Joe Ray

Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Brother From Another Mother

ISPICA, SICILY

To prepare for the cookout, Dad sits with the English-Italian dictionary to figure out the first thing he’d like to say upon meeting our gregarious host, Guido: ‘Your are my brother from another mother.’

Guido, my pal Francesco’s uncle, was born with the gift of making whoever he’s with feel like they’re two peas in a pod and this day was no different. He lent me his daughter’s scooter the first time I lived here and though I only have what the French would call notions of Italian, language never seems to be a barrier when talking with him.

My parents came to Sicily on vacation to learn about the Motherland and our family history here – Dad’s maternal grandparents emigrated from the tiny town of Altavilla Milicia in the early 1900s – and being together in the place where our ancestors were from is a potent emotional experience connecting us with the past and each other.

Guido’s wife Pina and Francesco’s mother make a feast that includes roasted peppers, sautéed mushrooms and grilled meat a go-go and I’ve smuggled an entire jamón Ibérico – black hoof and all – through customs as a gift from our family to theirs.

Today, however, food (very tasty food at that) was simply a way to bring us together and I’d trade every amazing Sicilian restaurant meal for this one feast.

Being made to feel like family can be as important as finding the real one.

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Monday, May 26, 2008

The Little World of Don Guido

This afternoon, I hitched a ride with Guido to his cabin where I figured I could work unconnected while he puttered around in the garden. He picked me up in his 1970s Renault R4 and headed back through Ispica for an impromptu tour of the old part of town.

“That’s my church,” he said, rounding a corner, cresting a hill and pointing out the window all at once. “Now, neutral!” he said, batting the old car’s dash-mounted stick shift back and forth with his hand and letting the car coast. Next, he passed through streets so narrow, I had previously thought it was a pedestrian area. “Modern cars don’t fit.”

Five minutes out of town at the cabin he uses both as an artist’s studio (he’s a well-known artist, with an affinity for mail art) and a base for his gardening, his mulberry tree has a carpet of fallen berries below it. A week after I was here last, the berries on the tree are now a little bigger, a little riper and a lot tastier. With high wire comic panache, Guido again brings out the umbrella and fills up a plate of berries for me to nibble on while I write.

Later, I help him sweep and shovel up the berries on the ground and return them to the earth as compost for his olive trees. Near a stack of firewood, he identifies four kinds of wood just by looking at the cross sections: carob, fig, almond and olive. I ask which type is the best for cooking.

“For baking bread?” he replies, “Olive. You take a few branches and throw it into the oven and it smokes, giving flavor to the bread.

“In the forties and fifties, when the olive trees were pruned, the farmers would put the bunched-up trimmings in bushels around the tree to dry. Later, they would load the bushels on a back of a cart and sell them in the countryside. At home, you would put a few bushels in the oven and let them burn,” he says. “When the tile in front of the oven was warm, you’d scoop out most of the cinders and put your bread dough in.

“Now, it’s different. Things are…” he trails off, whipping his hands around in the air looking for the word, “…globalized.”

There’s no malice in the word, he just uses it like the name of a country he’s never been to; he hasn’t reinventing the bread making process, he’s just sharing what he knows.

“Here, it’s peaceful,” he says. “Here, I’m good.”

“Here, have a glass of wine.”

This is Joe Ray reporting (hic!) from the Motherland.

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