Nonna net

Soon after we arrived in our village we got a lesson about the effectiveness of the nonna network in Italy.

During our first year in Tuscany what helped the most to get our non-Italian speaking kids thriving in the all-Italian local schools was a couple of sent-from-the-Gods tutors who helped with the transition. They’d pick the kids up at school, check in with the teachers and find out what was coming up the next day, but what became the most important in many ways, take them to the family lunch before starting in on homework. One of Sebastian’s tutor’s grandmothers often cooked for the extended family, plus Sebastian, and got to know him very well.

One day John and Sebastian were walking across the piazza and the grandmother came rushing towards Sebastian, obviously upset and concerned. She started talking to Sebastian in very loud, rapid-fire Italian, her five-foot tall frame towering over his eight-year old height. At the end of what seemed to be an epic scolding she gave him a huge hug and walked away.

John asked, “What was that all about?” “Nothing,” said Sebastian.

So we called the granddaughter, who spoke some English, and got the story. Living in a small village our kids ran free a lot. Apparently earlier in the day Sebastian had been taking a walk with a very attractive local mom and her young son on the path that runs next to the top of the ancient walls of our hill town. This defensive wall is at least 50′ high and the top of it has a flat surface about two feet wide. It drops from the lower part of our village to the valley and helped protect the town from invaders. Sebastian decided to show off, so he jumped up onto the top of the wall to walk for a bit.

But his brief high-wire act had been spotted by a grandmother, who none of us knew, as she was looking out her window. She immediately called her friend, Sebastian’s adopted grandmother, and explained that she saw him break a big village rule: no walking on the wall. She thought her friend would want to let her young American friend know how dangerous this was.

And we learned our first of many lessons that prove that Italian grandmothers rule. They take responsibility for enforcing village mores, and such a transgression would warrant an instant phone call to a friend to rectify—the nonna net in action.