Meeting My Nonna!

Photograph: My bedroom, the one place I can't see piles of cardboard.

Since I found out that I was going to Italy, I have secretly and not so secretly longed to have an adoptive Grandma. I even went so far as to ask one of my old students from Greene, if she would lend me her relatives who still lived in Italy. So you can imagine my joy when I finally met my first potential Nonna. My Nonna! Grumpy, old, yet clearly highly varied in her articulate Italian. I believe it is completely acceptable for old ladies to be grumpy, and truly, is there anything more fun than a grumpy, opinionated old lady!?

Well, our shipments had finally arrived and after two weeks of having cardboard boxes fill our living room, we had finally gotten unpacked. We broke them all down into nice neat piles and headed to the trash building. But that was not to be...

My Italian Nonna scrutinized us over her balcony as she hung her laundry out to dry. As she peered down, it looked as if she had been waiting for this moment for weeks. I looked up and suddenly heard more Italian streaming out of her mouth than I had experienced since I arrived here three weeks ago. Very good! For, I want my Nonna to be Italian. She strategically flung sentence and paragraph after paragraph over the railing. When our vacant eyes made her realize that her lecturing was not being absorbed, we saw her leave her balcony muttering. Somehow we knew we should wait for her descent. And descend she did, but commotion followed, as it seemed like lifetimes to see her small body appear in the doorway. As we waited, I could hear her foot steps, then knocking and more people speaking wonderfully expressive Italian. I half wondered if a crowd with torches and pitchforks would soon appear to run us from the apartment building.

Before I could even rehearse the Italian phrases I might need, my little Nonna appeared and walked directly towards me with nothing but hate and frustration in her beautiful brown eyes. Her fluent sentences flowed out of her and I repeated, "Sono spiacente, non capisco." Which of course means, I am sorry, I don't understand. In which she mimicked me and said...."Spiacente, spiacente!" as if it were a bad word, and for all I know, if pronounced wrong it is. Ooooooh maybe it is! Oh no!!! I kept asking in the kindest tone I could muster, "Dove? Dove?" Which means where? I just wanted her to show me where I should put the cardboard. Instead her hands did little to show me anything, except alternating between resting on her hips to pointing as she feverishly shook her head in complete disgust.

Suddenly, as if she gave up on a stupid, uncomprehending animal, she turned and walked away, again muttering, adding one last sigh for effect. I felt as if I had been through a tornado and suddenly I came to the realization we would be living with those cardboard boxes for at least a couple more days or even more likely, three years! But at least, I had my first conversation with my new Italian Nonna! I mean she is already taking the time to help me learn Italian ways, she can't help it if I am a little slow. Overall, a very helpful lady, my Nonna! He he he!