The story of our move to Italy starts
with "Arrival"
on the June 26, 2017 blog post.
In September of the year we spent in Italy, Paul, James, and I watched
our first grape harvest—the vendemmia.
Zio Remo’s vineyard was just down the hill from our house, and every year the
family gathered at Gabi to pick his grapes. Since the vineyard was not large,
and most of the main grape-picking could be done over a long weekend, it was
assumed that anyone available would help out. Zio Mario and his son drove from
Turin, and that year George would join them for the harvest.
Each day the men trekked down through the early morning mists to work:
George, the uncles—Silvio, Remo and Mario—and George’s cousin Rudolfo. (Due to
his arthritic knees, my father-in-law couldn’t work in the vineyard, so he
spent each morning preparing a substantial lunch for the workers.) Each man
moved as fast as possible along the avenues of vines with a large basket. He stopped
to expose the deep purple cluster of grapes that hung full and juicy in the
shade of the leaves, snipped it off, carefully placed it into the basket, then
shifted to the next bunch. Zio Mario walked along behind the men with a large,
woven, funnel-shaped container strapped to his back, into which he poured the
grapes from the baskets. When it was full, he emptied it into the large wooden
trough parked on a trailer beside the vineyard, then returned for more. The men
started at dawn and worked in the hot sun until lunch with just one break, a
fifteen-minute merenda at ten
o'clock, sitting in the shade with salami and rolls. The only difference from a
hundred years ago was that around 1 p.m. they returned up the hill to Gabi to
eat and rest, instead of eating in the field and napping under the shade of a
tree.
As the mist drifted and thinned and we looked
down onto the vineyard from our living room window, I was fascinated by the
tiny figures bending and rising in the dark spaces between the rows of deep green
leaves. From that distance we had broad overview of the process and to the
techniques that had endured for generations. We could see the link to George's
ancestors' lives, to the work they had done, in the way that they had done it.
I pointed out to Paul and James that the baskets and knives were similar to
those that had been used for years, and the funnel basket that Zio Mario wore
had actually belonged to their great-grandfather. I wished that I could be down
there working alongside the men, as I knew generations of women had done. In
harvest time everyone helped, but I had four little children to watch, and
unlike those previous generations, I didn’t have multiple family members help
with child-care. My mother-in-law was not eager to baby-sit more than one child
at a time, so I remained on duty in the house.
I was also aware that, as
a modern woman, I had it pretty easy. I had the leisure time to look out of
that window as my laundry spun in the washing machine, whereas even women of my
grandparents' generation had scrubbed by hand every item of clothing that their
family wore, after working in the fields, and preparing the meals for their
family. I was fooling myself that I wanted to feel connected to the men in the
field. George had complained after the first day that the bending and picking
was exhausting. Zio Remo needed his help, otherwise George said he'd readily
relinquish this opportunity to become one with his ancestors. Somewhere deep
inside, I knew I didn’t really want to work that hard.
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| A faded picture of the edge of Zio Remo's vineyard from our window |
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