I don’t know why, but I have always been fascinated by and taken great comfort in watching a restaurant being prepped for opening by the staff, their vests or jackets still unbuttoned, bow ties dangling from pockets or draped around necks. I particularly like the moment when the dining room is finally ready and the ma?tre d’ unlocks the door, swings it open invitingly, then steps back inside and waits for the first customer to enter as the waiters do up the last buttons on clean and freshly pressed uniforms.
When we returned to Rome many months later, we visited the same restaurant, as my father must have felt a certain loyalty to the place because they had been so welcoming to us as new arrivals. As we sat down he reminded the waiter that we were the same family that had visited some time before. Without missing a beat, the waiter threw up his hands and with a huge smile welcomed us back and even called my sisters by name. How this man, who was no spring chicken, had that kind of memory given the number of people he had waited on since our first visit and over a lifetime, we may never know. All I can say is that he was a testament to the professionalism and innate graciousness of the precious figure that is the Italian waiter.
When we settled in Florence, I did not speak a single word of Italian, so I was enrolled in an Italian school but placed in the year behind where I would have normally been at my age in order to learn proper grammar along with the other students. This proved to be a very wise choice, because within two months I was speaking fluently, and by the end of our stay I was correcting any correspondence that my father had to write in Italian. （Unfortunately, today my Italian is hardly fluent, a result of not speaking it every day. But I have been taking lessons, and frequent trips to Italy have given me opportunities to practice, although I pity the very patient natives with whom I converse.）
Unlike in America, there were no school lunches. School started at around eight thirty and finished at one p.m., at which time everyone went home for the midday meal and an afternoon rest. To compensate for these short hours, we did however have classes on Saturday mornings from nine a.m. to twelve p.m. I loved these hours, as they gave me much more free time in the afternoons. Of course, this schedule was conceived with the assumption there would always be an adult at home to care for the children when they arrived for lunch. Today things have changed distinctly, but in the Italy of the early seventies there was always someone, usually a mother or a grandparent, in the household at any given time of the day.
Having an adult present at home consistently was of even greater importance when spring brought warm weather as, purely by coincidence I am sure, during this time teachers’ strikes became more frequent. We had experienced a few strikes by the faculty throughout the year, but we were usually told in advance if and when one was pending. What exactly these sudden walkouts pertained to we never knew, but as kids we welcomed them. By the time spring had fully arrived—the trees were in blossom, the blue Italian sky floated overhead, and summer was just around the corner—the strikes were even more frequent and came without any forewarning. I remember walking to school a number of times and entering halls that were empty of staff, with the exception of some administrator who would tell those of us milling about looking for some kind of guidance, “Ragazzi! Non c’è’ scuola oggi. C’è’ un sciopero. Tornate a casa!” （“Kids! There is no school today. There is a strike. Go home!”）
And so we would go home. Happily.
When the strikes first began, my mother of course questioned my unexpected return, and I would cheerily explain that there was a strike. At first she and my father were shocked. They both worked in an American high school, where nothing like this would ever happen. But eventually, as the teachers absented themselves with more frequency and I regularly reappeared in the apartment a mere half hour after having just left, she would roll her eyes and shake her head.
My sisters were enrolled in a Catholic school, and because nuns are not inclined to protest for better wages or shorter hours, they were schooled consistently. However, for me, although I did learn proper Italian, my schooling in Italy was the best education I almost had.
At this point in the chapter I would write about all of the food I ate in Italy over the course of that year, but I am afraid that, unless we were traveling to another city to sightsee or visiting relatives in Calabria, we ate at home. The sabbatical required that my father’s salary be reduced for his year abroad, and even though the bygone Italian lira was very weak compared to the American dollar, it still made no sense for our family to dine out. Even when we traveled through the country by train, my parents always bought all the ingredients to make sandwiches as opposed to paying extra to buy them premade. This means that not until I began to travel to Italy on my own many years later would I begin to experience the wonder and diversity of native Italian cooking.