The Adventure School » USA! USA! ITALY!?!?

Last Saturday saw another 4th of July come and go. Yesterday the Adventurer Profile interview with Rosanna Bowles, aka my mom, gave you a taste of where I come from. Combine these two forces of nature from the American cultural scene and you’re liable to get an explosion. But in a good way. Mostly.

Many years ago, my mother remarried a man from the Italian region of Umbria. Talk about cross-cultural education…Living with a bona fide Italian had its drawbacks, like my stepfather’s initial, limited grasp of the English language and his abiding refusal to accept that here in America men wash dishes. But there were some fortuitous perks to the marriage as well…like spending a month of each summer vacation living in a gorgeous farmhouse in the Italian countryside.

Our stay in Italy always lasted from the end of June to the end of July, leaving the 4th of July stranded amongst foreign wheat fields and people who had little appreciation for Yankee Doodle and the serious consumption of beer coupled with an abiding love of setting off fireworks. After a few years without all this, my mother, American to the core, decided if we couldn’t be in America for the 4th, she’d bring America with us.

Thus began the increasingly elaborate annual 4th of July with-an-Italian-twist party. It began with PAT’s (Pancetta, Arugula, Tomato sandwiches), a tart with USA spelled out in berries, and some paper plates printed with the American flag. But the next year, she bought tiaras. And the next she insisted our entire family wear Old Navy American flag shirts she’d bought for the occasion. Pretty soon, an entire suitcase was devoted solely to the transport of Independence Day decorations across the ocean. As the years passed, the Independece Day celebration doubled then tripled in size until it gained a reputation as a much-anticipated summer event by all of my parents’ Italian friends. Sitting at a long table on as the sun set on the 4th, they’d listen with rapt attention as my mother gave instructions on how to construct the perfect American hamburger in grammatically flawless Italian.

The celebration kept growing and growing. We hadn’t yet figured out how to smuggle fireworks through customs the year my mother proposed to mount an interactive theatrical production of the birth of America from Paul Revere’s ride to the signing of The Declaration of Independence. At that point, we drew the line. But one thing’s for sure: the woman knows how to throw a hell of a party. The Supreme Court has ruled: Rosanna Bowles is a true patriot.

p.s. The 3 artful and obviously professional photographs at the end of the post were taken by the inimitable John Granen. The rest are by yours truly and fam.

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