Love before WhatsApp

Lightning engagements and a smashed plate to make herself understood: Mrs Ettorina and a love from another age.

Mrs Ettorina was a long-standing resident of Villa Teruzzi, who stayed in the home for very many years. I did not get to know her well straight away, but only after quite some time, when I began to play cards with her.

We played scala quaranta, the game she used to play with her husband. She used a little wooden stand to slot the cards into, because she could not hold them in her hand. Mrs Ettorina was from the Veneto, having come to Lombardy very young and married just as young. Engagements back then were over in record time: a year, a few outings together and then straight to the altar.

Compared with today’s, where engagements last decades, it really seems like another world (and perhaps it was). It is hard to say what drove Mrs Ettorina to marry so quickly: perhaps the culture, the wish to have someone to lean on, or perhaps the generation that came out of the war had a view of life that we, born in a time of peace and plenty, cannot share. One story Ettorina told me has stayed with me, about her first days as a married woman.

She told me that at home her husband did not talk… he said nothing, probably very shy and taciturn and not yet at ease with his wife. Mrs Ettorina told me she could not endure that atmosphere for the rest of her life, and so one day she took the plates, threw them on the floor and began to shout.

At her side there was always her husband, the wild card who helped her win even the games that were lost from the start.

The scene made her husband understand the unease she felt and, in the end, they found their balance and things between them settled. How often, even now, do we fail to find the courage to tell our difficulties to the person beside us, causing misunderstandings and quarrels? Ettorina has so much to teach us! Mrs Ettorina had a complex and difficult life, but at her side there was always her husband, the wild card who let her win even the games that were lost from the start.

Collected by Riccardo Beretta · AVO Concorezzo volunteer