Should parents apologize in public for a child’s behavior? Should we two Americans apologize for our President? If so, how, across a language barrier?

We thought we would have a quiet, private dinner at the table in the empty back corner of Ristorante Antica Via in San Gambassi Terme. But before we could order, five pleasant-seeming Italians were shown the table next to us: two young women and two young men, apparently married couples, and a boy child of maybe two years. Their lively talk filled our little corner with noise.

The adults put the child into a high chair with a confining tray.  But it was not enough.

He was trouble, uttering a few loud resisting Italian words his parents ignored. They moved tableware away from him, but before they could pull out the unbreakable toy replicas of foodstuff, the boy had grabbed an empty water glass and dropped it on the tile floor.

CRRR-AASH. A couple of waiters rushed to sweep up the broken glass. I lifted my tired feet so they could get the broom under our table too.

This was a normal boy child, the way an electric wire is normal where the insulation has been peeled off. It’s fine, until the 220 volts finds a ground through a body.

We said it was ok – “OK” is Italian. Before we could think of Va bene, before our dinners came, another CRRR-AASH. The boy child had somehow managed to get his hands on another glass and dropped it on the floor. Such a pleasing sound to echo through the ancient low vaulted ceiling.

This time, one of the men at the table sped off to get the broom and dust pan. He was the one who showed a fist of tattooed knuckles to the boy child’s face, but it was a joke by loving parents and the boy seemed indifferent to that parenting method. The mother’s glance at us said “Sorry.” But you know: Children. So they went about enjoying their dinner out together, and we enjoyed ours.

On our pilgrimage, I thought about how the parents had handled that embarrassment. What can you say? Enjoy life while you can.

When we meet friendly, educated Europeans along the way, what can we say about being Americans at this moment in history?

A man who wanted to show off his roses at a B&B we passed spoke to us in broken English. He had misaligned teeth like fragments of lumber in the discard pile. And he had a lot to say about the glory of Italy, ancient and modern. He mentioned the Latin roots of Italian and why the English mispronounce the vowels. He explained that an Italian, not Alexander Graham Bell, invented the telephone. And Marconi, of course, gave us the radio. (See my posts on Marconi, here and here.) Appreciate Italian scientists, he said, not just the geniuses of music and painting.

I asked what he thought of Italy’s conservative Prime Minister, Giorgia (pronounced like our home state, as he said it in Italian) Meloni. Her party is the same one that was originally behind the Fascists, he said. He was worried. They don’t remember history! So much ignorance! His home is right where the Allies liberated Italy from the Nazis, just south of  the “Gothic Line.” Italy was saved.

How do you say “We agree, totally,” in Italian?