Wife of a U.S. Soldier

On Friday, I decided to mow the grass.  We get a lot of rain here in this part of Italy during the spring time and our grass simply grows quickly, very quickly.  I dragged the mower out of the shed around 5:00 and got right to work.  Now it is important to point out two things about our yard:

*Our yard has an odd shape--kind of like a triangle, with the house at the bottom of the triangle and the back door (which is really on the side) looking out onto the entire backyard.

*One entire length of our yard is "walled in" by a berm that holds back the Bacchiglione River.  It's almost as tall as our two story house and people use it to walk back and forth into town all day long.

That being said, it was not unusual to see some ladies out walking while I was mowing the grass.  They were old ladies, clearly Italians who had stopped on their walk to visit my neighbor, Anna Marie and her husband Luigi (Nope, not kidding about those names). I noticed that they were staring (not unusual for Italians, or really Europeans, for that matter) when they first walked by and could tell they were chattering away, so I just raised my hand in a friendly "hey there" wave and kept right along mowing.

Meanwhile, Giuseppe, my Italian Bofrost man pulled up in his refrigerated truck.  Bofrost is Italy's version of the Schwann's man, so twice a month, always on Fridays, Giuseppe pulls up and blesses us with highly overpriced but delicious frozen goodies.  He is in his 30's I'd say and his English is pretty good.  He usually texts me before he arrives and is so nice that he even sends us messages to wish us Happy Eastern (Easter--gotta love that).  I'm not kidding about that one, I have proof!

Happy Eastern, y'all!

Sorry, I digressed but Giuseppe's arrival was important because he is the one who translated when the Italian Stepford old ladies returned from the visit and had to walk back by my house.  They waved to us both and shouted "Ciao"and in Italian, asked me "Sei un italiano?" (Are you an Italian?) I totally understood what they had asked but Giuseppe answered anyway with "No, no italiano.  Lei è un americano."  The Stepford ladies chuckled and said sarcasticaly, "Una donna italiana non avrebbe mai tagliato l'erba."  I had to ask for a translation on this one...An Italian woman would never cut the grass.  

Immediately I thought to myself, They would if they were married to a soldier!  How many days, months, years has my soldier been gone?  His last deployment lasted into the 14th month!  I can't imagine how tall the grass would have been had I not cut it! Just another of the many ways that makes me realize how different Americans are from Italians--proud to be an Army wife!