Friday 6 January 2012

befana

To most of the english-speaking world, La Befana means absolutely nothing. According to Google Translate it means The Epiphany. According to Wikipedia it refers to an old lady, perhaps a witch. When Alex took the girls to the indoor pool this morning, she found nothing open. Except the streets. You see, this is the Epiphany: the 6th of January when Jesus is recognized as God the Son, a human child; the day when, traditionally, the children of Italy awake to a mountain of presents under the...  Befana tree?  Maybe not, but nevertheless, they do awake to a mountain of presents left by a wayward old lady who has passed up the chance to accompany the three wise men and spends the rest of her haunted soul's existence dropping gifts at the feet of any child she bumps into.  Just in case they may be the actual Jesus of whom it has been spoken. Can you imagine the effect, when every child considers itself a god-like creature? How disappointing it must be to grow up. 


But La Befana presents a remarkable resemblance to our regular hero. Or rather a blend, or perhaps a prototype of, Santa Clause and the Halloween witch. "She is usually portrayed as an old lady riding a broomstick through the air wearing a black shawl and is covered in soot because she enters the children's houses through the chimney. She is often smiling and carries a bag or hamper filled with candy, gifts, or both." (Wikipedia).


What is remarkable to me is that Italians have incorporated Santa Claus (Babo Natale or Father Christmas) into their holiday tradition. An Italian child today can expect a mountain of gifts on Christmas day from Babo Natale as well as a second lot on the Epiphany from La Befana. How have I missed out all these years?


Anyway, you can rest assured our kids got nothing today. Yet mama, La Alex, received a fancy mop bucket, complete with a mop squeezer, to help encourage her Befana-like habits of compulsive house cleanliness. Ho Ho Ho!

Wednesday 4 January 2012

sempre stranieri

Always foreigners. It's been stated by authors who should know. Not the pollyanna ones who write things I can't read, but those who tell it like it is. After Hannibal comes to mind by Barry Unsworth.

On the first day of the Christmas holiday, Thomasina stepped off the school bus in an obviously quiet
mood. At home she waited until we were alone before losing her composure and crying in my arms. Her school friend of many years had avoided her, preferring Italian friends on her 'smart phone' and fruitless boyfriend strategies. Thomasina confessed to not being able to keep  up with the slang, the dialect, of the locals and their fast-track chatter about TV shows, local cinema, immediate society, and current fashion. We have restricted  her cell phone, TV (absolutely non-existent), movies, and most social life. Instead we have insisted on homework, tennis lessons, sailing lessons, swimming lessons, and housework. She and Isolde have lived as a pair of friends in a foreign land. Every adult we know praises our kids as the most polite, the most informed, and the most well adjusted of any they know; but I worry. Any kid who is not accepted by her friends is in for a hard time, in my opinion.

Yesterday, Alex told me we had not been invited to the New Years Eve party of a couple we thought were friends or ours. We passed a nice holiday with numerous visits beginning with Thanksgiving and I felt a bit exhausted by it all, not to mention the frustration of obligatory gift shopping, when faced with the self-imposed schedule of making daily progress on this infinite pile of work I've set out for myself. But, if pressed, I have to confess, I don't have many friends here. When a potential acquaintance, let alone friend, holds a New Year's Eve party and forgets to invite me... well that's fairly obvious. When I learned of the snub I shrugged it off, but it's been haunting me for the whole week. Now I know what it feels like, Thomasina.

All vacation long, we've been thrown together in our small, snug apartment. We've made the best of Christmas with our olive tree and Jaquetta's cooking and inspirations, but it's been a very private season. We all work most of the day, including Christmas Day (cooking, etc.), the girls do their homework, Thomasina does some guitar practice, Isolde reads endless books until she is forced to re-read those she read last week. They practice their bridge (card game), swimming, and tennis. And the girls seem happy to play with each other at loads of make-believe games.

We are currently watching the weather report for signs of snow at the local ski area, but time is running out. School starts on monday and tonight it's raining.