THAT'S MEN:WE HAVE all heard of Golden Boy, the Irish male so cossetted by his mammy that he will never find a wife to measure up to her cooking and adulation.
Well, boys, read this and tell me if there is an Irish mother who can measure up to the Italian mamma as described by Rome-based Tiffany Parks on her blog The Pines of Rome ( thepinesofrome.blogspot.com):
“I once met an ancient Italian lady walking to the bus stop in Trastevere. She was lugging a heavy duffle bag, so I offered to carry it for her.
“In the not-so-brief walk [I was sweating under the massive burden], she revealed to me that she lived in Naples, and that she took the train up to Rome once a month to do her son’s laundry.
“Yes, she was taking the massive bag of soiled laundry of her 40-year-old son down to Naples to wash and bring back up to him, neatly pressed and folded. And he didn’t even give her a ride to the station!
“She had to take the bus, an 80-year-old feeble little signora!
“When I asked her why she did it, she beamed and said, she wanted to do it, it was an excuse to see her son more often.
“Is there a mother in Ireland who can match that?
“Could somebody please devise a reality TV show to find such a paragon – perhaps it could be called The Mammy?”
I read Tiffany Parks' report in a piece by Associated Press journalist Trisha Thomas on her Mozzarella Mamma blog ( mozzarellamamma.com). And I met Trisha Thomas on the 116 bus which a group of us took in the wrong direction in Rome recently.
The stylish Italian woman with the American accent who urged us to take advantage of our mistake to go to the Galleria Borghese (where you learn how sensuous marble can be – my words, not hers) turned out to be Ms Thomas.
Italian mammas, she writes, try to do it all – “work, handle all the childcare, be the perfect wives and mammas [measuring fevers, cooking pasta, and fretting] while their husbands do little to help, and their [husbands’] mothers continue to buy their socks and underwear and phone them several times a day on their cell phones to make sure they have not caught a cold.”
Guys, why are you emigrating to Western Australia and the far reaches of Canada?
Learn Italian, fly to Rome and see if you can find one of them Italian mammas for yourself.
Start by getting on the wrong bus.
Addendum: Who is Duffer from Ringsend and what is he doing now?
Nine years ago tomorrow, he sprayed the following onto a wall of a nameless lane in Kilmainham: Duffer Ringsend “Rules” 28-03-03.
I look at Duffer’s artistic endeavour occasionally when walking the dog and I wonder what a Ringsend invader was doing in our neck of the woods. I hope he got home in one piece.
I assume he was a teenager at the time – the old (ie anyone who is not a teenager) don’t write on walls although I don’t know why not.
Also, females don’t seem to make their mark in this way and, again, I don’t know why not.
Duffer, in any case, was making his mark in our lane when Ireland was an example to the world of how to run an economy, emigration had disappeared, we didn’t worry about unemployment or the unemployed and the future was bright and beautiful if we could only find the time from our busy schedules to enjoy it.
I am intrigued by the fastidiousness of those quotation marks in “Rules” and the precision of “28-03-03”. Whoever Duffer was, he had an education.
I wrote “was” but I hope he is still in the present tense, and flourishing.
And if he ever becomes an Old Duffer, I hope he will remember the young Duffer with fondness.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is available free by email.