vivinolavita

A few years ago, Italian automaker, Fiat, announced the arrival in the U.S. of its 500 series with a brilliant TV commercial. I hope you saw it.

Charming colorful Fiats tooled along the Amalfi Coast in Italy to an upbeat version of Torna a Surriento sung in Italian – all heading somewhere with clear purpose – in a very big hurry. FAST and FURIOUS.

One shot.

A pint-sized lemon yellow car abruptly nose-dives off a cliff into the glistening blue Mediterranean. A white Fiat veers off the narrow winding cobble-stone road onto the sandy beach maneuvering between fishing boats and smack into the ocean. A red charmer hurls itself off a pier while an orange mini plunges into the water from somewhere above.

Whaaatt?

Next shot…the empty ocean.

You wait.

Then, the red Fiat pops out of the sea accompanied by a new song with a new attitude. In English. Another 2-door number bobs to the surface. All of the crazy little Italians arrive unscathed on the shores of the Big Apple. None the worse for wear after traveling some 4000 miles across the Atlantic. The voiceover announces, THEY’VE COME TO PARTY!

The title of the ad…IMMIGRANTS.

So, all these adorable, indomitable foreigners were headed to America. And they looked different than the other cars we Americans were used to. Sure, we’d adapted to VW bugs and the new odd looking Smart cars. But these Italian numbers spoke their own language. English with an Italian accent.

I know.

Toyota is a Japanese company. Hyundai is Korean. But when I see one on the road, it looks All American to me. It blends in with all the other white cars parked at the mall. Not these crazy Fiats. They’re not here to blend in, to assimilate. They’ll learn the special language of the American roads and the American driver but they will still think like Italians. Like Luigi, the delightful loveable Fiat 500 character from the Pixar movie. You just want to pinch his cheeks and hang out with him. You want to party down with Luigi and his sidekick and best friend, Guido, the Italian forklift.

My mother-in-law was Italian, born to simple, uneducated parents in the small town of Boscoreale, Italy, in the province of Naples, the home of Mount Vesuvius. The Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried when Vesuvius violently erupted in AD 79. Two cities completely annihilated. The mighty volcano shot clouds of stones and ash and fumes tens of miles high; the thermal energy produced by the viscious eruption was far more powerful than that produced from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima almost 2000 years later. Vesuvius is still alive and dangerous – millions of people live in its shadow.

She was a World War II war bride. Married an American GI from Wisconsin. She didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak Italian. She wanted out of war-torn Italy, out from under the oppressive hand of her mother, the cramped quarters shared with a large family, the constraints of a small town, the shadow of Vesuvius threatening to erupt and annihilate her and everyone else.

It must have been exciting to meet a handsome soldier. To steal away for romantic clandestine moments on the beach, away from the old traditional rules about good girls and chaperons. Sibling hierarchy. To marry this virtual stranger with plans to live happily ever after across the sea in the unknown land of America.

I wonder.

As she boarded the U.S. Army transport ship, Algonquin, for her voyage to America in 1946, pregnant, without her new husband by her side, was she scared? Did she have second thoughts as that ship set sail. Heading toward her husband’s home town to live with people she had never met, who spoke a language she did not understand.

To wait for her young GI to return to America.

While she waited for her baby to be born.

Expecting his parents to welcome her with open arms.

Did her parents’ hearts break into as they waved goodbye? Did they grieve every minute of every single day, until the day they died? What did they hope for her? What did they expect from their new son-in-law  and his family for their young, pregnant daughter? Could they even begin to comprehend the distance; the possibility that they would never again see their daughter; the chance they might never kiss the grandchildren that would be born across the vast sea in a very foreign land?

By the time I met her some 44 years ago in Texas, the young, tall dark and handsome GI was long gone from her life. So much of that story is unbearable to think about. But she had a sporty little green 1968 Mustang convertible with a V-8 engine. She loved that car and looked great behind the wheel. I think that car understood where she had come from, the distance she had traveled, the starts and stops along the way, the joys, the pain. That sweet Mustang understood her English heavy with accent, even after so many years, and knew she, too, had come to America to party.

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