The kids come for a visit

The same evening that we returned from Southern Italy with our son in tow, our daughter and her partner arrived. Our son's girlfriend got here a few days later. It was the first time any of the young people had seen our place in Fidenza, and I was a bit nervous about how they'd react. Would they grasp the subtle charm of the town? Would they like the apartment?  Would they spot dirt, excessive eccentricity, or other signs, invisible to their aging parents, of our cognitive decline? Would they find the beds in the guest rooms acceptable? And could we all stand to share a single bathroom?

Our progeny immediately made themselves at home, settling into the two most comfortable seats in the living room and marking their territory by spreading around their footwear.

One thing that I knew would help make the visit work is our shared love of Italian food, preferably in large quantities. Their visit provided an excuse to revisit some of our favorite local restaurants: Ristorante Astoria for pizza, Ristorante Ugolini for pasta and pizza, Trattoria San Giorgio for their down-home prix fixe lunch, Trattoria Antica del Duomo for torta fritta and salumi, and Osteria Ardenga out in the countryside for good things too numerous to list.

The kids were even more enthusiastic about the food here than I'd hoped, and the area's fizzy red Lambrusco was a great favorite, too. They also bought a lot of cheese and salumi at the Latteria 55 downstairs. We consumed so much prosciutto crudo (the raw cured ham we in the States know as plain old prosciutto) that it probably would have been more economical to buy a whole leg and one of those big industrial slicers, too.

We did a little sight-seeing, to the Duomo in Fidenza (to see San Donnino's decapitated skeleton), the Baptistry in Parma, several of our favorite stores and supermercati, and the outdoor Saturday market.

Lina took this lovely picture of fresh borlotti beans.

I was amused to note that the same high spirits the children displayed when we first visited Fidenza with them in 1989--there was a lot of tussling, running about, and shouting of ribald insults--were still very much in evidence. Although they are successful grown-ups by all measures, sophisticated and highly intelligent, when we get together as a family, and when there aren't any outside witnesses, they still enjoy insulting each other and trying to put garbage in each other's pockets.

When they were little I usually found their bad behavior amusing, which is probably one reason there was so much of it. Today I still do; in fact, I haven't laughed so hard, at such silly things, in a long time.

We played several interesting table games, something we hadn't done as a family since they were tiny. I was surprised how much fun it was, even when I didn't win. But most of our time together was spent planning the next meal, consuming it, complaining about how full we were, and then taking restorative naps so that we could repeat the whole process again.

For reasons I can't explain, I have no photographic mementos of any of these meals. Apparently I was too busy eating to take any pictures. And since my tech-savvy children are very averse to having their photos posted in any kind of public forum, even one with only a handful of readers, I can offer no pictures of them, either. But trust me, they and their significant others make a very handsome group.

Somehow the bathroom usage sorted itself out pretty much effortlessly and the beds were acceptable, if not quite up to the luxurious mattresses that they have at home. Whatever signs of our decrepitude they spotted they politely didn't talk about (or maybe they did and it has slipped my mind).

All in all we had a lovely time with them. When the day came for them to go back to their own lives, I felt a bit envious of those old-fashioned Italian families where the children and grandchildren all live a few blocks from their parents' house and all have dinner together every Sunday. Realistically I don't think any of us have a high enough irritability threshold to endure that kind of closeness week in and week out. But for a few days it was wonderful to be together and to do it here. I hope they will want to do it again.