Moving to Italy: New Years--Part 3

For our New Year's Day celebration, we had invited many of the relatives from both Rina and Marino’s sides of the family to repay the meals we had enjoyed with them. On Rina’s side: Her sister Dina and her husband, their son, Cousin Luigi and his wife; and their daughter, Cousin Rita, her husband, and mother-in-law from Vercelli. And of course, Marino’s brothers, Zio Remo and Zio Silvio.  

I was proud that I could prepare a beef roast, one of the few food items I cooked better than my in-laws. As more than twenty of us sat around two tables set end-to-end, eating, talking, and laughing, with a child or two on someone’s lap, it struck me that it looked like an Italian food scene from a movie—the first stereotype I had seen fulfilled! The food was good—antipasto, homemade ravioli, roast beef with multiple vegetables, and a salad—and the wine better than usual (Cousin Luigi had brought some of the good stuff!) I didn’t eat too much, accidentally missed the ravioli course and didn’t bother asking for the plate.  That way I felt just nice instead of bloated.  Finally, I had learned to control my food intake at an Italian table!

(l-r) Luigi's wife, his sister Rita, his mother and Cousin Luigi himself. Foreground left: Luigi's father. Foreground right: 3 balding Marca brothers: Remo, Silvio, and Marino.

Paul at New Years before the relatives' arrival

After everyone left in the early evening, we drove back to Montaldo with the children and tried to telephone my sister, but yet again the circuits were busy, and we couldn’t get through. The slow drive there and back was just as long and dangerous as the previous ones. The fog drifted around the hillside, obscuring the roads, the trees, and the buildings, and we felt as if we drove through a gray tunnel from the bar all the way back to our front door. I knew my sister would be doubly disappointed that we hadn’t been able to telephone her on either Christmas or New Years, but we decided to call her on January 8, her twenty-second birthday. Since it wasn’t a holiday, the circuits were less likely to be busy.  

Trying to make an overseas phone call from a phone booth in a remote area of Piedmont was an exercise in frustration, just like the previous year trying to establish ourselves in Italy. But we firmly believed if we just kept trying eventually it would all work out.