Task: Scriva a la famiglia! (phase 2)

Now we’ve got an imperative. I suppose I could keep writing updates and using different grammatical forms: scrivo, ho scritto, scrivendo, but I don’t know that it will require a blog post every month. Still, one follow-up seemed reasonable.

So I did write last month, and I heard back from one of my cousins, which is fine. I did not really write anything requiring a response, and again, I think this will take some getting used to for them. If nothing else, it makes Zia Elda really happy, and it is her 90th birthday this weekend, so all the more reason.

I realized that I probably need to do more to make this reciprocal. One thing should be asking my brother and sisters if they want to be copied on the messages. It feels like a hassle, because then do I provide the English version, or not? Does it make my writing about them more awkward? Still, it seems to be the right thing to do.

The other thing though, is I realize that I need to do more to bring in the older half of the family. My younger sisters and I have all been there, even though at different times, so we have met everyone. Technically my older brother and sister did go, but they were respectively two years old and eight months, so their only memories are of when Elda came to visit, and that has been quite a while. The last time she was here was ‘85 or ’86.

I think the way to deal with this is to send them a monthly e-mail where I go over some cousins and give a little information about them and attach pictures. If I cover all of them at once, it is information overload. My grandparents had six children who survived to adulthood, and all of them married. From them I have seven cousins with four spouses, and two more first cousins once removed. Also, there are names that repeat, because we have two Lucianas and two Robertos.

Plus, even though Zia Elda does not have children of her own, she lives in her in-laws house. They divided it into three apartments, and one of her nephews by marriage and his wife have taken me on most of the sightseeing I have done. Technically they are not our family, but they kind of are too. That adds an additional ten people even if we don’t count any step-relatives. Breaking it down is just the responsible thing to do.

Lance and Lynn should be there at the end of April, which is a reasonable amount of time to cover everyone, and they could probably even learn a little Italian maybe. So, we shall see.

It’s a short post today. What should be coming up next are some posts reporting on my graphic novel reading, and then we will move into the graphic novel writing, and then into music, all of which will blend together quite a bit. There may be some other task posts if I accomplish anything else, ever, and I can’t guarantee no political posts or annoyed rants won’t sneak in. They have a way of doing that.