Meet the Family - Italian Style

My Dad would never get on an airplane. It actually surprised me that a big guy like that was really afraid of flying.   Bill and I told Dad and Mom that we would take them to Europe with us for vacation and pay for their airline tickets if Dad would get on a plane and go to Italy with us.  Unbelievably, Dad immediately got over his fear of flying and seemed anxious to meet his family in northern Italy for the first time.

What a trip that first trip was! Dad’s first cousin, her husband, and younger son met us at the airport in Milan and from there we went to their older son’s home for a meal with his family in Monza, outside of Milan.

Bill still talks about that luncheon we had at Maurizio’s house with his family.  They served a nice marinated octopus salad.  We had never eaten octopus before.  We love calamari but we were not familiar with octopus.  It wasn’t bad at all.  Not sure if I would ever go out of my way to eat it again, however.  Bill ate all of his and because his plate was empty, he got a refill, the ultimate penalty for eating too fast.  All was washed down with a nice homemade vino which made anything go down easier. 

While Mom and Dad stayed at his cousin’s in Genoa for a few days, Bill and I stayed at a cute hotel on the Ligurian Sea in a little town named Nervi, a few miles away.

Bill was not feeling well after we settled in so I provided him with a pill which was washed down with water from the tap.  No one told us not to drink the water.  So, for a couple of days, instead of feeling better, he was getting worse.  Finally, we learned why. 

While he was going to bed early at night, I was watching Italian television.  I came upon a game show but I could not figure out the rules.  There were two contestants, one male and one female, both competing for points. It seemed that people could either take off their own clothes or have the girls on the show take off theirs for points.  Many people ended up naked. Oh my.  And this was not on pay-per-view either.  I was engrossed in this for a couple of nights until Bill got better.  Then, he joined me as we tried to figure it out. It was really funny and the girls were very pretty. Amazingly enough, the male contestants were not bad either.

I told my folks about the show, but since they were staying at Dad’s cousin’s house, they were not privy to the television show. When I told my younger cousin that I found a game show called Colpo Grosso, he said, “Don’t tell mama.” 

We traveled around the city of Genova and visited Portofino where Dad’s cousin had an artist studio and sold paintings to Liz Taylor, Rex Harrision and other movie stars from the USA. 

Within a few days, we went to Sarzana and Ponzano, where the family is from. It was raining but it did not stop these wonderful family members from waiting outside their house in the rain for the family they had heard about from the USA. Still with us at that time were two of my Nona’s siblings, a brother and a sister who were quite elderly.  I still cry when I think of how wonderful it was hearing my Dad sing a song with his uncle which was a song my Nona sang to me when I was a child and to Dad when he was a child. 

We met so many cousins, some of which we had never known about before. What a fantastic family.  There were old cousins and young cousins and only the young ones spoke English.  Dad was fluent in Italian which was his first language and was quite comfortable conversing with his family.  I knew some Italian, but it is safe to say that all I really remembered were the swear words.  But, since our English language is based on Latin, it was not too hard to figure out what they were saying some of the time if they spoke slowly enough.  It was surprising to me that dialects from region to region, even within the family, were kind of hard to understand.  Everyone wants to feed you and the food was delicious and of course, wine flowed and flowed freely. 

We went to Cousin Clara’s house and she spoke absolutely no English.  She wanted us to sit down on the couch, but she did not know how to convey that to us, so she went over to me and gave me a slight push, forcing me to sit on the couch and we finally knew what she meant. This was pretty funny and we got a big kick out of it.   

After a few days, we continued on our trip to Rome, Verona, Bologna, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Montecatini, and my favorite, Santa Margarita, before heading out to Yugoslavia (now Croatia), Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Holland, and Luxembourg.

Mom had never really traveled before.  Dad was in the Navy so he did do a small amount of traveling.  But, Mom found her niche and loved to travel and was so happy to actually be in the country where her people were born, Yugoslavia.  In fact, she kissed the ground in Yugoslavia which made me cry tears of joy because she was so happy and I was so happy for her.

We had a ball and it was a vacation to remember for Mom and Dad as well as for us. This was the start of many wonderful trips to Europe with my parents.