where fish wear crowns 243nothing real scary under my fingernails. My mother raised children who
feel we need to earn what this world means to give us. When I sat back
and relaxed on the flight to Rome, I left behind a spit- shined kitchen, a
year’s harvest put away, and some unplanted garlic. I’d live with it.
With the runway of the Leonardo da Vinci airport fi nally in sight and
our hearts all set for andiamo, at the last possible moment the pilot aborted
our landing. Wind shear, he announced succinctly. We circled Rome, fl y-
ing low over ruddy September fi elds, tile- roofed farmhouses, and pad-
docks enclosed by low stone walls. The overnight flight had gone smoothly,
but now I had ten extra minutes to examine my second thoughts. Would
this trip be everything we’d waited for? Could I forget about work and the
kids, indulging in the luxury of hotels and meals prepared by someone
else?
Finally the nose cone tipped down and our 767 roared low over a
plowed field next to the airport. Drifting in the interzone between waiting
and beginning, suspended by modern aerodynamics over an ancient fi eld
of pebbled black soil, I found myself studying freshly turned furrows and
then the farmer himself. A stone’s throw from the bustle of Rome’s inter-
national airport, this elderly farmer was plowing with harnessed draft
horses. For reasons I didn’t really understand yet, I thought: I’ve come
home.
/I am Italian by marriage: both Steven’s maternal grandparents were
born there, emigrating as young adults. His mother and aunts grew up in
an Italian- speaking home, deeply identified with the foodways and all
other ways of the mother country. Steven has ancestors from other parts
of the world too, but we don’t know much about them. It’s my observation
that when Italian genes are present, all others duck and cover. His daugh-
ter looks like the apple that fell not very far from the olive tree; when
asked, Lily identifies herself as American and invariably adds, “but really
I’m Italian.”
After arriving on the ancestral soil I figured out pretty quickly why that
heritage swamps all competition. It’s a culture that sweeps you in, sits you
down in the kitchen, and feeds you so well you really don’t want to leave.