Facciamo un giretto?
So here I am 30 years out from that very first ever trip to (Etruscan) Tuscan, Italy. The year is now 2025. Rome is celebrating another Jubilee and I’m still home.
A gita is to take a brief walk, drive, a short trip, quick road trip, a jaunt. A gitarella, ending in the feminine A, is a girl, a young woman out of the house. Not to be confused with citarella, or little citadel, which will come a little later down chapter road.
Facciamo un giretto? This phrase in Italian is asking you if you would like to take a quick tour around the town. Generally it is a friendly inquiry to join someone you know for a little spin. Otherwise it can mean a man asking a woman for a date, a spin in his orbit, to show the town–which to him is his world–who he is out with.
Dove Vai? Much more problematic for a young single woman is 'un giretta'. Though maybe I am speaking too soon, or too many years after the learned fact, from the now infamous and ubiquitous question posed as a directive from just about any family member when I first arrived alone in the town and thought innocently to spend a few hours alone walking around the town to simply take photos of the old village. ‘Dove Vai?’ Where are you going? Always from family. In both languages. In both worlds.
Gira per il mondo, is another thing altogether. It is part monella, part vagabonda. Dove sei stata? Un gira per il mondo? They’ve now accepted your peripatetic ways jovially, though still watchfully, maybe accepting that this is not their choice for themselves or maybe even you but they’ll let you have it. They let you be it.
It's complicated.
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BOOK THREE of the TRILOGY
Coming in 2025
