My Mother Is a River by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

Author:Donatella Di Pietrantonio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mother;daughter;dementia;Abruzzo;Italy;family
Publisher: Calisi Press
Published: 2015-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Saint Imier 4 November 1970

Dear wife

I write this letter to let you know I am well and I hope you are too

Here it snows every single day when I go out in the morning to walk to the factory my nose hurts from the cold and tears fall on the front of my coat and they freeze right away

Hows Fabrizio is he growing? If he needs them make sure he gets some slaps Cesare won’t lay a single finger on him because I’m not there but remember were not raising a little prince

Sometime arrange with Esperina to wring a chicken’s neck behind fathers back he’d only kill the one at Easter and Christmas but little ones need more meat than we do

If you want to give the old man some meat too just tell him it was the dog that killed the chicken at most it will get a bit of a clobbering

Here in the shack we are all Italian and I get on very well with the others especially the Calabrians who are as stubborn as us from Abruzzi and on Saturday night we go to the bar to have a beer together

The boss treats us well and comes to the factory once a day he walks right by us to see how we work and nods his head yes

But the foreman is from Frankfurt bit shirty he don’t speak French very well and when hes cross he shouts to us in German dirty Italian and Italian pigs spitting all over the place

I never even look at him that redheaded prig and I take no notice, I just carry on with my work I know I can do it

In October I did a lot of overtime and there was 100 francs more in my envelope than before now I want to do it all the time

Friday my bottom wisdom tooth hurt and I howled all night like a dog

On Saturday morning a friend took me to a female dentist he knows and the tooth wouldn’t go numb because it was inflame so she punched me in the face to stop me screaming and just wrenched it out that devil

Here women do what they like smoke cigarettes in the street drink beer and answer back to men they even wear trousers

So it’s better if you don’t come over, even if we’d said you might come next year and get in to do the cleaning at the hospital where I know someone who could put in a word

Let me know if Esperina bosses you about I’ll talk to her when I come back and put her in her place at least its not long now just over a month

Have Quaiarella and Camisciòla calved out yet? Have they had males or females? Have you sown the wheat in De Contra? And the barley?

Put a piece of loin aside for me before its all used up but hide it well or there’ll be none left like last year damn it

Its late now and

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