Around this time of year, when gardens look a little abandoned, stakes and strings holding up what’s overgrown, no matter how choked—and much of is—it’s the last of the cherry tomatoes, made brighter by sunlight and still sweet like they mean it, that remind me how I could live without squash or pumpkins, but I could never live without tomatoes.

Tomatoes sliced and sprinkled with olive oil and basil, of course, but my favorite way to eat them is right off the vine with my feet in the dirt. The taste is a mix of late summer and fall and rivals anything wonderful I have ever eaten.

When you compare this taste to the grocery store version, bred not for flavor but for packing and shipping, it’s like one is a true love story and the other makes me think of faces that don’t know how to smile anymore. Just sorrow. Not one single happy expression.

When my dad built our family home, he planted the tomato garden before he laid the foundation. Tomatoes, Italians know, are essential to day-to-day life. The next year he added cucumbers and peppers, but they never had priority over his tomatoes. No matter how cold and grey spring can be, all those little Dixie cups full of tomato seedlings help us feel warmer.

When I asked my dad why he planted the garden in back of the garage instead of behind the kitchen, he told me he didn’t want to feel—feel rather than hear—all the noise that went on in there. This was my first understanding of two things: That sound will bounce in much the same way as light reflects. And that alone time is also essential. And a garden ensures alone time. At work, even at home, my dad was a control freak. But in the garden, he could trust that nature would take care of things.

Yesterday, I was reminded of something else essential to Italians. It was a revelation. And if anything demonstrates how we continue to learn about ourselves, like it or not, it’s a revelation—these are what make life interesting. This one took place on Manitou Beach, a twenty minute bicycle ride from my home on Bainbridge Island. It was there I met another Italian woman, lucky for me. She was beautiful, her looks were pure ethnicity. Her hand movements were pure Italian.

Naturally, we got to talking. Mostly in superlatives, at first—You are?! So am I! I thought so! Neither one of us much for small talk (somehow I already knew we were of one mind about this), we launched right into real conversation, a conversation that exemplified my affection for my background, despite how far away I feel from it now. Exuding the kind of absolute attentiveness and directness I seldom meet in anyone, much less on an isolated beach, it took only minutes for me to realize that what made the conversation so much fun and feel so alive was that she kept interrupting me, and I kept interrupting her, and nothing about it felt rude or impolite. When I pointed this out, nearly breathless with delight, she reminded me that in Italian culture, it would be rude to not interrupt, “it would seem like you weren’t paying close attention,” she said.

This is absolutely true.  But it’s been so long since I’ve shared a meal with my extended family, I’d nearly forgotten how we sit around the table for hours, talking, arguing, interrupting each other, no one thinking they had to hold themselves back to be polite. Disagreeing, interjecting, and how you handle both, is all part of the intuitive mix. Like hard work or sex, it relieves tension. “So,” she adds, “it can be hard here sometimes.”  

This is also true. “Because, remember, immigrants from Nordic countries settled the Pacific Northwest and Nordics tend not to interrupt each other. They will save their input until you have finished speaking. Aaaand,” she drew out the word in its sound and in its meaning, “we live right next to Norwegian Poulsbo. So, you know, way different culture.”

On my bike ride home I thought how what she said was by far the most interesting thing I’ve heard about my upbringing in a long time. I don’t plan on making a habit of interrupting people, promise, but I like the idea of interrupting stemming from heredity and passion. I like the implication of it—enthusiasm rather than rudeness. And the best part of the revelation was that I saw how this kind of conversation is also essential, dare I say innate, for Italians. And I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling that maybe we don’t transplant well.

There is something mysterious about a serendipitous revelation, but I was too happy to care. Because there is something even better about being just two of millions of Italians who understand a particular trait about ourselves. It made me wonder if we have any real control over who we are. We may think we have a lot, but maybe we don’t.

My husband is a mix of Scottish, English, and Irish. “A real mut,” is how my dad first described him, always proud of our family’s deep ancestry in only one country. And if you Google what Scottish/English/Irish conversational traits share in common, you will find this: “They like to engage in polite conversations. It is best not to inquire about personal information upon meeting them.” If he  had been with me on the beach yesterday, once my revelation-giver and I became instantly intimate, he would have walked on to inspect the seaweed, quickly, as if he was afraid that we would attempt to engage him. Before I put my foot down, and I do mean down, he would hold his hand up as if directing traffic if he even suspected I might interrupt. But I don’t blame him. It’s difficult to keep up with Italian conversation-expectations. He is not breathless with delight, ever, though he does have his moments . . .  but still, nowhere in his conversations are the emotions that brought him to his opinion unless I beg him to elaborate. Even then, it will take him 24 to 36 hours to figure out what he thinks he thinks he is feeling. Though he’s not really sure.

Before this chance encounter, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me to care so much about what is being said that I just can’t wait to interject and say exactly how I feel. Which is generally perceived as So Damn Rude.

When I called an Italian friend who still lives in New York to tell her about my revelation, she said something that still makes me laugh, “Oh yeah,” she laughed, “all these people who want to rent a villa in Tuscany and tramp all over Rick Steves’ version of Italy, but what they really know about Italians you’d have to multiply by a hundred and then we’d still have only the beginning of any real understanding between us. Mostly,” she added, “they pay attention too little and eat too much.”

Like gardening, writing ensures alone time. As I write these words,  with my reading glasses balanced on my nose and my half-cup of cold tea next to me, it’s hard to believe that I can start out by writing about tomatoes and end up here, but the very fact that the next time I just have to interrupt you, I will no longer feel like a very bad person, cheers me up no end.

An aside:

 “Oh, by the way,” my husband said after reading this piece, “I prefer Anglo-Celtic-American heritage. I might even start a festival.”

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Sanelli's latest collection of essays, Every Little Thing, was nominated for a Pacific Northwest Book Award and a Washington State Book Award. Her first novel, The Star Struck Dance Studio of Yucca Springs, was released in 2020 and her first children’s book, Bella Likes to Try, was published in the spring of 2022. Her columns appear in Seattle's Pacific Publishing newspapers, The Kitsap Sun, Art Access magazine, on the Opinion Page of The Seattle Times, and have been aired on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. She also works as a speaker and master dance teacher. For more information about her and her work, visit www.marylousanelli.com.