They're Killing Me with Kindness

I was talking to a British friend and she asked me: “When you left Sardinia and came to live in the UK, what was the hardest part?”

I had to think about it, as the challenges were many. My English was good, but not good enough  at the time to pick up on the subtleties of a foreign language, nor the humour. I missed my family and friends, the food and the sunshine. But probably, the hardest part was the cultural differences.

She then asked if Phil (my husband) had experienced a “culture shock” when staying with me in Italy. And this brought back some memories…

When I first introduced Phil to my family in Italy, mamma really struggled to say his name. She asked me how it was spelled and when I did it, she seemed even more confused. A name that starts with P but it sounds as though it starts with an F…not to mention that fact that it ends with a consonant.

Very few Italian word ends with a consonant.

In the end we agreed she should call him Filippo, the Italian version of his name. And many older relatives still call him this way.

Those first visits to my family were indeed a bit of a culture shock. For him.

We used to go to Sardinia in the summer, so this was our main holiday, and we could also combine it with visiting my family.

We stayed a casa mia, the home where I grew up, in a village that used to be a farming community.

As it was our main holiday, Phil and I didn’t want to get up early, so we would come down for breakfast around 8:30am.

I don’t remember a single day of our holidays when we would come down to mamma’s kitchen and there were no visitors.

You know how some people like to start their day quietly and slowly?

Perhaps it takes them a while to actually wake up and utter a few words.

Well, that’s what Phil and I were like.

And that kind of peace wasn’t happening in my Italian home.

Forget about coming down in your pyjamas. There were always visitors, even first thing in the morning. Or rather, first thing in our morning. My aunts, neighbours, mamma and cousins had already been up for hours by 8:30am, so for them it was mid-morning!

Sometimes it was zia Angelina who just brought a crostata (jam tart) she’d just baked, or my cousin Teresina with a basket of freshly picked tomatoes, or our neighbour Maria Teresa stopping for coffee.

Looking back I feel for Filippo. He really struggled with his Italian at the time, and could barely hold a conversation one to one, let alone with a group of ladies, whist he was still half asleep.

Meal times – lunch or dinner – were the most challenging for him.

First of all because mamma (or any relative who invited us), would insist he’d try every course they had lovingly prepared.

Phil was always happy to comply.

The problem was when they offered him seconds. Because he is quiet and a bit reserved, they assumed that he was just being shy, and he was saying NO to be polite.

So they insisted: “Mangia, mangia!”

He felt he couldn’t say no, and he would eat, and eat, and eat, and then whisper to me: “They’re killing me with kindness.”

On top of being overly fed, the conversations around the table could prove exhausting. We know that Italians are generally sociable and chatty. Maybe not everyone, but my family definitely falls into this category. They also like to talk over each other.

It’s something I didn’t notice when I lived in Italy, but I’ve realised it since I’ve been away from home.

Imagine a  way of conversing with a group of people around the table, where everyone has something to say and intervenes; so in order to be heard you have to speak louder. This means that the next person also raises their volume because they want to be heard too.  It can get chaotic. Un casino!

On those occasions, Phil never got a chance to be heard. I had to tell him: “You must shout! if you speak so quietly, no one will hear what you have to say.”

“But that’s my tone of voice!” he would reply.

An example of a conversation around my family’s table:

Fratello grande: Dove lavori, Phil? (Where do you work?)

Phil: A Londra. (In London)

Cognata: È lontano da casa? (Is it far from home?)

Phil: Un’ora e un quarto di treno. (One hour and a quarter by train.)

Mamma: Ho sentito che i treni sono cari in Inghilterra. (I’ve heard the trains are expensive in England.)

Phil: È vero. (That’s true)

Martina: Costano molto più che in Italia! (They’re much more expensive than in Italy!)

Fratello grande: Però sono puntuali! (But at least they run on time!)

Phil: Non sempre. (Not Always.)

Sorella: Quanto dista il lavoro dalla stazione di Londra? (How far is work from the station in London?)

Mamma: E la stazione da dove parti, è lontana da casa vostra? (And the station where you leave from, is that far from your home?)

Fratello grande: E come mai non vai in macchina? (And how come you don’t go by car?)

Cognata: Forse perché non c’è parcheggio vicino a lavoro? (Maybe because there’s no parking near work?)

Fratello grande: Forse perché c’è troppo traffico la mattina? (Maybe because there’s too much traffic in the morning?)

Fratello piccolo: Dipende da che ora deve essere in ufficio. (It depends on what time he needs to be in the office)

Fratello grande: E cosa c’entra l’orario di lavoro? (What’s that go to do with his working hours?)

Fratello piccolo: C’entra perché se deve essere in ufficio alle 9 del mattino, deve viaggiare in ora di punta, no? (It’s got to do with it because if he needs to be at work at 9 in the morning, that means he has to travel in rush hour, right?)

Sorella: Certo che viaggia in ora di punta, magari non trova neanche posto a sedere nel treno. (Of course he travels in rush hour, I bet he doesn’t even get a seat on the train.)

Fratello piccolo: Però questa pasta è un po’ troppo al dente. (Hey, this pasta is a bit too al dente.)

Cognata: Ma no! Casomai è un po’ troppo salata. (Not really. If anything, it’s a little too salty.)

Sorella: Mamma usa sempre troppo sale, e lo sa che fa male! (Mamma always uses too much salt, and she knows it’s bad for you!)

At this point, after debating about trains, and rush hour and pasta, Phil is still stuck thinking on how to answer the first question, which was: Quanto dista il lavoro dalla stazione di Londra?

And do note, it’s unlikely that all those sentences were uttered in sequence.

I’m confused just writing about it, let alone being in the middle of it all and expected to translate the bits Phil didn’t get!

It makes me smile to think of those family get-togethers now.

And they seemed the perfect inspiration for Un pranzo in famiglia, an Italian word search built around some of the verbs that belong to a family meal: welcoming, cooking, sharing, chatting and, inevitably in my family, eating far too much.