Going Through the Motions

While on the phone a few minutes ago with mom Giulio asked me if he could play with Daddy's spaceship, our little model space shuttle that Lorenzo bought this summer at the Wright Patterson Airforce Base Museum which now proudly sits on our desk next to the computer. Giulio took the spaceship and lay on the floor, shouting orders to it in English, something about how you have to close the door, gee, I wonder who he got that from? Five minutes later he had added this robot he got for free from a box of Cheerios, so the space ship and the robot, a stand-in for the Red Power Ranger which is wildly popular among the four year olds in his class, were duking it out. Only Giulio didn't say Red Power Ranger the way I would, he was calling it a pa-WAIR range-AIR Rosso, which is what he has heard the other children call it. It suprised me to hear such an Italian pronounciation from him, but then again, how often does he hear me talk about Power Rangers, red or green ones at that? But it reminds me that he is growing up here in Italy and not in the US, where the Power Rangers are rosso and not red.
Nothing like Halloween to really hit that point home. Each year the Italian news talks about the growing popularity of Halloween and how much money is spent on the holiday in Italy alone but I still have yet to see anyone here going all out for Halloween. No one decorates their yard or sits by their gate to give out candy to little kids trick-or-treating, and why should they? It's not their holiday, and in fact I find it (almost) irksome that people celebrate it here at all, kind of like another triumph of marketing over tradition, simply because someone figured out there was money to be made.
Italians celebrating Halloween reminds me a bit of Americans trying to get into the spirit of the Soccer World Cup. They see it, they know it is important, they know they should really be getting excited that the US beat Columbia, and yet somehow their effort falls short and when the US is eliminated, it's not that big a deal. Not like what it would be if we lived in Europe they say. What Italians know about Halloween comes mainly from the movies and American TV shows depicting high school dances and parties where people dress up like vampires. They know about jack-o-lanterns, dressing up, trick or treating, the orange and black, and how it is a big holiday in the US. But they don't really get trick or treating, which is barely done at all, and done only by older kids with a very menacing side to it. I don't think it is clear that it's intended for smaller children, and that most kids stop by the time they are 13 or 14--there are easier ways of getting candy. My own children do not trick-or-treat, they were in bed asleep by 7:30 having no idea of what they were missing a continent away. Some English/American people I know arrange with friends ahead of time to have their children come by dressed up and do a kind of poor man's trick or treating, but as it is nothing like the real thing, I really don't bother because it just make me feel bummed out instead. The one thing I insist on though is the jack-o-lantern.
The first Halloween after we moved here to this building I did one and got so many compliments on it from Terry and Eugenio and Sig.ra Pala that I decided to do it every year, that it would be my way of flying the flag, even if no one was coming to ring the bell for candy. Italians are all about pictures and statues that protect homes, cars, and people, so when I explained the jack-o-lantern would scare away all the ghosts hanging around just before All Saints Day from hanging around our building, well, it went over very well. The last two years finding pumpkins has been super easy. I usually order them from the florist across the street from the nido and he's always found these huge, Legend of Sleepy Hallow type pumpkins that looked amazing when carved. I placed my order back in September and waited for him to call me and tell me that it was in, but nothing happened. Finally on Monday I went in myself and he told me that the reason he hadn't called me was because so far his distributor hadn't had any to sell. I began to panic slightly. It was Monday and Halloween was on Wednesday and I still didn't have a pumpkin. I then went and asked at my local market if they were ordering any and they told me they were expecting four bigs ones, one of which they could put aside for me. Whew, crisis averted. My kids may not trick or treat, but I want them to remember me carving the jack-o-lantern each year, I want it to be one of our traditions, something that our extremely different childhoods have in common, so having the pumpkin was a big deal. I had also agreed to come to Livia's group at the nido and make a jack-o-lantern for the kids, though Rosella told me that she would get the pumpkins.
On Tuesday I went back to the market to pick up my pumpkin. It was raining and I left my umbrella in the car and allowed my hair to get frizzy because I thought there was no way I could carry an umbrella AND a huge pumpkin back to the car. Imagine my chagrin when instead of a large heavy pumpkin I was handed something slightly larger than a volleyball, apparently instead of 4 big ones they had been sent 8 small ones, as though what was lacking in size could be made up for in numbers. All well, I thought, beggers can't choosers, I would make do with two little ones. Then that afternoon as the rain kept coming down I got a call from the florist, the pumpkin was in, but it was a small one. Fine, I said, great, I would have three little jack-o-lanterns.
The next day I went Livia's nido and made the JOL for the kids with Rosella's small pumpkin, though apparently HER grocer had pumpkins much bigger but she had requested a small one. Obviously I don't have the right connections with the right people; the people with the big pumpkins. Sig.ra Pala had told me that this year there were only "Chinese" pumpkins available. When she said that I first thought she meant that the Italian market was being flooded with cheap pumpkins from China, but then I realized she meant that this year there were only small pumpkins around, though, she went on to say that big ones could be found in Mantova if I wanted to make the trip.
Pumpkin number 3 from the florist was larger than the ones I had gotten the day before and had a nice shape and a long stem for the handle, so I was pleased. Then when I went back to get Livia after work Rossella handed me a large plastic bag and said that she and Daniela had decided to give Giulio the JOL I had carved as a gift, he would enjoy it much more than her now grown children would and hadn't I said that I only had little pumpkins? So now I had four pumpkins to put out that evening. On the way home after getting Giulio we went to the fruit/vegetable shop and there in a wooden box outside the entrance I found an 11 pound pumpkin for sale. How could I resist? And then there were five.
So I realized that I had four pumpkins to carve and about an hour to carve them in, while trying to involve the children and create childhood memories, all before making dinner, putting the kids to bed and then going back to work for my evening class. We piled into the house and I started filling up the kitchen with the four pumpkins that needed to be carved, the fifth one was already in place downstairs, and it was here that I realized that carving in hardly a child friendly activity, especially when you are on a tight schedule. Just what I wanted, Giulio and Livia weilding sharp knives and pumpkin goop in a small space. Giulio however was really excited so I had him get the footstool so he could at least see better and a marker for him to draw a face on to his chosen pumpkin. What music does one carve JOL to? I wanted something very American, in the end I settled for Johnny Cash, most Italians have never heard of him, though we did once hear a coffee house performer in Bolzano belting out "Folsom Prison Blues" which Lorenzo recognized about five bars before I did.
The first two pumpkins were fast, the small ones carve easy and can be scooped out quickly. I don't do much in the way of artistic faces, I do the two triangle eyes, a smaller triangle for the nose, and a large grinning mouth, though occasionally I carve a tooth if I'm feeling inspired. But by number 3 Livia was trying to climb the footstool and grab the gas knobs for the stove top, while Giulio had disappeared somewhere with the blue marker. I found him drawing tentively on the tiled floor in the office and promptly banished him to his room. Luckily the marker was washable, I quickly cleand the floor and then got back to work. I finished all four in under an hour, but not how I wanted to, I mean I wanted it to be something that Giulio felt a part of but other than drawing ears on the pumpkins and refusing to touch the squishy insides, and then being sent to his room amid much protest, he wasn't involved much. It was me cranking out pumpkins while trying not to make a mess and keeping Livia from hurting herself. Maybe they are too little. Or maybe the fact that like anything that happens in my house from Monday to Thursday after 4 o'clock there are always time restrainsts and me keeping a close eye on my watch.
I finally finish and round up candles, a lighter, and put the JOL into plastic carrier bags, along with the now over-flowing compost pail (we are required to seperate our garbage), get the kids' shoes on and hustle us out the door. Luckily we meet Sig.ra Pala on the stairs and she insists on carrying the four pumpkins and the garbage pail, though I had offered her Livia instead. We head out to the yard where we run into Vanda, who I had invited to come and help carve but who had fallen asleep instead, and everyone stands around and watches as I line up and light the five jack-o-lanterns which glow wickedly in the darkening evening. Giulio is so excited he runs around yelling and laughing across the lawn, then comes running back to look at the pumpkins before taking off again. He swings his white Pat the Bunny around and around in his hand. Clearly the tears and Time Out from earlier have been forgotten, maybe this little tiny bit is what he will remember about Halloween with his mommy when he his older. Livia is too busy concentrating on walking as Sig.ra Pala watches her every step to be interested in Mommy lighting some candles, but Vanda looks for a moment and then tells me that there is one pumpkin for each kid in the building, the two smallest are Alessandro and Livia, while Giulio and Vanda have the slightly larger two. "And the really big one is Stefano," she says, which is kind of funny because Stefano could be describes as three yards of standing pump water but I agree that she is right. Five turned out to be the right number after all.