“Make me Harry Potter!”

Paciano, Umbria: Festa di Tavolo Lungo

As I was installing a light­ning bolt on this British lad’s fore­head, a la Harry Pot­ter, his older brother watched care­fully, and then signed up for a shoot­ing star on his fore­head:  Harry Pot­ter and Mer­lin as relatives!

It was indeed a day full of magic.   Once a year Paciano offers its festa de tavolo lungo, lit­er­ally, the fes­ti­val of the long table.  Dur­ing this day, this charm­ing Renais­sance town becomes one giant din­ing room.  You buy a ticket for 12 Euros, and are treated to a 6 part meal, served at sta­tions around the town:  Apper­i­tivos, wine and water, fra­gi­oli de Umbria (beans), pasta al ragu, porchetto (pork), and dolce con caffe.

My friend Mar­garet had signed me up to do face paint­ing in the main square.  “You can do this, right?”  “Certo, why not?”  After all, I had years of expe­ri­ence draw­ing pic­tures on lunch bags for my chil­dren, and I knew chil­dren to be a most appre­cia­tive audi­ence.  Remem­ber­ing that my son approved of my ren­di­tion of the space shut­tle on his lunch bag, with a pleased and proud smile,  I fig­ured faces would be an eas­ier medium.

A wig­gle factor

What I had not counted on was the wig­gle fac­tor.  The youngest were the wig­gli­est, and the older boys, the most dis­tractable.   So hold­ing onto the to-be-decorated body part was a lot harder than exe­cut­ing the design!

Pink but­ter­fly with pur­ple dots

After Harry Pot­ter, lady bugs were high in pop­u­lar­ity with the girls, and the tri­col­ore (the Ital­ian flag) was a favorite, to my sur­prise, among the boys.  I man­u­fac­tured but­ter­flies in all col­ors — pur­ple, pink, green with orange dots.  Hot air bal­loons, lit­tle foot prints walk­ing up the arms, birds, fish, spi­ders, gira­sole (sun­flow­ers) all sprouted on arms, hands, fore­heads and cheeks.   One pre-teen girl con­sumed every pic­ture I had on my poster, and still wanted more:  clearly she was going to grow up and be a tat­tooed biker babe!  I rose to the occa­sion and cre­ated sev­eral designs just for her:  a neck­lace and a ring, painted on– I think it was a com­bi­na­tion of emer­alds and cinnabar.

Spi­der­man brings a possie

Becom­ing spiderman

My biggest chal­lenge was the young boy who wanted to be Spi­der­man.  “Draw me his whole mask.”  Gosh, I only saw the film once, and this fel­low clearly could quote some of the dia­logue, com­plete with inflec­tions and tim­ing!  But, ral­ly­ing with space shut­tle courage, I ven­tured forth, draw­ing ALL over his face, around his eyes, legs down his cheeks, spi­der head mid-forehead.  Then I handed him the mir­ror, await­ing judge­ment.   He stud­ied  him­self, pleased, then said “You for­get the line that goes from the chin down the mid­dle of the neck.  That’s where the zip­per is hid­den.”  So we installed the zipper.

After a while, Spi­der­man came back, hold­ing one of those long thin bal­loons, in a kind of loop.  He handed it to me proudly.
“I made this for you.  It’s a heart.”