Once, when I was in college, just when the trees in the student forum where budding, a friend noted, as we watched some flip-flop and short clad students pass by, that she hated seeing people "push summer" by pulling out their summer clothes early. The first sign of a warm day, and it is hard to not want to increase your wardrobe by unpacking your summer attire and adding it to the mix of still needed jackets and jeans. My daughter is about to turn 5, and since she started dressing herself at 2, has always preferred shorts and tees to sweaters, and flip-flops and sandals to sneakers or anything else that confines her toes. She would gladly wear a leotard and tu-tu or swimming suit out and about town, no matter the weather.
Well, as my previous post would tell it, the Italians stay bundled with jackets and scarves into the 80s, or until the page on the calender is flipped to something showing a beach scene. Needless to say, we stand out when we have a walk around the town. I give in to letting Rachel wear a tu-tu... it does compliment her pink cowboy boots from Oklahoma. As Italian little boys wear speedo-styled swimming suits, my son has been wearing his swimming suit like underwear under his clothes for a few weeks now. Even my Italian husband now breaks out the shorts and "pushes summer" when the temperature hits the mid-70s. And I, being American and accustomed to everything and everywhere being air-conditioned, am sensitive to getting uncomfortably overheated; I break out the summer clothes the first day I deem necessary.
Last year at this time we were just coming off of a long, hard winter battling ear-infection after ear-infection. We had the doctors baffled as Rachel just couldn't knock the infections. The doctor's final advice: Take the kids to the beach every day in the summer. And we did just that. It sure beats fighting the kids to take antibiotics or the Italians favorite cure-all, saline nose spray. We followed the advice and the final verdict for this past winter: not an infection at all, not one!
I swear it was the snorkeling that their spear-fisherman father encouraged that cleared their sinuses permanently. They spent almost as much time under the water as they did building sandcastles. Throwing his head down underwater, my son was only 2 and unaware that he was swimming, his feet lifted off the seafloor with each gentle wave. Passersby would panic and tell me to hurry and catch him before he sunk, and I would have to explain, in my Italian, that he was breathing just fine through the snorkel. I'm sure I looked like a negligent mother.
Being from landlocked Oklahoma, I am slowly learning the beach culture of Italy. My kids and husband, on the other hand, are hooked, born for this salty, sea life. My husband has been out catching octopus for weeks now. This spring we have "pushed summer" at the beach already a few times. With chilling water, I wouldn't get in, but kids are immune to cold when it comes to surf and sand, and they've been swimming. So, while some Italians are still clothed head to toe, all I can say is that we are just starting in a little early, just doing what the doctor prescribed.
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