2nd entry – christmas 2012

Dec20 010aThe weather is really frightful; we are getting the rain-band of the storm. We’ve decided to stay in and enjoy the luxury of not having to go anywhere or do anything. And Sambuca makes doing nothing even more pleasant.

The image is of the presepio on top of grandma’s old sewing machine, the stairs festooned in garland and me in the mirror with camera and quilted jacket. The presepio is an old world, Italian tradition we’ve all maintained. They’re no longer the hand-made, hand-painted, paper-mache, Neapolitan figurines, now they’re made in resin molds and colored in bland, faint earth-tones. (The Neapolitan angels drape the Christmas trees at The Metropolitan in NYC, The Carnegie in Oakland. And the mangers scenes, celebrating the poor of the world, spread out under these artificial evergreens.) My presepio was a gift from Jo’. One of her friends had gone to Italy and she got her to buy me my manger figures. (The one I assembled when we first came from Italy is at my parents. It’s figures are Neapolitan and paper-mache.)

Rose talked to both Mafalda, my mom and her mom – Mafalda’s sister and my aunt. Both understand the interference the weather has brought, but are confused about the fact that we just didn’t drive up. (My aunt mentioned that the schools were closed in the Soo, because of the weather. And yet we’re supposed to drive up and visit with them.)