A souper tradition!

Fifteen years ago tomorrow, as I watched our guests enjoy Italian Wedding Soup at our wedding reception, I turned to my new husband and said, ‘I’m going to make wedding soup every year on our anniversary forever and ever.’ And so far, I’ve made good on that. But like most things, the theory is sometimes easier than the practice.

I’ve learned to be flexible with this tradition. Some years we eat our wedding soup on our actual anniversary and some years we fudge the date to suit the demands of life. This year was a good example of that. Knowing tomorrow will be too busy to spend the day crafting our anniversary soup, I opted to make it today instead. The sentiment is more important than the timeliness anyway, I’d say.

As I worked on the soup today, I thought about the six kitchens across five states from which I’ve served this soup. I reflected on the people we’ve shared it with and the years I’ve eaten it without my husband since he was off serving elsewhere. In those times, I always shared it with friends and the void was sufficiently filled, even if my heart was missing him something fierce. After all, my wedding soup tradition is rooted in love, and friendship exudes love, too.

And then I thought about the the labor involved in this soup. Over the years I’ve tweaked and changed my recipe to arrive at what is as close to perfect as possible. I thought about the hours I spend making my meatball mixture and how much time it takes rolling each individual meatball to just the right size. It’s tempting to make them larger to speed the process up, but my patience is rewarded with a nicer end result. Isn’t that a great little metaphor for marriage? Patience is so important there, too. And I’m so lucky to have a man who is patient with me, for better or for worse. And yeah, I know I test the ‘For worse’ part more than I should...

Then there’s the pasta. If I cook it in the soup, it gets mushy and turns the broth too starchy, so I cook it separately and add it at the very last minute. That way each component can be at its very best by the time it hits the table. Isn’t that a lot like marriage, too? You can grow and refine yourselves separately in order to arrive as the best version of yourself for your partnership. The broth and the pasta are just like an old married couple, aren’t they? They give and they take exactly where they need to.

I love our tradition and I’m blessed to share it with you all, as well as with our children. They look forward to it, even if I have to tailor it to exclude vegetables for our son’s portion, and extra meatballs for our daughter. And even if our boy drops my cell phone into his soup when I ask him to take a picture of his parents, it’s super special. And I would not trade it for anything in this beautiful world.