Chapter 2: Piccola Principessa di Papa.
When my sweet daughter, my Carolina, was born, my greatest wish was that someone had come with the idea of Maternity Leave for Fathers. From the very moment I had set my eyes on my daughter I wished I could have been with her 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year… She was such a sweet little thing with the mass of dark hair and huge eyes that soon lost the terrible blue of newborn and turned dark hazel. She had the sweetest smile and I swear her first smiles were for me and the soft Italian words of papa's love I whispered to her little ears.
My wife was not too happy to share her time and her endearments with her daughter. She even accused me of having more sweet Italian names for Carolina than for her… What can I say – the words flew freely on their own and Mia Cara thrived on them – her own first words were Italian not English… But then from the very beginning I regaled her with all the greatest Italian Fairy Tales and Folk Stories, the Myths of old Roman Gods, the wisdom, joys and terrors of Dante's Divine Comedy, the frolics of Boccaccio's work (well, this one I censored a little at the time…) and many, many more. And I sang to her all the great Italian songs: traditional folk songs, Verdi's, Puccini's and Rossini's arias as well as Drupi's and Umberto Tozzi's tunes. Since my wife complained that Carolina (whom she stubbornly called Caroline – with an exaggerated accent on the last syllable) would not learn to speak English properly, all this Italian singing was done while Lucille was out shopping, visiting her friends or at her Golf or Bridge Club. With her mother present, Carolina heard only American songs, but I did not complain – Frank, Elvis, Dean and others, not forgetting Doris, had great songs and I sang them to my daughter with gusto.
Mia Piccola Bambina was very clever from the very beginning – soon she realized that with her Mother present she should behave like a little lady: speak just the English words, sing American songs, eat with knife and fork, sit with straight shoulders, wear only dresses, have her long hair in braids or ponytail and always, always tidy up… But when we were on our own… Well – let's just say we let our hair loose, wore jeans, talked loud not only with our mouth but also our hands and just had fun… I especially loved the vacation time since my daughter and I always took them on our own. Usually Lucille took Carolina to visits her parents for a week or two in the early summer and refused to leave town and her friends for any more periods.
And so my summer break from work was spent with Mia Bambina alone. 24 hours a day, 3 weeks a year. Pure heaven! We mostly spent them by the seaside as both of us just loved the Ocean, its waves, its ever changing color and sounds. We would play in the sand and the water, collect seashells, build sandcastles and take long walks.
I'm glad to say that Mia Cara knew what is good for her when it comes to food from her early age – she much preferred pasta to hamburgers and fries, she quickly decided Cassata was much, much better than Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, that hot dogs were fine, but bruchetta and insalata tricollore were nicer and that American pizza, though great in its own way had nothing to do with its Italian namesake. I'm happy to say that she also much preferred my non alcoholic limoncello to the 7Up or even to the homemade lemonade Lucille's friends prepared for the kids' parties. I even used to let her have few sips of great Italian wine (preferably Barolo) from time to time – diluted with water, after my first (and only) mistake of miscalculating the effects of the alcohol intake by such small bodyweight…
While on our Papa and Cara vacation, we never followed any rules; just had fun. Slept as little or as long as we wanted. Tided our mess only when we felt like it. Wore jeans, dungarees and flip-flops. Mia Tesoro wore dresses only on the days she fancied herself a Principessa. On those days she demanded a Good Morning Song, breakfast in bed, Gelatos for lunch, a nice dress (with red or white slippers to accompany it), flowers and her hand to be kissed. She called herself a Piccola Principessa di Papa on those days. Funnily enough she never demanded the tiaras her mother insisted on buying (as all Little Princesses should have at least one – or so Lucille had said).
The vacation time was never long enough for me and (or so I always hoped) for Mia Cara. But we also had tons of fun back home. Lucille was a rather unimaginative cook, so the kitchen has become my domain early in our marriage even before our daughter arrival. I have always liked to cook and experiment with the herbs and spices of my childhood, so I did not mind "slaving over the cooker or the oven" – but I have never anticipated that cooking and baking could be so much fun until I have tried it with Mia Piccola Principessa. Although my wife never spent much time in the kitchen, she insisted it was equipped with the state of art furnishing, appliances and all the latest gadgets. As it was myself who used them – I never complained. What drove me mad though was my wife's insistence of putting away all the herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables in the pantry after the meal was cooked. And she never stooped as low as to have her meal in the kitchen. In consequence our state of art kitchen was rather cold and uninviting most of the time. I've never thought I would miss something of the Italy of my childhood and youth other than the sun. But I have – I missed the warmth of the kitchen and its smells – I was only ever able to reproduce that for those few fleeting moments while cooking. It was so until Mia Cara came to our lives and especially so when she first started to help me, then was learning to cook and in the end become a proficient "Master (or Mistress) of the Pan" herself. Then Lucille stopped complaining about "the messy" look our kitchen acquired as she decided that Cara (sorry – Ca-ro-LINE) would need to learn household duties and that not every woman can be as lucky as herself to land with a husband who enjoys cooking and does it well. I was not happy with this talk of husbands and marrying young but as it landed me more precious moments with Mia Bambina, I kept my mouth shut.
And so our grey stainless steel kitchen quickly gained colors of rich reds, warm yellows and orange and leafy greens. It started to smell as the kitchen should. It even sounded great as Carolina and I always sang while cooking. Mainly Opera Arias. Once again – Lucille did not complain. She said it would do our daughter well to become "culturally versed in all manners, including Opera" as it "would increase her chances of landing a good catch" since she "could not rely on her looks or wit". Once again – I did not like the talk of landing a husband young and more so the insinuating that Caro was not good looking or not intelligent enough, but throughout the years of my marriage I have learned to keep my mouth shut and my temper under wraps just for the sake of peace and quiet.
Cara and I had lots of fun outside the kitchen, too. My little girl was not too keen on the friends her mother deemed "suitable" for mingling with and so she spent most of her free time reading or listening to the music, when she was not busy cooking or "shooting up the breeze" with her old man. Outside of cooking we also had our other "little projects" as Mia Cara used to call them. We went to the cinema often, planned our escapades to Baltimore for Opera and the Theatre, wandered there around some Museums and Art Galleries…
As I said – Mia Cara's nose was in the books most of the time and later we discovered that she had a knack of writing very good stories and essays for her English Literature assignments. Since her mother was not overly interested, it was I who usually read her homework or lent an ear when she was voicing aloud the analysis of whatever novel or poem they were reading at school. I even tried to convince her to start writing stories as a hobby, but Carolina somehow did not believe she could be creative enough to come up with original plots for her stories. Realizing that had she taken that advise it would have cut down on our father-daughter time, I never pressed her too hard to try. I already was jealous of her time that book-reading took away from me anyway…
So we continued with whatever "project" took our fancy. We even tried to tend to our garden to have more than the grass growing there. Although most of the time it WAS mainly grass, rather over-grown by American standards with dandelions growing freely, attracting butterflies to feed on their nectar in the summer and wind to blow their seeds even more around our garden in the autumn… But we did try… We had a patch of the sweet smelling Lavender growing as well as some herbs. We tried to grow Roses – Carolina especially had set her mind on some peach colored rose called Carding Mill but it only boomed in our garden once… We did not have any more luck with bougainvillea, which seems to grow in Italy like the weed, either. But I did have some luck with growing some Sweet Peas much to my daughter delight (which resulted in my one and only English nickname for my daughter) and she in turn managed quite well with the Viola Tricollore Pansies which she claimed she had grown for me. The Clematis also proved to be a success. And of course we had to have Daisies – those were the first flowers ever my sweet Cara got acquainted with when she was still a crawling infant. We were at the park together with her mother and Mia Bambina crawled off the blanket, ignoring her mother's angry shouts of "not getting herself dirty" or her frock "soiled with the grass (never mind the germs!)". Cara made a quick work of getting to what picked her interest – the wild Daisies - the lovely flowers, albeit not exactly sweet smelling, that the park grass was littered with. Then she proceeded to try to eat it and I had to put the stop to her exploring… But since then – Daisies were always one of her favorite flowers. Anyway – since flower growing was not our forte (we later discovered that some flowering bushes managed to thrive on their own accord mainly and smelled lovely to boot – so we just planted few and gave up pretending to be gardeners) – we decided to grow our own grapes. Before we could do that we had to construct the trellis as support for the vines. And thus our Verandah took shape. And also - that's how I discovered I was quite handy with woodwork and that working on something with my own hands gave me surprising pleasure – I guess it must be something to do with the genes – my grandfather was a carpenter. And yes – his name was Gepetto – Mia Bambina used to joke that for sure I must be related to Pinocchio as my nose grew whenever I tried to fib her… Nevertheless – on top of car-tinkering, woodwork had become my other hobby and I would disappear to my newly created workshop in the basement whenever my Cara deserted me for books.
Grape growing also led to another hobby – namely wine-making. I could not call myself l'Italiano Vero had I not given a try to the process. The wine Caro and I managed to produce was not spectacular as the climate we live in is not warm and sunny enough, the grape juice we managed to preserve though, coupled with some strong alcohol (preferably vodka as it does not have any taste of its own), resulted with a very nice home-made liqueur… We continued experimenting and found out that brandy and grape juice also gave interesting results. And once again – this little project has led to another hobby – one that I could share with my daughter albeit in secret. I was very happy to discover my Little Sweet Pea was very quick on learning how the winemaking process works, on the differences of various grape kinds and the tastes of different wines. Of course she was much too young by American standards and Law to be openly tasting any alcoholic beverages, but then, I argued with myself, she WAS of Italian descent and thus had to have it in her blood. So I continued teaching her about making, tasting and enjoying the wine. We even managed to sneak to Napa Valley few times to tour various vineries. Lucille never knew about this our little "guilty secret". Had she known – I wonder – how would she classify the wine knowledge versus wifely accomplishments – as the "household duties" or the "cultural refinement"? But since we never divulged – I have never learned…
Whatever "project" we would undertake however, whatever we fancied doing together – one thing was constant; THE MUSIC. We listened to the music together, discussed it and sang, always sang together – mainly the Opera and Operetta Arias and standards from the Musicals, but really – we could have sung anything and everything (driving Carolina's mother crazy sometimes… Her words not ours!).
No, I'm lying (checking my nose for growth…) – there was one, just one time when music was not helping, more even – when it seemed to hinder the progress… It was my attempt to teach my daughter to drive. Oh what a disaster it was! I started as any full-bloodied male would – explaining how the car works, how the engine is its heart, what happens when one presses the clutch pedal, etcetera, etcetera… Mia Piccola (it was also the time when she started to object to be called Piccola – so maybe this fact also made me a little less patient with her and her inability to grasp the workings of a car…), Mia Principessa told me in clipped words that she did not need all the said knowledge in order to "get from point A to point B" successfully. It was a dark, dark time for me – I never had known being a patient father required so much self-restraint – suffice to say I took to drinking at least one BIG glass of cognac after our driving sessions… Grazzie di Dio she never requested me to let her drive my Cadillac – I'd have died of the heart attack on the spot! Let's just say – the little British books I picked up at some garage sale – namely "Keep Calm And Carry On" and "Sod Calm And Get Angry" helped a lot!
After many lessons (and many BIG cognac glasses on my part) Mia Cara managed to grasp the mystery of "getting from point A to point B" with some (moderate in my opinion – but I kept this opinion to myself) success and managed to pass the Driving Test. I bought an old Ford Pinto for her – a mass produced car seemed to be most appropriate for Mia Cara's way of driving and, more importantly, her way of looking (or rather not looking) after the vehicle – I was sure its life would not last long. Funny that she still drives this car – I'd never have imagined it could have lasted for so many years…
