Language

Dr. Stanley Coren, the author of The Intelligence of Dogs, said in an interview that dogs understand about 160 human words. I'd say I have about 75 Italian words down perfectly, which include words like "pasta" and "bella" and other words that everyone knows. I can almost conjugate two verbs, and that's with some serious mental gymnastics. Yet, tomorrow we leave for Italy for 11 months, where I will be one-half of the team in charge of our family of four small children. Thank goodness for them, the other half is fluent in the language.

For the past six months the kids and I attended Italian lessons once a week: we sang children's songs and played color and number bingo. I learned a lot of animal names [if you want to know how to say spider and frog in Italian, I am your gal], and the strange-to-us sounds their animals make [shouldn't cats meow the same in every language?]. The Italian lesson book our teacher used had a lot of vocabulary surrounding witches and insects, so I am all ready for dinner with an Italian Wicken. Can't say I hope for that.

I have packed Italian books, verb drills, and phrase books in my suitcase, and Michael gave the older children a little sheet of "just in case" phrases. These take up little of the space where I have crammed one year's worth of material life in a pink flowered suitcase. It's curious to see what each of us, with our one bag filled of "what we can't leave behind" has picked to pack. Those bags sit now, six of them, waiting for the adventure that begins at 5:00 am tomorrow morning.

My dog, Piper, will begin her adventure tonight as she is dropped off at my parents' house for her year with them. With the bags out and the commotion in our house, Piper knows something is happening. She follows me around, never letting me out of her sight, and often leaning into me a bit more than usual. As I pat her head, feeling happy and a little sad, I understand what she's saying.