A walk to the creek:
There is a poem caught in all this for me. Like the crayfish embedded in the rocks.
Making gnocchi. We do this every year on the 25th of December. My mother makes the dough and rolls it out into snakes. She cuts the dough into little cubes. I flick the cubes off the tines of a fork. There is a right way to do this and a wrong way. Grandma picks up the rolled out gnocchi and places them onto a tray. She likes to make organized tidy little rows. Dad comes and is in charge of placing the gnocchi in the boiling water, scooping them out as they rise to the surface. He spoons them into a baking dish and my mother pours sauce over the top and sprinkles with Parmesan cheese. Later, they will be baked in the oven until they are hot and the cheese melts and the sauce bubbles. Brothers may or may not show up to help eat (because that is life) and sometimes friends without family in the area. And then there will be next year and hopefully a spoonful or two of leftovers.