Moving to Italy: Speaking Italian

Paul and James had settled in the new asilo, and their Italian improved dramatically, while mine progressed slowly. Even James began to chatter more in Italian around home. After a month in the asilo, one of the fathers asked George if his son could come over to play with the boys so the son could learn English. George told him the boy was welcome, but he wouldn’t learn English because when Paul and James played together they spoke in Italian. We were delighted that the boys were picking up the language so quickly.

One day, I was cleaning up around the house as usual when I asked Paul a simple question, in English of course. He looked at his father, then pointed at me and said,

"Che cosa ha detto?"  (What did she say?)

Alarmed, I repeated myself and he still looked at his father. He needed a translation!

I realized he had so immersed in Italian that English had been pushed aside. This was my son, my firstborn, the forerunner of the rest. I could not, would not, lose verbal contact with him—and after him, the others?  No!

This memory returned later, as I taught college students who regretted that they could not communicate with their immigrant grandparents in their native tongue. How many immigrant children were told to speak only English in their homes if they wanted to progress in this country?—standard advice. As they spoke more and more English, many lost their first language. And I wonder how many immigrant parents and grandparents lost the power of a common language with which to communicate with these children. Language acquisition as an adult is a much slower process. Even if the parents/grandparents learned to get by in English for interacting in the community, it takes years of practice to become fluent enough to express oneself clearly, to communicate at a deeper level. I know. In my year at Gabi, despite my ardent desire to speak fluently to those around me, I was nowhere near gaining that ability.

 

On that day in Italy, I stood firm: “English only in the house!” I told Paul and James. It would slow down my Italian, but I had already lost my community; I would not lose my children.  

And then I looked at my 25 year old self. Who was I? I could no longer see the person I used to be in California—engaged in reading, writing, politics, and slowly studying my way to a Bachelor’s degree. With adult interaction in my native language limited to my husband and my in-laws, I was afloat in the world with no other connections except for occasional letters. I felt isolated on the farm with no newspapers, nor magazines, not even television, and no conversation with anyone outside my home. Because we could not converse, the Italians in town and our relatives on the farm defined me as housewife and mother, and nothing more. Were they right? Was that all I had become? My core identity was fading, and I felt helpless to stop it.

Moving to Italy: School--Part 2

The new asilo stood alone on a small lot encircled by a fence. It was not a leftover room that had been turned into a preschool; it was built with forethought, not as an afterthought.   When we went to check it out, the tall gate was shut so we parked outside, and walked down the long driveway that bisected the lot, past the play equipment, to the main building. School was out for the day, and all was quiet. The teachers were three nuns, trained to do only that—teach. One of them was our guide. 

Younger and more energetic than the nun in Cerrina, she showed us four main rooms: one for desk work, one for playtime, one for play-acting, and one for quiet time. We saw opportunities by the score for our boys to grow: percussion instruments and puzzles, construction toys, tea cups, costumes and cars, a stage and a stove, an electric keyboard ready for curious children to play, and a piano where everyone gathered to sing. The children were split up between older and younger, so the older ones wouldn’t be held back. The nun said no naps if you were five and had given them up—Paul would like that. She showed us little exercise books of prewriting exercises, and writing when they were ready. They taught the older children to write all the letters of the alphabet, and to draw birds, flowers, and houses.  Also, they had little projects like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards. I was relieved. All of these activities would help Paul get ready for first grade. They seemed to try first to get the child's interest, and let him take it from there, just making sure that the right materials and guidance were available. The sister didn’t mention the ground-breaking Italian educator Maria Montessori, but I recognized her philosophy and methods. The outside equipment didn't look like much, but after the other school, the inside was heaven.  

Off to the side was a long room that alerted me to my support duties. A row of miniature towels hung over a bank of cubbies where the lunchboxes would go. Each towel was provided by the family and embroidered with the child’s name. He would bring it clean on Monday and take it home dirty on Friday. He must bring a sandwich in his lunch box, but soup was provided by the school. And each of our boys would need an apron to cover his clothes. The school put a new child on a half-day schedule for the first two weeks and expected that a parent or grandparent might have to stay for a day or two, so that the child was broken in easily. How much more humane this seemed than the other nun’s “Go! Go!”  No one there knew English, so our boys would immerse themselves in the language and culture of Italy, their new land. All this, and it cost less than the other asilo. We signed them up on the spot.

We had already bought lunch boxes for the other preschool, so I bought towels to match—blue-striped and orange-striped—and I embroidered their names in Italian on the top of each one: Paolo and Giacomo.  I then sewed a loop to hang them on the little nail in the wall.  Marino talked to a tailoress (his term) who would make them each a blue-checked grembialino (little apron) to cover their clothes. It was a cotton, mid-thigh smock with three-quarter length sleeves that buttoned in the front. (Sadly the only picture of them wearing it is lost.)

Paul went first, so James wouldn't distract him with tears. He came home with stories of boys that he met, and games that they played, running up “mountains” and fighting off crime. We took James and stayed with him for a few days then, on one half-day, we left him whimpering in the arms of a short, kindly nun. When we picked him up he was smiling. The little nun told George that she held him for five minutes, and he clung to her legs for five more. Then he made her sit down and listen to him talk. In Italian, he spoke of his family, every last one of us, who we were, what we did, where we had come from and where we now lived. He talked on and on for half an hour, and then he stood up, smiled, and went to play.

The philosopher Charles Taylor says, "I define who I am by defining where I speak from, in the family tree, in social space...in my intimate relations to the ones I love."  James did exactly that.  He defined himself and his position in his home, and only then did he feel secure enough to reach out to the community around him.

Without the tools of language, I struggled to do the same.

Moving to Italy: School-Part 1

As September arrived I was getting increasingly worried. If Paul were in California he would be starting kindergarten. It was time to get serious about school.

The town of Cerrina, whose municipality encompassed Gabi, had one preschool (asilo).  Most of the people in our area had sent their children there, so we drove over to see it with the boys. It consisted of two rooms with a playground outside, attached to a home for elderly Italians who had no children to take care of them. One old nun watched the many children in her care without help. Like most of the people in that area, she didn't speak any English, so I couldn't ask her about her philosophy of teaching little ones, nor find out if she was right for our boys. George tried, but he hadn’t read the same books as I had, and he didn’t know all the right questions to ask. Once more I felt frustrated at my lack of Italian, but I could still observe the facilities. 

One room had a piano and books, the other a table with blocks and pegs, and outside was a small yard with some play equipment. Because it was the local asilo, and we wanted to do what the locals did, we signed them up. George and I told the boys that they were going to preschool and they seemed to understand and offered no objections. The next day, we walked in with them and said goodbye. Paul was fine, but James began to cry as we walked towards the door. The nun told us this was normal, and to Go! Go!  James was howling as we pulled out of sight, and I felt awful. He rarely cried, but he could be very shy, so I knew this was hard on him. I wanted to go back to get him, but we decided I was being silly and that he was safe, for a day anyway. He was playing nicely when we returned at four, but Paul looked bored.

At home, they told us their day was blocks and pegs and singing at the piano, then lunch. They had no writing, no painting, not even crayoning, and after lunch they had to take a nap. Since Paul had given up naps at age three, he objected to that. But I could understand. The nun was alone, she probably needed the break, and it was easier if everyone napped at the same time. In the afternoon, they played outside until we arrived.  James said he had cried for us loudly at lunch, and the sister yelled at him. 

"What did she say?" I asked.

"I don't know, she was speaking Italian," James replied.

Hmmmm. He spoke Italian better than I did, but perhaps I expected too much, so I gave him advice: "When you don't understand, you must say 'Non capisco.'" 

He looked up at me, frowned a bit, then replied, "No. When I don't understand, I say 'Non ho capito niente.'" (I haven’t understood anything.)

I realized that was probably better than what I had told him. It certainly sounded better. He was only three years and nine months but he was catching on to the language far quicker than me, and his accent sounded perfect. "Is that what you told the teacher?" I asked him. 

"Yes."

"Then what did she say?" 

"I don't know; she was speaking Italian."  

How could he correct my Italian and then claim not to understand the teacher? I couldn’t be sure, but I thought maybe he was resisting. Or she was speaking dialect. He cried the next morning and said he didn’t want to go, but we made him anyway. His grandfather drove them, thinking maybe I was the problem. He said James cried a little bit but was fine when he picked him up. The old nun said James had refused to eat his lunch, but at four o’clock when he saw his grandfather’s car, he ran to his lunch box and gobbled his sandwich. When he got home, he announced that he wouldn’t go the next day. With minor variations, this went on for three more days, but more importantly, Paul was still bored and I worried that he wasn't learning anything. So we pulled them out. 

This was not a wise move for people trying to fit in. That asilo was where the local people sent their children. Because we pulled them out we were making a statement that their preschool wasn’t good enough for us. Because this was mostly my decision based on my readings about early childhood education, I felt a little guilty. I felt it even more when my in-laws questioned what we were doing, then frowned. They wanted the best for the children too, but I think they considered me a bit too fussy. The community was tight and we were "the Americans."  Uncles and cousins, and grandfathers—Marcas galore—made no difference to them. We were still "the Americans." We were indeed acting like Americans. When one service didn't suit us, we weren’t afraid to reject it. Our children meant more to us than community solidarity. 

We had heard about another asilo, in a town much further away, where Cousin Luigi had sent his boys. We decided to check it out.

Moving to Italy: Hay Ride

By late summer, Paul and James had become good friends with Simona. The three of them played together almost every day in the surrounding fields and orchards, when they weren't cruising back and forth between our house, the uncles' houses, and Simona's house. Simona, who was six that summer, had played at Gabi since she was a baby, so she was able to lead the way. We told them not to hike up to the next village, but if they wanted to play on the slopes beneath the courtyard, or walk down to the orchard where apple, plum, and apricot trees dropped fruit, they were free to do so. Hunger brought them home at lunchtime and long before the sun slipped below the horizon.

One day I heard the usual sound of the tractor coming up the hill pulling a trailer loaded down with hay. Matthew clamored to see, so I put down the book I had been reading to him and Margaret Ann and positioned chairs so they could look through the open window.  Zio Remo, who had been helping with the harvest, was sitting on top of the hay as they drove up the hill. He waved at Simona, Paul, and James walking up the road from the orchard. 

Paul’s wavy, fair hair had grown long, and even from that distance, I could see the blonde streaks. He had stretched out after his fifth birthday, and his legs and arms had bronzed in the summer sun. James’ light brown hair was also crowned with blonde highlights and long strands dropped frequently over his eyes. I knew that sooner or later I would have to attempt to trim his and Paul’s hair. James at three and half, was also thinner and more tanned than when we arrived.  It seems strange for them to have tanned more in Northern Italy than Southern California, but they were outside more often at Gabi, playing and exploring.

As the tractor passed the children on the road, we heard the faint sound of Zio Remo’s voice as he called out to Zio Silvio to stop. They invited the children to ride. Silvio stood astride the trailer hitch and hefted up the children one by one on top of the hay, where Remo nestled them securely into the middle then stretched his arm out behind them. The tractor started up towards us.  I grabbed my still camera and called to George to get the movie camera. The children looked so content.

The late afternoon sun was warm as they settled into the hay, and the slow rhythm of the moving tractor lulled them to stillness. As I watched them I could imagine the sweat from Zio Remo's hard day's work mingled with the sweet, dusty smell of freshly mown hay, and the prickle of the stiff stalks pushed at the skin on the back of their legs as they saw the windows of our house appear and disappear between the tree branches above them. When they turned into our road they saw us on the bedroom balcony where we had moved with the babies to watch, and they pointed, laughed, and waved up at us. The twins laughed back and squealed as they ran up and down the balcony trying to get a better look when the tractor passed slowly beneath us. Zio Remo smiled and waved to them. As the tractor rounded the corner, Zio Remo idly reached up to pull twigs off the overhanging hazelnut tree.

We crossed to the other side of the house, to the courtyard balcony, and waited for a few minutes until the tractor came to a stop in front of the barn. In the main courtyard Marino walked over to watch as Zio Remo helped the children off the hay, onto the trailer hitch, then to the ground. We still have an 8mm movie that shows Simona wave off Zio Remo then jump daringly the last two feet. As we watched, Matthew and Margaret’s babbling echoed noisily around the courtyard, and the cows in the barn mooed and clanked their chains at the laughter and loud noises. Then Zio Silvio drove the tractor and trailer under the portico. The hay would stay on the trailer until the next morning when the two men would spend another couple of hours forking it onto the conveyor and up into the hayloft.

It was suppertime for the children. Simona ran back to her grandmother's house, and Paul and James came upstairs. As they burst into the kitchen I ruffled their hair and bent my head to inhale the smell of hay from their warm heads. I marveled at how different their summer had been from those that had gone before. Their world in California had been bounded by the block-wall fence that surrounded our back yard, by the car which transported them to the park and to various relatives' houses for visits, and by the impatience with which many adult strangers had greeted them. I could never let them roam freely on the street where we had lived in California, because the zooming cars were too dangerous.  At Gabi cars were a rarity. If we hadn't noticed them as moving dark rectangles on the road far below, they announced themselves with whining gears as they strained up the steep road. The children stood still to see who was arriving, so we never worried about their darting out unawares. They ran and jumped and climbed, and even learned to ride around the ruts in the courtyard on the two-wheeled bikes their grandpa had bought them. 

All I could see, all I wanted to see, was that our children were thriving, nestled in the warmth of a healthy and accepting environment. Not only were they learning what it took to put food on the table, but they were learning a second language, and they had connected with relatives they wouldn't have known otherwise. They were healthy and strong, and the ready acceptance from kindly adults in their lives meant that they were learning to trust the world about them. And so, as the warm summer sun set for the day, I felt content that our decision to move to Italy had been the right one.

What we didn’t know until years later was that as the tractor bearing the children rounded the corner of the house out of our sight, Paul grabbed at the branch of the tree to snap off a twig as he had seen Zio Remo do. Instead of breaking off into his hand, the twig held. Paul had tugged at the branch and held on to it as the tractor moved out from beneath him. For a few moments he hung suspended twenty feet above the ground while Zio Remo yelled at Zio Silvio to stop and back up.  Zio Silvio maneuvered until the trailer was positioned under Paul’s swinging legs. At first Paul was so scared he didn't want to let go. Finally, he was persuaded to release his grip as Zio Remo reached up, grabbed his legs, and guided him back down. 

While we were basking in the glory of the simple life, our first-born was in danger of breaking a limb, or worse. The simple life at Gabi meant no phone, no paramedics to summon, and the nearest hospital was 40 minutes away. It was a good thing we didn’t know!

 

Moving to Italy: Corn!

Late in August, my father-in-law told us to bring a basket as he was taking us for a ride to one of Zio Silvio’s fields, but he wouldn’t tell us why. In the crowded car we bounced up and down and sideways as he drove slowly along the rutted lanes between the cultivated fields. We couldn’t see much on either side as high green grass or other crops came up past the windows. It was a relief when Marino stopped the car and we all piled out. 

As we straightened up and looked around, we saw upon row after row of tall, green stalks. George and I recognized them but pretended we didn’t to intrigue the children. Excited, we walking them over to one of the stalks and carefully peeled back the fronds to expose familiar yellow corncobs inside. “Corn, Mama!” Paul exclaimed as he and James peered at the familiar cobs. The twins jumped up and down clapping their hands and yelling “Corn, corn!” even though they probably had no memory of what they were seeing. 

With my father-in-law’s encouragement we retrieved our baskets and began to pick the corn. Zio Silvio waved then walked over from the other side of the field where he had been working. He laughed at us as we filled a basket with enough corn for our dinner. He thought we were crazy. Marino laughed with him and explained to me that on the farms of that area the corn was usually left on the stalks until it was hard, because it was grown to sell as feed for livestock. Silvio wouldn’t dream of eating it himself; he considered it fit only for animals. When we cooked it later that day, we offered some to him, but he said no thank you, giving us a good-natured look that said “Crazy Americans!” On our way back to Gabi, I asked Marino to stop by the butcher’s in Gaminella. To complete the meal, I wanted to cook hamburgers. 

As I worked on dinner that evening, I felt relieved that instead of struggling to make do with what was available, I could cook and serve the foodstuffs with which we were all familiar. This brought a momentary relaxation of the knot of anxiety inside me. That knot was built of trying to adapt what I had learned about nutrition and cooking to ingredients that were strange to us. When I found familiar ingredients, I could relax and just cook. The corn wasn’t as crisp or as tasty as what we bought in the supermarket in California, but its distinct flavor brought a flood of memories. We placed the hamburgers in small rolls and stacked them with lettuce and tomatoes from our garden. For once I knew that the children would willingly eat the food that I cooked, and I was confident that it was nourishing.   

My in-laws joined us in our dining room upstairs as we cheerfully tucked into our “American” dinner. I was surprised to recognize our warm feelings as nostalgia. That was confusing. When we left California, I thought we had rejected everything American. How could I feel nostalgia for a country that we had fled so willingly?

James with corn

Mary and Paul with corn field

George helping James and Paul harvest corn