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It was with heavy hearts that we left the Renzi's today. I can't speak for everyone, but if I were to venture a guess, we were all leaving behind something that we had only just obtained; removing a part of ourselves that we had only just discovered; a room in a house or a box in the attic filled with pictures, books, stories, memories we didn't know existed, and we are required to close the box and shut the door before fully exploring what it contained. Renzo is my grandmother's cousin, which may seem a significant distance on the family tree, facing south while we face north; our branches have not bumped into each other thus far during life's breezes and storms. Yet branches on adjacent trees can rub against each other as well, and as far as this metaphor is concerned (there is a better one I am certain), similarly do we meet and connect with people, create a family not necessarily related by blood but by spirit. How much stronger the connection of the spirit when reinforced by blood, and I imagine the duty to care for those in our genetic lineage often generates the spiritual connection that might not have been created otherwise, and to those whom we have developed a connection with voluntarily outside of sisters, uncles, and the rest, the time to practice duty will reveal itself in its own time.
The practice of faith often provides us with an image, a symbol of all humanity belonging to the same family or even entity; love your neighbor as yourself: the two are one. Love your enemy. Give yourself to acts of service for your Family. Love is spontaneous as well as long-suffering, and both types are symbolized by the family.
I was thinking of writing that blood relation is a deeper connection than the bond formed in other contexts, but now I see genetic family as just one of many contexts in which we share meals, share memories, seek fun, challenge to grow, forgive for mistakes... all in all, to create family. Perhaps "community" is the proper term, but where is the line drawn, when our ideal community is the family? We want our communities to be "like family," and we want our families to be healthy communities. I suppose both terms can have positive and negative connotations depending on the amount of hopeful utopia one is sprinkling on them. Family can be created in a mutually beneficial relationship, two lovers, a group of friends, joining for companionship. A group will also join to pursue a common goal, and create family in a club or community service project, or a musical ensemble. It can be created between someone in a position of provision for another; every child receives this until they attain independence; those in need rely on society for sustenance, on teachers for education, with the ultimate goal of achieving independence and perhaps continuing the cycle of giving. It cannot occur with expectation, but only hope that what is imparted is received with gratitude and passed on in the paradox of duty and joy, duty because sacrifice is made, joy because the teacher can grow as much as the student if they allow it; intention and vulnerability, humility, are the keys.
I digress. Renzo and Adri felt like family. We were greeted with smiles, delicious meals, and the context was that we were related on the family tree. We had never met, we spoke different languages, we lived in different continents, and yet there was no question that we belonged at the same table. All people belong at the same table, I correct myself, but the context decides the direction in which the conversation moves, or does not move, and the connection of family gives us something to converse about. Any group of people can discuss the weather, yet the weather of the area we were in had particular significance to us beyond its effect on our plans for the day, for this was the climate my extended family grew up in, this was the weather that 1/4 of my ethnic identity, unbeknownst to me, had experienced before I was born (what remains is Irish and English, the former having only seen its home recently from the confines of the Dublin airport). Any gathering of people can discuss the food, but the cuisine before me was a step closer to the roots of my mom's Italian cooking, and paralleled my grandmother's recipes and the stories of her mother's cooking, but in the country that it originated it, reliving the experience in the culture with people who speak the language (and for the most part, only that language), and maintain not just the cuisine but the tradition surrounding it: the topics of conversation, the language, the wines from close friends, the sequence of multi-course meals that amazingly emerge from their modest kitchen and are placed next to tasteful place settings. There are many people that can venture into a European city and be in awe at and interested its history, but we were able to return from touring to a mealtime with people who live in that history day to day, who have made their own efforts to learn from its wisdom, who would probably shudder at the thought of referring to their daily life as "culture," as something foreign to one's identity that has to be learned, as we were doing.
Part of the soberness of our departure, I think, but maybe the lesser part, was that we had been exposed to a culture, a history, that belongs to all people but to us in a personal way through Renzo and Adriana, and that it was deeper and richer than we could manage to imbibe in the time allotted. We knew we had only skimmed the surface of the city and further exploration would be conducted primarily through secondary sources: books, pictures, etc. Above all, though, we were leaving people that cared for us, that loved us, maybe because we tried to be gracious guests to our generous hosts, maybe because we were interested in getting to know them and cared for them, but certainly because we were family connected through very familiar others; a context that existed long prior to our entering their front door. It was with sadness that we left, but the sadness was felt for all the right reasons. Their hospitality was perfect and beautiful, and I'm sure they went to great pains to make it so. We could not but feel we were imposing, for each meal was so complete, and with each came shopping, cooking, serving, cleaning, and returning to the best vantage point for the next round.
It would not be correct of me to say that no context existed other than our family connection, for Jenna had opened the door and made initial contact when she visited in March and April during her study abroad in Italy. All this was begun, of course, with their invitation. The open door was maintained in no small part by Jenna's quick study of the Italian language; I was really impressed with the ease in which she conversed with Renzo and Adri, only after a semester o Italian and a semester of immersion. She has really become an Italian. A fine translator she has been (when she feels like doing free work) and spending time with Renzo and Adriana would have been much less enjoyable without her bilingual capabilities. Renzo comprehended English pretty well, but seldom chose to speak it; for most people, the language barrier would result in awkward silences and frequent gesticulating, but Renzo simply spoke in Italian in a way that made you wonder if he forgot you can't understand; I would speak slowly in a mix of English and, with the help of Google translate, a few Italian words, and after feeling relatively successful at my attempts to communicate upon his affirmation that he understood me, he would, in his regular jovial, charismatic manner, smile broadly and open the floodgates of Italian discourse, drowning me in a flood of words that were interpreted by my ears as a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, words that often ended in a vowel, and beyond that, gibberish. Jenna would be nodding her head and giving the occasional verbal affirmation, and I, having cast down my eyes in shame, would glance up to her from time to time with the small but sincere hope that she would have the mercy to relieve me of the verbal onslaught by translating a key phrase here or there, which she sometimes did. In general, as best as I was able to follow, conversation was either about the family's whereabouts and doings, the Renzi life then and now, the vineyards that produced the wine we were consuming, the food, music (the attended opera often)... I'm sure there was much more I missed out on, but in retrospect there might have been something more important than the content of the conversation. Perhaps the emphasis was the quality or character of the dining experience. My tendency to space out during conversation if my my mind deems no immediate or eternal consequences for doing so means my retention of and contribution to the conversation was equivalent to any uni-lingual mealtime discourse I've been surrounded by in the past. What I will remember is that the conversation was not inhibited by the language barrier, that lack of comprehension did not impede freedom of expression, that my ineptitude for language did not inhibit Renzo from exercising his gift for oratory, which was essential for him, a man of class hosting guests. What I will remember is that mealtime was a multi-tiered event in which Renzo was the entertainment, with clean, uplifting small talk. It was the atmosphere that his persona generated that was more important than the details of the conversation, but as I said before those details were certainly important to us, probably more so than for the typical guest. Adriana certainly contributed as well, but didn't seem to see much value in talking with someone extensively in her own tongue if the primary response was going to be a puzzled expression, thus she generally directed her comments towards Jenna while the rest of us waited with bated breath for an interpretation, like parched hikers fumbling over a slippery faucet handle. Had the entire company concerned themselves with comprehensibility, we would have experienced timidity instead of confidence, anxious silence instead of humor, and smiles of withdrawal instead of smiles of appreciation. When you take pride in your family, friends, and affairs, you show it, give your best, maybe play the game a little as professionalism dictates, clean up, and rest, or work, or do whatever will best prepare you for the next social engagement.
There is also a time for silence. Now we are in Orvietto.
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