The Instant Family Evaporates

On Saturday Deme and I took Ginevra and Giordano back to Rome and back to the aching arms of their grandmother. It was a difficult 2 weeks for me. Not because I had tons of laundry, dishes, and cleaning to do, not because I had no free time, heck I didn’t have any alone time, and not because I got to witness sibling rivalry at it’s best (I caught Giordano trying to do wrestling moves on his 7 year old sister); the main problem was the language barrier.

Entertaining children is not that difficult, we played Monopoly, Chess, Checkers, Scrabble (using both Italian and English words), went to museums, went to the market in our neighborhood every other day, visited a palace, went to the swimming pool, park, played ping pong, went bowling, to the movies and more. All the while we remained a bit estranged and all the while, I felt the “teachable moments” slipping past. Although I managed to watch the new “Star Wars” in Italian, I could not explain to Ginevra the complexity of the entire “Star Wars” saga. I could not read her any bedtime stories, Deme did that. I did get very good at asking for help setting the table, clearing the table, taking requests for meals, making sure both children took showers and helping with summer homework though. Still when I saw something interesting in the street, in town or while we were driving I could not fully express myself and many moments just passed us by. I have now decided to commit myself to studying Italian more rigorously at home and with my tutor, so that next time I will be more prepared. To sum up the past two weeks, the kids were great company. They made me laugh; we ended up exploring parts of Torino, I never bothered to before. We told stories, took walks and I even got Giordano to play catch with me. It was nice to spend a bit of time with them. For their first visit with us 2 weeks seemed like the perfect amount of time. For their next visit, I’ll be ready to take them on for a month.

On a rather hilarious note, Deme made the mistake of sending both kids with luggage in tow into to elevator together up to their granny’s apartment. They ended up stopping the elevator and getting stuck inside for about 40 minutes. All the while Giordano said “this time we didn’t do anything. Last time we did jump up and down in here but this time it stopped on its own.” Ginevra on the other hand politely asked for sustenance in the form of a sandwich.