Despite Differing Cultures, Good Men Have a Lot in Common

It starts with something as trivial as what to serve at the reception: prime rib or veal parmigiana?

And the stakes only rise from there. Will your honeymoon be spent looking up relatives in the old country or searching for uncharted golf courses in the South Pacific? Will your new home be a Mediterranean villa or an old Craftsman? Will Junior answer to Giuseppe or just plain Joe?

If the union of husband and wife is special, the merging of cultures makes American weddings something just a bit short of a miracle.

Until recently, I thought of marriage as something that would happen in the far-off future. When the time was right, I would meet some great guy who agreed with me on everything. It would be destiny.

As a first-generation American, I had experienced some awkward cross-cultural dating situations. Yet I had no preconceptions about who my husband would be or how he would affect my family. I naively gave no thought to what obstacles might lie ahead.

Minor obstacles, like the fact that my Italian father has a very limited command of the English language.

Then along came Dave. An all-American, Midwestern, meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. And he didn’t speak a word of Italian. The two most important men in my life and they didn’t understand each other.

But Dave proposed, I accepted, and there was no turning back. With the church booked, the dress ordered and hefty deposits generously left all over town, Papa and Dave could no longer avoid it. It was time to start down that long, precarious road--the road to knowing (and hopefully liking) your in-laws.

*

Despite communication limited to sentence fragments and hand signals, they managed to discover that they had a few common credos:

* The Sabbath is sacred. Dave spends his Sundays kneeling before 18 holes; Papa genuflects in the kitchen preparing the family’s weekly tomato sauce.

* It’s better to play sports than watch them. Papa competes in a boccie league; Dave eats, sleeps and dreams golf.

* Plants are a passion. Papa spends his retirement years rotating his crops of tomatoes, fava beans and zucchini; Dave tries (sometimes even successfully) to keep a respectable looking lawn, when he’s not playing . . . golf.

In spite of this progress, it wasn’t until last Christmas, while sharing dinner with my parents, that I saw it all in a new light.

I was stuffing the last bit of cannoli in my mouth when I put down my fork (for the first time that night) and looked up to see Papa studying his soon-to-be son-in-law. I felt Papa’s thoughts seep into mine:

“Is this boy sincere, or is this all a show? . . . He says he’s an operations manager, but what does he really do for a living? . . . Is that his third or fourth beer?”

Across the table, I felt Dave having his own concerns:

“Sicilian? Aren’t they all in the Mob? . . . If the old man found out I was sleeping with his daughter, would I be sleeping with the fishes? . . . Is this my third or fourth beer?”

As the last of the espresso was poured and as the women cleared the table, the men began to show signs of fatigue that comes with wine and rich food.

Papa carefully rose from his chair, gave Dave a last look, and headed to the den. Somehow Dave knew instinctively to follow.

I was both intrigued and encouraged. Was this the time for Papa’s big speech, would he put Dave through the manhood test, make sure this young fellow was worthy of his one and only daughter? Or perhaps he would pass along those invaluable pearls of wisdom that come with being married for 43 years.

My mother and I retreated to the kitchen to scrub pots and dish out plans for the wedding. It wasn’t long before I noticed my father standing in the doorway. With his clothes disheveled and clutching a blanket, he motioned me toward the den.

There I saw Dave curled up and asleep on the sofa. Papa handed me the blanket and said, “It’za cold, why you no put blanket on Dave?”

I gently did so and as I turned to leave, I spotted Papa curled up in the adjoining recliner.

It was then that it hit me. I would soon be marrying a man just like my father.

At first look, it was hard to see any similarity between them. My husband-to-be stands only a modest 5-feet-9, average for an American man, yet he towers over my aging father. Papa, on the other hand, has a stature of a different kind. His nose is like a classic Roman ruin, casting a shadow over Dave’s perfect plastic-surgeon prototype.

So different and, though they don’t know it, so similar.

Both are immigrants. Papa from Sicily, Italy; Dave from Suburbia, Ill. While each left for different reasons, both saw California as the place for a new beginning.

Both experienced the loneliness of being separated from family and lifelong friends, the fear of having nowhere to turn if you fail, the exhilaration that comes with successfully starting a new life. All done with courage, integrity and dignity.

If these two men could sit down over a bottle of wine, they would also discover other similarities. How both suffer the same aches and pains that come with practicing a hard work ethic, how both crave the simple things in life, and how neither understands why his mate insists on doing the laundry (neither can grasp the concept of separating whites from colors).

Papa would probably try to instill in Dave some Old World respect and devotion for the family, something he’s known his entire lifetime and wants to see carried on after he’s gone. And Dave would agree, because sometimes people want things precisely because they’ve never had them. Although Dave might not know it, he has a bit of the Old World in him, too.

My father wants his soon-to-be son-in-law to know he fears losing his only child to another man and another culture.

My fiance, having lost his own father at an early age, is searching for a gentle man to be a positive, loving role model.

*

The big day is fast approaching, and preparations have moved into high gear. As I start my new family, I worry about losing touch with my old one.

I worry that without daily use I will forget my Sicilian. I will no longer be able to communicate with my father except for repeating the same simple phrases I’ve managed to hold on to, over and over again, like some lost tourist visiting Palermo for the first time.

I wonder if he will be able to communicate with his future grandchildren, for whom he’s patiently waited so long. Communicating is tough enough when you do have full use of the vocabulary.

In recent months, Dave has attempted to learn a few words of Italian but even if he never learns to say more than manga (eat) or basta (enough), I know it will be all right. Sometimes words are just words--weightless, abused, left with little or no meaning. It’s a lifetime of actions that count.

Watching Papa give Dave a tour of the new tomatoes in his garden I see that good men are the same the world over. They cherish their families and make unspoken sacrifices for the ones they love.

This is why America is such a remarkable place: Nowhere are so many different people so much alike. It looks like Dave and Papa have a lot more in common than I realized.