Moving to Italy: Winter Doldrums

Hi Newcomers: If you want to read this blog in chronological order from the beginning, you need to start with:
"Arrival" on the June 26, 2017 blog post.

During the months of January and February, George continued to look for a job.  Between interviews he used his time away from the fields to work on the next step in our on-going project to paint the house.  In spite of the newly-installed central heating, the walls felt damp as the moisture seemed to seep through from the outside to the paint we layered inside. I had asked about repairing the stucco first, but they had told me it would take too much of my in-laws’ money, and besides, that wasn’t the Italian way. The inside was much more important. And so we kept at our indoor painting project, sometimes waiting a week between coats. After the doors and windows were finished, we finally reached the walls.

Because of the high ceilings George stood on a plank between two wooden sawhorses to reach the upper half of the walls, while I painted the lower half. From his months of work around the land, George was in good shape, but for me it was tough going. Unused to the up-down motion, my arm muscles soon ached and my neck grew stiff from reaching up. In addition, the smell of paint permeated our heads and the house. I hoped it wasn’t harming the children’s lungs and brains, but we didn’t have a lot of choice. If we opened the windows to let out the fumes, the paint would never dry in the damp weather, and we would expose everyone to the bitter cold. I was learning that there is always a trade-off in life, no matter what we do. But it felt good to work with George to make the changes that we could. As my brush moved up and down the wall leaving a swath of clean color in its wake, I felt myself becoming part of the house, part of Gabi, part of the community.

Of course this was just an illusion. All we were changing was our little section of the community, of Gabi, of the house. This was never clearer to me than when we returned fifteen years later. The dampness had reasserted itself, soaking and curling all of the paint we had so carefully applied. The house and the community had been there long before we arrived, and they had survived our departure.

The doors we had scraped and repainted after years of neglect

 Our plans for supporting the family had evolved. When we first moved to Italy, we had envisioned just simply living off the land. In early November, George and Zio Silvio worked out an agreement to buy more cattle, rent more fields and work together to increase the income of the farm. Later, when we sat down to work out the actual “dollar” amounts, we realized our share of the farm income was not enough to support six of us. We couldn’t just “live off the land.”  The only way we could survive was for George to work locally to supplement our income. But he still couldn’t find work.

Maybe it was the recession—there were few jobs available—and maybe it was that George was considered “The American,” but the Italians in our area did not have employment that they were willing to give him. Although he interviewed for job after job, several as a translator at companies in nearby towns, nobody seemed to need his skills. George had left Italy as a child, and by becoming an American citizen he had given up any claim to his place as an Italian. No law prevented companies from hiring him, but there seemed to be an invisible wall that had been constructed to keep him out.

To most Italians we dealt with, the word “American” was synonymous with “rich.” Although Marino could call on his familiarity with older members of the community to get some discounts, he found prices quoted him for repairs were still higher than what he knew others were quoted.  And while the locals were eager to work for us, when it came to asking for job referrals, they simply shrugged. Family members seemed to be the only ones willing to help. Luigi had referred us to the chicken producer, and another cousin said his friend could get George a job. However, when George inquired he was told it would be “next month.” Each month that we asked it was always, “next month.”  We waited, then asked, and waited some more and asked again. Finally, we realized the job would never materialize. We couldn’t tell if the offer was sincere, or if it was social grease to keep the conversation turning. It was very difficult to convince the community that we really wanted to stay, that we really wanted to work, and that we weren't "rich Americans." We didn’t have the money to live there forever without working.