Carlo spent the morning at the bread ovens again under Zia Filomena"s tutelage. The ladies gathered to bake bread were a generation older than their American visitor, but they had embraced him warmly, to the point of preening and sometimes embarrassing themselves.
“Carlo, do you want to knead my dough?” asked Lidia with a twinkle in her eye. Marta stood next to her but elbowed Lidia after that comment.
Carlo blushed lightly but took it kindly enough; at times he laughed at their jokes, knowing that these ladies were acting out an age-old drama in the human story between man and woman. The compliments are sometimes exaggerated, the jokes sometimes risque, but this is a part of relationships between the sexes that has played out in every society for centuries.
Zia Filomena gave him carefu
