“Non è un problema per me, è il mio lavoro,” he explained.
“Yes, I know it’s not a problem for you, but it is for me.” I tried to make light of the situation but I could only manage a forced smile.
“I’m not questioning your ability as a doctor, but as your English teacher, I’d prefer to wait and see Dr Spini as always. Bye.” Not waiting for his reply, I opened the door as nonchalantly as I could and left.
Seeing my still flustered face when he came home, Michele asked what had happened at my appointment.
“Oh, nothing much. I walked in and out.”
“Cosa? Perchè?” He couldn’t understand what I meant.
“I mean, I walked in and the doctor was one of my students, so I walked out again.”
“Ah,” his smile spoke volumes.
I badly needed a diversion and Alex gave me one when he walked in later.
“Papà! La Fiorentina viene in Valtellina in ritiro – how do you say in ritiro in English, Mum? I’ve completely forgotten.”
“I think it’s: on retreat.” I made a mental note to look it up, just to be on the safe side.
“My friends were talking about it. They’re coming to Lecco to play a game then they’re going to Bormio – on retreat.” I couldn’t remember seeing my son so excited. To say he was an ardent Fiorentina fan was an understatement but it was good to see him smiling again after the stress of end-of-school exams.
“Per’aps we can go to see them play,” Michele suggested after reading that the team planned to go to Sondrio, too. Needless to say, football happened to be the only topic of conversation for the following weeks and I couldn’t wait for them to go with Michele’s nephew, his cousin and his boys to see their idols on the pitch.
Nothing could have prepared me for the surprise when they came home – instead of being satisfied with their Viola afternoon, they started discussing the possibility of a family day out to the place mentioned for the team’s retreat.
“We could go to Bormio tomorrow to see the players practising and then watch the friendly game against Grosio,” Alex suggested.
“But what if they’re going back to Lecco tonight,” my thirteen year old nephew added. “We don’t know for sure where they’re staying.”
“If it’s in the papers then it should be true,” Alex reasoned.
After listening to them anguish over the dilemma of not knowing whether the team was going back to Lecco or Bormio, I suggested ringing the Palace Hotel in Bormio where the Fiorentina team was supposed to be staying. In my best Italian, I pretended to be a sports reporter wanting to know if the Fiorentina team would be staying at the hotel for a few days and the receptionist replied in the affirmative. I earned a spontaneous kiss from Ricky, my nephew.
We set off early the next morning in two cars with Pietro and his family and Mara’s oldest daughter. We found the stadium and watched the training session for an hour. I have to admit feeling excited seeing the players and the trainer in the flesh. As it was a warm summer’s day, we decided to have a picnic in the mountain above Bormio by the Cancano Lakes before going back to the Palace Hotel in the afternoon.
When we arrived, there were a number of reporters gathered outside and I decided to join them. Telling my nephew to stay close to me, I marched up to the front of the hotel and when the concierge came out I spoke in English, saying I’d come from England to interview Giovanni Trappatoni. Fortunately, he didn’t speak English and had no idea what I was saying.
“Un momento, prego,” he gestured for me to wait and darted inside the foyer to reappear a few minutes later with none other than the trainer himself.
“Hello. I’ve been following Fiorentina for a number of years and I wanted to meet you and the players,” I explained.
“Are you from London?” Trappatoni asked, in very good English.
“No, I’m from Poole, in Dorset on the south coast,” I said, giving him the Fiorentina book to autograph.
“Oh, I don’t know Poole,” he smiled, handing me back the book. “Thank you for coming. Bye.”
“Thank you very much,” I replied. “Bye.”
No way could I be rated as a good news reporter but Alex managed to photograph me talking to him and Ricky remained speechless. We walked back to the stadium and took our seats, ready to watch the match and I could hardly keep still. I realised that I, too had well and truly got the football bug.
At half–time, I took my nephew to the area where the players were resting and giving autographs to fans. We saw a number of boys climbing over a fence in order to get a closer look but we automatically made our way to the gate and waited. A lady standing nearby heard me explain to Ricky that it wasn’t right to do what they were doing and came over to talk to us.
“Siete di Bormio?” she asked.
“No,non siamo di Bormio.” I told her we weren’t from Bormio but we had come a long way to see our favourite team. She thought for a moment then asked me if we’d be around later that evening. I automatically said yes, to which she introduced herself as one of the organisers and told me to take Ricky to the Palace Hotel at 9pm and she’d let him in to meet the players. Without thinking, I asked her if my son could come, too. For once, my ability to talk to anyone and everyone had paid off. The second half passed in a blur and when both teams filed out to go back to their hotel, we decided to have something to eat. We found ourselves in an empty pizzeria in the town centre but when the owner finally came out of the kitchen and we told him there were nine of us, instead of being happy to have some customers, he said we were too many and couldn’t cook for all of us. Absolutely dumbfounded, we left, opting for a toasted sandwich and a hot chocolate in a crowded bar nearby.
True to her word, at precisely 9pm, the woman came to the hotel entrance and took Alex and Ricky inside. I wished I’d asked if my husband could have been part of the group, too as Michele eagerly watched them talking to Cois, Chiesa, Batistuta and Toldo, to name but a few of the team, through the long windows. After a while, the woman came to the door again and beckoned to me to send Elisa and my nieces in, as well. Alex took photos of them together with the players, got their autographs and even joined in singing with Batistuta. It was an experience of a lifetime for them and 19th July, 1999 will always be a day to remember.
“Mind you,” Alex told us confidentially afterwards on the way home, “Gabriel Batistuta can’t sing for a toffee!”
21
A New Look
“Ellie, do you need the car this afternoon or can I have it?” Alex asked.
“If you’re going to Morbegno, you can give me a lift,” my daughter said before adding, “I want to see Luana.”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at my children, remembering the day when Alex came home grinning and waving his driving licence.
“Well done, darling,” I’d said, giving him a hug. “I knew you’d pass.”
Two years later, history repeated itself with Elisa receiving a hug and a kiss as she joined the ranks of young motorists.
Whereas over the years I’d watched my children evolve miraculously from chubby toddlers to teenagers who now took it in turns to drive the family car, I couldn’t say the same for our village. It had been a slow and silent metamorphosis but Piussogno was gaining a new look: people from Milan – Milanesi – bought and restructured old stables and buildings, turning them into fashionable holiday homes; modern terraced houses popped up like mushrooms and charming one-storey houses materialised. Noticeably, more cars appeared on the roads, which inevitably needed widening to carry the ever increasing traffic, and the sight of mules pulling carts laden with hay or logs became a memory. Pavements finally lined the roads, too late for me, but a welcome accessory for young mothers with pushchairs.
“Well, Piussogno looks very different from the last time I saw it,” my sister commented as we saun
tered down to the village square. “And where’s the old washing trough?”
“They demolished it in order to make more room for parking,” I explained, before stopping to chat to a young woman with a pushchair.
“I suppose you know everyone living here now,” Diane said almost wistfully.
“Yes, I do.” I took it for granted these days. Then I thought of something else.
“And have you noticed that you don’t see dogs chained up outside anymore, left out in all weather?”
“Do you mean that cats and dogs have finally become part of the family?” she couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, they’re real pets, and are allowed indoors.”
“Wow, at last!” she smiled.
Very subtly, the antiquated hamlet had become a modern day village or so it seemed. The overall structure gave the idea of progress but the mentality of some of its older male residents still resisted total change: they couldn’t contemplate helping with domestic chores or preparing succulent meals. They worked on the vines, probably the last generation to do so, went to the bar for coffee and played cards, smoking their non-filter cigarettes until closing time. They vetted newcomers, watching them surreptitiously from a distance and new-fangled machines such as mobile phones and personal computers meant nothing but trouble. However, the younger generation flourished with the enthusiasm of enterprise: students enrolled at university instead of choosing manual work, women chose to follow a career, and the young people who had left their hometown in their teens, returned, ready to settle down with a family.
At this point, I suddenly realised that my son had stopped chatting to me whenever he had any spare time, spent longer in the bathroom before going out, smiled practically all the time, and asked if he could use the car more than usual. ‘It’s a girl,’ I thought. ‘It has to be a girl!’ And, of course, a mother’s instinct never fails – even if she’s living on foreign soil. Alex introduced us to a pretty girl with deep blue eyes and long, light-brown hair, one Sunday afternoon.
“Mum, Papà, I’d like you to meet Lorena,” he said, proudly.
They’d been classmates before becoming a couple, and seeing them laughing with their heads together, I knew he’d found his soul mate.
Little did we know that Alex’s future wife had actually been in the baby unit, called il nido (the nest) with him at Morbegno Hospital. As is the custom, we met Lorena’s parents, Dina and Angelo, and their two other daughters. Dina told us that she remembered the Inglesina who had given birth to a bambino grande, and was in the room next door to her. Lorena was born five days after Alex and had been in cot number 14. Dina, like me, enjoyed a good natter and we hit it off immediately, just as Michele and Angelo did. When we met up, the men went down to the basement for a game of pool while we stayed upstairs talking. I often popped in to see them on my way home from Morbegno and we exchanged local gossip over an espresso.
Alex left school as a qualified land-surveyor but instead of continuing his studies at university, he decided to help his father in the building trade while he waited to be summoned to do his military service. Conscription still existed in Italy and unless you asked to do social work, you had to spend ten months at a military base. The topic of the moment was naturally the Millennium and mass media talked of nothing but the Millennium Bug. Companies and small firms worried that something ominous could happen to computers with the coming of 2000 and many had already hired trouble shooters to fix any problems that might occur. My main worry was another: to go to England to see the New Year in or not to go. Diane and her family helped me with my dilemma by deciding that they would like to come to Piussogno to celebrate the new Millennium together with Mum and Auntie.
The following weeks flew by preparing English lessons, looking after the house and the family – not to mention coffee mornings with Julie and Gaetana – and before we knew it, we were at Malpensa airport waiting for our visitors to arrive.
I felt really happy to think I’d be celebrating with my English family for once. It meant that they would be able to see the Live Nativity at Cercino on Christmas Eve. A few years earlier, a small group of local people organised the reproduction of the biblical village of Bethlehem with huts where you could see people depicting various trades, in the square at Piussogno. It was so successful that they decided to put on a bigger pageant at Cercino the following year. Alex and Elisa were asked to be Mary and Joseph and I let them wear proper Arab clothes that a student from Abu Dhabi had given me. (My colleagues at the Anglo-Continental had teased me at the time that I’d arrive at school one morning to find a camel as a present.) Elisa rode on a donkey and whereas during rehearsals, they had been given a doll to hold, on the evening, they were presented with a real baby who fortunately for them slept the whole time. We found out later that Baby Jesus was actually Michele’s cousin’s two month old daughter.
“It’s absolutely lovely,” Auntie said, enthralled as we walked around looking at the carpenters sawing, the women spinning, others making butter. A lot of time and energy had gone into preparing the Presepe Vivente but it was worth it.
Next on the agenda after Christmas, was New Year’s Eve and while Diane and I decided on the menu, the men discussed the entertainment.
“You want to come with us to buy fireworks?” Michele asked Sean and Gordon.
“Yes, okay.” They both fancied a trip to Morbegno.
An hour later, they came back laughing and Gordon could hardly talk.
“What’s the matter with you?” Diane wanted to know.
“You won’t believe me if I tell you,” he managed to say. “We chose some really good fireworks and when we went to pay for them, the cashier only had a lighted cigarette in his mouth…”
“What?” Diane didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
“Shall we go to Iperal?” I felt we badly needed a divergence.
That evening, standing on the balcony, wrapped up against the crisp cold air, we saw fires glowing in the mountains and at midnight, fireworks lit up the night sky in a spectacular display. Thanks to Michele and his helpers, our own contribution made a fair impact on the welcoming of a New Millennium.
*
“Mum, I’m ready.” Alex stood in front of me with his bag at his side and his hand in Lorena’s who had offered to drive him to the station. More used to laughter and playful teasing in our family, I now had to fight back unfamiliar tears that risked spilling out at any moment.
“Off you go then,” I said briskly, giving him a quick hug and peck on the cheek, “and don’t forget to ring me when you get to Belluno.”
“I won’t,” he grinned.
I watched them climb into Lorena’s car and disappear down the road before turning back to the house. My son had left to do his military service at San Candido on the Austrian border.
“Cheery up.” Michele invariably gave his own interpretation of well-known phrases but it made me smile.
“I’m not sad because he’s going away – well, I’ll miss him, obviously – it’s just that to me, it’s a waste of time and money, this conscription business.”
“Certainly, for you it is, but for us it’s good. It makes you stronger in character because you’re by yourself, you ‘ave to think for yourself and stand up for yourself.”
I wasn’t convinced; I’d have preferred Alex, a pacifist at heart, to do something more constructive for ten months instead of playing soldiers. Naturally, I only shared these thoughts with Gaetana and Julie. However, when Alex came home on leave in his Alpini uniform, he looked extremely good-looking and I felt more than proud to be his mother. He also looked remarkably well.
“I’m working in the office in San Candido – in the logistic department – helping to sort out the finances for the Sixth Regiment,” he explained to us. “It’s not so bad, Mum,” he added.
He came home nearly every wee
kend and regaled us with stories of what i nonni (the soldiers in their last few months) made the novices do as penances. Sometimes, I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing but Alex seemed happy enough – apart from the fact that he missed his girlfriend.
“I’ve got my Giuramento soon,” he told us one Friday evening as soon as he arrived.
“What’s that?” I hadn’t a clue what it was.
“It’s my Swearing In ceremony where all this year’s recruits swear allegiance to the country. It’s on Saturday, 11th March at the Rossi barracks in Merano.”
I made a note of it on the calendar – not that I could forget such an important date.
“Piangerai sicuramente,” a friend told me, “è molto commovente.”
“I won’t cry,” I told her, “I’ll be too proud of my son to cry.
“Vedremo, secondo me, piangerai – e tanto!”she nodded, absolutely convinced that I’d be overcome with emotion during the ceremony.
I hate to admit it but she was right. As the bugler played his poignant notes and the soldiers shouted their allegiance, there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen. A shout from one of the officers was a signal for the soldiers to break ranks and run to their families.
“How are we going to find Alex in the crowd?” I wailed. I’d quite forgotten that he and Lorena had arranged a vantage point. Michele, Elisa and I stood together with Lorena, her parents, sister and uncle waiting for Alex to appear and we didn’t have to wait long before he was smiling in front of us.
“Come on, let’s take some photos, then.” Elisa started snapping away.
A serious photo shoot followed of everyone together with Alex then Michele made a suggestion:
“Time for lunch, I think!” And it was.
22
I Do!
Life rolled by in a daily routine of looking after the family, teaching, choir practices, and meeting friends for coffee and a chat. Elisa left school as a qualified land-surveyor like her brother and Lorena before her, then decided to substitute the drawing board to giving massages and took a Shiatsu training course. I was only too happy for her to try out her techniques on me – I couldn’t think of anything better than relaxing for an hour as she pummelled away the stress to the melodic strains of Native American music.
Mamma Mia... That's Life! Page 10