Moving to Italy: Visiting Luigi-A

A short time after the boys’ arrival back home from their adventure in the fields, we heard George’s cousin Luigi’s Volkswagen Beetle as it chugged up the hill from Pozzengo, a town on the opposite hillside. He had left a message with the uncles before we arrived that he would pick us up for lunch that day. Coming from California, I had always considered the Volkswagen a small car, but my perception had to readjust as it rounded the house into the courtyard and loomed large next to Zio Silvio’s tiny Opal. Constantly shattering assumptions was the most disorienting part of living in Italy, and I imagine for a new immigrant to any country. What I had taken as true, like Volkswagen equals small, was so often not true in my new context.  

Luigi was a lively, talkative man in his thirties whom I liked immediately. Since I couldn’t understand much of what was said to me, I found that I paid close attention to faces of the people I met. Luigi’s face was slender, with sharp angles, but the eyes under his dark hair spilled with goodwill. He didn’t come in, but waited outside and chain-smoked while we finished putting on the children’s shoes and jackets, then piled into his car and, once more, bounced down the single-lane road.

Just as we hit the straightaway, we encountered a tractor coming towards us. Luigi pulled the car to one side so the tractor could pass and we all watched curiously. A middle-aged woman was driving. Big and bulky tractors had always seemed to be a man’s domain, and I didn’t think a woman would have the strength to control them, but this woman had no problem. Luigi told us she was a neighbor from Bertola. Her husband had died many years ago, and left alone with a farm and no sons to help, she did the most logical thing: got up on the tractor, drove it to the fields, and ploughed them herself. In that area it wasn’t considered unusual. I had always prided myself on being a strong woman, but watching her maneuver the tractor while I sat with my husband and children, I knew I couldn’t do half as well. I couldn’t even drive a stick shift! 

When we had left California, women were just breaking into the traditionally male professions, such as engineering and medicine. And it wasn’t just in the professions. Every week a woman pioneer was featured in some newspaper or magazine article, wielding a welding torch or driving an eighteen-wheeler. From my place at home with my babies I cheered them on. It would be several years before women would demand equal pay for equal work. At that time, it was enough that we were gaining access to a variety of jobs. My expectation on arriving in Italy was that I would be able to enlighten Italian women about all the possibilities that were open to them. When I saw that middle-aged woman driving a tractor, and later when we met Italian female professionals well-established in a variety of “male” careers, I realized that in many ways, the Italians were way ahead of us.

View from Gabi. Pozzengo is the town just to the right of the X.