Nobody’s getting my family’s secret recipe for meat sauce.

Nobody.

My wife and 7-year-old son walked into the kitchen unannounced while I was making the sauce and I about flipped.

“Why are you in here?” I asked. “Close your eyes—don’t look at what I’m doing.”

My dad entrusted me with the secret recipe for the Picarella Family Meat Sauce, and it was my responsibility to keep it a secret. So I was a little harsh.

On her way out of the kitchen, my wife told me to stop shooing her and our son and asked if I could teach the kid how to make the sauce—just like that. As if I hadn’t told her how secret the secret sauce was.

“I think it’s time we teach him responsibility,” she said. “He should be held responsible for keeping the secret.”

“Good idea, we could do that,” I said. “But you and I were both 7, and we both know that ‘7’ and ‘secret’ don’t go together, so maybe not.”

“I can keep a secret,” our boy said.

I sat my boy down. I told him he was a great kid. I told him I loved him very much.

Then I reminded him of the time he and I snuck cookies and how he told Mommy that we weren’t eating cookies. And I reminded him of the time we wanted to surprise Mommy with flowers and how he told her not to look because we were getting out a vase.

“This secret recipe is very secret stuff,” I told the boy. “Grandpa could kill me if I told anyone. He might even kill Mommy. And she doesn’t even know the recipe.”

That’s when my wife filled me in on some alarming news: “One day,” she said, “you’re gonna die. And then the recipe will be gone forever.”

On her way out of the kitchen, my wife told me to stop shooing her and asked if I could take pictures of our boy making the sauce—just like that. As if I hadn’t told her how secret the secret sauce was.

Right away, my son and I had problems. I wanted him to watch what I was doing, and he wanted to be doing “the doing.”

So I let him crack an egg. I spent 10 minutes trying to fish all the cracked pieces of shell out of the egg. Then I let him put a few pinches of secret spices into the mix. I spent 30 minutes shoveling out those few “pinches.”

There was mess on the counters, mess on the floor, mess all over our clothes. But in the end, we made a good batch of sauce. And we ended up having fun.

While I was cleaning up the kitchen, I overheard my son on the phone with my sister-in-law, giving away the secret recipe. I ran in and asked what the heck he was doing.

“Nobody’s gonna tell your dad,” my wife said.

“Nobody?” I asked. “Who else did you tell?”

“Just my sister. And my parents . . . and Bethy.”

“You told Bethy? Are you crazy? She’ll tell everyone.”

Bethy was a family friend who could spread dried cement. She spreads the word faster than—

Ring . . . Ring . . .

It was my dad calling. Bethy’d already gotten to him. I told my wife to tell him I wasn’t home. She dismissed my worry as nonsense.

“He’s right here,” she told him. “What’s that?” she asked him. “Oh.”

She held the phone out to me. “Yeah, he wants you dead.”

Before taking the call, I kissed my wife goodbye, asked if she’d probably remarry. I kissed my son, told him that when he begins shaving to go with the grain not against it.

My son got teary-eyed. He said he’d tell Grandpa that it was his fault for not keeping the secret, not my fault—he’d take the responsibility. And he was serious.

“Look at that,” I said to my wife. “He really is responsible.” So I told my son to take the call.

About an hour later, I decided to take responsibility for the responsibility I’d accepted when I was given the recipe. I took the phone from my wife— my dad was still waiting. And I hung it up.

A few weeks later, after life returned to normal and my father accepted my son as another keeper of the secret recipe, my wife asked if the kid and I would make more sauce together.

Of course we would, I told her. I gave my son a proud little nudge—only the two of us could make the sauce in our house.

“Yes!” the kid said. “Because I forgot the recipe.”

E-mail Michael Picarella at michael.picarella@gmail.com. To read more of his stories, go to www.michaelpicarellacolumn .blogspot.com.