When I was about two, my mother said I invented a game called “Names.” The rules were simple: she regaled me with terms of endearment while I basked in the glow of Honey, Sugar, Sugar Pie, Sweetheart, Sweet Pea, Sugar Plum, Pumpkin, Pumpkin Pie, Honey Pie, Honey Bun, Baby Cake, and so forth. When she ran out of names, I announced Part 2: “More Names!” Names had a “No Multi Tasking” rule. No cooking, ironing, cleaning up, or other useful tasks. We had to play this game on the couch, with full attention to Me.
In time our relationship grew more nuanced (for sure), but I’m happy it started so well. Fast forward to meeting my husband, who is Italian. He was mildly surprised at the American habit of identifying love interests with food, especially vegetables. So “Pumpkin” must have sounded as off as “Oh Zucchini, it’s so good to see you.” Or, “Of course, Onion/Okra/Parsnip, whatever you say.” Apparently in his culture, food is food and people are people, and you don’t (baring cannibalistic predilections) think tenderly of eating people.
We lived in Italy during the Clinton Administration and the newspapers, quoting Bill speaking to Hillary, took care to translate “Honey” as “Miele,” with the subtext of : “We know it’s weird, but that’s what this American really said.” As if he might have called her Corn Syrup or Molasses. No big point here, except that if you tilt your head a little to see your world through another cultural perspective, it is a bit odd.
When I was a child, grammar descended on me in Barbetta, a grand (to me) Italian restaurant in NYC. I must have been about eight. I was the only child in the room, which gave the event both solemnity and anxiety. I was instructed to be on my best behavior. In fact, this periodic theater-and-nice-dinner-in-New York was part of my Cultural Education which my parents took quite seriously.
I’ll be leading a workshop on Point of View for the Knoxville Writers Guild (
One of the rewards of the writing life is teaching writing. I taught composition for some years at a US military base in Naples, Italy. I remember a young soldier who had grown up poor in the Caribbean. He struggled with standard English, with school in general, and walked into my English composition course with probably as much sickening dread as I would have brought to Marines basic training. His name was Henry.
The first plot piece of my novel in progress (current title: Out of the Red Summer) was set when I was in grade school.
Last week, I led a workshop on memoir writing at a local senior center. Amazing stories came out, funny, sad, and precious. Here’s a variant of an exercise we did that I think would be useful for writers, and just people living in families with people who are not exactly, precisely like ourselves.