After weeks of begging and pleading, Nana had finally agreed to make gnocchis with me. We had dragged out the dusty old pots, brought down the flour from the highest shelf, and rolled up our sleeves, we were ready.
It started out fun, tossing flour around at each other, and trying to recreate old pictures from eleven years past, us in my kitchen, smiles big and bright and my hair circling my head like a halo But, thanks to my brilliant sister’s suggestion, we decided to double the recipe. Four people, we could eat lots of pasta. What my grandmother failed to remember is that the recipe she had is the one she used when she fed her family. One batch was enough for seven people, with leftovers. After thirty minutes of rolling the gnocchis we were all already fed up. There was a mountain of pasta in the middle of the table and a mountain of untouched dough right beside it. It was going to take all night we feared.

An hour or two later, still making the pasta, over tired and covered in sticky dough, everything was funny. Zoe and I were regularly rolling around the floor laughing out of desperation. Why did we do this to ourselves, we cried, exhausted tears streaming down our faces. In an effort to uplift our moods and calm us down, my mom suggested some music. It was my idea to turn on a Frank Sinatra Pandora station, we thought it would be nice for Nana to hear some music from the past. As soon as the first song trickled out of Zoe’s phone, my grandmother’s head slowly rose staring around in amazement. The sweet lyrics of “you are the sunshine of my life” moseying out of the speakers, love and devotion clear in the lyrics.

As we rolled our pasta, Nana’s lips began to mouth the words “I used to love this song,” she gasped, “I haven’t heard it in decades”.

Then, the woman whom I had to beg to sing happy birthday to me, began to belt out the lyrics. Her hips swaying to the trumpets and her feet began moving across the floor. This woman, roughly five times older than me was gliding around the room with the grace and youthfulness I had only ever seen in pictures. Sinatra breathing life back into her old and frail body. As the song came to a close, she pleaded for another, like a drug. The songs of the 40s followed us through the night. In the end, we cooked and ate our pasta, threw all the pots and pans in the sink, and went to bed.

Two weeks later, I got a letter. A thank you from my grandmother for bringing her back. It reminded her, she said, of the times her and my late grandfather would dance around the kitchen to the radio, which then was playing the up-and-coming tunes of Frank Sinatra. So now when I hear an old song, I try and remember the memories made along to it. How someone out there loves and treasures the moments it helped create.