My wife tells me that she never liked her grandfather. He stunk of tobacco – he used to cut up cigars and smoke them in his pipe – ignored her and her siblings, and chased after young women well into his 80s. As a descendant of English-speaking European settlers in a Latin American country, he […]
Tag: family
14. The War of the Role Models
Recently, my wife asked me if I had any role models as I was growing up in Italy. The concept of “role model” is new to me, so I said no. She pressed on: “Are you sure there wasn’t someone in your life, or even a character from a TV show, whom you admired or […]
13. Our Mothers
Until almost the end of her life, my mother-in-law did not like me and did not accept me as part of the family. She thought of me as a good-for-nothing who married her daughter solely to exploit her. As if my wife would put up with fools and moochers! My wife always said that it […]
5. To Stay or To Go
As a young, newly-married man in southern Italy, my father became a tenant farmer. He rented a large plot of land from a prominent member of a patrician family based near Florence. With only a zappa (a wide-bladed hoe), my dad, joined by his brothers and a couple of day laborers, cleared roots, grasses, weeds, […]
