Prologue: While using a Venn Diagram to compare my father's personality with my mother's, I decided a more worthy memoir task would be to describe their lovely relationship for posterity. I didn't want to be maudlin about it, though, nor did I care to go into great, boring detail. What I finally came up with was the following. I don't know if it works or not.
Tara-barala, tara-barala
Il prete la suona,
La serva la balla
"What's that you're singing?" my daughter Ann asks from her wheelchair in her family room. It's the end of March, 2010, and she's recovering from knee surgery. I am at her house, nurturing her, like in older, happier times
"Oh, it's just a nonsense little song your nonno, my dad, used to sing,” I say,
“... usually just to get your nonna's goat."
"What does it mean?"
Having finished cleaning up her kitchen after lunch, I wipe my hands on a tea towel and come into the family room to join her. "Well," I say, "tara-barala, tara-barala is just a musical incantation, sort of like 'tra-la-la'... And il prete la suona means the priest plays it, and la serva la balla means the servant girl dances it. When my dad used to sing this, I always imagined a priest in white-collared, long black frock belted with a rope, and a servant girl in country dress and apron, dancing and swinging together.”
"The whole thing goes like this," I say, remembering:
“Tara-barala, Tara-barala. Il prete la suona; la serva la balla.
E quando non é piú buona, la serva la suona; il prete la balla."
"Which means?" Ann asks.
"The last part? Oh, it just means:
And when it isn't any good anymore, the servant girl plays it; the priest dances it."
"So why did it get your mother's goat?" Ann asks.
"I don't know. I think maybe it had a double meaning. Maybe something naughty. Anyway, I loved to hear him sing it. No, I guess what I really loved was the little smile that quivered at the corner of his mouth when my mother would scold him with: Joe! You know I don't like that silly song!
Yet, come to think of it, even as she was reprimanding him, my mother's eyes hinted at a smile as secret as his. It was like that with the two of them – he an impish tease, she a proper lady, involved in a private joke between them. A love affair, no doubt about it, and my two sisters and I, growing up in the aura of their love were darn lucky. At the time, though, we just took it all for granted."