After the long flight from Florida, we landed in darkness to a new and unfamiliar land. “It is called Italy,” my parents told me. My parents, in their early twenties, ragged after traveling with three children, myself eight, my sister five, and my brother barely two, called un taxi to take the twenty-minute drive from Napoli to our hotel in Castel Volturno. The location where we would eventually be housed for the next four years by the U.S. Navy. Upon arriving at the hotel the direttore d’albergo graciously gave my parents a room key and showed us to our room with my brother screeching down the halls the entire time. I remember my mother being very embarrassed and apologetic to the manager, who spoke very little English. With the biggest smile, the manager threw his hands around wildly saying, “no problema” and “non piangere,” while smiling at my brother and touching his face. My father explained, through the gesture of placing his hand toward his mouth, that my brother was hungry. Immediately the manager understood and threw his hands in the air, “AH, my wife will make food in il ristorante.” It was close to midnight at this time and my father was saying, “no, no, it’s fine, it’s late, the restaurant is closed,” but the manager insisted. We were shuffled into a small, eloquent, and empty restaurant and given menus. My mother ordered us three pasta dishes, father ordered some type of meat, and mother ordered herself shrimp pasta. When the food arrived shortly thereafter, my mother’s face became flushed with horror, as the manager placed the plate in front of her. There on the plate, was a heap of pasta with four whole seasoned shrimp on it--heads, legs, tails and all. My sister and I started making little girl scream sounds when we saw our mother’s face. The poor manager looked on in confusion not sure what to make of this slight against some of the freshest seafood in all of Campania. To understand my mother’s horror, it must be explained that she grew up in Ohio, miles from a beach anywhere. Never, even in Florida, had she seen shrimp in a restaurant served this way. My mother didn’t even know where to start with the shrimp and had never even seen a shrimp that wasn’t a peeled, deveined tail. My father, being raised his whole life on the island of Scotland, reassured the manager that the meal was “perfetto, non preoccuparti.” After the manager left us to our meal, my father, completely embarrassed by our ignorance, assisted my mother in removing the heads, legs, and bits and bobs of the shrimp. In his endeavors he stuck the shrimp heads in our chubby faces saying “rrahhh” as we squealed at the sight of them. This was my first memory of Italy; laughing at my father teasing my mother over dinner, served inconveniently late, by a proud and kind hotel manager.
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