The
village, Gaminella, consisted of modest two-story houses along the main road
with just a few shops interspersed between them: the small grocery store, a
pharmacist, a furniture store, others that looked like they serviced farm implements,
and a bar/ristorante. Shutters, just
like those at Gabi bordered the windows of all the houses, but below each one
was a window box filled with geraniums just beginning to show their colors in
the early spring morning. They looked beautiful! I hoped we could do the same at Gabi. The
architecture was radically different from what we had left behind. It was exciting to look around at a village
that looked like all the villages in all the Italian movies I had ever
seen. I knew then, at a gut level, that
we had arrived in Italy. Poised at the mouth of the small road that led to Gabi, Zio Silvio waited for a
motor scooter driven by a woman to pass by, then drove across the
road into the grocery store parking lot—a wide area of lumpy gray gravel.
As we
unfurled ourselves from the car and wrangled the children into the little shop,
the proprietors, a middle-aged couple, greeted us with smiles and curious
stares. George knew them from his teen years and he introduced me, then the
children. I smiled and said “Piacere,” which my Italian book told me
equated to “Pleased to meet you.” They
nodded and used the same term but added “Signora.” I realized that I probably should have also
used some term of respect for them—too late. They said some more words that I
couldn’t understand, so I smiled again and nodded. While George explained that
I didn’t speak much Italian, I smiled widely, searching their faces for some
way to let them know I was friendly. My
face ached from all the smiling I had to do in the first few weeks.
The children had fallen silent as they watched this
exchange. Until our arrival in Italy,
they had heard only George’s parents speak a few Italian words when we visited
on weekends. Now they listened,
wide-eyed, as their grandparents’ language flowed about them. George chatted with the proprietors and
caught up on their news, while I checked out the groceries.
The shelves looked a lot like my present-day local
convenience store. They stood about
shoulder high and were lined with various useful items, like soaps—laundry
soap, hand soap, shampoo, scouring powder—clothes pegs, and toilet paper. I was
relieved that we wouldn’t be without the basics. Lined up on one shelf were
little three-cornered cartons marked “latte”—milk.
It wasn’t refrigerated, but when I asked George he couldn’t tell me why. He
said it was always sold that way, and no one seemed to get sick. The well-water
at Gabi was not recommended for drinking, so our first major selection was a
case of water. That was a huge reality check. If the water from the tank on the
roof wasn’t boiled it could cause illness. Water for drinking had to be from a
bottle. The only question was “Con gas”
or “Sensa gas”—sparkling water or
plain.
Next, I saw dried pasta and immediately picked up
several packages. The children loved pasta.
One thing the store didn’t have was breakfast cereal—neither dry nor oatmeal or cream of wheat—a necessity in our house. The owner said that we could perhaps find it
in Casale, the closest small city, about a forty minute drive away. I was
dismayed. We relied on that for breakfast. We then asked about peanut butter,
another staple, but they had never heard of it. At my look of panic, George
explained what it was, and they suggested an alternative, Nutella. It is
available in California now, but not at that time, so we were unfamiliar with
it. It is made from a few hazelnuts, lots of chocolate, and lots and lots of
sugar. Not surprisingly, the children would love it. Worried about too much sugar and not enough protein, I fed it to them anyway in the weeks ahead. I
just kept murmuring the mantra: “nuts have protein.”
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