You have recently arrived in the UK, you go to pick up your child at school and you stick to some other mothers walking home.
Yes, I said mothers, females, because there are always only women outside the school, whether it's UK, Italy or Mozambique.
Anyway, you stick to other mothers, we said, because you want to make friends, for yourselves, for your children, for brotherhood among peoples, you want to be part of the community in which you live.
Suddenly, the small child of the English lady with whom you are walking, jump in the middle of the road, he almost gets hit by a car, ten seconds of very strong tension.
The mother catches him and at this point you see a scene that you have never seen, a 'premiere': the mother kneels to talk to the child, and WITH A TONE OF VOICE LOWER THAN USUAL (I repeat: LOWER) says softly:
“Sweetie, you have to watch out for the road and the cars. Normally nothing happens, but sometimes someone gets hurt. Now don't be scared, just try to understand that you need to be careful. Go back to play my love. "
It is a shock, I tell you, the first time is a shock.
We are used to something so different that we are amazed watching the whispering mother.
40 years have passed, but I still have in my eyes the same scene in the Italian version. My sister crosses the street without looking and my father literally throws himself under a car to save her, picks her up and then shout with all his voice an unspeakable curse. In the center of the village. And it is perhaps the only time I have heard him swearing in my life.
Or I remember very well when my cousin was about to burn his hair as he passed close to the gas stove and my grandmother, without saying a word, slapped him so violently that moved him two meters.
For us the whispering mother is a dream.
And in addition to whispering, she also says positive things!
Like: YOU COULD get hurt.
So as not to scare the child and get him a positive message.
What do we know about all that, we are so far.
My mom used to tell me:
"If you drink cold water, you DIE."
"If you sweat and get cold you get pneumonia"
"If you trip you break your leg"
Then our tone of voice, which is normally 200 decibels higher than the British one, grows in anxiety.
THEY speak in a low voice, even and especially with children.
WE yell all day.
For example, in the beautiful huge parks where children play after school, there is no total silence, but a cheerful chatter, children's laughter.
All very suffused.
If there are no Mediterraneans around.
My presence alone, for example, changes the situation. If I have to call my son who is on the opposite side of the park, in fact, I scream his name fiercely, I repeat it even 5 or 6 times, standing still, without taking a step.
And that's just because my house doesn't overlook the park, otherwise I'd call from the window, of course.
In Mediterranean peoples the version of the mother is screaming.
Even at home we make an incredible mess compared to them.
My neighbours have a 6 year old girl. The walls are made of plasterboard (see the Anomaly of the toy house), the gardens are communicating: you can hear everything.
The little girl gently calls and chant "Moooom?" up to 340 times per hour. Moooom? And then pause and then useless childish question. The poor woman always answers her questions calmly.
And she always starts her sentence by saying: "Yes, my love?"
On the second time in a day that my son calls mom, I scream: "Enough!!!! Mom isn't here. She’s dead! "
In years and years I have never heard neighbours shouting. They hear us screaming hundreds of times A DAY. We yell, fight, cry, laugh, re-argue. We keep the television on full blast. We try to communicate by shouting from the floor above to the floor below. We sing out loud in the kitchen.
We are more vital, of course. We are more whimsical.
But we make an indecent mess, let's face it.
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