In my ongoing efforts to expand my skills, I’ve been taking a machine quilting class from Ramona Conconi in Melide (Lugano), Switzerland. And I also did a Saturday workshop in serigraphy (silkscreen printing) with her. This quilt is a result of both lessons.
The print is from a photo of my stepdaughter which I took on our trip to Paris last spring. The quilt will be a gift for her 20th birthday this week. I hope she won’t mind my beginner’s mis-stitching.
As many of you know, I live in Italy and my husband and stepchildren are Italian. Stepmom is often a challenging role wherever it’s played but, in Italy, it offers an additional, unexpected challenge: there’s no name for the relationship! Nor for stepchild, stepson, stepdaughter, stepsister/brother, etc. Of course, they have fairy tales in Italy, but the words used there have retained their negative connotation. No one would use them in the real world unless they intended to insult. Divorce has only been legitimized recently in Italy, and the church makes great effort to keep it marginalized, even if more than half the marriages in Milan end in divorce — or some approximation of it. The social denial of its existence results in a lack of vocabulary to talk about the new relationships that follow from it.
If I want to talk about my stepdaughter in Italian, I have to say the equivalent of ‘my husband’s daughter’, as if I myself have no relationship with her. My stepson is ‘my husband’s son’. And for them, I’m their ‘father’s wife’, even if we’ve been family for more than seven years. This has an emotional impact that is not pleasant. It denies the unique relationship that exists between us. It alienates us from one another in the public eye. (Not when we talk to each other, since we don’t use labels in direct speech, but still…) It’s even stranger when I hear my parents referred to as their nonni (grandparents), my siblings as their zii (aunt and uncle), my nephews and nieces as their cugini (cousins). Of course, all of these labels make sense because I’m their —– … moglie di papà (dad’s wife). Rather disconcerting…
Anyway, here’s a detail of the quilting for my stepfiglia (my invented anglo-italian word for stepdaughter that no one understands but who cares?):
I’m such a novice with the sewing machine, but I love the possibilities it offers. The speed and potential for spontaneity are appealing to me now. I finished this quilt in three days. Can’t do that with a thangka… and I wouldn’t want to.
But that reminds me of an encounter I had several years ago in Dharamsala:
I met a Tibetan man from Amdo who makes the glued form of applique thangka, with facial features and contour lines drawn on afterwards. Some of these works are very finely produced while others are remarkably shoddy. I never saw this man’s work but I remember his challenge to me.
“I can make a Buddha in three days!” he quipped. “How long does it take you?”
I quietly smiled and said, “A bit longer.”
I’m proud of the work I do on my six-month Buddhas and I think the differences are clear to the viewer. But I have to admit a part of me has always wished that I too could see a completed result in three days! And now I have. Not a Buddha, perhaps, but a portrait of a lovely sentient being who probably has some buddha nature too. 
Great story. Love the interweaving between language and stitching.
The quilt that you made for your stepdaughter is beautiful. I love the colours you’ve chosen and the quilting adds a wonderful texture and something like physical depth to the work. I am sure that she will love it. Thank you for sharing your story about there being no words for the “step” relationship in Italian families. Interesting. As a mom to two adopted daughters I think I’ve heard all possible variations on the title; ‘real’ mother, ‘natural’ mother, ‘birth’ mother, ‘biological’ mother, and of course ‘adoptive’ mother. The reality for our children is that they have two sets of parents, both are ‘real’, both are important. We sometimes just drop the qualifiers and simply refer to ourselves as our children’s second mother and father, their ‘birth’ parents are their first mother and father. In the end, a mother is a mother is a mother.
Thanks, Frankie.
Thanks, Juanita.
Yes, terminology is tricky and in the end they are all just labels. Language is powerful, though. It’s interesting how in labeling, we give something existence. In Buddhism, we say that things exist nominally, in dependence on being named…
By the way, in French, the words for in-laws are applied to step relationships, and they are very positive words: belle-mere, belle-fille… Beautiful mother, beautiful daughter… Lovely, isn’t it?