Teach me things

In the car on the way home from holiday visits, I learned a bit about my grandmother's life back in Italy, and her experiences as a new Canadian.
She told me about the school in her small town, where her fingernails and the area behind her ears were inspected daily for cleanliness. Where the child that did not complete their homework had to wear paper donkey-ears with the Italian word for Ass written across the back. A school where punishments ranged from a strapping on the hands to having to kneel bare-legged on dry corn kernels. I learned that she was the first person in her family to learn to read.
It will be 51 years ago tomorrow that my grandmother and her two daughters took the 12 day boat trip to Canada, and I was surprised that I had misunderstood the circumstances for so long. I grew up thinking that they came over, huddled together on the lowest level of the boat, trying to stay warm and not to starve, sleeping on their belongings, frightened and dirty.
Instead, I found out that they shared a cabin with another woman and her two children. They were fed meals in the ship's dining hall, and the ladies were able to try many things that they had never before eaten...like bananas and beef steak. My grandmother couldn't fit into her clothes by the end of the journey-she had never experienced so much food and so little physical labour before. She saw her first ever moving picture, a cowboy film. Shortly after disembarking, she cut off her old world braids, got a perm, changed her clothes and got to work on her new life.
Mille Grazie, Nonna.