Moving to Italy: Letting go

While we were in his house, Zio Remo had invited Paul and James to go with him to his fields the following morning. I was a little unsure, but George said it would be fine. With just grass and trees and insects, there wasn’t much that could harm them. Zio Remo knocked on the downstairs door for the boys just after breakfast the next day, bringing six eggs from his hens, but he refused to come up to our apartment.  Zio Silvio had also refused to come in when he delivered the milk each morning. Very different from our American neighborhood, I was to find that most local visitors seemed more comfortable chatting outside the house. I was delighted with the eggs and looked forward to cooking them for breakfast the next morning. It would make a change from milk-sopped bread or salami.

The boys pulled on their shoes and marched off to the fields with Zio Remo. We told them to behave themselves, but I was a little nervous about their safety. With James only three and Paul almost five, they had always been under the watchful eye of our immediate family, and I didn’t know how they would cope away from us. Or whether Zio Remo would know to watch they didn't hurt themselves. George took Margaret Ann and Matthew for a little walk to meet Zio Silvio's dog, tied on a long leash at the edge of our courtyard, while I continued to unpack our suitcases. Later, as I bent over the bath to wash another load of laundry, I worried about how the boys were doing. Around 11:30, as I was hanging out the wash, I saw them round the corner of the house below me. It sounded as if my boys, who spoke only English, were conversing with Zio Remo, who spoke only Italian!  

Matthew and Margaret Ann approach "Ful" Zio Silvio's hunting dog.

Paul and James burst into the house full of chatter about what they had seen and where they had been. They were thrilled with the freedom they had enjoyed as they had run around in the grass, chased each other up and down the slopes, then helped Zio Remo dig. They told us excitedly that Zio had even shown them how to distinguish good fruit from bad under the trees in the orchard. (And I wondered how they had understood his Italian.) I was as thrilled as they were, especially at the big grin on Zio Remo’s face as he turned them over. Their first experience running wild in the fields was the partial fulfillment of our mission at Gabi.

A later picture of the children's adventures in the fields