‘If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a wheelbarrow.’ That’s what Italians say when they want to interrupt your rambling hypothetical scenario. After all, if a rolling granny doesn’t bring you to a standstill, nothing will. ‘
So, before someone tries to stop me with ‘mia nonna…sarebbe una carriola,’ just let me say that if I were a social commentator, I’d have a gazillion things to say about current events in political Italy over the past week and a half.
It’s a hypothesis, of course. No matter the bones there are to pick, I don’t have a social commentator bone in my body. I’m just a word scout who loves idioms enough to wish she could bake them in the oven as cookies. But if I were to lose control and go biased on you, I’d say that the time has come to stop it. To stop them talking, I mean. As in: how about some quiet time at parliament and a little peace of mind for the rest of us, shall we? For when it comes to modern-day politica, oh, how I wish it were time to chiudere baracca e burattini-to close down the puppet show and fold up the makeshift stage. That’s the Italian way to imply that enough is enough. It means the winnings and losses have been divvied and divided: either the show is over or the game is up.
Of course, one’s mood should never depend on what’s happening at Montecitorio. Italians and virtually anyone who has passed Italian 101 will tell you that. But for someone who has a hard time keeping her spirits in the center of the spectrum, applying this principle is not as easy as it sounds. Thankfully, though, there’s a solution. When I am disappointed in something or someone-even if it’s just a crowd of fraudulent politicians-I seek out real people. Or real person, actually. And the lady I visit is la persona più vera che conosco.
Bice smells like bleach and serves her meals on heavy plates. She cries when children are mistreated on television and buys dishtowels from a Moroccan vendor each week, swearing she’ll slam the door on his feet next time he returns. Bice feeds me almost every other Sunday and knows which potatoes are made for frying and which should be mashed into gnocchi. And if that isn’t enough, she’s fooled herself into thinking that I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread, or she would, if sliced bread ranked at all high in her system of values. Thankfully, no matter what mistakes I make to sabotage this conviction, she never quite takes them as proof.
In short, she comes from a generation where love is loyalty. In short, she is the woman who raised my mother. And the woman who taught me that, for Italians, things are ‘as good as bread,’ ‘as false as money,’ ‘as ugly as hunger’ and ‘as silent as a tomb.’ It was at her table that I learned that words can fly much higher than balloons and feel even more colorful. Bice inhales breath and exhales proverbs. On some level, I could even credit her for this column: her way with words made a lasting impression on my child-mind.
Although she mastered the alphabet when she was nearly 70 and has never written anything besides her signature, she remains my mentor and main linguistic authority.
Women who can’t read, listen.
Women who listen, know.
Bice talks politics. In fact, Bice talks everything. But unlike the country’s elected wolves and foxes, she isn’t afraid to chiamare pane ‘pane’ e vino ‘vino.’ In English, we’d call her a stickler for calling a spade ‘a spade.’ Sooner or later, all things must be given their proper names. This week’s conversation went like this:
‘I can’t stand them, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘I politici. We can’t remember what their party initials stand for, and we no longer care what their colors mean.’
‘Hmm,’ she grunted. ‘Don’t believe a single one of them until they start flying flags with skulls and cross-bones. Pirates-that’s what they are.’
I smiled.
She continued, ‘But, don’t you mind it. Hoping that politicians will change is voler raddrizzare le gambe ai cani. It’s not possible.’
‘No one can straighten a dog’s legs,’ I repeated.
She shook her head. ‘Nessuno.’
No one. And no one in the world is quite like Bice.
And she’s right, you know. About the dog-leg axiom. They said the same thing in Italian 101. They just said it in other words.
