What was that again?

I was better prepared to talk about death than politics, which ended up being even darker. However, I am going to put writing about that off into next week. Today I will just amuse you with some stories of misunderstandings.

My first trip to Italy was in 2006. I knew listening would be easier than talking, so I had thought of some questions to ask and let people talk. One of those was asking about their work.

In many ways this was a failure; Italians do not share our American tendency to self-define by career. The office is just something you do. However, one of the most interesting answers was also the one that lost me completely.

One couple worked a compressed work week, and they took advantage of the extra days off to show me around. They were not technically cousins, but the nephew (with his wife) of my aunt's husband.

I thought they said that they worked in a key factory. I did think it was odd that to explain it they mentioned key parties and sex, but when you are not sure someone is understanding, you may reach for examples.

Helpful vocabulary at the time would have been that fattoria means farm. "Factory" is fabbrica. I did hear "keys", because after she said tacchini, she said "turkeys" for clarification. It wasn't even that I didn't get that she was saying it in English, but I missed the first half. Also, I did hear "sex", because her job was telling the gender of the poults, which is a pretty specific skill.

That taught me on my very first trip that not only can you be very wrong, but you may not have any idea that you're wrong until something comes up later.

One helpful strategy can be asking different people the same question. That can be good even without the language barrier, because different people will emphasize different details, and you get a full picture.

For two particular misunderstandings on this recent trip, it wasn't that I asked anyone else or did any follow-up; we just talked more and things came out.

On my first day - when I am always less functional - I was asking one cousin how she had been. They had been pretty good, but had recently lost their bird, who had been like a child to them.

I thought.

I guess there were clues, in that I didn't remember them having a bird, and I usually know who has which pets.

In fact, I did not hear uccello, but Marcella. That was not a bird, but her mother-in-law. I had known they were taking care of her mother-in-law, so it really made more sense that way anyway; I just hadn't gotten it right. Mainly, I am grateful that I did not say anything specific to pets or birds.

The other thing happened with one aunt who talks a lot, so I go in assuming I will miss some things. She had expressed some concerns about her grandson's hair and tattoos (I think). He is not that extreme, but that seems very grandmotherly, so I wasn't worried.

Then it sounded like she was starting to complain about her daughter-in-law; something wasn't good.

She has never been that kind of mother-in-law, so I wasn't sure if I was getting it right. However, the grandson's mother does usually have colored streaks of some kind in her hair; maybe the grandmother was blaming the mother for the son's beautifully tousled hair. The conversation moved on, and I didn't worry about it too much.

The next time we were talking it came up again, except that time it was clear that it was more worry, and it started to sound like a health issue. Okay, my beloved aunt was a caring mother-in-law like I had thought, which was good, but now there was something else that worried me. That's when it was time to ask another source.

They are saying that it is just that work is really hard and tiring now. I still have some concerns there, because sometimes believing that work will not remain exhausting is merely wishful thinking. At least there is some clarity.

And sometimes it feels that any clarity I have is merely accidental.