When I was 8 we all went on location with Dad while he made his third, and as it turned out, breakout movie, "Grape Lucidity."

A major portion of the movie was shot in Italy and so we moved there for 3 months.

Dad spoke fluently, Alex picked it up well enough. Mom, Marsh and I spent a lot of time speaking slowly and loudly in baby English.

Despite my difficulty with the language I loved Italy. Mom was healthy and pregnant, Dad was tan and sounded so smart speaking to the locals.

The actress playing my father's love interest had her three children with her, all girls, Caroline was 12 and I followed her everywhere because she always had the best ideas for things to do. Jessie was 7, truly only months younger than me but I deemed her too babyish to play with. Mabel was 5 and the perfect playmate for Alex, effectively keeping her out of my hair.

On the nights they weren't shooting all of the adults and their children would come to our rented home. We'd have pot luck meals or else a few of them would decide to cook for the group with everyone buzzing in and out of the large country kitchen.

I remember one evening, Mom and a few other women were cooking for the group. In that magic time of day when the sun knows it should be going to bed but it keeps holding out just a few minutes more.

The ladies had the windows and kitchen door open but it was still hot thanks to the oven being on.

All of the men and some of the women were outside on the patio where we would eat. Alex was playing with Mabel under her mother's watchful eye. Marsh was, as usual, in the far corner of the yard in a dirt pile pushing bright yellow dump trucks around.

I was helping with dinner because Caroline had wanted to. She liked to do the things the grown ups were doing.

Mom was cutting potatoes, barefoot, looking like a fifties housewife. She was joking with the other women when Dad came in and slipped his arms around her from behind. He patted her belly and kissed her neck, not caring who was looking. He asked if he could help, said he missed her after shooting all day.

Mom laughed and leaned into his subsequent kiss on the cheek but then shoo'd him out of the kitchen. When he'd gone the other women told her how lucky she was.

"My husband wouldn't come looking for me if I was missing for a week."

"How long have you two been married? My Stewart hasn't acted like that since we were newlyweds."

And so on. Mom told the others that they felt like newlyweds because she'd been sick before they got married and sick for such a large part of their marriage they were just now settling in to getting to enjoy each other without fear.

That night after dinner everyone came inside because the bugs became too abundant outside to ignore.

We kids were set about to lie down on various blankets and things in the tv room because it was our bedtime, except for Caroline, she was older and didn't have to go to bed so early. As a compromise the adults told her I could stay up and we could play games or talk quietly but not disturb the others.

What we did was angle ourselves so we could peep at the adults. While I found them only interesting when someone swore or fought Caroline was much more adept at reading the room.

"Julia and Rob are fighting." She called all adults by their first names, something I mimicked once and was immediately disciplined by my mother for.

"Are not!" I'd retorted. "They aren't even near each other."

"Exactly. Watch how when Rob says something Julia looks like she smelled bad milk."

She was right.

"What about my parents?"

My father sat on the floor, my mother occupied a chair directly behind him. She scratched at his neck or tousled his hair from time to time. When he said something that made everyone laugh, including her she batted him lightly on the shoulder.

"Your parents have a lot of sex." She surmised.

"What?"

I knew sex was...something. It was like a dirty thing that older kids alluded to but the mechanics were lost to me, as was why adults as innocent as my parents might have anything to do with it.

"Sure, first she's pregnant, and they're always touching and kissing. Only people in the movies kiss as much as your parents, and those people are always having sex."

She said this with such authority I had to ask, "What does Mom being pregnant have to do with anything?"

Then I was made privy to the answer to the big grown up secret, 'where do babies come from?'.

Being 12 Caroline had too much information and no sense of her audience. She spared no detail and by the end I was in tears, there was no way my parents did THAT, she was making that up. No one in their right mind would do that.

She told me I could believe her or not but it was true and we went back to watching the adults, me now in a resentful silence.

The next day Dad was working, Marsh was at his dirt pile and the little ones were with Mabel's nanny. Mom asked where Caroline was and I said I didn't care. She was a liar who told gross stories and I didn't want to play with her anymore.

Mom being mom couldn't leave it at that and pressed an explanation until I told her what Caroline said through tears.

We were sitting at the kitchen table and she reached over and touched my arm.

"Tonks, she didn't lie. It wasn't appropriate for her to tell you those things and some of the details are wrong (no one pees inside anyone) but yes, sex is when two people who love each other are intimate in a physical way and that is how babies are made."

"But it's so gross!" I was angry at her now and Dad for being a part of this disgusting act.

"No, not when two people love each other. Your father is the love of my life and sharing something like that with him is like kissing or holding hands, it's beautiful and caring and it brings us closer together. When you are older you'll understand better but for now I want you to keep this information to yourself, not because it's bad but because it is hard to understand when you are young."

I said I would but felt only marginally better about the whole idea.

I have to admit, I looked at my father differently after that. He was a boyish man, and remains so in the most delightful ways. At the time he would rough house with his friends and throw his own body about with reckless abandon but with my mother he was always careful and tender.

I had once seen him put her over his shoulder and carry her, protesting at the top of her lungs, into the ocean but even then when the waves crashed around them he held onto her like she might be carried away forever should he let go and they came out laughing, their arms around each other.

Beyond that moment I had witnessed only softness between them in their touch.

Now though, I imagined the violation sex seemed to me and became a little frightened of who he might be late at night.

About a month after I received my inaugural sex talk the family went to a small restaurant in a village near our house. After dinner the owner asked my father to sit at the piano and sing a song or two. This happened with some frequency no matter where in the world we turned up and after some warming up my father almost always agreed.

This particular night was the anniversary of the night my father had proposed to my mother and while some couples might choose to celebrate that alone my parents were of the mindset that we children were nothing if not living, breathing proof of their adoration for each other.

Dad sang a few songs we'd heard roughly as many times as we'd heard our own names to a small but extremely encouraging audience of mostly older local couples.

After running through his standard fare he begged the indulgence of the room (this is how my father talks, he is polite in a way that can occasionally seem condescending) and announced that it was a very special night for out little brood, "It was 9 years ago this very evening the beautiful vision of a girl you see at my table, the reason my heart beats, and the bearer of the most precious gifts I have ever been given, those 3.5 children over there, agreed to be my wife." He paused here as the patrons of the restaurant applauded and raised their glasses in a salute.

"I'd like to sing something new, something no one, including my bride has heard before and dedicate it to Isabelle, without whom I would not know how to take a single breath."

With this he launched into a song, one you likely know by now as "Open". At the time I didn't understand most of the references but I did understand the change of the air of the room.

Couples who had previously seemed bored with each other's company moved closer to each other, placing their arms around each other, holding hands, gazing at each other with sweet smiles.

Tears streaked my mothers face and she patted her belly. She mouthed "I love you" to my father, whose face was also wet with tears.

When the song was finished he asked her to join him for a song.

As much as my mother taught people to sing, and therefor hit occasional notes or trilled short sections of music we rarely heard her sing an entire song, and other than once in awhile singing along with the radio in the car, or in groups around the beach fires we had never heard her sing with my father.

She went to the piano, something none of us expected, and sat beside him. Together they sang some love song I don't remember the name of.

My father has never sounded as good as when his voice has my mother's as it's partner. As I listened to that song I cried myself, not really knowing why, but after that I never thought ugly thoughts about my parents and sex again. I understood as I heard their voices together that nothing they could ever do together was scary or awful but filled with love.