After my mother and my stepfather had divorced, my half-sister Nira and I would end up traveling overseas multiple times per year to visit her father and his family. Just before the first trip to Italy to see them, my mother sat me down at our kitchen table and informed me that she needed to give me some important lessons. She laid out table settings on our scratched-up hand me down table and I was instantly confused. She put down three forks, two knives, three spoons, two plates and a wide soup bowl, along with three drinking glasses. She proceeded to explain to me that at meals I was to use the utensils from the outside in and then from the top, but that was not all. I was never to cut with my fork, nor was I to switch which hand I held the fork in. She had me practice cutting food, using my knife to position food. It was all so complicated. Even soup had to be consumed properly. She told me. “Never tip the bowl to you – and never draw your spoon towards you. Instead, fill the spoon by drawing the spoon away then bring it to your mouth. Then when you are nearing the bottom of the bowl, tilt the bowl away from you.” This coming from my hippy mother was so very strange. We barely survived day to day financially yet here she was giving etiquette lessons to an eleven-year-old.
Shortly after that, Nira and I went to Italy to join up with Nira’s grandparents. On these trips to Nira’s family, I was sent as surety for my half-sister Nira, who was nine years younger than me. My presence ultimately assured that at the end of our visit that both of us would return home as my mother feared that there would be a likely kidnapping of Nira by her family. To many in Nira’s family I was to be tolerated. I was “that woman’s child”, but that was not the attitude of Baba-Jun (grandpa dear). Baba-Jun always was kind to me, he always made an extra effort on my behalf. I realize now that it was because he was not born into affluence – he had married “up” and understood far better than his wife did the struggles of poverty and what it took to fit in. I only vaguely understood what he was doing in Italy, in Rome, I knew he was an ambassador, but what that meant was unclear, until one morning, when things started to make sense.
Baba-Jun came to the breakfast table one morning, and as the butler carried dishes to each one of us to select from, he said that he wanted me to come with him for a ride. This was a first. I had frequently gone out with Homa-Jun (Homa dear – she chose not to be called Grandma in any language) during our visit, but this was the first time he had invited me out and he deliberately had not invited any others to join us. After breakfast we took the elevator to the garage and got into Baba-Jun’s limo. I was all eyes wide open. Little flags fluttered on the hood of the car, and the chauffer navigated the tight streets of Rome, pulling up to a gate, guarded by two of the fanciest soldiers I had ever seen. They wore bright gold, blue, and red striped billowing outfits and wore steel helmets topped with red feathers. Baba-Jun turned to me and said, “These are the Pontifical Swiss Guards, and we are driving into the city state referred to as the Vatican.”
I looked up at the arch covered roadway as we crossed the gate. Once inside we had walked around for hours with him pointing out various things that were only seen by few, explaining that we were in areas not open to the general public. I had not been exposed much to Christianity but suddenly I was struck by the opulence, the regaled formality of everything around us, and knew that somehow this was sacred ground. Until then I had not understood that the Vatican is a city, within the city of Rome, that is its own nation, ruled by the Pope, and that just like other nations, there are ambassadors who are assigned to represent their nation to the Vatican.
This was Baba-Juns job, and he had shared it with me… only me. He was a diplomat in more ways than one.
