One summer afternoon about a year ago, I took our granddaughter Lucia, age 6, for a walk around our town in Southern Italy when I heard a man call for help. “Aiuto!” he cried out.
I rushed down the street from our house to follow the voice, holding Lucia by the hand. “Aiuto!” our neighbor again pleaded, louder now.
There, on a second-floor balcony, I saw him. He pointed with a jabbing hand down toward the cobblestone piazza below.
Two people were clutching at each other, grappling chest to chest. One was a man, the other a woman, each about 40 and of average size. Lucia and I stopped to watch this male-female clash, each trying to outmaneuver and overpower the other.
I never anticipated the ethical dilemma that lay ahead for me.
“Fermati!” I yelled, meaning “stop.” But the combatants kept grasping and tugging each other off-balance. The woman was holding her own, clearly up to the challenge.
“Basta!” I bellowed, meaning “enough.” But to no avail. Either neither heard my attempt to restore the peace or chose to disregard it.
I stepped away from Lucia and into the middle of the fray and shoved the man away from the woman, his arms flailing, backed on his heels. He looked at me in surprise.
But then I was in for a surprise of my own, because just then the woman came over and shoved me back. Hard.
OK, I thought. I get it. My services were no longer required. So I put up my hands as if to signal surrender and backed away.
But our three-way confrontation was still far from over. The man came over to me, his face a foot away from mine, and stared into my eyes. I stood still, staring back at him. This game of chicken lasted about 15 seconds until he walked off, the tussle with his companion now over.
I returned to Lucia and we resumed our walk. Neither of us said anything about the incident. But I was plagued by questions about my actions. What if the man had slugged me and gotten the better of me? What would have happened to 25-pound Lucia, suddenly left unattended and watching me lose a fight?
Alternatively, what if I had gotten the better of the guy? Lucia would have seen me resort to my fists in an instance where I could easily have minded my own business.
Contrary to my initial impulse, my effort to play peacemaker was hardly heroic. Rather, I had needlessly endangered our granddaughter. I was a bad grandfather.
A few days later I joined my friend Michael, a fellow American expat, for coffee in a local café. I confided what had happened and how I felt I had failed my family.
Michael reads the Bible every morning. She grew up in a family of ministers, her father and uncles all members of the clergy. She listened solemnly before speaking.
“You did nothing wrong,” she said. “You only wanted to help.”
I remained unconvinced of my innocence.
“You had a choice,” Michael said. “You could have turned your back on the violence and walked away. Instead, you tried to stop the woman from getting hurt.”
I clenched my mouth skeptically.
“That’s what Lucia saw you do,” she said. “And that’s what she’ll remember.”
I value her judgment. But I know I’ll never pull a stunt like that again. Sometimes we dads just have to learn better.
Brody, a consultant and essayist, is a former New Yorker and author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”