Nenzi or Nunzi?

     Growing up with my loving, Italian-American family, I was provided with an abundance of Italian food, an unending supply of Catholic guilt and a network of dozens of Italian relatives who spoke only in Italian around me.  This was, in a nutshell, how my 7-year-old ears understood my Grandmother, Assunta:  "Eat-eh, Nenzi.  Don-teh mak-eh me ea-teh by mysel-feh...."  "Nenzi, Pu-teh the pasta fagio-leh in the frigidaire-eh..."Nenzi, wanna candy? How abou-teh sangwi-cheh?"  "You'seh Grandfathe-reh and me, we was neve-reh fight...." Now, if this was, in fact, what my grandmother was saying, then so be it.  But I often understood very little of what my mother and grandmother were saying, so on Saturday afternoons,  resting between them in the front seat of our '73 Ford Country Squire, I turned my head from left to right as if watching a tennis match. And then, my grandmother would warm up the car with her endearing smile and say to my mother, "Rosina, Giss--eh Bella, di Nenziucha."  Was that what she'd said?  Who knows.  It's what I heard. 
     As an adult, I have told these stories to both my children and students.  Listening as intently as I always had, my most recent class heard the words differently.  Nenzi morphed into "Nunzi."  My students wrote notes to me addressed to Nunzi.  Birthday cards written to Nunzi.  Literary letters in their notebooks with the salutation, "Dear Nunzi."  And so, I no sooner became affectionately known as "Nunzi" in our fifth grade domain.
     Though there is no real Italian translation for either of the words, no Webster's definition for clarity, mine would look something like this:  nun-zi (nun-zee) n. 1.  a loving member of an Italian family nicknamed by her aging, broken-English-speaking grandmother.  2.  a child who longed for the smell of Ivory soap on her grandmother's hands and who was forever reminded that she was "bella."  nen-zi,  nen-zi-u-chia,.