“La gentilezza… è imporTANTe,” our host Francesco told us quietly, but emphatically, as the warm Sardinian sun filtered onto the terrace where we sat enjoying hand-pressed Myrtle berry wine, fresh homemade ricotta, wild lavender honey, and the most succulent, silky, and perfectly balanced prosciutto imaginable. These accoutrements had all been graciously provided to us by Francesco, his wife, and their children, as they hosted John and I at their lovely farm and B&B, Petra Manna. We were on our first pilgrimage to the rural, rocky, turquoise-water- and white-sand-coasted Italian island of Sardinia, and were fortunate enough to have our multilingual friend Melina with us, translating Francesco’s lightning fast speech so we could truly converse.
I am only barely conversational in Italian and couldn’t understand much of what flowed out of short-statured, dark-haired, tan-faced Francesco’s mouth in rapid-fire fashion until Melina translated it, but he spoke slower now, and I knew the words: Kindness is important. When you don’t know your guest (which is often the case in the hospitality business), Francesco wisely counseled that we mustn’t make assumptions – about their lives, experiences, and the worldview they come to us holding. As their host, the most important tool we can deploy is kindness, as we navigate the bringing together of two disparate worlds – ours and theirs.
I thought of Francesco yesterday, as I apologized profusely to my friends Jenny and David, who came to visit us from Dave’s corn and potato farm in Auburn, Maine, where we used to be farm neighbors. They had made the journey up to Greenwood to celebrate the New Year with us, thoughtfully bringing a sackful of “spud ammo” for Rhiordan’s under-construction potato cannon, beautiful giant Chef’s Potatoes for my kitchen, warm hugs, and wine. But they were visibly frazzled as they entered the door to dole out their tidings – they had just been chased up our mountain road, stopped, and threatened by our neighbor.
It’s been almost a year since David and Jenny’s last trek to our cabin, and they thought they remembered the way. However, there are several small gravel roads shooting off the Greenwood Road as you near the sanctuary, and they had accidentally turned up the wrong one just before ours, one that is home to a neighbor who, for reasons only truly known to him, despises us. We speculate it is because we purchased land he used to enjoy hunting on, but the hate is so strong it’s difficult for us to understand. Anyways upon realizing they were in the wrong place, Dave and Jenny turned around to get back on the main road and find their way, but it was too late: our angry neighbor had spied them, jumped into his vehicle, and went in pursuit.
He chased after them aggressively, riding their bumper as he caught up to them and following them up our mountain road as they turned in, and when he attempted to overtake them, they stopped and opened the window to apologize for the apparent disturbance they had caused. But there would be no gracious reception of this apology – instead, our neighbor irately confronted them, demanding to know their intentions, declaring John and my status as “assholes”, and finally, in his unfortunate but predictable fashion, threatening gun violence upon them. Over the years he’s privately and publicly fantasized and threatened gun violence against us multiple times.
He couldn’t have known that night however, that just over a year ago Jenny had in fact been an actual victim of gun violence in a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, nor, as he boasted angrily to her about his good aim, that a bullet from a .308 rifle had penetrated and shattered Jenny’s shoulder during that mass shooting, nearly taking her life.
I am grateful that David had the presence of mind to be a gentleman in the face of this encounter, apologizing, diffusing, and de-escalating the situation, but I am sad that my friend Jenny had to experience a mini-trauma last night, explaining herself to a police officer that our neighbor subsequently deployed to our cabin, while blue lights flashed outside, and spend the rest of her festive evening with old friends rattled and thinking about being shot.
This brush between strangers, and the thought it begs of how it might so easily have gone so much better, lends us a perfect example of precisely Francesco’s point that sunny afternoon in Sardinia: that we might be wise to deploy a hospitable spirit of “la gentilezza” when we find ourselves in interactions with others unknown to us. Because you just never know what someone has been through, and because a little kindness goes a long way.