In 2016, I Grew a Cucuzza
the let's-look-back-ten-years trend with audio 🎧 essay
Keeping Creative Time
It’s never too late to be the creative person you want to be. 💖
Dear, Creative Friends—
In 2016, I grew a cucuzza. Or more accurately, I grew two cucuzza plants that, by the second half of summer, became several baseball bat-sized Italian squash, their bodies hanging like limbs from the vine on a green metal trellis I bought from the dusty shelves of Durfee Hardware, down the street from where I lived in Cranston, Rhode Island.
What is a cucuzza you might be wondering? It’s a pale green, slender Sicilian squash that my grandfather grew every summer of my childhood in his garden in New Jersey. When cooked, he served it peeled and quartered, sauteed in olive oil with garlic, over a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce topped with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. In all my forty-one years, I’ve never come across a cucuzza at a grocery store, farm stand, or farmers market, even while living for over a decade, in a state known for being a home to a large population of Italian-Americans.
But in 2016, I was determined to find the seeds and grow a cucuzza to mark the ten-year anniversary of my grandfather’s death. And while scrolling the Seeds of Italy catalog online, I held a vision of bringing this serpent-like squash as an offering to his grave. An offering that said: “Hey, grandpa! I miss you. Remember when I shared my poetry with you? Remember when I used to be writing?”
I think it’s important to mention that in the year 2016, I was feeling a lot of guilt and shame for not living the creative life I thought I’d be living by age thirty-one. If I’m honest, I don’t think I knew what I wanted that life to look or feel like, but I continued to try and put my creative energy into projects that excited me like cooking, gardening, knitting, sewing, relationships, and of course, my work as a librarian.
While I delighted in these hobbies, people, places, and the public service career itself, none of it scratched at the deeper creative itch I longed to relieve. I didn’t want my life to hold pockets of creative moments, I wanted my creative moments to be the container that held my life.
A question that bubbled under the surface of all my anxieties and fears boiled down to this:
What makes a life, a whole creative life?
If I were to answer this in 2016, I would have said that it’s in the output, the productivity, the results of what’s been made, the consumption of a product. The proof I was a writer would only be known by the publishing of a book or an essay printed in a well-known magazine. In essence, the fruit from vine but not the careful tending of the vine itself.
A creative life is so much more than the finished work we share. It’s nourishment for our growth lies not in the awards, the accolades, or how many followers we have on Instagram, but in the simple act of choosing to show up everyday and do something to care for it—to be the gardener of our own lives.
In 2016, I might have grown a cucuzza, but what I really did was plant seeds. By growing that squash in honor of my grandfather, I was choosing to make meaning out of the half-lived creative life I’d been living in the decade since his death. Today, ten years later, I can barely recognize the woman that I was, and I’m grateful for this. The seeds she planted are the many vines I now tend.
Below you will find an essay about my relationship with grandfather. It was written during the pandemic, while taking the first of many online writing courses that helped me scratch at that deeper creative itch I’d once longed to relieve. And since this year is now the twenty-year anniversary of his death, I share this as an offering to you with the question:
What are you tending to today in your whole creative life? And who, what, and where were you in 2016?
This post was inspired by one of my favorite memoir writers, Molly Wizenberg!
She is the author of several books, my favorite being A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table. Since it’s publication in 2010, I still regularly make many of the recipes from this book, and enjoy following along with the tending of her whole creative life through her Substack I’ve Got a Feeling with Molly Wizenberg.
I invite you to listen to the essay below.
Thanks for being here.
Take care, y’all.
<3Faye
The Serpent of Sicily
an essay by J. Faye D’Avanza
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Until Next Time
Keeping Creative Time
It’s never too late to be the creative person you want to be. 💖
Before you go, enjoy a song from the playlist I call . . . Odes to Time.
Louis Prima —“My Cucuzza”—1959.
Keeping Creative Time explores a writer’s healing journey in conversation with what it means to live a whole creative life in the twenty-first century—one breath, step, and morning page at a time—while sharing stories and tools rooted in her creative community in Asheville, North Carolina.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for listening!
J. Faye D’Avanza, MSLIS
Creative Empowerment Facilitator & Coach
Artist, Writer, Librarian
Founder, Library of Care
jfayedavanza.com
Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a book purchase from one of the book links I’ve shared. ☺️❤️📚
Thx so much for a delightful journey in time, vegetables and introspect! I did NOT know what a cucuzza was and now all I want to do is find some, prep them, cook them and eat them! One thing I do love about you, Faye, and your whole creative practive is .... its unpredictable & fun!