My first memory of an Italian connection comes from the town where I was born in NQ. My parents were freshly married. Dad, having made the short-list of airmen surviving raids over Europe, had a new job to start life over... He found himself in a position to help an Italian migrant and his family. It was a huge step from working in the cane fields to buying a cane farm, and so began a life-long friendship.
We spent weekends with this Italian family - mama mia! the food, even breakfast was a banquet. Elena, a plumpish woman, dripping with sweat wore a hand-towel around her neck and merrily slaved over huge pots of food, the smells of Italy wafting onto the wide verandah.. Three sons were not so plump, working hard to help their father in the fields. I was lucky, the youngest one being promised to me in marriage by his father. However my mother suggested waiting for the children to grow up before any decisions were settled.. The eldest son, dark-skinned from the sun with natural Italian good looks, married a beautiful Dutch girl with blonde plaits. I had blonde plaits too but no, my family moved, so romance didn’t blossom for me with the youngest Italian son........Imagine if it had, I could be 99% fluent by now..
​ Many years later I arrived in Italia - finally a chance to immerse myself in la dolce vita, the sweet life. My preparation was to watch the movie, Under the Tuscan Sun based on the book by Frances Mayes, with warnings from my daughter not to buy a dilapidated villa.. I would be too busy explaining Feng Shui to architecture students in Venice, I told her, but wouldn’t mind too much if I ended up in a charming villa with an equally charming Italian man..
​ any fluency in Italian was not on the agenda..
​ Casting aside all those romantic notions, I spent several weeks hanging out in piazzas and wandering the back alleys of Italian life, wading through tidal water on the bottom floor of the Venetian apartment building to go out the front door and join the thinned-out sight-seers decked out in bright yellow, red and green plastic leg coverings… the local women wear long gum boots or thigh high waders befitting a high fashion wardrobe..
Daily life is always as though stepping out on the catwalk, young mothers in designer jeans walk their adorable children to Kindy and grandmothers shop in the local supermarket wearing twinsets and pearls..
What happened to my fluency?