There were some
minor catches to “living the dream”: we weren’t rich, the house wasn’t that big,
and it needed many repairs and buckets of paint. And after two weeks George’s
parents arrived to live downstairs.
In my girlhood
dreams, I hadn’t envisioned my in-laws living right below us, offering their
words of wisdom almost every day, and getting irked when we didn’t take them.
For instance, one day my mother-in-law, Rina, suggested I wash out my plastic
bags so that I could re-use them. I said no thank you, I didn’t think that was
sanitary. Several days later I noticed her hauling my discarded bags from our
trash with an expression that clearly registered her annoyance. When I saw them
drying in her kitchen downstairs, I was indignant. How dare she pick at my
trash! How dare she tell me what to do!
I couldn’t imagine anyone being so cheap that they would wash, dry, and
re-use thin plastic bags. I couldn’t argue with her. We were living in their
house! So I had to stifle my annoyance and that was not comfortable.
Many years
later, I understood that she was an early recycler. At that time in Italy we
couldn’t buy plastic bags, packaged and folded in little boxes, so it was
logical to recycle the ones that came from the store. Even though I had been
married for almost six years and had given birth to four children, I was just
twenty-four and still so insecure that I resented all advice that came from
George’s parents, no matter how logical.
With my in-laws arrival at Gabi, our life changed
again. Instead of us struggling to figure out how to do what we needed to do,
they took over and told us how to live. This was a mixed blessing. On the one
hand, it was a relief to be able to ask someone where to find a shovel or axe,
or where to buy flour. On the other hand, George and I lost the closeness that
we had felt as we met each obstacle and reasoned a way around it, together. With
his parents to tell us what to do, we also lost our autonomy. It bothered me,
but George was much more easy-going than me, so he was not bothered. One of the
first things his father did when they arrived was to devise a plan of action
for George to clean up around the farm. The first job, clearing brush around
the driveway, started at 7 am the following day. George was up and out the door
on time.
Within a week of their arrival, my in-laws bought a
car and then, much to my relief, they ordered and paid for a washing machine. I
loved that washing machine! After three weeks of hand-washing mounds of
children’s dirty clothes, I sighed with relief as the appliance truck drove up.
The delivery men puffed and panted the washer up the steep stairs into my
kitchen. Since it came with a built-in
heater we didn’t need to tap into the hot water line, so we placed it next to
the kitchen sink for cold water access. It fit neatly between the well’s pump
switch and the balcony doors. It was a front-loader that could spin-dry our
clothes super-fast.
For a longer clothesline, my father-in-law directed
George and Zio Silvio to string a line around a pulley from the second story
balcony of the house, across the courtyard, and around another pulley on the
second story of the barn. I pegged an
item of clothing, then pushed on the rope to move that item out over the
courtyard then hung the next. I
continued this way until the line of laundry stretched from my kitchen balcony
to the barn. It was high enough that the
tractor, even with full a load of hay, could pass underneath without
touching. When the clothes were dry, I
pulled on the rope to gather a clean, sweet-smelling pile. It was an ingenious solution, because the
clothes were strung high on the hillside catching the breeze, as well as the
sun, for most of the day.
A month or two later, one of the villagers remarked to
George that she mistook my colorful laundry, visible from the valley below, for
signal flags. I wonder now, what she must have thought of us, moving in and
installing “signal flags” on the hill. Even though Marino was well-known to the
residents, they must have considered his American family a strange lot. Since
the “flags” changed several times daily, I wonder to whom they thought we were
signaling, and what kind of messages we could possibly be sending. Or perhaps they thought it was a decorative
thing. Her statement was a signal to me
of the cultural misconceptions that existed on each side.
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| Laundry strung over the courtyard |
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