Foreign travel gives you new perspectives

A few days before I flew to Italy, I met a new immigrant from Prague who is settling in Spokane. The young man married a woman from a Palouse farm family. He told me his wife’s family members have not yet traveled to the Czech Republic, but someday they might.

I hope they do. When someone marries a person from a foreign country, it opens up the globe for the entire family. I know this because 42 years ago my sister Lucia married Pietro D’Angelo, a Sicilian, and I’ve been fortunate to visit his home village three times.

In the early 1960s, Lucia and three girlfriends traveled to Europe, and when Lucia arrived in Rome, she met Pietro, a young, handsome attorney. When she and Pietro moved to the United States in 1964, Pietro spoke little English. He worked as a busboy and janitor and eventually, he earned advanced degrees. He’s now 73, a retired language professor. He and my sister spend their summers in Alcamo, a 35-minute drive from Palermo.

I first traveled to Alcamo in 1976 with my parents, who picked me up after my Gonzaga-in-Florence year. We ate dinner at the farm owned by Pietro’s older brother, Ciccio. An argument, fought in Sicilian dialect, ensued among family members.

At one point, Ciccio reached into the refrigerator, pulled out a plucked chicken and chopped its head off with an ax. Later, while eating lamb – the dead relatives of the sheep who peeked in the door as we ate – I expressed concern about the argument. Ciccio asked: “What argument?” He then poured me more homemade wine, so strong that I saw my father drunk (and singing Italian) for the first, and last, time in his life.

Ten years ago, my husband and I traveled to Alcamo for the wedding of Pietro’s niece. We never ran into another American during our stay, but I sensed the modern world encroaching. The wedding was videotaped with the latest equipment, and traffic in Alcamo, population 43,000, was increasing.

This visit, we spent two days in Rome before heading to Sicily. The lines to the Sistine Chapel stretched for miles, and so many American tourists sat on the Spanish Steps that it looked like an ominous scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.”

It was a relief to fly the one-hour to Sicily, especially after spying the McDonald’s in Rome’s airport. I looked for, and found, some signs that Sicily is also becoming Americanized. Palermo boasts a Wal-Mart-style supermarket. And the children look chubbier. Alcamo’s most modern café proudly serves cheese pizza topped with pepperoni – and french fries.

But schools in Alcamo still close down for the day in the early afternoon so children can eat the large, traditional pasta meal with their families. The children, and adults, then take long afternoon naps. Baby sitters are unheard of. When we went out in the evening for gelato, we saw children alongside their parents, even though it was 10 p.m.

On our last night in Alcamo, the town shut down for a religious procession, the final event in a three-day festival. Usually, on the first day the main street is covered with dirt and horses race through town. But Alcamo’s mayor canceled the races this year due to a betting scandal. The mayor was in trouble for the decision, but he proudly took his place among the dignitaries at the church where the procession began.

For three hours, thousands of villagers walked behind a wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Some walked barefoot, hoping Mary would grant them their prayed-for miracles.

As we watched the procession from Pietro’s balcony, I wanted to thank him for opening up his world to me and my family. Each time I return from Sicily, I understand Spokane, and American culture, from a global perspective. But Pietro is not one for sentiment. His daughters joke that they can only ask him three personal questions before he clams up.

So I said a silent grazie instead, while below us in the street, Alcamo pilgrims continued on their way of hope and miracles.