All immigrant cultures did it ... if it was long enough and sturdy, it ended up in the garden. Our white friends' dads used to mount their hockey sticks in their rec room with little labels like "first assist". When things became more civilized our parents used painted rebar to hold up their tomato and bean plants.
One hockey stick I had almost took a different route to the grave. I wasn't a hockey player, but I always had sticks and skates.
When I was still living at my childhood home, my friends and I rented the arena every Sunday night. I had two sticks, but one was never used and was in brand new condition (like plastic on the couch). We stopped playing about a year before I was married. When my sons started playing hockey, I helped out on the ice and one day my stick broke. I immediately thought "I know exactly where I left my other stick", 11 years after leaving it there.
After we left the rink, I drove to my parents' house to get my still brand new stick, but it was gone. I didn't look in the garden because it was winter and the stick wasn't broken. (My mother would use a broken stick for her plants, but she would never murder one for her own purposes.) I thought nothing of it and my life continued.
On a random day, years later ,we were there for lunch and my son Anthony comes running upstairs and yells "Dad, you gotta see this ... Nonna has sausages hanging off a brand new hockey stick in the cantina (fruit cellar)". WE FOUND IT! I knew exactly which stick it was and went downstairs to confirm. I found my baby. My mother yelled at me while I replaced it with another stick from the garage and moved the sausage over. There I was, the first born child, teetering on an upright cement block, removing the stick that spanned from one rickety shelf to another , and my mother was worried about the sausages.
I understood the focus of her concern because I had OHIP and the sausages did not.
This story had nothing to do with my WRIT3P15 course's requirement to explore Politics, Culture, Education or Identity Issues, I know. But, it's late on a boring Friday night and it popped in my head. Enjoy it or else your hockey stick gets chopped and ends up in my mother's garden.
Despite what you say about it not being relevant, I still find it to be a cultural piece of some sort, or to put it more narrowly, a familial piece. Amazing improvisation on your Nonna's part, I must say. I've never heard of stick being used in such a way. Good thing I'm not that large of a hockey fan, eh? (Apologies for having those last three sentences rhyme, it was unintentional I swear it).
ReplyDeleteThanks. And being a poet is not a crime.
DeleteI have to admit, I'm really loving your blog. I didn't know that there was so much to know about intimate Italian social interaction and I find myself laughing along with your blog posts as I read them. Moreover, I liked/found it interesting in how you commented on the differences between your "white" friends and your own family. Too often we amalgamate people with white skin as within the same demographic of people, but they can be further separated. I love how you are furthering the distinction of the Italian culture! Keep it going! I feel like our blog group is unified through diversity and its wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mackenzie. There is a definite difference in being Caucasian and being "white" :)
DeleteI'm not sure why we called our Canadian friends "white" people, but we did. We were all good friends and it was fun going from our house to their house and back. We didn't have rec rooms. They didn't have dead animals hanging in their basements.
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