Friends that is. Big and small. We’re just back from visiting our great friends in Italy, and their four wee ones (some not so wee now). As well as restocking the supplies of risotto rice, grana, and a certain small pasta that goes well in sausage casserole.
It’s now nearly 8 years since R and D decided to head to Italy, and interesting to see how friendships develop when you see people less often.  For a while, we managed to see each other nearly every 6 months. Rising numbers of children on their side, and work commitments on ours, now stretch it to a yearly catch up.  But it’s still well worth it.
One of the features of going over less often is that we end up with a snapshot of life there that may only last a week. Especially with the youngest at a year and a bit, change is a very rapid thing among children.
We pick up their catch phrases, identify their favourite books at that time, and see other ‘big’ changes that in fact came in over time: both older girls now reading independently in both English and Italian, for example.
Even being around for just a week, it’s terribly gratifying for you to hear one of the children saying “I want my Alison”, or for another to call you auntie by mistake.
Even the littlest went from hiding from us earlier in the week to accepting being fed by us, as well as a few games together, such as repeated shaking your head while holding a naughty grin at the same time. (She started it, not me.)
Time also shows what has lasted since a previous visit – the eldest remembering how to play “Sausages and chips”, where you try to make the other person laugh by asking them silly questions.  She will also set up photo opportunities for their Flat Eric, as we tend to do with ours, having seen our pictures in the past.
Other elements that we completely forgot – interim books that went into a parcel at some time, colouring in stencils on windows – are still part of life there. I remember hearing R’s grandmother saying to me one time, with some pride, an estimate of how many English books she had sent over to Italy while R and her siblings were growing up there, and I started to feel that we might be continuing a little of that trend.
Apart from the food products, there’s always things we bring back. A growing interest in the Veggie Tales’ “Silly Songs with Larry“, which was principal CD in the car while we were there.  Photos of another year. An even greater appreciation of R and D’s skills as parents.  A couple more pictures to go on our fridge.
Some people go on holiday for a change. I do that too, but it’s sometimes even better to go on holiday for more of the same.