Mending… so out comes the sewing box Nanna Francesca gave me for my 8th birthday. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to receive this as a present at that age, though I put on a happy face so not to hurt her feelings. Afterwards, I told Mum she could have it and the sewing box sat in her linen press for years. Yet, once I moved into my own house, I went and retrieved it and it has stayed with me.
I’m not much of a sewer like my grandmothers and great-uncle were. I can only mend hems or sew on buttons by hand. In first year high school, when all us girls had to do ‘Home Economics’, I liked the cooking (we made scones and shepherd’s pie) but didn’t take to sewing. I think I lacked the patience and neatness needed. It was Mum, in exasperation – ‘You should at least be able to mend a hem and sew on a button!’ – who showed me.
The white thread I’m using was hers. All the other spools also Mum’s or my grandmothers’. The scissors, a bit blunt now, were Nanna Francesca’s, and Quality Street chocolates I’ll always associate with having at her house. I know I’m terribly sentimental but it’s nice to be reminded of these connections on the odd occasion I get out this old, sewing box.
Even this sundress I’m mending is old and faded but its cool cotton is perfect as a ‘house dress’ in summer. I recall women in Italy sitting on chairs outside their doorsteps, mending clothes or linens (to me, a comforting sight). Partly, such mending stems from necessity, especially in poorer areas, however in Italian folklore there’s also an awareness and valuing of the fleeting nature of certain earthly materials we use. Like linens or timbers that bear the effects of sun, wind, human treatment, rain, marks, stretches and shrinks in their histories of use and misuse. Things that may not be financially worth much, but worth being mended for as long as they may be used.
Once I would’ve been too self-conscious, but I think if I was in Italy, I’d now drag a chair outside the door while I sit and hem, catching the breeze and perhaps a chat if someone happened to stroll by… 💚🧵
The Italian saying, ‘Prendere due piccioni con una fava’ – catch two pigeons with one fava bean – sounds slightly kinder than ‘kill two birds with one stone’ but its meaning, ‘achieve two aims at once’ is the same. It’s fave (broad bean) time again here and they’re particularly fresh, sweet and earthy tasting at present.
Still, it’s lovely to look back, especially to see Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni next to me on the front steps the day I arrived as well as beautiful Fossa when there was no hint of the earthquake to come more than a decade later. And I still can’t get over the rich blueness of the sky some days up there in the Apennine Mountains! No filters or tricks on these photos, just nature at its most exquisite. Thank you for taking the Mezza Italiana journey with me and for sharing your stories too. Grazie infinite cari amici! Zoe xx
Walking around Fossa, along lanes that become so steep and narrow they merge into steps or descend into tunnels, I began to notice all the different doors I passed. Some with stylised, door furniture of lion heads or dragons and beautifully varnished wood, others crude, weathered timber, or painted mission brown.
I took this from the tiny balcony of the house in Fossa. As Roger walked along the laneway below on his way to the Boccabella shop and passed someone on their phone, he had no idea I was taking a photograph from above.
Fossa house, Abruzzo, a decade ago… pecorino cheese made by two women on a farm down in the valley, olives from the L’Aquila market, cerasuolo wine from a nearby vineyard, the paisley tablecloth Nanna Francesca purchased from a travelling merchant who drove from village to village in his small truck full of wares, an Italian folk song blaring from speakers to notify buyers he had arrived.
Zoë Boccabella 