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| At Passo Lavaze in the Dolomites in January |
One afternoon not long ago Ingrid had been behind closed doors in our dining room longer than usual, and without making any noise, somewhat of an anomaly for her. Besides using the spot for eating dinner, it serves as her workspace for calculating long division problems, identifying parts of speech, reading about the Sumerians, figuring out metric conversions, and writing that what she would call that picture in the English workbook is pants, not trousers, and that it really is okay to spell color without the ‘u’ (little did we imagine that this year she would also become proficient in a second ‘foreign’ language). Homework is getting easier but there are usually still the calls for someone to “…come help me NOW….PLEASE!”, or the screams of distress “NIKO!!!”AGHHHHH!!! NIKO!!!!” when her brother has infiltrated her office to see in what new way he could get his sister’s goat (current rate of success on all methods is one hundred percent). Of course the room also houses our TV, a mid 1980s German model that amazingly succeeded in communicating with the new decoder box it united with in November when most of Italy finally switched to digital signals. So I was figuring a sure bet was to find my daughter curled up in one of the well-worn orange leather chairs watching the triplets whine about someone’s make-up in Spanish and hearing the mismatched dubbing of the corresponding Italian voices on the teen soap opera broadcast on RAI GULP, television for not quite adolescents. It’s probably a good thing I’ve never been much of a gambler.
The door burst open and Ingrid’s eyes were alight. Now I did another quick calculation and guessed that whatever it was, she probably hadn’t just finished the worksheet instructing her to, thirty times over, figure complex fractions of large numbers quickly, and in her head. The odds were in my favor this time. Her mouth was moving, but I didn’t hear any quattro, cinque or sei.
“Sui campi, sulle strade,
silenziosa e lieve,
volteggiando, la neve
cade…”
The words continued to pour from her mouth after she consulted a sheet of paper, walking speedily toward the kitchen where Lauren was preparing some pollo al limone (a lemon and chicken recipe she’d learned back in August). I was right on her heels.
“Mom, I have this poem to learn for tomorrow,” she said excitedly (or was it nervously?), “we have to recite it in front of the class. We have to memorize it.”
Lauren took a look at the poem. It was called La Nevicata by Ada Nagri. Its theme? A snowfall...and what good timing! The forecast called for some of our own, a rarity in Lucca.“That’s great Ingie, do you want to pr--” she began, but was cut off by Ingrid hopping around the small kitchen, snatching a look at the poem before continuing to recite. Lauren and I later agreed that there’s nothing like a good challenge where a student will be held accountable by her peers to motivate studying and practicing without intervention—demands, ultimatums, cajoling (just kidding… really!)—from her parents.
Danza la falda Bianca,
nel’ampio ciel scherzosa
poi sul terreno si posa,
stanca.
It turns out she didn’t get a chance to recite the next day because there were too many kids and not enough time. Some had learned the poem and others hadn’t and the teacher said they could try the next day. But they still couldn't make it through all of the students the next day either. “More time to practice,” I told Ingrid. “Maybe I’ll just have to say it to her at her desk since I’m American,” she said. “Maybe,” I said, wondering if perhaps the teacher wouldn’t even have her recite it at all. I suddenly felt under whelmed by the whole experience.
In mille immote forme
sui tetti e sui camini,
sui cippi e sui giardini,
dorme
The next day I picked Ingrid up from school and nothing seemed any different in her reaction as she pointed me out to her teacher and was allowed to go down the stairs and meet me by her bicycle. I didn’t beat around the bush. “Did you say it today?”
“Say what, Dad?”
I tried to appear more casual. “The poem, Ingrid, did you say the poem for your teacher?”
We were not quite out of the school gates yet; maybe her friends were watching. So, rather nonchalantly, she answered, “Oh, the poem, no. Actually I said it in front of the class. We had enough time today.” Then she saddled up and rolled down the sidewalk, leaving me excited for her and with many questions which would have to wait until she’d had lunch and was willing to say more.
Tutto d’interno รจ pace;
chiuso in oblio profondo,
indifferente, il mondo
tace.
Once Ingrid's go-to sandwich, fresh mozzarella on pane casalinga, was safely on its way to her stomach, she was bubbly and recounted the experience with significantly more animation. “For everyone else they were just like this,” she said, mimicking faces held up by hands propped against a desk, eyes droopy, “but for me they were like this,” and now she was sitting up straight, smiling, slowly nodding her head in approval, “and at the end they clapped for me but not for anyone else.” I didn’t worry for a second about all of this going to her head even though it was happily going to mine. I ate up her retelling, but, a step ahead of what she thought we might say, Ingrid qualified it. “Because for them it’s easy, but I’m an American. They know it was hard for me.” Although the girls in her class don’t lovingly pinch her cheeks or her tummy as much anymore, they are still very aware of her differences from them and they’ve been supportive of her in every way.
So this proud papa thought he’d share not only this story but also the memorized poem itself, recited by memory here (audio only) by the girl of the hour, our daughter, nine year old Ingrid.
I guess next time I better start giving her more credit when she’s shut herself up in a room. (But just for the record, that resolution stops once she’s a teen if she starts having boys over who need “help with their homework.”)
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