Within five seconds of two Calabrians meeting one another, they're quizzing each other about their family.
Who's your mamma? Oh, her grandfather and my grandmother were second cousins! Yes, Giuseppe, but the one with the bad leg, not the one with the beard.
Calabrians (maybe all Italians. I don't know) are keen to make a personal connection, and for them, that means finding a family member in common. And once you're family, the hospitality pours in.
And Calabria is so small, it turns out that it's easy to do this!
Cousins, Cousins, Everywhere
I've given up asking Fra how a particular cousin is related. His family is a spiderweb of connections, and oftentimes, a "cousin" is more like a fifth cousin!
In my family, we stop counting after second cousins, so for me, claiming a familial connection any further out is strange.
We're Not So Different
I laughed when I realized something. My mother does exactly the same thing ("who's your mamma?") when we travel in Lousiana, where, in a sense, it's a lot like Calabria in that the world is small, and there's a good chance that we are cousins!
Comments