Sunday in Southwest Sicily

“Hurry UP!!! We’re going to be late AGAIN!!!”

Seems like the refrain never changes. Monday through Sunday I’m found yelling up the stairs at two boys who are decidedly slow only when we’re under the gun to get somewhere on time. The usual Monday through Saturday routine I can understand, after all, I was a kid once too! Getting up for school, having to bolt down breakfast, grab a 100lb backpack – or so it seemed – then race to school. Unlike Niscemi, however, I went to school Monday through Friday albeit for almost seven hours per day. Here the kids go Monday through Saturday for five and a half hours a day then it’s home for a true Sicilian lunch everyday and hitting the books until early evening. I can say that I do miss having Saturday lazy, roll-out-of-bed-when-you-want time, but we live here so we have to play by these rules.

No Frumpiness Allowed Here

What does this have to do with Sunday?! Well, Sunday here is a particular mix of religion and tradition with the separation between the two blurring until it’s almost impossible to see.

Unlike the vision of Italian women I grew up with – long-sleeved, cover-the-knees frumpy dresses with black opaque stockings and head scarves – Sundays mean high fashion and I mean HIGH fashion! My experience is the further south you go in Italy, the more fashionable the women – and men! – dress. Of course, the main social gathering place on a Sunday morning is….church.

Now, because the largest of Niscemi’s churches are on their own piazzas or near the main piazza, folks tend to use ‘going to church’ as an excuse to dress in their latest ‘best’, head out to the piazza, sit, have an expresso and catch up with friends they haven’t had a chance to talk with all week.

Everyone Enjoying a Sunday Morning

The mass and sermon are merely a means to an end. Kids run around outside the main doors playing tag, giggling and poking each other. Adults finish their expresso, head into the church to stand near the doors to make the quick exit when all is said and done. Then everyone congregates outside the doors to discuss what they’re going to do for the rest of the day – that is, of course, after the 1 1/2 hour lunch.

Starting in October catechism begins with all 2nd through 5th graders heading into the bowels of the church after mass to learn all about the traditions, saints, holidays, and history of Sicily, Italy, and the church – in that order. Confirmation here is a rite of passage, not just a religious ceremony. Everyone, even the

daughters of the Muslim Tunisian math professor who lives here, goes through catechism. In Niscemi the rite symbolizes ‘coming of age’, of growing out of childhood and entering adolescence. All 24 of my 8-year-old’s classmates are in his catechism class which is good and bad at the same time – good in that he knows everyone, bad in that he has to be there every Sunday.

Homemade pasta al forno - better known in the US as lasagna - on a typical Sunday

This, of course, means that I have to get up, get him and his 16-year-old brother up (my older son helps out in the catechism classes), get everyone in the bathroom, make breakfast and get both out the door to church by 10:00AM. If I really push I can actually get myself ready in time to go with them – it doesn’t happen often enough, but it does happen.

So, I’ve accepted the fact that for the next three years my stairway will continue to echo with screams of, “Get Ready before I get up there or you’re really in trouble,” seven days a week.

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