From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(11)

Now in Italy, barely twenty years old, I was trying to decipher what made people come together and stay together forever. The idea that Saro had suggested, that a pairing could yield something great and lasting, was beautiful but untested. Still, when he said it, it felt real and possible. Even though I had extended my stay and I was set to return to America in a few months, Saro floated the idea that we could spend the summer together, that he’d come visit me at Wesleyan. One occasion after we had made love, he told me, “People eat all over the world. I can be a chef anywhere. You can only act in Los Angeles or New York. I will be at your side.”

I was willing to take a risk with him. There was something so utterly confident in his vision of our future. He was unwavering. He saw what he saw, and his every action inducted me into that vision. And I felt safe. Safe to open my heart, to be vulnerable. Safe enough to take a risk on something no one in my family had seen coming—a potential long-distance relationship with an Italian man twelve years older, without a college degree, who was banking on “cooking” as the means of supporting our future together. It was improbable, romantic, idealistic, unprecedented. The journey I was willing to take had no guidelines or examples I could look to in either my own life or the lives of my parents. His parents, from the little he had told me, had been married his whole life and lived in the town where they were born. Saro and I would be making our own way. There was no one with whom we could compare ourselves, no one to whom we could turn to for the ins and outs of long-distance, bicultural, bilingual, biracial love. That was scary, but it was also freeing. As though for the first time in my life, I was making a brave, bold decision of the heart that felt expansive, intuitive, a wish from my soul.

My family, on the other hand, had reservations. When I told my father during one of our weekly Sunday conversations from Florence that I was seeing a man, the mere mention of it when I was so far away from home, so young, set off his parenting alarm. To make matters worse, I was talking about staying in Italy even longer than the stay I had already extended. I told him I might not come home for the summer. Or if I did, I would work briefly at his law firm to make just enough money to buy a plane ticket back to Italy. That was all he needed to hear. He and my stepmother, Aubrey, booked the first ticket they could get to Europe. They left my three young brothers at home with Aubrey’s mom, the youngest of whom was barely a year old and whom I had met only twice. They boarded a plane to Switzerland, the cheapest my dad could find. Then they rented a car and drove across the Italian border, then south into Tuscany, and finally to Florence. He told me he wanted to see how I was doing, visit his daughter in Italy, and treat Aubrey to a brief vacation. What he didn’t tell me, but what I sensed, was that he had every intention of looking a certain Italian man in the eye. He had every intention of telling him to step the hell back, if needed.

Dad arrived in Florence in full Texas regalia, complete with cowboy hat, denim pants, and alligator boots. His jacket was suede, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t some fringe on it. The sight of him coming down Via Calzaiuoli and filling Piazza della Signoria with his presence was enough to make me adore him just a bit more and also wonder what the hell I had set into motion. That he was going to meet Saro was nonnegotiable. In fact, he had casually suggested that Saro and I join him and Aubrey for a drink in “downtown Florence.” So Saro was set to meet us shortly after I linked up with my family. I was quite nervous, afraid that Saro would be so intimidated by my father that he wouldn’t say a word or, worse yet, would try too hard.

Instead he arrived on time and at ease.

“Nice to meet you both.” Saro shook my father’s hand and gave Aubrey a hug. “I was thinking we should have dinner together tonight. I’ve made arrangements at my restaurant.”

He was setting the tone for hospitality and transparency, things I knew my dad greatly respected.

But it was Aubrey who could see Saro’s love on view in plain sight. Later, after a walk through Florence, an afternoon of window browsing, and then dinner, she told my dad, “And don’t even think about objecting to their age difference. You and I are also twelve years apart. It’s plain as day how he feels, you do not have to worry about this.” She shot down any lingering doubt, assuaging my father’s concerns. Aubrey was Saro’s ambassador into my clan.

My mother would be a tougher sell. She was coming off her second divorce and had bounced herself into a new relationship with a man whom, ironically, she had met while visiting me in Florence. He was Senegalese, a diplomat’s son, Muslim, educated at the Sorbonne. He was the antithesis of my stepfather, the Mexican American, self-claimed entrepreneur, Armani suit–loving man with whom she had spent the last twelve years of her life. That marriage had gone up in a bonfire of lies, questionable business decisions, suspicions of infidelity, and other accusations I caught wind of. By the time I had left for Florence, the marriage had been coming off the wheels. My mother hadn’t talked much about it, or maybe I hadn’t let her talk much about it. Their separation was exhausting. My stepfather had been hard to feel attached to despite the fact that I had spent half of my childhood under the same roof. He was dodgy by nature, and it didn’t help that he liked to tease me for sport.

As soon as her divorce was complete, my mother had been more than happy to hop onto a plane and come visit. It was Christmas break, and I had never spent a Christmas away from home. As much as I loved Florence, I hadn’t yet started dating Saro, and I was terribly homesick.