9/14/11 Some Things Can’t be Fixed; Some Things Won’t be Fixed

I returned to Lidia’s house to pick up my parents.  Dad was outside with Pasquale and both of them noticed that I was still smiling.  “I’m glad you made it back in one piece” said dad, knowing full well what I had been up to.  Mom called me over and asked me to take a picture of the spot where my zio Francesco used to serenade my zia Cristina; they called it il ponte  (“the bridge”).  Mom pointed out a piece of concrete that was broken and said that it had been that way for as long as she can remember, at least fifty-five years.  The concrete that had once broken off the top and now rested on the ground had never been moved and il ponte had never been repaired.  Why bother at this point?

Mom on il ponte

While taking the pictures, I heard someone calling for my mother over my shoulder.  It was Stella, another cousin of my mother’s and possibly the crudest woman on the planet.  Stella had moved to Halifax with her family when she was an infant but returned by the age of four or five, nobody can quite remember.  When talking about her family she said that she was one of five children, but that one of her siblings was killed at birth by the doctors because it was born with a horse’s head.  Seriously?  Even I can’t make this stuff up.  Even though the “horse head” was likely a severe birth defect, the power of folklore keeps the “horse head baby” story alive.

Stella and mom

When my mother asked Stella if she remembered any English, she replied “Si! you fuck off!” with a thich southern Italian accent.  The conversation proceeded so fast and in a dialect so pronounced that even my mother had a hard time keeping up.  Other topics included: Stella’s greying hair and the crude and unnecessary admission that the “curtains matched the carpet” so to speak; and that after we left she would touch herself for good luck because she had been paid a compliment which is an excuse popular among men who just want to “rearrange” things.  Stella was a sailor and a trucker all rolled into one and mom insists Stella’s been this way for as long as she can remember; just like il ponte.

Some things can’t be fixed; some things won’t be fixed.