Who should be blamed? - Di chi e' la colpa?

 

This photo was posted today by zia Pina (Tronk's babysitter) on her Facebook page. That's right, my child is kissing his girlfriend on Facebook. The picture has already been liked by nine people and commented by four people in three different languages! The news is official and I already feel like one of those Sicilian mothers; sooner or later people will start asking me when is the big day!

I showed this to John and saw the typical worried look of the father... later explained by this comment: "wait until he goes to school and gets teased by the other boys for it. If that happens, I am afraid their friendship will fall apart!"

No doubts it's my fault. I should have not taught them to kiss. How do I tell them to stop? Tronk has just asked me to go buy flowers for her and then to take him (and Naima) for a ski weekend in the mountains!...

A Visit From The Spring Fairies - Visita degli Gnomi di Primavera

There comes a time when a baby boy is no longer a baby. He must part from the things he was attached to as a baby, he must rise up from his crib, make his way to a brand new bed and wave goodbye to his fifteen (or more) pacifiers, because those things are not for him anymore. There comes a time when a mother has to tell her baby that he is no longer a baby. This is not easy, especially when the thing you want your child to part from is the ciuccio (pacifier), the one thing who helped you (and generations of other mothers) overcome the baby blues, the precious friend which faithfully followed you later in motherhood, in the good and in the bad, to offer you support and an hour or two of peace, every day. I could always count on that instant calm that would wash over him when I was sticking the ciuccio in his mouth. This is hard to give up.

So, my dear pacifier, I have to say goodbye. I want you to know that for two and half years you have been very precious to me. I’ll never forget the special moments we shared. Thanks to you, we went to nice restaurants, art exhibitions, bookstores, museums and last year we even managed to sit through an entire evening event for adults, without a single cry coming from the stroller. I will never forget, dear ciuccio, the numerous instances when you were about to drop out of his mouth but you were still there hanging on. Two or three seconds later, he would invariably pull you back into his mouth like the curtain accidentally sucked by the vacuum cleaner. I remember this moment with strong emotions:  indoor, in complete silence, with aisles of books still carrying the smell of the printed pages, while outside a snow-storm or the torrential rain. And Tronk STILL ASLEEP in the stroller! With you still glued to his lips and the white blanket squeezed in his little hands. I felt I was in heaven perhaps for an hour, or two.

Thanks to you, Tronk was still a baby. Well, in my heart he still is.

Did I say I wanted you to leave? No, stay for a little longer, please. It is not about Tronk but also about me; I want to keep my baby, my space, that precious silence when he is asleep. I don't want to give all this up. Pacifier, stay, please!

"Doctor, are you telling me that I have to give up the pacifier? I mean... that William has to give it up?", I asked the pediatrician. "Yes, he's a big boy now, he doesn't need it! His rashes might be caused by that. Get rid of it!", he replied firmly. "Sure”, I said, with the tone of the teenager who has just been told by her mother to stop seeing a man who is not good for her.

No matter what everyone said (doctor, husband, mother, friends), I continued to feel that I couldn't live without it - I had one in almost every bag I own, one in the stroller, two on Tronk's bed, one in the car and several back up ones on Tronk's chest of draws. More than once, I went on a girls night out with a paci stuck in my purse! To later realize I was happy to have it; it was almost like carrying a bit of Tronk with me.

I promise we will never read Ciao Ciao Ciuccio again!

A book on waving goodbye to pacifiers later came in the mail. The first time I read it to Tronk he burst into tears and hated the book. He later decided that “Ciao Ciao Ciuccio!” was his enemy and that there was no way I could persuade him to pick up that book again without seeing some sort of displeasure in his face. The truth is I wasn't getting a good feeling from that book either. There was something missing. Why would a cat who is upset because he cannot find his pacifier suddenly decide to wave goodbye to it and make it fly away attached to a balloon when it turns up? Sorry, I am not buying it.

On the internet, there was a troupe of mothers having discussions about how to help their children overcome the binky addiction. Many of them were saying that the older the children get, the harder it becomes to do it.  

"Ok, the clock is ticking. We have to do it, whether we like it or not", I finally said to John.

Every day, the same questions: "When are we going to do it? This weekend? No, this weekend no! Next weekend! Ok ,done! No, we’ll be away! Ok, we'll do it the following weekend. What? We are flying to Italy! Ok, when we are back."

We cannot just make them disappear. Ultimately, we decided we had to steal his pacifiers away but we needed to come up with a nice story to cover our crime. "Ok, let’s go ahead with the spring fairies but we need to get him used to the idea". "Sounds good".

"Tronk? I ciucci sono per i bebe', non per i bimbi grandi. Tu sei un bimbo grande adesso! Dobbiamo dare i ciucci agli gnomi di primavera!" (Tronk, the binkies are for babies, not for big boys. You are a big boy now! We have to give the binkies to the spring fairies!), John and I must have said this in his room at least a hundred times in the last few months. Yet, before we were even finished uttering these words, the blue binky had already snapped onto his lips.

“The spring fairies are coming to take your ciucci. Would you like them to bring you a car in return?” He agreed immediately. Few days later, “No, voglio una macchina e un camion!” (No, I want a car and a truck!). Ok, deal.

So yesterday we finally did it! We asked Tronk to put all his ciucci in an envelope with a letter addressed to the spring fairies which we wrote for him.

What is this all about?

We then went to bury the envelope in the backyard and placed a large stone on top of it.

Tronk happily helped us do all this, without the slightest hesitation. Then bedtime arrived. Tronk was tired but nothing was making him go to sleep. He was trying to find excuses to stay awake. He kept saying: Non voglio dormire perche’ e’ primavera! (I don’t want to sleep because it's spring). At the end, he eventually did fall asleep, but after a fair amount of crying.

The following morning:

Fantastico!, he really said that.

We had another fair amount of crying the second night (back to the crying out method we used when he was a baby!) but we managed to get through it. I know this is going to take some time and efforts on our part - a bit like giving up breastfeeding, very sad and emotional, but it is good for all of us. We need to move on and do big boy things. So thanks for all your help, binkies. I will never forget what you did for my baby... and me.

Dangerous Liaisons, Part Two - Amore Pericoloso, Seconda Parte

Today, when I got home, I found these on the kitchen counter.

Flower Blossoms Tronk Collected in Watertown

Zia Pina, who took care of Tronk in the afternoon, told me that he collected the flowers on his way to the playground. She tried to persuade him to give the flowers to a woman he met, who had been nice to him in the past, but Tronk insisted that the flowers were for me. Apparently, he came home at around 5 and ran as fast as he could to the kitchen, while calling my name, with the white flower blossoms still in his hands. I wasn't there so he was upset - he tried to throw the flowers in the garbage! Typical man. Then, when I arrived home, as soon as I saw the flowers, during storytime, Tronk said firmly that they were for me, not for the other woman.

"mamma!"

He knew I would be touched by that, like he knows that when he says "mamma!" with the desperate tone, I get to melt like a piece of ice under the hot sun. In those moments, I feel I would do anything for him. He knows how to get to my heart and this frightens me.

A cultural gap I am afraid I will not able to bridge - Un gap culturale ho paura non potro' colmare

I have been in Boston for more than a week now and I still feel unadjusted. I have been sitting at the computer looking for fun things to do with Tronk in the afternoon in our neighborhood, so far with little success. The truth is that there aren't many things to do with children outside the house that don't involve waking up at dawn and eating outside. Yes because here waking up at 8 am is late.  In more than one occasions, nurses from the hospital and survey guys turned up at my house at around 8:20 am and apologized for not arriving earlier. And the majority of people here (with or without children) eat outside the house. This is precisely the kind of thing I have been trying to avoid from the very first day I have been back in Boston.

Lunch (and dinner) in Boston

Apparently, in the US, it is legal to give children the left overs from dinner. No, they didn't tell me this. I figured this out when the moms at the playground unveiled the morning snack for their children: fried chicken. Perhaps it was  lunch, I am not sure. It didn't look very fresh though. When you think it cannot get any worse, you see the child sitting next to yours eating cold pasta with the hands, chips style. Second course: raw carrots, raw broccoli and raw onions! By the way, these are healthy moms, they shop at Wholefoods and don't give their children coca cola instead of milk for breakfast!

Aha, Boston, the land of freedom! Next time I will pack the tail of the fish from Tronk's dinner and will not miss that 9 am music class I always wanted to attend.

Robe di Kappa vs Trucker Girl - Robe di Kappa vs Donna del Camionista

I will never buy Robe Di Kappa sportswear for my son and I'll tell you why.

You might be up for some serious disappointment if you are planning to wear your collection of preppy Robe di Kappa sportswear in the US - In Italy wearing Kappa is a bit like wearing Lacoste (or maybe A&F) in the US. This is what happened to the father of one of Tronk's friend, a man in his forties who was living in Italy until few months ago. According to what this man told me at the playground, when he started his new job here in Boston, his boss was initially ignoring him and so were other work mates. He was getting a few dirty looks here and there. It was only a couple of months later that a bit of truth came out when two work mates (unsuccessfully) tried to explain to him with diplomacy the connotations that the Kappa symbol has in the US.

What is really sad is that the Italian guy said he came up with a great "politically correct" answer: "the symbol can be interpreted as one may prefer to interpret it”. He proudly told me that his explanation left everyone silent. Poor guy! He thought they did not appreciate his style. Now he has hundreds of euros worth of clothing but the Americans here assume he is a sexist douchebag. I can already picture him in his flashy black Robe di Kappa tracksuit while he is discussing the termination of his contract in the office of his boss.

This brand really cannot win in the United States. Even if you were wearing the more subtle sweatshirt with the Kappa logoscript on it, you would still be misunderstood here as they would think you are a guy in a college fraternity!

Italian: I am preppy

American: I am in a College Fraternity

The feeling of home - Il sentirsi a casa

There is a feeling of "home" in every person. Each time I go to see my parents in Turin, I am filled with an incredible amount of joy each time I see the mountains below from the porthole.

Sono quasi a casa, sigh! - I am almost at home, sigh!

We finally land and I am usually greeted by a pale but unexpectedly warm sun and all of a sudden, I see the things that make me feel at home: the bright light coming from the courtyard in the morning, the light blue sky slightly dirty from the fumes of the city, the crying of the child and the grandmother talking just after that, the old lady that says "buongiorno signora!" on my way out of the condo, the mountains in the background behind the houses I am looking at, the jangling of the market, the smell outside the bakery shop in the morning, the bells ringing at the nearby Church, giving me a rough idea of the time, the friendly "buondi'"(goodmorning in piemontese) of the local tobacco shop owner. It is the same guy but with grey hair. He still remembers me and my grandmother.

As my friend Laura once wrote in her psychology thesis, knowledge, memories and affections are strongly connected with the places where we lived. I read her thesis while I was living in London. Turin had become a stranger to me and I had become a stranger to her. I remember thinking that I had grown into a different person and that my home town had changed from a shelter of  bigots to a multi-cultural city of unconventional people (more traveled, more knowledgeable and more open to new experiences). Yet, as my mother often says, "a volte l'apparenza inganna" (sometimes appearances deceive). When I was visiting my parents in Turin, although I remember trying to act as if Turin was still my home, as a matter of fact, while I was there, I was spending most of my time complaining:

What? There isn't a single store open where I can buy food at night?
Dirty old man! I can't believe I overheard the cheese guy at the farmers' market saying to his wife that I could be as tasty as some of his old cheeses!
Another pathetic communist talking about his rights to be on vacation for a month! Give me a break
Elegantly dressed men with sweat dripping all over their suits! Is it a sin to take off the jacket here?

"Aha, the technologies of these modern days!" High-school kid, do you realize that you are talking like an old man??

Each time I was visiting my parents, I was feeling as if everyone was getting on my nerves and on my third day in Turin I was already looking forward to flying back to London. Turin was no longer my home or perhaps it had never been. Yet, now and then, I was constantly searching for cheap Ryanair fares to go enjoy a weekend of aperitivi and cioccolata con biccerin in Turin. Perhaps my old friend Elena was right. My choice to abandon Turin was the best I ever made. I discovered the luxury of living in one of the coolest cities in the world (London) only two hours away from home. And I could always take a few days off to go home (and complain of course).

Living thousand of miles away from home (Boston) has made it all different. Not only it has made me realize why an old English friend was always calling me “the Torino girl”! when he was drunk and that Turin is indeed my real home, the place that has shaped my heart, thoughts and decisions. It has also made me realize that now it only takes a few encounters like these to produce tears in my eyes:

 

 

 

"Eh cara mia, all'estero cose cosi' te le puoi sognare!" (eh, my dear, abroad, you can only dream of things like these!), my mother used to say. Now, ten years later, I can't agree with her more.

Do you want the finger mom? - Vuoi il dito mamma?

Vuoi il dito? (Do you want the finger?)

This posting will be brief as it is only meant to record yet another, hopefully transitory, strange obsession of my son. In the last few weeks Tronk has discovered the most exciting thing ever: "il dito" (the finger) and our reactions when he moves his index finger up and down towards us. He does that to copy his dad, who likes to tickle him. When Tronk first raised his little finger towards us John and I couldn't help showing him that we were scared; typical reaction of the parent treating the child as a grown up! The problem is that he got a real kick out of it while we were in Italy and continued to raise his little finger to nonno and nonna (the Italian grandparents) and even to strangers in the street, hoping to get the same reactions from them.

Unfortunately, nonno turned out to be the only one who went along with the game, by producing a fake expression of terror and a scream (causing us to be scared) each time Tronk's finger was approaching. Strangely, nonna's reaction instead turned out to be an attempt to eat the finger. Sadly, everyone else Tronk came across in the two weeks he spent in Turin, did not get the message.

We are now back in Boston, still trying to escape from the little finger and get some sleep.