The Peasant Is in the Field. And She’s Learning Italian (Again)

Because sometimes, the only thing to do after your mam dies is re-learn how to say “spark plug” in Italian.

It’s been nearly a month since my mam passed, and in a moment of what can only be described as emotional insanity (or maybe divine guidance?), I found myself opening an old Italian language course I bought twenty years ago.

One of those audio-visual binder sets that came in a folder the size of a phonebook with actual CDs, back when learning a language meant flipping through plastic sleeves and inhaling the scent of false hope. Don’t laugh, I’ve been trying to learn a second language since Lingaphone was a box set of cassettes and cost several months of your salary.

And yet, two decades later and thousands spent on Italian courses…
I still struggle to speak an Italian sentence confidently.

But this week, I started again.

Learning Italian After Loss

I’ve lived in Italy for years now—long enough to know my Prosecco from my Spumante, and to shout at my dogs ‘Die’ with the Italian meaning, not the English. But full sentences? Grammar? Telling the pharmacist that I need something for a sore throat and not an over-the-counter colonoscopy prep kit? Still a work in progress.

But now, I want to do it properly.

After losing my Dad and brother in the last three years, Mam was the last member of my childhood family still living in Ireland. And now that she’s gone, I’ve finally admitted: I won’t be going back to live there.

I live here. In Italy. I need this place—hot and beautiful—to be home. And not being able to speak the language is my major road block to having that feeling.

Back to the Books (and the Binder of Shame)

So I’ve pulled out the course again.

It’s a beautiful relic of the late '90s, divided into cheerful, practical categories like:

• Camping

• Body

• Clothes

• Car

Il Contadino nel Campo

Some phrases have stayed with me from when I first did the course.

“Il contadino nel campo,” I announced proudly to a friend the other day.
“The peasant is in the field.”

“When are you ever going to use that?”

Fair question.

However I have now learnt a few new sentences.

Actual example sentences from the course:
“The fat girl’s radiator is broken.”
Followed by:
“I see the spark plugs.”

Radiators, spark plugs, and 1990s body-shaming.

Honestly, if I ever find myself in a field beside a voluptuous woman with a steaming Fiat Panda, I’m ready.

Fat Shaming and Gondolas

As much as I adore Italy, they’re not exactly pioneers when it comes to body positivity. In 2020, the Association of Substitute Gondoliers (yes, it's a real thing) reduced the number of people allowed in a gondola from six to five—for weight reasons.

The president of the association explained:
“Advancing with over half a tonne of meat on board is dangerous.”

Half. A. Tonne. Of. Meat.

And I thought “la ragazza grassa” in my audio course was bad.

Italians may have mastered art, fashion, and pasta, but when it comes to body image, let’s just say they’re still rowing upstream.

The Words We Don’t Have

There’s no word for grief that quite fits the way it lands on you in Italian or English. Maybe there isn’t in any language.

They say lutto, which feels too formal. Too obituary column.
Tristezza is closer, but it sounds like someone forgot to order dessert.

In English, we say “I’m heartbroken.”
In Italian, there’s spezzato il cuore—a broken heart.

Still, none of them feel big enough to hold the absence that sit in my chest when I pick up my phone to call my Mam, Dad or my brother, hold it for a moment and put it back down, ten times a day. I’ve been through this before; it took me eight and a half years to stop thinking of calling my sister every day, so I know it’s not going to stop any day soon, so I distract myself; I’m writing again, reading a lot. And every time I pick up the phone to call them, instead of putting it down, I switch on to Duolingo and do a lesson — Retraining my brain as to why I picked up the phone.

Perhaps finding the joy in the small things of learning Italian—like remembering a word, forming a sentence, or getting through a conversation with the pharmacist without panic-texting Lucia, will help me learn how to be in this world without speaking to my Mam everyday for the last 53 years. A new way of speaking to replace the old way.

And maybe one day, I’ll be able to tell someone, perfectly, in Italian:

“My mother used to live with me in Italy, but she went back to Ireland because she liked pineapple on her pizza.”

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Until next week,

From your favourite Contadina Carina,

Rosie xxx