The Home by the Sea

In my kitchen, I am confident. I can cook a feast for 30 while only breaking into a light sweat. I can bake perfectly formed cupcakes with creamy centers and light enticing frosting at a moments notice. I have been having a life long love affair with my Calphalon frying pans and me and my knife... well, we are best friends. BUT, when I am taken out of my kitchen, out of my element, when I am placed into unfamiliar territory, such as in a tiny kitchen by the sea about 45 minutes south of Salerno, a kitchen complete with a strong Italian mama, my previously mentioned skills dissipate. I looked down in horror at the head of lettuce, the simple task of tearing each leaf causing my hands to shake. 

“Am I taking too little time to wash the salad? Am I taking to long?? When the hell was the last time I washed my lettuce?? Am I tearing into pieces insultingly small? Oh dear God, does she want me to squeeze the lemon on the salad? How much is too much? What if this is the cleanest most sour salad to ever exist in the history of all creation? Where is a tornado siren when you need one???”   

Antonietta Raffaella rules her kitchen with an iron strength earned from 45 years of marriage, raising two children now going gray and chasing after three energetic grandchildren. She is a tiny woman, not quite reaching 5 feet, with a sturdy build and patches of pale vitiligo affected skin dotting her capable hands and feet.  Her short puff of hair is tinted red, matching her cardinal colored nails, and her smile is well etched into the lines of her face. Beyond raising her own children, she dedicated her life to helping others through her work as a nurse to mentally and physically handicapped children and young adults. At the wise age of 66 years, she has well earned her summers in the little house by the sea.

Rizziero, Rafaella’s husband, endearingly known to some as “Baffone” (The Big Moustache,) is a bulldog of a man, with the arms and legs of a triathlete and the belly of one who is blessed with an extremely talented wife in the kitchen. He is the definition of a man’s man with his dark hair, sun bronzed skin and forceful personality. He spent his entire career building and inspecting cars at the end of one of Fiat’s assembly lines and in his retirement, he obsesses over crossword puzzles and falls asleep while sitting at the dinner table, his head slowly drooping into his afternoon expresso. He lives loudly, full of generous emotion and when he heads off to the bathroom, his adult children (who really should know better) snicker and say “ scimmie con le scarpe da ginnastica ai piedi.” (it smells like he ate monkeys and gym shoes.)

Rizziero is from the old guard.. the generation who knew how to find dinner in the sea, how to fix cars, how to hold a hammer, how to repair one’s house, the generation who voted for the communist party and still would if one currently existed in Italy, the generation who believes wives tales such as “wet hair will cause migraines” and “one should never open the refrigerator barefoot,” the generation whose hands don’t fit comfortably on a computer keyboard...the generation in which people spoke face to face to one another.

Every August, Raffaella and Rizziero play host to family and friends in their little house by the sea, while living by the motto that “to feed is to love.” Guests are embraced as family and are given food and drink to a near bursting point, and after a week of sun, sand, wine and quiet evenings, one cannot leave their orbit without a bag of potatoes grown in their own garden. 

However, their’s has not always been an easy path, and there were times in their many years together when one thought seriously of leaving the other. But even so, even as the breeze through the window carries the smell of the sea and they fall into a comfortable bickering, Raffaella leans her head towards Rizziero and their chairs are close.