Labour Day Dinner Night

The Italians - among several other countries and cultures - celebrate their Labour Day not in September but on the first of May. It's a big deal, everything shuts down for three days solid. The Friday evening prior, everyone goes Y2K-styles mental buying up the last of the milk and bread in the stores.

Emiliano and Basil crack their first beers at eleven thirty in the morning to begin the food preparations. After they break for lunch, Victoria and I steal a portion of the kitchen table to make bread and a pie, respectively. The little girls of the family friends from Holland come in and recite in perfect English their list of names for the baby bunnies.

Out in the yard Phelan is constructing a volcano.
It's made up of grass, twigs, wire, fabric, flowers. There is to be aluminum airplanes suspended around it. Rolf is googling ways to create smoke or fire without igniting the entire thing. The boys take the two little girls out for gelato while they pick up more beers and this time they let me have one too (Yes because I complained for not being taken out for gelato and was jealous).

As is gets later we set the table out on the deck, scattering a bagful of IKEA tealights around. Everyone rotates running inside and getting sweaters. I can't. I made the cocky foolish mistake earlier in the evening of saying, "Pfft, of course I'm not cold, I'm CANADIAN" and have to mask my shivers as tremors of pleasure from the delicious house wine.

The girls from Holland fight over putting on Michael Jackson or the soundtrack from Grease, the final guest arrives and the boys bring out the food.

Again, the Italians fooled me. I was thinking after the two rounds of bruschetta and insalata a mare and pasta, we was all done. Oh no, Fresh fish off the grill, three different types, risotto con asperigi, vongole. They don't let you serve yourself either. Even when I politely mime vomiting as they as if I want more, I receive more.

I bring out espresso and the pie and the fresh plates and forks. They all eat with their fingers anyways. There is a hilarious conversation involving another language mixup between massages and sausages. Between eight adults we finish fourteen bottles of wine and then they break out the mead.

I triumphantly remain one of the three last men standing and we pile up the dishes and whipser in the kitchen. Over the last sips of wine we talk about the big festa in October when I have been instructed to return. I escort the two gentlemen to their cars and watch the sun rise over the hills, the family's greyhound and pointer circling my feet attentively. Time to feed the chickens.