Offro Io

Any teacher will tell you that the first day back is rough.  I know the first day after vacation is tough for most people in most jobs, but it's teaching and teachers I know most, and by noon it feels like 5pm.  This morning I taught three classes, met some parents, did some work, and was ready for sleeping.  It was noon.  So I went for a walk, prepped a Jhumpa Lahiri story, and debated tea or coffee.

Break Bar is downstairs from our apartment.  We don't go there often (Bar 103 and Happiness are more our go-to's), but I like to go sometimes because they're our neighbors.

I walked up to the counter and asked for a cappuccino normale.

The woman working asked me something like, "Senza shumo?"

I hadn't heard this one before.  So I repeated, "Normale."  Then, getting a bit braver and knowing that I have to keep talking with people and I have to understand what people are talking about, I asked, "Shumo?  Non capisco shumo.  Crema? Latte?"

"No.  No."

She made the cappuccino, which looked normal to me (though with no fancy decoration on top in shape of a heart or some such design as is often the case), and we tried to figure out shumo together.  She asked these other customers, two older women to my right.  I showed them the google translate app on my phone, asking them to help me spell shumo, which, it turned out, was shiumo, which translates on the app as "foam."  I taught them how to say "foam," and they taught me "shiumo," pointing to the frothy milk in my cup.

We laughed.

A few moments later, as they two women went to pay and leave, one stopped and said to me, "Offro io.  Italiana...."  I didn't understand the second half of what she said.  But I had learned the first half when I graded SYA Capstone assignments during sei giorni (six days of Italian high school for our students): each SYA student was given money to treat an Italian student to lunch one afternoon after school.  The name of the assignment was "Offro Io."

Aghast, I was about to say to this woman offering to buy my cappuccino, "Perche?!"

Why would this woman I've never met before buy me a coffee?  Why such a gesture?  I wanted to say, "I can't let you do that.  Let me buy you your coffee."  But I was afraid that that would be rude or unappreciative or just odd.  We had shared a moment of understanding, a short conversation, a connection of sorts.  Perhaps she was telling me that this was an Italian thing to do.  A colleague earlier in the year told me not to feel awkward when someone offers a kindness: trust that the person really wants to do the kindness.  She told me, "We say, 'Fare non complementi,' and this means that you accept the kindness."

I thought to myself, "Fare non complementi."  (I could totally be destroying this saying and spelling.)

To the woman now paying for my cappuccino with foam I said, "Grazie mille."