My cousin Nino and his wife Linda are coming to dinner with their very tall son again tonight. Gianni’s son is coming too. Nino’s son has spent a month in Boston this summer at a program at Northeastern University. This was a super cool experience for him—that curiosity and fascination with America—and he likes to talk about it.
At dinner he’s sitting across from George and he tells his two top stories: one involves doing laundry and the other cleaning his room. These are clearly two things that he doesn’t do at home. He went all the way to Boston to experience the exoticism of running a washer. I find this hilarious.
The other often told tale from his trip is about his swim in the Atlantic Ocean. He came out of the water yelling, “Viva l’Italia!” The water was so much colder than the one of the Mediterranean!
After dinner the boys go downstairs to play ping pong. When they come back Nino tells me that George didn’t want to play. I knew that, George can’t play ping pong, but watching the big boys play—what a treat! George is beaming.
Linda says, “This can become our tradition, the end of summer dinner.” I hope so, I hope that life allows us to make it an ongoing event. It’s a signal of the differences between us: she feels confident that we will do the same thing again and again, I tend to think events will get in the way.
