With these words Danielle wisely finished a sentence that I began. This wasn’t one of those Hallmark moments when a swooning couple inserts romantic prose into each others’ lips. Although it began as such. No, not at all. Since I was about to insult an entire heritage in the midst of its shareholders.
It began from the beachside bar at Monterosso al Mare. Our view was ripped from a postcard. The smooth beach stretched in both directions pierced at even intervals by the bright orange umbrellas common to Cinque Terre. Being an offseason weekday, most weren’t being used, folded up to a point giving us a better view to the water and giving the beach a sort of upside down carrot patch affect. The sun was white hot but one of the few open umbrellas provided us shade and kept our pitcher of sangria ice cold.
(Remember this benevolent umbrella, it is a two-faced Judas!)
Traditional beach noises crashed along the relatively deserted beach until all at once from somewhere in the sand a dust storm of Italian children roared into view and earshot.
Three looked and acted related. The fourth did not and was being treated as such, shunned and mocked as the outsider but in a childish, playful way. They were entertaining to say the least. Running, digging, whacking away at plastic golf balls, all the while yelling and conversing (maybe cursing) at the top of their substantial Italian lungs, with both their mouths and hands. They resembled every group of Italian children we encountered during our trip: active, loud, unsupervised and fearless (My personal favorite of these groups was in Vernazza. They were hunting jellyfish along the marina with a long net. They kept yelling when they saw them, “Jelly pesca, Jelly pesca!”).
As it were, Danielle and I had arrived to Monterosso after a day of ridge hiking and the sangria break was our reward. So when the playful Italian children intensified their playful argument, my exhaustion intensified, unjustifiably, into annoyance.
The outsider wanted badly to join in but they yelled louder and after giving him a chance at their game and his subsequent inability to reach their probably unattainable standards, he was cast out. Some words were exchanged that I understood and sort of winced that children had uttered them.
Perhaps I felt bad for the kid. Perhaps I was just tired. But the next phrase I said and did not finish was, “Their kids are just like the rest of these Italians! They’re all . . .”
And Danielle wisely finished it for me.
“They’re passionate,” she said.
I’m not exactly sure what I would have said, how I was to stereotype my wife’s family, heritage, my own family and heritage and all the exceptionally amazing people we had interacted with over the past two weeks. It would have been an impulse. It would have been wrong. But what followed was not Danielle chastising me for my hasty response but rather she launched into a story about her own childhood. The kids reminded her of herself.
“I was just like that,” she said, pointing at the oldest girl who seemed to be the ringleader and loudest. “We’re a very passionate people.”
And I had to laugh as she described her youth among her grandparents and parents and other kids her age. They thrived in tradition and culture and she embodied the same spirit that these present-day bambinos erupted with. I couldn’t help but remember my own youth, running around with my cousins with the volume at near deafening levels.
And as I scrolled my memory rolodex, forgetting the insult I almost tossed out into the Italian sea air, karma slapped me upside the head. Literally.
An almost mythic, strong gust of that sea breeze whipped off the ocean and yanked the aforementioned open umbrella right out of the sand, metal holder and all. The stand cracked my shin and ricocheted off my thigh as I swerved in my chair. Danielle said the heavy wooden pole missed smashing my head by centimeters. In the end the umbrella and its stand were both on the roof of the beach bar, several others scattered around the sand, tables and chairs in disarray. And me, thoroughly shaken.
Within minutes, though, the kids were back playing. Danielle was laughing a little. And me, I would think twice before almost insulting the Italian heritage, my heritage, again. It’s a passionate country with passionate weather. As she said, they’re a passionate people.
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