While we were in Italy, we spent alternating weeks at the nearby farms of my two sets of grandparents. At each place, I was able to spend a lot of time with my young cousins who lived locally or in Rome and came to stay with us with their mothers during the week.
My Roman uncles came out when they could on the weekends, often decked out in short-sleeved white shirts and brown gabardine pants. Rome was only a 90-minute drive north, but one uncle, Mario the Evangelist minister, lived with my aunt and three kids in Taranto — 200 miles away — so he came out less frequently to join us and his family.
