Living Proof

(Actual photo of dad's lobsters.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be spending time with the family this Christmas, however, there are a few quirks that need adjusting on many levels when it comes to the whole “Christmas festivities”, which happens to fall on Christmas Eve for us. The entire family rounds up at my parents’ house at 7pm. Every single year, my father makes the feast of 7 fishes, because it’s basically the Italian tradition. During the course of a decade, one by one, each family member has begun to start the process of developing some type of allergy to shellfish. My father, being the retired owner of a fish market down on South Street Seaport in New York---he wouldn’t have Christmas any other way. Fish was it. That was the permanent menu from now on. We don’t know any other way. The first sister to develop a shellfish allergy had the worst reaction of all. She literally blew up like a tick and her throat closed up. She had to be sent to the emergency room. Now, be...

“Here, gimme dat’, will ya?” Dad took the lobster out of my hand and started cutting through the midsection of its body. “Disiz’ howya’ do it,” he said, with an accomplished look, “You gotta cut right inda’ middle.” He was trying his best to show me how he cuts open a lobster, but I just wasn’t getting it. I didn’t want to get it, even though I wanted to help him. He used to come home everyday from the South Street Seaport in Manhattan with a crate of lobsters that were still alive. I remember poking at one, as it tried clawing me while being tied up with an orange rubber band. They’ve always reminded me of huge crickets- ugly with big antennas everywhere. Worse yet, my sister would always call them sea roaches. I never enjoyed eating them. I was afraid that one day, my father would be attacked by one of these giant sea roaches just by the way he killed them. It’s been said that lobsters love their family, just as humans do, and feel emotional pain. Being that dad worked at the fish ...