Formula One

It’s been a difficult week here. Things started off with a bang when I checked in with Lorenzo Monday morning at his office not long after I’d arrived at work. He had gone in at 6 am, due to a demonstration from angry commuters who take the train every morning to Milan scheduled to take place that morning. But what he told me had nothing to do with people who were furious with Trenitalia. “It’s a mess, he said. “There’s been a murder.”

Perhaps you think that being married to a cop means this sentence crops up fairly often, that between doctor’s visits and parent-teacher conferences a few dead bodies must fall, at least in his line of work and perhaps if Lorenzo worked on the homicide squad in Baltimore (at least according to The Wire) this would simply mean another day at the office. But in the almost eight years we have lived in our smallish town Lorenzo has been called into the office only once because of a homicide, so Monday’s call to an apartment in a neighboring town where Lorenzo and his partner found the guy stabbed and dead in a pool of his own blood couldn’t have been pleasant. It certainly helped me put my crappy day into perspective, work sucks sometimes, but at least we all lived to tell about it.
The only thing worse than dealing with a murder victim in Italy is perhaps processing all the paperwork that follows and Lorenzo didn’t get home until 10 that night and was (obviously) in a foul mood.

And so our crummy week continued, with the high point coming on Wednesday, just in time for Giulio’s Christmas School play. Schools in Italy have no obligation to be secular at the holidays, pictures of Christmas trees and Santa Clauses have adorned the halls for weeks at the preschool, and the Christmas show is the high point. Last year’s was pretty incredible, it involved the kids all dressed in white while black lights and neon props where used. It sounds bizarre but it looked very cool and Giulio earnestly singing “We are the World” in Italian with the other kids at the end of the show is something I will always remember. The show was set for 6.30, which would mean that I would leave work at the usual time, get Livia, and the head over to the town gym where the show was being held.

Then on Monday afternoon while I was at work I got a call from Giulio’s teacher. I spent the first 30 seconds of the call waiting for her to tell me that Giulio had a fever and that I should come and get him, so it took me a moment to realize that she was saying something else. That the show had been moved up to 4.45 due to previously scheduled basketball game set to take place at 6:45, that the kids needed to be there, all dressed in white at 4,30. Fine, ok. Lorenzo said he would leave work on time, get Giulio and Livia, take them to the gym, change Giulio into his white duds, and I would leave work an hour early in time to catch the beginning of the show.

Fastforward to Wednesday afternoon. I’m at work dealing with the explosion of a huge, unpleasant in-house email with me as one of the main recipients. In the middle of trying to formulate an articulate, concise, intelligent reply that knocks my critics to the ground, all in Italian no less, I get a call from Lorenzo. It’s 3:40. He’s in bank where they are in the middle of seizing someone’s bank account, something he has never done before. It sucks, and he can’t get away. “I need to find a new job,” he moans down the phone, which means basically, he can’t get the kids. “You have to get the kids,” I say. “I can’t leave before 4:30.” He says he will try and puts the phone down. I slog on through my email, the stress forming a knot in my stomach, when my phone vibrates again. It is Giulio’s school, it is 4:05, was Giulio to go the after school program or was someone coming to get him? Wasn’t he going to the play at 4:30? After assuring the Sicilian school custodian that my husband was surely on his way I placed a frantic call to Lorenzo. His calm detached tone when he answered told me everything I needed to know. He was still in the bank. I blinked at the clock, it was almost 4:10 and Giulio wasn’t going to make it to the town gym at 4:30 at this rate. An image of a mournful Giulio, waiting at school for his daddy and missing his school play came into my head. I had no back up. This wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you called and asked your neighbor to do at the last minute, “Yeah, Eugenio , listen…I was wondering, I’m stuck in the office and Giulio has his school play in 30 minutes………”
I wasn’t going to let me son miss his school play because of my job or even Lorenzo’s, was I a mommy or wasn’t I? This was a time for action! “I’ll get him.” I said down the phone. ‘Yes,” says Lorenzo, “But his white clothes are locked in my car.” “Meet me at your office in 10 minutes,” I said and tore up the stairs to my boss’ office to tell her that there had been an emergency and I had to leave now.

I ran out to my car and booked it over to Lorenzo’s office where, during a second frantic call discovered that Lorenzo was in a bank nowhere near his office, at least not near enough. I could see his car, with Giulio’s clothes and all our audio visual equipment locked inside, and thought of the spare key sitting at home, while Lorenzo tried to explain which bank he was calling me from. “Nevermind!” I said and hung up, hit the gas and tore over to Giulio’s school. As I drove I was weighing the balance of which would be the best use of time: to get Giulio from school, go home and get the key and then drive back to Lorenzo’s office, get the clothes from the car and then take Giulio to the gym, changing him somewhere along the way—OR—getting Giulio, going home and praying to find some other white substitute clothes and then taking Giulio to school. I decided to see what I could find in the way of white clothing at home and take it from there. Giulio, as he is a 5 year old boy, doesn’t own much in the way of white. Our plan had been for him to wear some white pjs turned inside out so the football pattern was on the inside and wear a white turtleneck over it. I had forgotten about the school play when I had Giulio wear the one white turtleneck he owns on Sunday and because it was still clean, again on Monday. Tuesday night Lorenzo dug it out of the dirty clothes to examine the yellow stains on the front. “It’s fine,” he ruled after studying the lemon colored marks and put it into the backpack along with the white pjs and the video camera to take to work with him the next day. Racking my brains for other wardrobe possibilities (could he wear a shirt of mine??) seeing that it was now 4:30, the time when Giulio should have been at school, I thought of the mess that I still had to resolve at work, and groaned. “Damn!” I said, gripping the steering wheel, and blowing past a white Fiat Panda, “Being a grownup SUCKS!”

Arriving at Giulio’s school I ran as fast as I could down the long drive in heels, where I found a happy Giulio waiting for me with the afterschool teacher. “Run!” I said as we booked it back to the car, “Go! Go! Go!” I called, like a high school football coach on the first day of preseason practice as I hustled Giulio into his carseat. “Mommy, why were you so late?” Giulio asked as I buckled him in, reducing me to tears. I am such a failure as a mom.
We drive up to our house, and leaving Giulio in the car with Stefano our neighbor keeping watch on his bike, I ran again, all the while thinking all I needed was a sprained ankle on top of everything else, down the walk and up the three flights of steps to our door. I go to the kids’ room and made a beeline for Giulio’s closet, wondering if Giulio had a spare pare of khakis that I had forgotten about, khaki being about as close to white as I was going to be able to find at this point. Instead I hit the jackpot, finding a pair of cream colored pants that I had forgotten about. I grabbed an undershirt and paused for a second, it was too cold for short sleeves. A quick search through his shirt confirmed that Giulio’s only white shirt was that white turtleneck locked in the other car when I suddenly remembered a white thermal long sleeved shirt of Livia’s that I had decided was too big for her, even though the tag said 2T. Well…Giulio was skinny………..I grabbed the shirt from Livia’s drawer, took the other clothes and rushed back to the car.
“Why are we late, Mommy?” Giulio called from the backseat. “All the kids are at the party and me, no.” Flooded again with guilt I gun the car onto the main road and head back to the center of town, only to be met by a long line of cars at the traffic light. Who are these people causing traffic at 4:45 on a Wednesday afternoon and where could they possibly have to go?” Suddenly I remembered that I had said that we would get Livia early and take her too. Not happening now. Ok, I would deal with Livia in a second, right now I had to get Giulio to the gym. It seemed that my entire town had turned out for the show, there was no parking within a square mile of the place, so I pulled up the front of the gym, parking illegally in one of the two handicapped parking spots. “Ok, Giulio,” I said, coming around to the backseat. I tore off his coat and shirt and put on Livia’s thermal shirt, which fit him just fine, though the sleeves only came down to his elbows, and put the white undershirt over it. “Giulio, do you wear your shoes during the show?” I asked. No it seemed that socks were fine, so I pulled off his shoes and jeans, got him into the cream pants and then, leaving everything in the car, carried him into the gym where the show was just getting underway. Spotting his class seated and gathered on one part of the “stage” i.e. the basketball court, Giulio ran over and took his place next to the teacher while I went back out to re-park the car. Walking back I tried to call Livia’s nido and realized that I had never changed the number in my phone from the old one. I made a frantic call to my office where my colleague looked up the number on line and updated on me on the email bomb situation. Lorenzo called me to tell me that he would get Livia and I called the nido to tell them that her daddy would be there as soon as he could, or if nothing else, I would be there before six. I come into the gym and stand with the other parents and relatives at the entrance who came too late to get a seat, and marvel at all the parents seated whose lives are together enough to get their children, bring them to the school play scheduled for 4:30 on a weekday and still get a seat in the bleachers. Who are these people? What club to they belong to? Where do I sign up?
I can feel the stress of the last hour radiating through my body, and notice also that this year there are no neat special effects with the lights, perhaps due to the imminent basketball game that could not be rescheduled. And I see Giulio seated with his class on the floor, scanning the crowds. And then he sees me, and his face lights up and he smiles and waves, and I wave back and blow him a kiss which he blows back at me, and I realize he doesn’t care about anything that happened that afternoon, that he is just thrilled that his mommy is there watching him, and I’m suddenly thrilled to be standing there watching my son in his school play. I make my way over to the side of the gym which is closer to Giuio’s class and where I see a mom I know, and after about 15 minutes I see Lorenzo come through the door with Livia. He has made it in time, and somehow, once again, we have pulled it off.

Of Trees and Turkeys

So it is Thanksgiving Day here. Sunny, cold, just the right day for cooking and eating an enormous meal. Only I have to work today, and honestly where I am, people could care less that it is Thanksgiving in the US. I got a few comments here at work, had I brought a turkey (no—I don’t force my cooking on non-family members, especially Italian non family member who probably have excellent recipes for turkey that would be much better than anything I could prepare.) Was I making a turkey tonight (no), and lastly, had I gotten up early that morning to prepare a turkey? No.
The thing is, I love Thanksgiving. I have very happy Thanksgiving memories from when I was kid, excluding one unfortunate incident involving cornbread when I was 11. When I first came to Italy I made Thanksgiving dinner two years running to rave reviews, from Italians no less, who ate every bite offered to them, albeit the second year my guests were two policeman colleagues of Lorenzo’s who were living in the barracks at the time. I imagine any food that had been reheated would have been met with enthusiasm by them. A year later I got married over Thanksgiving weekend in Rome, if that is an excuse not to cook dinner, I don’t know what is. And then the year after Giulio was here, barely six weeks old and nursing constantly, and I was so sleep deprived at that point that if Lorenzo had so much as mentioned stuffed turkey I would have thrown something. In 2004, no. I have no excuse, I just didn’t do Thanksgiving. In 2005 I somehow pulled off a miracle and managed to prepare dinner on a weeknight, but Giulio was in bed and fast asleep before we even sat down to eat. In 2006 we were in the States, and yes, I enjoyed every minute, but what Giulio remembers I couldn’t tell you, much less Livia who was only 3 months old at the time.

My point is that despite my strong desire to give my children these important holiday memories, I find I tend to lack this conviction when it comes down to actually creating these memories. It can be said that Thanksgiving is more than bunging a stuffed bird in the oven and setting the table. It is about coming together with friends and family, that wonderful feeling of knowing that the next day you don’t have to go to work, and that moment of release when you give in to eating as much as you want, including seconds on dessert. For some reason the idea of me stuffing and roasting a turkey and sitting down to eat it only with Giulio and Livia (Lorenzo is working on Saturday evening and my friends who could be considered potential guests are busy), Giulio who would probably refuse the stuffing just on sight and Livia would take a few bites before following Giulio’s example and refusing the stuffing too, seems so removed from my Thanksgiving memories as a kid that as much as I want to give my children holiday memories, I don’t want to give them THAT holiday memory. Mommy tense and preoccupied all day, serving dinner and then weeping when her children take only a few bites before declaring they want yoghurt or that they are full. Daddy at work, and the grandparents and uncles are on the phone from across the Atlantic. No, no, no.

Yet what is wrong with me that I don’t want to make this effort? Just today the discussion moved to Christmas and were we going to do a tree this year. We have done a tree every year, even though finding a real Christmas tree in Italy is no easy feat. They always end up being the size of a small bush and come in a pot, so you can plant it after Christmas. Which I always mean to do, but I keep putting it off and then one day you go down to the yard and it is suddenly dead overnight in its pot in the same spot where you left it on January 2nd after lugging it down three flights of stairs, dropping needles everywhere, cursing the whole time and wondering why you so stubbornly insist on a real tree year after year as opposed to a fake one which would just go back in its box.

This Christmas is a little different as it will be the first one for me in eight years where none of my family members are here, and so we have decided to go up to the Dolomites and stay in my boss’s vacation home (without my boss) for Christmas, just the four of us. In any case it seems silly to do a tree, to keep shooing Livia away from the ornaments when its grand purpose (to accessorize and highlight all the gifts around it on Christmas morning) won’t be fulfilled if we aren’t there on the morning of the 25th. Lorenzo said something about buying a fake tree, and then admitted that what he really wanted to buy was a nativity scene like they always did in his family and set that up instead. So that is what they are doing, Lorenzo and the kids went this morning and bought the figurines, the fake grass, the blue starry background, and whatever else you need when you make a nativity scene and they are going to set it up while Livia takes her nap, right in the place where the tree usually goes. The whole thing is supposed to be a surprise for me for when I get home. Giulio (who I saw because I came home for lunch) was so excited but I know THIS is the kind of thing he will remember, what will shape his childhood. I guess next year, and hoping that my parents or my brother can come over, I will insist on the tree again, and it can sit next to the Nativity Scene. At the same time I just feel guilty. Put the headline over my head, “Mom Too Tired to Create Holiday Memories for her Kids”, and ask me why I’m not fighting harder. Maybe because I know deep down as hard as I try what Giulio and Livia will remember as kids is dressing up for Carnivale and throwing confetti, or opening a giant egg on Easter instead of Easter baskets, or in this case for Giulio, a wonderful afternoon with his daddy setting up a nativity scene. They live in Italy, they are Italians. But next year I swear we will bring back the tree and we will decorate it together.

As I was leaving to go back to work Lorenzo got out torrone for the kids to eat, it’s a Christmas candy that comes from Cremona, and the kids were happily chomping away around the table. I noticed that he is so much calmer with the kids than I am, and that they in turn are calmer too. The house was a mess as we had just had lunch and the floors were dirty in the way they get when the kids are home all day, and somehow, unlike me who would be thinking about what had to be done next, how I was going to clean everything up and should I do it before, during, or after Livia’s nap. Lorenzo was just in the moment with the kids, laughing as Livia tried to cram her more candy into her mouth. Is it just me? Are all busy moms mentally five jobs ahead of the one they are currently doing? I don’t know, but on Saturday when I am home we are going to sit in the kitchen and eat torrone again, and I won’t worry or care about all the ironing piled up in my closet, the laundry sitting in the washing machine, or my job patiently awaiting me on Monday.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Be Careful What you Wish For-You Might Just Get It.

I'm sitting here at the computer, typing. Except for the dog barking in my neighbor's yard it is silence. No giggling, no wailing, no sound of an open palm coming into contact with someone else's head. There are no crumbs on my floor, no one is asking me for a snack, or wanting to know if we can play with the play-doh cause this time they promise they won't break it into little pieces and throw it around the kitchen. No, today I've got what I have I prayed for on so many endless, grey Sundays: a day to myself. No, the kids aren't at a birthday party (that was yesterday) or enjoying an afternoon down at the neighbors, instead they have gone all the way to Rome with Lorenzo to spend a week with their grandparents so that mommy can go to a convention for work and not be missed too much. Somehow the stars have aligned and I have won the prize, I get to miss out on a stressful week with children suffering from over permessive grandparent overload in the uncomfortable presence of my in-laws (though I am missing the chance to eat pizza in my old neighborhood in Rome). Instead I am here, in my clean house and in two days I have to go to Monte Carlo and stay in a four star hotel, and do whatever it is that people do at conventions, and yet, I'm not lying on my couch stretched out and thinking, "this is the life." Instead I am pacing around the house and watching the clock as time crawls by, if I smoked I would be puffing away like someone on an episode of "Mad Men".

I was totally not expecting this. When I told my friend Karin on Wednesday that I was going to get two days to myself she told me that she would kill to have a day to herself, she would kill at least a spider or a small rodent to have that, and I knew what she meant. I can still remember back in March when I went to Germany how I LOVED that one morning waking up by myself, taking a bath (in the morning!) and getting me, myself, and I ready to go without having to coax anyone out of their pajamas, or scrape soggy cereal bits out of a highchair seat. Instead this morning after tearful goodbye with my children who were more interested in the DVD already playing on the car player to really look at me or wonder why mommy was sniffling in their ears as she gave them kisses, I found I no longer felt like spending the morning in bed.

I went back into the house and proceeded to clean the kitchen, go running, read the New York Times, make beds, start to pack my suitcase, run a load of laundry through the dryer, fold it, eat lunch, run another load through the washer and hang it up outside, iron a mountain of clothes, give myself a face mask, leg wax, file and buff my nails, polish my boots, finish packing my suitcase for my trip, and still get in three episodes of The Wire. All before four o'clock. I can't concentrate on any books, the though of giving a whole movie my attention seems exhausting. It seems that not only am I not used to being alone, I am not used to being able to concentrate on something for more than 10 minutes at a time. A desperate message to my brother (who is very good at enjoying the benefits of being a young man without a wife or small children) to call me has gone ignored, I guess because he is probably still sleeping, it is only around 11 am in New York right now.

Lorenzo called at 2:30 to tell me that they got there OK, and he put the kids on the phone, Livia with her typical husky "Hi Mommy" made me choke up, while Giulio's breezy announcement that they were going to have pasta for lunch made me want to climb through the fun and hug him. And it has only been a few hours. I realize that the noise, the crumbs, the tears, the mess, the hugs and kisses, the voice in my ear at 6 am asking for food are as much of a part of me as breathing. I know I could get used to this, this being alone, putting something down and coming back an hour later and finding it in the same place, but today it is hard. At the same time it is nice to know that for how much I complain, the frustration I often feel when I am on my own with the kids for days at a time, that in the end it is exactly what I want. That honestly (except for these four days in Monte Carlo) I wouldn't want it any other way.

Fear of Flying

First of all it is official, Giulio did NOT damage Ermanno’s car, or if he did, they aren’t telling us. I called Theresa twice last week and sent one text message asking about the car and each time I got an “It’s FINE, Claire.” Then they invited us out to dinner on Saturday night and I remember thinking that they can’t hate us that much if they still want to have dinner. They drove Theresa’s car though, not Ermanno’s and went we got to the restaurant I joked that they had decided it would be safer to bring the other car since Giulio was going to be there. Ermanno responded by playfully punching me lightly on the arm and telling me to stop it, so if he can smile and laugh about it when I joke around then I guess we are OK.(Insert sound of exhaling here.)
My vacation looms on the horizon. On Friday I will be on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic ocean trying to keep Livia from dumping a half frozen Little Debby Cherry dessert cake into my lap. To be honest, I still haven’t mentally prepared for the flight. By now I should just know that it will be long, uncomfortable, and horrible and just go with it, but like a runner preparing for a marathon, I need to be mentally prepared for when I hit the 18th mile and I want to stop. Except that on an airplane what am I going to do if I want to stop? Perhaps I will just rise from my seat, dump Livia in the lap of the stranger sitting next to me and go hide out in the bathroom for the rest of the flight, knocking back mini bottles of vodka stolen from the Business class trolley, ignoring the screams of my children calling to me from the front of the plane, or the flight attendant pounding on the door.

At any rate before I can begin reflecting on the flying part I have one million logistical questions running through my head: Where to leave the car for three weeks (answer: at the police station at the Malpensa airport, thus avoiding paying for three weeks of parking worth roughly the cost of our entire trip to the States.) And will we be able to eat our way through all the food that is lurking in our fridge and freezer? Judging from a general inventory taken last night, cheese and hot dogs will feature prominently on our menu for the next week, along with popsicles and breakfast cereal. Except that Livia won’t eat hotdogs and Giulio is rather hit or miss with them, eating them some days and snubbing them on others. And finally we come down to the Big Debate, is it better to pack sooner or later. I’m a last minute kind of girl, I always pack the day before for fear of leaving something out while Lorenzo would pack a month in advance if he could, except that there is no where to keep a fully packed suitcase in our bedroom. Neither of us is a light packer either, though I have made great strides in recent years when coming to the States to leave most of my clothes in Italy because no matter how much I swear up and down that this time I won’t go overboard shopping, my first day back always finds me at Target, dazzled by the low prices, buying cute summer clothes even though I don’t think I need them, and then the rest of my clothes just hang in the closet for the whole trip waiting for me to take them home again.
The other thing I promise every year is that we won’t go overboard bringing people gifts. Every year we spend hundreds of dollars bringing back t-shirts and cute kids clothes for various friends and colleagues, which is a nice way to say thank you to people for all the times they lend us a hand, and in fact I ask my girlfriends if they need anything in particular for their kids. But sometimes it gets out of hand, with us buying numerous gifts for people in Lorenzo’s office, many of whom say thank you and then proceed to be the same jerks that they always have been. Plus, in all the years of us bringing gifts I can think of one time when someone actually brought us something back, which is fine, but the fact that I have to go broke taking things back for people that I only see on the odd occasions when I go to Lorenzo’s office—no thank you.
I started packing on Saturday, but other than Livia having 10 million dresses that she has never worn and needs to wear in the next month or otherwise will never get to wear them, we don’t have a lot of clothes to bring. What is taking up a lot of room are bottles of blueberry infused grappa that I have been nuts about ever since I went to Bolzano for the first time two years ago and therefore feel that everyone should be as nuts about it as I am and therefore want some as a gift, limoncello, and various other goodies, most of which are in glass jars. My biggest fears are 1) the bottles breaking and leaving the mother of all stains on our clothing and that we will have to take our bags off the baggage carousel with grappa dripping out of the side and b) that customs will stop us and accuse us of trying to bring in the contents of an entire liquor store illegally into the US.
I guess it will depend on who is carrying the bags, my bets are on my husband. Lorenzo, who is not a US citizen and therefore always goes through the line at immigration, who speaks heavily accented English always gets these teddy bear immigration officers, men who stamp his passport and make pleasant chit-chat, comment favourably on the fact that he is Italian, and then wish him a pleasant stay in the United States. Then there is me, who is always slightly overcome with emotion when we land, excited to be back in my homeland, thrilled to be hearing people speaking English, and I always get these total grumps. Men who barely glance up from my passport and when they do they make me nervous that they aren’t going to let me into the country. Standing before them, juggling babies in my arms along with the 50 back packs we always carry (At JFK they won’t give you your stroller back when you get off the plane. You have to go through customs and baggage claim before you can get it,) I feel about 2 feet tall and like I have just tried to sneak into the US crossing over the border from Mexico. In the eight years of going back and forth I have gotten one “Welcome home” and 10 “Next!” It is the passengers themselves that make me remember why I love coming home. Almost two years ago I flew to the US alone with Giulio who had just turned 3 and Livia was barely 3 months (just writing that makes me feel tired) and I must have looked so pathetic, so bedraggled I had people rushing up to help me from when I got off the plane in NYC until I collapsed in my parent’s arms at the airport in Cincinnati. There was the woman who carried two of my bags and Giulio’s carseat down to immigration for me, the two girls who helped me haul my luggage from baggage claim over to where the baggage for connecting flights needs to go, and best of all, the airline CAPTAIN who asked me when we arrived in Cincinnati if I needed any help getting myself and the kids to where we were staying. It’s people like this that keep me flying, let’s hope there are a few good ones on the flight on Friday, and maybe this time I'll get a cuddly (and handsome) immigration officer who will let me sit on his lap while he stamps my passports and will have the band strike up as I move from immigration into baggage claim, with airport employees singing and helping me on my way like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz when she set off from Munchkin Land to OZ. Or maybe I should just hope that the grappa bottles all get there in one piece.

The Rock

This weekend we did something quite unusual for our family: we took a mini vacation staying at a bed and breakfast in the mountains north of Brescia, though I didn’t organize the weekend away, my friend Theresa did. She and her family have these pleasant organized weekends away sprinkled throughout the year; a winter weekend skiing in Madonna di Campiglio, a fall weekend where we all go to Bolzano where her husband Ermanno did his military service, and two summer weekends, one away at the beach in Chioggia, which is below Venice, and then this weekend in the mountains. All are held at the exact same time each year, the trip to Bolzano is always the third weekend in October, with the same activities followed each time. It is nice to visit a place with people who know it well, that way you are sure that you really are eating at the best restaurants and seeing the most interesting things and Eramanno’s family is so functional that his parents and his aunt and her husband and Ermanno’s cousin and his girlfriend all come along too and no one ever argues or sulks. Best of all they take our children, with their sudden need to eat or use the bathroom or feel tired or flip out in stride without so much as blinking an eye, which is really saying something for as much as I enjoy these weekends I’m exhausted by the end, so I can’t imagine how all of Ermanno’s relatives cope. I like to joke that a weekend with us must be the best form of birth control there is, three boys squabbling over Thomas the Tank Engine and Livia refusing to sit for more than the first course, that Ermanno’s cousin and his girlfriend must drive away after these weekends vowing never to have sex again.
This weekend, which was the first time that we had done this particular trip with Theresa and her family, involved a lot of eating and some limited hiking and long strolls around the town. And more eating. It was the weekend of the Palio, which immediately draws to mind the horse race in Siena that runs around main piazza in town, but up north apparently there are no horse races, though the town was divided into various colored teams. What does happen is a cheese race, where the teams one by one chase an enormous wheel of cheese down the main road that runs through the city center, two men with sticks running along next to it to help steer it and keep it moving, while four or five fellow team mates run behind carrying banners, cheering, and offering moral support. Along the race course people hold lit torches, and the only thing missing is a few pitchforks to make the group seem like one of those angry mobs you seen in old Frankenstein movies.
It was a good weekend, despite the less the ideal weather, mostly because it was pleasantly cool as opposed to the oppressive heat down where we live and because the food was good and there was plenty of wine and after-dinner grappa. But Giulio managed to make the weekend come to a screeching halt with a true “what WERE you thinking!!??” moment. Saturday night after dinner we decided to go back into town to take the kids on the bumper cars and to see if anything was happening in the center for the Palio. Lorenzo offered to stay at the B&B with Livia, who was exhausted at this point, and Ermanno’s parents and aunt and uncle. I was glad to be going down with just Giulio, he is often at his best when it is just me and him, though perhaps the fact that we had Theresa, Ermanno, their two boys, and Ermanno’s cousin with girlfriend, didn’t really mean it was just me and him. Giulio and I piled into Ermanno’s new Citroen 4x4, and drove down the treacherous hill leading up to the B&B and into town.
Ermanno had bought the car a few months before, after a long and weighty search for the perfect family car combined with Theresa’s desire to have a 4x4. Apparently you can take the girl our of America, but you can’t take America out of the girl. This particular model comes with all the trimmings: leather interior, DVD players, and video camera to help you see better when you back the car up. When he had got the car we had all gone out to their garage to check it out, Lorenzo and Ermanno talking gas milage and how much of a discount the dealership had given them, me thinking how great it would be to have a car in Italy that holds seven passengers for when my parents come to visit.
Parking that evening was tight and we had to park further out than anticipated, but we managed to find a spot, and I helped Giulio out of the backseat, gave him a kiss and we walked up the tiny ridge where we had parked to where the road was. I was standing there with Giulio next to me with the car about 3 feet below us, and I was talking to Theresa as the others piled out of the cars and got the stroller open when I suddenly realized that Giulio has just thrown a rock. It was one of those moments where everything seems to move in slow motion. The rock left Giulio’s hand and seems to stay suspended in the air, as Theresa and I both cried out in unison: “Nooooooooo!” We watched as the rock completed its long arced flight before hitting the shiny roof of the car with a solid THUNK. I looked at Giulio a second in disbelief before swatting him on the butt and then running over to the car. I didn’t see anything, just a little bit of dust, but it was dusk and hard to see, especially as the roof the car was just above eye level. “How could you?” I yelled at Giulio, and then the phrase I always swore I would never say: “What were you thinking?” Giulio just looked down at the ground. “How many times have I told you not to throw rocks??” Anger and disbelief had left me sounded like a combination of a wronged ex girlfriend and someone who needs parenting classes. Giulio continued to look at the ground, and I realized that Theresa had gone over and was talking to Ermanno. He said nothing, didn’t even look in our direction, just loaded their younger son in the stroller and started walking up the hill towards the center. We all followed, Giulio trailing dejectedly at the back behind Ermanno’s cousin. All I could do was apologize over and over to Theresa and then to Ermanno who simply smiled weakly and kept pushing the stroller. I told Theresa we would pay for whatever damage had been caused, an offer which she just waved away, but then went on to tell me that when she had told Ermanno what had happened he had said he needed to be alone, and then added, “I don’t know what to tell you Claire, I mean, I think he loves that car more than he loves me!”
If I could have I would have just taken Giulio and gone home, but somehow I didn’t think Ermanno would let me take their car for the ride back. We were stuck. My stomach churned. What if Giulio had caused hundred of euros of damage? What if it they wouldn’t let us pay for it, but were still so angry about it that eventually we couldn’t be friends anymore? Theresa is one of my best friends here, Italian yet American, and her husband was a prince, a truly great guy who Lorenzo really liked as well, and our boys got along so well. Was all this about to go down the drain because Giulio couldn’t fight the urge to throw rocks? I knew he hadn’t meant to hit Ermanno’s car, I knew he had just picked up the rock and thrown it out of pure four year old impulse, that it was bad aim and poor judgement and not pure delinquency that had caused him to do so. But it seems like we were risking a lot for pure impulse. I also knew that if it was MY car and my friend’s son had damaged it I would be pretty steamed too.
We stood in front of the bumper cars as Theresa’s two boys drove happily around the rink, Giulio standing solemnly next to me, having been banned from the rides. He eventually went over to Theresa and leaned against her leg and said sorry, before creeping over to Ermanno and saying he was sorry again. I saw Ermanno lean down and say something to him before Giulio came back over to me. “What did he tell you?” I asked. “He told me not to throw rocks.”
Over the next hour Ermanno thawed. He never said a word about it, but not more than 45 minutes after the Event, he and Giulio were walking hand and hand down the street, Giulio talking animatedly. Right before we headed back to the B&B Theresa gave me the thumbs up. “He knows Giulio didn’t do it on purpose, I also told him how awful you felt, and that you hadn’t seen any damage to the car. He’s OK, really.” When we got back to the car it there was thunder rumbling in the distance, the sky was lit up with lightening. Giulio squeezed my hand and whimpered that he was scared. “Don’t be scared of the lightening,” I said “Be scared of what your dad is going to say when he sees you.” As we all piled into the car I noticed that Ermanno didn’t even glance at the roof, which I had checked again for any possible damage, but still hadn’t seen anything. I would look again in the morning.
The next morning I got up to go running early before everyone else was up, and I checked over the whole roof and still saw nothing. Who knows what happened or what Citroen uses to make their roofs but it looks like this time Giulio got lucky. More importantly Ermanno is no longer mad, and Giulio knows not to throw rocks EVER, so perhaps this whole thing as upsetting as it was made such an impression on him that he really won’t ever throw rocks again. Or maybe not.
At home there was the less pleasant side of going away to deal with: doing all the laundry that you couldn’t do while you were away. As we unloaded the suitcase and the one million backpacks that we always seem to have to take with us for diapers, extra shoes, snack food, and water bottles from the car, the kids ran to the fence to call Babyface’s dog over. I also went to take the garbage out to the curb and as I headed back toward the house Livia came towards me smiling, and when I saw her I threw open my arms and she ran towards me laughing, her arms raised. When I picked her up she tightened her arms around my neck and then turned her head and lay it on my shoulder, and as I stood there I realized that right now this is all she really needs to be happy, a hug from mommy and she is set, and one day it won’t be so easy, that one day a hug from me will be the last thing that she wants. And I reminded myself yet again that I shouldn’t be in such a hurry for this exhausting stage to pass, that one day Giulio won’t throw rocks and Livia will be able to sit through a four course meal but they will want a lot more than just a hug from me. Sometimes in my hurry for time to pass I forget to try and make it stand still, at least for a moment. Yesterday evening, standing there with my daughter in my arms I let the clock stand still for a moment.

Thanks Kristin!

Just a special thanks to Kristin, my friend and amazing graphic artist for making me this fabulous heading!

The Crocodile Hunter

I sit at my computer trying to compose an email. Not just any email, an e-mail in Italian that explains that I will be coming back to work from my vacation a day later than I had originally stated.
Just to make things clear, I do speak Italian-well in fact. There are days when I speak only Italian, with the exception of when I am talking to my children. My husband and I speak Italian together. I can be speaking to my father on the phone in English while at the same time speaking to Lorenzo and I can forget which language I am speaking. I speak Italian at work. I dream in Italian. I forget what is the correct English translation of a word or phrase that I completely understand when said in Italian. So, yes, my level of speaking and comprehension is high. Writing however is another matter. As with most languages, Italian is not spoken as it is written, in fact unlike English where less is more, in Italian, more is always more. An Italian sentence uncoils and unravels and continues without a period in sight long after a period would be necessary in English, commas don’t go where they go in English, in fact at this point I have pretty much been frightened off commas all together.
Plus I don’t fear making mistakes when speaking. A spoken mistake is there for a moment, and as long as no one blows coffee out of their nose for the absurdity of what was said (which I have been known to do for various mistakes made in English by Italians), you go on. The error has vanished, no one can pin it down, or hold it against you. No one has to know that you aren’t exactly sure where the apostrophe goes, or if the article has one L or two. No one knows how ignorant you really are. But when it’s written on the page, it’s there for all your colleagues to snicker at. I imagine them reading my little messages, “I can’t believe she thought the accent went there.” Or, “Honestly, doesn’t she know that it is written with two m’s instead of one?” I shudder to think. I have improved. I think of how much trouble I had as little as six months ago and I feel better, but still there are things that bother me. One thing is that it is hard for me to judge my tone in emails written in Italian. Do I come across and friendly and professional, rude and shrill, or simply prim? If anything I sound like my colleague because she is the one who edits them for mistakes and tells me different ways of saying things.
I crave correspondence for English speakers. Writing emails in English has become my new secret pleasure, the choice of words there before me, like an apple tree weighed down with lush, ripe fruit, and I stand below it, choosing and discarding until I have the sentence exactly as I want it. No tense is too difficult, no punctuation too confusing. Like easing my Cadillac down a newly paved highway with extra wide lanes, I settle down with complete ease and confidence as I write to our clients, sure of my tone and my ability to say something without actually saying anything at all, a skill that I’m learning is crucial in the business world. I’m feel like the Bill Shakespeare of e-mails.
On a completely different subject, I’ve become Croc obsessed, about three years after everyone else. Don’t worry, before anyone reminds me how silly adults look in them I would like to add that I don’t want them for me for me but for my kids. It all started yesterday when Lorenzo spent his day off in the mountains with Giulio. Let’s just pause and think about that sentence for a second. Lorenzo used his day off to bond with his son in the peace and fresh air of the Alps. What do I do on my days off? Housework and childcare and waiting around for Lorenzo to get off work so I can actually DO something on my days off. If I had a free Friday, a day when both children have the nido or school, I would use it to do housework, iron, grocery shopping, and squeezing a nice long run in there somewhere so I could then try and enjoy Saturday with the kids without having to do any errands. I am so grouchy on a Saturday, trying to clean my house while two children do their best in the meantime to mess it up again. Rather like bailing water out of a sinking rowboat. No sooner have I vacuumed the living room than the kids are asking for a snack, which is eaten in the kitchen but somehow manages to spread crumbs throughout the house again. I sound like your typical bitchy housewife by noon, all I’m missing are the curlers and the fuzzy slippers. “Don’t sit there! I just vacuumed!” “No Livia, don’t touch the windows I just wash them!’ “Giulio, get in here and clean up these toys! I do nothing but clean up after you kids!” And so on and so forth. Lorenzo in the meantime came how glowing about his day alone with Giulio, all the interesting things they talked about, how bright Giulio is, and how sweet he is too. Yeah, I can imagine, I wouldn’t personally know because 90% of my time with Giulio is spent along with Livia which is fine, but it doesn’t give us a lot of talking, one on one time. I intend to make Giulio-me time a priority so I too can be privy to all the neat things that Giulio shares when the pace slows down and his sister isn’t around.
But Lorenzo came back with a pair of knockoff Crocs for Giulio , he picked them up somewhere between here and the Alps for about 10 euros. They are blue with a yellow strap and Giulio loves them. Livia loves them too. She was actually the first person to try them on when they got home, showing us how nice they looked on her feet. The shoes have now become a bone of contention between the rightful owner Giulio and the wistful wanna-be Crocs owner Livia. Lorenzo bought them for Giulio for when he goes to the swimming pool at day camp, but I quickly realized that Giulio wouldn’t be content to just wear them at the pool. As he lay on the couch watching cartoons while Livia was taking a nap he asked me if he could wear his new shoes to school. Andrea has a pair, as does Marco. Andrea’s are blue, Marco’s are yellow. I realized I was going to have to find another pair of pool shoes for Giulio, and while I was at it, another pair of faux Crocs for Livia.
I could kick myself about this whole Croc thing. We have spent two whole summers in the States with every child under the age of 12 running around wearing Crocs, real and knockoff, finding the stores full of the shoes, my father even had a pair to wear to take the garbage out in, but I had been put off on spending 30 bucks on shoes for the kids, especially shoes that I thought would be considered too ugly for words back in Italy. Then suddenly around a year ago I started seeing Crocs at the mall for adults for about 50 euros and now suddenly this summer is shaping up to be Croc summer here in Italy as far as kids are concerned. I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to find a cheap pair of knockoffs for Livia, I had seem them everywhere lately, though Livia didn’t really need them, I had already got here a neat pair of sandals for 8 bucks on Landsend.com clearance.
I drove to the slightly sketchy mall about 15 minutes from our house, full of discount stores and parents with children even more hyper than mine. I found Giulio another pair of pool sandals, 10 euros and a new pair of running shorts for me, but I didn’t see anything resembling Crocs. Then all the way on the other side of the mall there was a store that sold shoes, umbrellas, and luggage, and according to the display outside the door, something called Mox. Things were looking up. We went into the store and I asked the woman if they carried any of these Croc-like things in a toddler size. Livia wore the smallest size they had, which came in blue or army camouflage, which was fine, what wasn’t fine was when I asked the price they told me 21 euros. Uh no. Not when I can get the actual thing for less than that in the States. Or if Lorenzo knows a good place where they sell them for 10. I left the store cursing under my breath about all the times I passed the racks of Crocs that they have at malls in Cincinnati without even looking at a pair. I know there are women who are ethically opposed to Crocs. They are ugly, they are expensive, they can be dangerous on escalators. While I like my kids to look nice, I also want them to be comfortable, and when possible, independent. Giulio can already put on his own shoes, but suddenly the thought of being able to say “Kids! Let’s put our shoes on and go!” And then 30 seconds later they would have their shoes on and we would be out the door is super appealing to me. Also kids look cute in anything, even ugly shoes. Now I’m trying to calculate the equation of: Is worth it to beg my mom to buy Livia a pair and have her mail them to me vs. the cost of trying to keep the peace with my children every time the Crocs/Mox/Lox shoes come out until August when I can buy them a pair in the States.
How does one quantify such an equation? How does one determine these values? And once again, how did I manage to completely miss the boat on this trend, leaving me high and Croc-less heading in summer?

Notes from a Domestic Goddess

I'm clowning around in the living room with Lorenzo and the TV is on when I think I hear music, not music from the TV but live music. I mute the TV and I hear the music again, it's a brass marching band playing in the street, followed by a procession of people, and then they stop playing and I hear one voice praying over a microphone, it's a church procession heading somewhere at 9pm, complete with a band, five priests, nuns, and parishioners including children, many of whom are carrying candles. The procession is topped off by a Carabinieri car with its lights flashing following slowly behind. The priest finishes his prayer and the band strikes up again and the procession heads on down the road. I didn't see Sig.ra Pala today so she couldn't tell me about the procession, which I am sure she took full part in, probably carrying the priest's microphone or something. Lorenzo asked me why we never go to the things like that, silent church processions around the neighborhood with our children in the soft darkness, and I point out that Giulio would ask to be carried on Lorenzo's shoulders within a block of the church and Livia would want to get out of her stroller and would be so whacked out by 9pm that she would be unbearable. We'll go when the kids are older, I tell Lorenzo, i.e. when they can carry their own candles without accidentally setting themselves on fire. We'll have plenty of opportunities, they do these procession around four or five times a year. Don Vincenzo it seems, is a fan.

The other morning I'm wiping down the kitchen counter before heading out the door to go to work and I tell Giulio to get his rain coat on because we are about to go. "Are we going to America?" he asks, making me wish that going to America was as easy as telling Giulio to brush his teeth and get his coat on. You can't blame him, it is getting to be summer and summer to me means sweating it out in the midwest as I dash from parking lots into over air conditioned discount stores. We spend all year talking about what we will do when we get to the States and who we will see and what we will buy that Giulio knows that one morning I will turn to him and tell him to get his shoes on and that will be THE morning that we are flying out. We won't be going until August though and "only" for three weeks, so my summer is still a long way off, leaving me for the first time to have to organize summer activities for Giulio. Livia is covered, her daycare closes the day before we leave for the States so she is fine, except for one week after we get back and I'm hoping to work something out with Terry for when I will be back at work, but Giulio is set. I didn't know this but apparently our town runs its own day camp for kids from the second year of preschool up to middle school. Theresa told me about it, you pay for what weeks you want to send your kid and it's open all of July and August (Giulio's school closes at the end of June), except for the week of Ferragosto when everyone and their mother is on vacation in Italy. The camp also offers extended day, and is open til 6pm, which really makes my life easy as it is also around the corner from Livia's daycare so I can get both kids at the same time without worrying about making it in time from work. And lunch is included. So how much is this camp, with ex-day and food included costing us? 37 euros a week. Yes, that is right, 37 euros a week. I love it when I feel like my taxes are actually paying for something that I use, instead of trying to remind myself of that fact when I see the city paving the roads or something boring but extremely useful like that. So Giulio will go for all of July and then one week in August after we come back from the States. Here's hoping he likes it!

Last week a colleague of Lorenzo whose daughter is two years older than Livia gave him a bag of hand-me-down clothes for her. I like hand-me-downs, and I always welcome new-to-us clothes for my kids, but I’m afraid that Livia won’t be wearing these. Not because I don’t like them, but because I am unable to replicate the ironing and folding job that this woman did before sending them over. Amazing. I doubt a Chinese laundry could do better. This isn’t the first time I have been given clothes for Livia (no one had any boys clothes to pass on to me) that I gratefully accepted and then promptly put in my closet until the necessary amount of months had passed so I could send them back. First of all, there is no way I can do such beautiful ironing. I have this shameful scene in my mind of giving the woman the baby clothes back, thanking her for letting Livia wear them, and her telling me that it was no problem, really. Cut to the woman a few hours later in her own home unpacking the bag and tsk-tsk-ing over my shoddy ironing and folding. She would take the clothes and wash them and iron them again, sighing and rueing the day she ever lent them to me, before carefully putting them back into storage for some other friend’s baby. I would feel awful about making someone do extra work on my account, but at the same time it annoys me that lending me clothes will ultimately cause more work for me. The few pieces that I let Livia wear, the ones I felt confident enough to iron, I was constantly worrying about removing all the stains in a way that I never am with clothes I bought myself. It also seems silly to me to send the clothes back, because by the time something has been worn heavily by two or three toddlers, well, you really don’t want to pass it on again. In the States the idea is always you take the hand-me-downs, use them, and then pass them on to another person you know who needs them. Instead here the idea is that you eventually give them back, unless otherwise stated. I gave all of Giulio’s clothes away to Terry and let her do what she wanted with them, as along with Alessandro she has several nephews younger than Giulio who more than glad to take his Gap cast-offs and keep them from taking up space in my storage room.

As a final note, we had the blinds put up in the veranda. I wasn’t there for it, thank God, but apparently the man came and put them up himself. Which shows how scaring the whole door incident in the cantina was for Lorenzo, that he let this project be done by someone else. I was so sure I would have to spend a stressful morning holding the ladder, handing Lorenzo tools while listening to him swear that I can hardly believe I got off so easy. I came home for lunch that day and found lunch ready and the new blinds hanging in the windows. They look great by the way, I still can’t believe we kept the old ones for as long as we did. And despite being spooked by working on the cantina he now thinks that fixing up it up is the best thing he has ever done. He has the bench press down there, along with a TV and he mounted some kind of desk to the wall. I joke that he is slowly moving his things down there so he can live down there permanently, except that my parents think we should keep it free for them for when they come. My mother thinks that despite that it’s a three flight walk up to the nearest bathroom, (though they could do it ala’ Sig. Piero and just pee in the garden,) and the fact that I would have to lock them in at night when they go to sleep, she’s convinced that we now have a great guest room for when they come and visit. Yeah, I can just imagine that conversation.
“So Claire, where do you parents sleep when they come visit? In your room?”
“No, we’ve found a great solution, we have them sleep in the storage room in the basement. It’s amazing what a few tiles can do for a room. They can’t believe we waited as long as we did. It's every New Yorker's dream--finding a room in your house that you didn't know existed.”

The Days of the Door

Lorenzo, hoping for early admission to sainthood used his day off two weeks ago to completely empty the cantina as part of our ongoing saga of redoing the storage room. It sat empty for a few days while Lorenzo drew plans of where all the shelves, the dryer, and his not yet bought weight bench would go. He also met with Eugenio’s dad to talk tiles, and one morning they drove to a tile “outlet” where they got some pretty terra cotta tiles based on my request for something matched what we have on the garage floor. Eugenio’s dad lives on the other side of our fence in his little white villa on land that he bought when our neighbourhood was just fields and is now worth about 20 times what he paid for it. He tiled our bathroom for the previous owners, tiled the kitchen for us, and now would be tiling the cantina floor.
For reasons lost in the mist of time I call him Babyface, not to his face mind you, but behind his back to Lorenzo. Even Lorenzo calls him Babyface when referring to him in conversation and it is difficult sometimes to keep from calling it out when I see him across the fence tending to his lawn. His is a spry man, slightly stooped and always busy, either chopping wood for his fireplace, tending to his plants, or driving up to the mountains at the crack of dawn to hunt for wild mushrooms and returning home before 10am. In other words, Babyface is a true Old School Italian. Though he looks rather frail, appearances are deceiving because he tiled and chalked the cantina floor in less than two days, including splitting tiles to make the baseboards, and without so much as a sore back. On Sunday, the day after taking my mom who was visiting for the week to Salò , we left her with the kids and Lorenzo and I painted the cantina with white paint leftover from 3 years ago when we painted our apartment when we moved in. Lorenzo washed the floor four times, twice with regular floor cleaner and twice with vinegar as Babyface told him it is the best way to get all that cement grit off the floor. Suddenly, with its new tiled floor and white walls the cantina was transformed. Sunlight poured in through the window. No longer a dungeon filled with dust, it was suddenly light and airy, and best of all, clean, looking more like a monk’s cell, though certainly bigger, or at least a pleasant basement apartment.
(Sorry, the mention of the monk’s cell made me think of something. Years ago when I was living in Rome, before I was married or had kids I had a job where I helped company execs relocate to Italy for work. I had this rather difficult client who wanted a beautiful home in the center of Rome, something unusual with a large terrace and didn’t want to pay more than 1000 euros a month for it, back when the euro was 86 cents to the dollar. Anyway, I called agencies all over Rome looking for an apartment to please this woman and I was nearing despair when I stumbled upon an apartment in the center, just off of the Circus Maximus, with the requisite number of bedrooms and square meters that this woman had requested. Once upon a time it had been part of a convent for nuns, but with the nuns long gone the remaining part had been turned into an apartment, and my boss told me it was the fabled unicorn of apartments, rumoured to exist, it would briefly appear on the market only to be immediately snapped up and disappear again. The client went to see it, she loved it, loved the location, thought the place was beautiful. In the end however she decided against it because, as she told me over the phone, the bedrooms were too small! Unfortunately for her most nuns don’t go in for large bedroom sets.)
I was pleased with our sunny monk’s cell and went to bed optimistic. On Monday Lorenzo had the day off and the plan was that he would put together the shelves that would go in the cantina and start organizing where we wanted to put things. Then he read on-line that IKEA was having a super sale, large plastic storage containers at 2 euros a pop, something that he couldn’t stop himself from driving to IKEA and buying, taking my mother along for the ride. I knew it would be tough to do all the things he had planned for one day, but I knew Lorenzo could do it. After all, what were some metal shelves and a trip to IKEA in the face of my husband’s raw determination? I found out at 5:50 when Lorenzo pulled up in front of my office. His fingers bandaged in two different places he told me that they had managed to get to IKEA but that he had only finished putting together two of the four shelves, had cut himself twice while doing so, and that he would need my help with the last two. I got home, took Livia upstairs to my mom, threw on some work jeans and headed downstairs, where I spent the next hour kneeling by the metal shelf twisting the little screws in as fast as I could trying to avoid the same fate as Lorenzo with his cut hands. We got the shelves up, and Lorenzo was whistling which is always a good sign but then we had to screw them to the wall with the drill and it was here that the whistling stopped. The walls, as all the walls in our house seem to be weren’t completely flat and involved one of us pushing the shelf against the wall while the other marked the holes with a red marker. Then Lorenzo would drill into the cement foundation to make the holes where the screws would go, the noise was awful, and then with the first shelf the holes didn’t match up and it took all kinds of moving and flipping them around and pushing them against the wall to get them right, and while the other three sets went in OK, Lorenzo was cursing under his breath and sweating and I was hating home improvement projects with every ounce of my being until finally we had all four shelves bolted to the wall so neither Giulio or Livia could ever pull a storage shelf down on top of themselves.
Then a dash upstairs to wolf down dinner before heading down again, it was now around 10 o’clock and the kids had been in bed for hours, my mom helping us move things into the plastic containers and onto the shelves. Despite the weeding out I had done the week before there was still a lot of things to get rid of, so much so that in the end when we got everything inside the cantina was half empty. Not the shelves, but there was a lot more floor space, just as well I suppose since we have to factor in the weight bench. The cantina looked good, and my mother made some comment about how Italian it was to have this beautiful room with tile that most Americans can only dream about for the purpose of storing winter coats and a surplus of shower gel.
The last thing to do was re-hang the door, something that is really easy to do in Italy, all the doors lift off their hinges and can be removed with some straining and then delicately put back in place with a lot of straining. Anyway, we strained and lifted to put the door on. It had been removed last week so the floor could be tiled and then cut down so the tiles would fit underneath and still allow the door to open and close. But the door didn’t fit anymore, it leaned heavily towards the right side of the doorframe so it would not close properly, let alone lock though if some thief would like to relieve me of 50 pounds of baby clothes, more power to them.
Italians are famous for their doors. You know those cop shows you see on TV where the cops give the door a hearty kick and it gives way? Or the SWAT team shows up with an iron pole, they pound on the door a few times and the whole thing collapses? Well Italian cop shows don’t bother with that because everyone knows that all front doors have steel bars in them, you can hear them moving into place every time you lock or unlock them. Lorenzo’s biggest concern when he came to visit my parents was how flimsy their front door seemed, alarming my dad so much that he had the door changed for something sturdier, though nothing like what we have on our modest apartment in Italy. But our basement door was of the standard wooden variety, the same door that was put when the building was built. Apparently about 15 years ago after several break-ins to the cantina, the former owner had added along with the basic door lock a heavy lock with a steel bar that the runs the length of the door and was held in place by a hole in the basement floor at the base and by a metal latch at the top when the door was locked.
But suddenly it no longer could be locked. Too exhausted to do anything about it as it was nearly midnight we trudged back upstairs with Lorenzo saying he would talk to Babyface and fix it tomorrow.
Thus began The Saga of the Basement Door. On Tuesday and Wednesday I came home from work hoping to find the door fixed and instead found piles of tools, drills, and Lorenzo and Babyface standing around the door. On Tuesday they said it would be fixed Wednesday, on Wednesday they admitted that the situation was grave, Thursday we took a break to go to Genoa for the day and forget about the stress of the cantina and it’s cursed door, but then Friday morning found Lorenzo down in the cantina again trying to put it right. It seemed a bit like herding cats. He would measure and drill and fix one thing only to find another problem and each set back seemed to push us deeper in despair. We couldn’t get new door, as that would involve ripping out the door frame and would set us back thousands of euro, but the longer it dragged on, longer than it had taken us to empty, tile, paint, mount shelves, and refill the entire cantina. Friday night Lorenzo came upstairs tired and defeated, with the tool box in his hands, a sign that the work for now was done. Apparently the door now closed, the bottom lock locked, but the big metal one would no longer close properly, no matter how many times he took it apart and oiled it. He was leaving it be, in fact, he would be doing no more home improvement projects. When our blinds come for the porch he is going to let their guys put it instead of taking care of it himself. It seemed like the end of an era.
After a day’s reflection Lorenzo decided that he would remove the old lock and put a new one on, but not yet. Right now we are still recovering from the draining four days that I call The Days of the Door. In the meantime we have taken all our winter clothes down to the cantina in clear plastic bins so that the contents are visible and as the room is no longer filled with dust I have no qualms about our comforters staying down there as well. There is something very satisfying about seeing all our items neatly stored and put away, yet having them easily accessible that I have almost forgiven Lorenzo for the havoc this project ended up causing and I can almost enjoy the cantina and take pleasure in using my dryer in a room fit for a monk.

DIY

It’s election day here. I casually brought up the topic with my co-worker as to whom she voted for and she busts out with 2 photos of Berlusconi that she carries in her wallet, next to the photo of her boyfriend. Guess that answers my question! I have to say that I am shocked, despite the fact that Berlusconi has already been elected twice she is the first person I have met who has openly declared her love for the man, though Italians are so private about who they vote for. They will tell you without blinking an eye who much they earn a month, but ask who they voted for, well, they blush, tell you that who you voted for is private, and then turn away. I do know that Lorenzo split his vote, saying that he voted for one party for the Senate and another party for the House, rather like ordering from a menu at a Chinese restaurant, seeing as there are more than 140 parties to choose from, though only 5 or 6 “big” ones. He didn’t work this election, which was a bummer because when we have elections it is a boon for cops to get in overtime, as two police officers are required to be in the polling place starting the night before the election and stay until all the votes are counted. Yes, they sleep there, and they take turns working, eating (they can leave for meals), and resting. Lorenzo always takes the books that he has been trying to read since our last summer vacation and our Play Station, and other than being kind of boring, I mean, you are just sitting there watching people vote, there are worse ways to pass a weekend on the job. At any rate we dedicated Sunday afternoon to cleaning out the basement storage room.
We are in the midst of several home improvement projects. New blinds for the study to replace the 40 year old green ones that been there when the study was still a porch and not a room. And then down in our storage area in the basement Lorenzo has decided that he what he really needs in his life is a weight bench and a room to lift weights in, this from a man who hasn’t been inside a gym in over a year, a man who hauled his heavy barbells up and down flights of stairs when we moved where they had been under the crib in the baby’s corner, placed them in a corner of our bedroom and hasn’t touched them since. (And from a man who is as slim as he was when I met him, the jerk!) However part of the plan involves putting down a tiled floor in the storage area and putting up new storage shelves and better organizing what could really only be called a junk room right now, except that my beloved dryer is kept down there as well, so I am secretly kind of happy about it. Ironically, our garage has a beautiful cream colored tiled floor, put down by the previous owners, that our diesel engine car drips oil onto, while our basement storage room sits there nakedly exposed to whatever walks over it. Honestly, it is just the kind of floor you would want oil dripped on as it never looks clean, even when you have just washed it. I really don’t know the reasoning behind these decorating decisions, but you can be sure that whatever tile we put down it won’t be as nice as what we have in the garage.
I usually hate home improvement projects involving Lorenzo. He is there, concentrating on whatever it is he is doing, while he leaves me the job of keeping an eye on the kids and running and fetching things for him. I don’t mind helping him, but I do mind helping him and try to keep two small children from climbing up ladders and picking up hammers. We started after nap time, with Livia clinging to me, knowing that I wanted to put her down and when I did finally detach her from my hip immediately got into arguments with Giulio over the toys that we had dumped out on a plastic sheet for the kids to play on just outside the storage room while we dealt with the stuff inside. The toys were all things that had been given to the children either when they were already too old, or where they seemed to have too many pieces and be too large to ever be properly put together. Soon the floor was covered with random pieces of a complicated race track and an “activity” table meant for one year olds that someone had given me for Giulio when he was already almost two, but that he was happy to assemble now.
The scary thing about going through our stuff was to find out how much stuff we have that we weren’t using, nor did we ever intend to use again. Apparently if I didn’t want it in the house I moved it down to the basement for That Day when it would be cleaned out, therefore 9 objects out of 10 were deemed Not Needed, including my wedding dress. You can be sure I’m going 100% couture the day I marry George Clooney, so I won’t be needed my old Bridal and Formal gown. And what was I thinking hanging onto 5 bags of maternity clothes, not one of which I ever intend to wear again, even if I did have another baby. Nothing makes a pregnant woman feel more beautiful than wearing maternity clothes from another decade. I discovered that I have an obscene amount of baby clothes, but as one of my best friends in Italy has just announced that she is pregnant I must hang onto them for a little longer, just in case it is a girl, because it feels like a shame to just give them away after the days of hunting at Value City, Target, Gap Outlet, and Old Navy to make sure that Livia was the best dressed girl at the nido.
The Hoarder Award went to Lorenzo for the 3, that’s right 3 irons that we had, and of which he would only part with 1. Though I explained that I had a fantastic iron and that if anything ever happened to it I was going right out to buy another and would not be dealing with those dinky little irons again, he argued that they didn’t take up much space and kept 1, plus the travel iron, though ironing is the one thing he won’t do. Nice to know that he has my best interests at heart. I also found several old purses which I was at least smart enough to clean out before putting it on the charity heap because it contained, oddly enough my dental x-rays, and a business card from a hotel that Lorenzo and I stayed at in Florence when we went to visit my cousins who had come from New York. The purse was a knock off of a style that was in about 5 years ago, and I cringed to think that I walked around Florence with it, God knows what my chic New York cousin thought about it—hopefully she didn’t notice.
Lorenzo dug out an enormous jar of ancient olives from his parents, another gift along the same lines as the prosciutto and wondered where to dump them, along with several jars of preserves that had been sent to the basement and never seen again.
In the midst of all this cleaning I kept going out to check on the kids and often finding that Livia, after her initial reluctance to be torn from my side, had taken to doing a David Copperfield on me and disappearing. I found her in the yard watching Terry water some lettuce, dust sticking to her face in streaks thanks to her snotty nose and looking like one of those children you see on the money raising campaign for Third World countries, minus the GAP raincoat. And took her back downstairs where now Lorenzo, with dust flying through the air, was attacking the 25 year old wooden storage shelves that looked like they had been put together by someone who was overly fond of nails. Just the thing to have around small children! The kids eventually took refuge with Terry and we were able to drag out the pieces of the shelf and sweep up, we gave Eugenio’s dad most of the wood, since he has a fire place and didn’t mind the nails.
In the end though other than being a bit grimy the kids were no worse for wear, Lorenzo was thrilled to have taken down the shelves, and I was just relieved that no one got hurt. Now perhaps you understand why I don’t like home improvement jobs.

The Mezzo Stagione

We are now in what the Italians call the “mezzo stagione” the middle season, that period between the cold of winter and the heat of summer. In other words, spring. Yes, spring is lovely, warm weather and all, but it always throws me into a panic for the simple and yet very complicated reason: I don’t have any “spring” clothes. My wardrobe, perhaps reflecting my formative years in parts of the US where the spring is more of a theory rather than fact, goes directly from heavy wool jackets and leather boots into sandals and t-shirts, there is little, if any, in between. So suddenly to wake up and find warm gentle breezes and temperature highs in the mid-70s I feel like a girl on her first day at junior high school; whatever am I going to wear? Let me expose myself as the shallow and self-obsessed person that at I am and lay it all out.
Living in Italy has shown me that style is stamped into your DNA, that Italians, especially Italian women always know exactly how to dress, and are willing to look just right, even if it means living with Mom and Dad until your are 40, or doing one week in Sharm El Shek instead of two. Plus it is not just the sense of style, it’s the unwritten rules that say when it is OK to start wearing sandals instead of shoes, or skirts without tights underneath, rules that I missed. In the US, if it is hot in April, you dress like it is June because, well, it’s hot. Wearing a sweater isn’t going to trick the heat into going away. Instead here, as I have said before, going in sandals a month too soon reflects poor moral fiber and a lack of self respect, and everyone you meet will either ask you if you are cold or make some comment on the state of your bare feet, honestly, it is just better to sweat it out a bit and cover up. Obviously after having lived here for almost eight years certain rules of fashion have become clear to me: no white clunky running shoes, no sandals with socks (unless you are Miuccia Prada), t-shirts with stuff written on them should not be worn outside the house, unless you are running. Fleeces get the axe as well. You don’t borrow clothing from your husband’s closet and then head out the door. No khakis on women. In short, my rule is that if you look like you are going to be spending the day at the Cincinnati Zoo, you need to go back and change.
It’s a rule that seems to be easier said than done however, judging from past photos of myself. When the computer in our little study is idle for few minutes it switches over to iPhoto and random photos from the past 5 years come up on the screen. In one you see Livia stuffing her face with spaghetti, then in the next there is a photo of Giulio as a tiny baby, then the one after that a photo of me with my parents in Mantova 3 years ago. Looking at these photos can be wonderful, oh, was Giulio ever that small? Oh, wasn’t Sicily beautiful last year? Gosh that was a great trip to Augusta, Kentucky. But beyond realizing I looked about 12 when Giulio was born, I also realize how badly dressed I am once we get into the warmer months. I can do cold. A nice coat covers a multitude of sins, as well as a good pair of leather boots. But there have been a few photos that have made me turn to Lorenzo and ask, you let me go out like that? No, nothing shocking, at least no socks with sandals, just some linen pants and a striped t-shirt, but it doesn’t look elegant, sexy, or well put together, which is how I see most women around here dressed.
I look in store windows for inspiration and I see a two hundred euro crisp white jacket that would look fabulous, until I actually wore it and went somewhere with my children. Or 125 euro leather shoes that would be perfect for spring but would languish in my closet the second June rolled around. The other thing is that my personal comfort is waaay too important to me. I just can’t do heels unless I know I’m going to be mostly sitting down in them most of the time, yet when I walk around and I see women my age wearing them without a care, or a pain, in the world, I blame it on my lack of training when I was young. I should have worn heels from the age of 15 on, so that by now I would be able practically to run in them, yet another way that I don’t measure up to these Italian women.
But I see that Italian women, and men too for that matter, are bothered by this mezzo stagione as well. Yesterday was beautiful, almost hot in the sun, but with a breeze that you needed a sweater for. I wore a long sleeved shirt with a cotton sweater over it, my black work jeans, (i.e. meaning they are really too nice for a day out with the kids) and for comfort, cause we would be walking, a pair of black sneakers. I saw some people dressed lightly, and yet I saw other people bundled up in the warm sunshine wearing wool coats and hats. Babies bundled up like it was 30 degrees and not 75. The day before the kids and I had played outside in the yard without our coats, wearing just long sleeved shirts. Eugenio’s sister came over zipped up in a quilted jacket and immediately asked me if I thought the kids were dressed warmly enough. I told her I thought they were, but I could tell she was worried. Italians tend to freak about wind/breeze. Didn’t you know that a strong breeze can cause all kinds of stomach problems and illness?
Sunday in Italy is a family day. Do you remember last Sunday on Easter in the States most stores were closed and people were with their families? Well, imagine if every Sunday was Easter, meaning stores closed and families together, but the restaurants are open, just as they were on Easter. People here also tend to dress up on Sundays, even if they have nothing else planned but going out for a walk with their families, some perhaps more dressed up than they get any other day of the week.
Anyway, so we go to Salò, which if you can forget its dark Nazi past, which isn’t entirely its fault, you will love this beautiful little town on Lake Garda with all this Venetian architecture, and snow capped mountains high above the lake. It is gorgeous and was obviously full of other people walking around. We had ice creams and the kids are running around, and then Giulio is walking around groaning because he wants to be carried on Lorenzo’s shoulders and people are giving him concerned looks because it really does sound like he is seriously ill or something, but we won’t let him be carried, at least not yet. After all, this is the same child who walked all over Syracuse in Sicily for four days a year ago, with little to no carrying at all. Anyway, in moments like these what do I do? I check out what the other women are wearing, imagining what I would wear if I wasn’t pushing a stroller and trying to ignore Giulio who is staggering along behind me, and if I had a much bigger bank balance than the one I currently have. Most of the women seemed overdressed, in that they were wearing too many layers, boots over tights and gorgeous swaths of wool artistically wrapped around them. No one seems hot though. Some are wearing truly “spring-like” clothing, elegant white trousers, crisp white blouses, cool navy jackets, and loafers, with lots of gold jewelry all things I don’t own. The women’s hair looks good as well, on Saturdays many women go to the salon just to get their hair styled, something I might consider in my next life. Other mothers were wearing jeans like me, but with 4 INCH heels and not seeming to be in any discomfort, though they dispatched Daddy to retrieve the kids when they went running off. I instead had to do my own running. So many women were wearing lovely dresses that I felt like asking Lorenzo if there was a wedding going on, the whole thing made me feel rather inferior, and with the sun beating down on me, also rather hot and sweaty, and wondering what genetic material I am lacking to be unable to spend a day with my kids wearing high heels and without breaking out into a sweat? I glanced at Lorenzo walking beside me in his jeans and sneakers and decided that even if I wasn’t super elegant at least we matched, in mean, he wasn’t wearing a tie and oxfords, was he? It made me think of my new boss who bought his girlfriend a beautiful pair of stiletto sandals on-line and had her drive all the way from Milan to our company just to try them on to see if she liked them. She’s a girl who would wear heels with a toddler, no prob. And then I thought of Lorenzo who has spent the last month scouring Ebay for a new pair of running shoes for me, because he knows that I will need a new pair sooner or later, and thought that maybe I’m with the right guy after all. Someone who doesn’t mind me in sneakers or getting a little sweaty on a Sunday afternoon. My mission to be more elegant and my insecurities over how I dress won’t go away, but at least I know that they come from me and nowhere else, which means a lot. It’s one thing to wreak hell on your feet because you want to look good, been there, done that, and quite another when it is imposed on you from another person. And while the stilettos would be fun for the clubs that we never go to, when we got home I went for a five mile run and had a wonderful time getting sweaty in my running shoes.

As Long as He Needs Me

Today was the first day back at work after the three day weekend. The kids are still home. Last Monday I was taking a shower when it dawned on me that spring break was almost upon us and that I still hadn’t organized childcare. Lorenzo seemed stunned that the schools would be closed for five days around Easter, and kept demanding to know why, why would they be closed for almost a week? Didn’t he have spring break when he was a kid I wondered, but I had to admit it seemed like a lot of time to fill. Before, with my old job we followed the school calendar and so when the schools were closed, we were closed (but not paid either) and there was no concern over who would be with the kids. Now I’m finding these long breaks the bane of my existence. It means telling Lorenzo to have his day off on Tuesday so he can babysit, and begging my neighbours to fill in for the other days, which is how we solved it this time, the kids went to Terry on Thurday, were home with Lorenzo Friday, everyone was home Monday, and today Lorenzo is home with them, he did work Easter though. Tomorrow he’s working in the afternoon and at any rate Livia will be back in daycare, which just leaves Giulio to spend the afternoon at Giusy’s tomorrow, which he couldn’t be happier about.
Getting out the door this morning proved just as stressful as always, even though I was the only one who had to be somewhere on time. Breakfast was hard going, one child demanding what the other child was eating, or demanding what I was eating, which meant I never managed to take one bite of cereal before I was out of my seat again to get another breakfast roll for Livia who then proceeded to leave most of it on her try and then scream like a banshee when Giulio tried to eat it. Yes, Livia is talking now, she can scream at full volume, “E’ mia! E’ mia!” (It’s mine, it’s mine!) which I should take as a small comfort that she is on track developmentally. Then Giulio wanted a banana, but not the banana that I had given half of to Livia. A whole banana, an “upright” banana with the peel still on. God, how he takes after me when I was a kid. And yet this complete understanding of where this mentality was coming from did nothing to increase my patience or understanding and I proceeded to have a pointless argument with him trying to convince him that half a banana still in the peel was just as good as a whole one. No such luck. He gets a new banana, unpeels it, takes one bite and then leaves it on his plate, causing another lecture from me. He goes to his room in floods and I grimly eat the greatly discussed piece of fruit. Livia wants to eat standing on the floor in the kitchen, instead of in her high chair where I want her. I put her in the high care where she stands up and refuses to eat, so I let her get down, where she gestures wildly to the pieces of roll on her tray. Back up again, no hunger unless feet are touching the floor. We compromise. She kneels in Giulio’s abandoned chair and finishes her breakfast.
After brushing teeth and washing faces the kids mill around the door waiting for me and Lorenzo to catch up as we throw dishes into the sink and pick up stray socks that have wound up on the living room floor. You know the old saying how you should always change your underwear in case you are run over that day? I always feel that way about my house. I want some semblance of order before I leave in case I get run over so the news reporters coming to interview my bereft husband won’t find the morning’s bowl of Cheerio’s still on the table, or a pair of pyjamas lying on the floor by the couch. Strange I know. Perhaps Italy is really starting to get to me. Anyway, the kids are by the door and Livia has some toy in her hand and Giulio announces he wants a toy too, specifically the plastic whale he got with his chocolate Easter egg, which I go and grab off the changing table in the kids’ room. In Italy they don’t have Easter baskets. They have these large hollow chocolate eggs which are placed in the center of a large piece of shiny cellophane wrap, and then the wrap is pulled up over the egg and gathered up at the top with all the excess wrap sticking straight up and tied with a piece of gold string. They are all different kinds of eggs, sizes, and price ranges because inside the egg is a little toy which is usually worth about 50 cents, the eggs themselves sell for about 4 or 5 euros depending on who made them and what the toy is.
They have girl eggs and boy eggs, so Giulio had received a little plastic blue whale, which doubled as a water gun, Livia a little pink stuffed pig, and then I got from the egg that I had won running a 15K the week before a small clear plastic tambourine. I had been really reluctant to open and eat my egg, as Eugenio said, it hadn’t cost very much but it had taken a lot of effort to get! In short, the toys are crap and yet the kids did nothing this weekend but argue over them, the whole è mio, è mia, though Livia in these cases was the more guilty party. My kids interest in toys is relative to how much the other one wants it. Livia had been playing with the plastic tambourine, (I saw Giulio with the pig yesterday) but as soon as she spotted the whale she wanted that too and when I opened the door she follows Giulio into the hallway in hot pursuit of the whale. When I get outside the door Giulio is sitting forlornly on the step while Livia stands in front of my neighbor’s door grinning and clutching both toys in her hand. Chaos ensues. I take the whale from Livia who starts wailing, and hand it to Giulio, and I pick her bereft form up and try to get her attention with the plastic tambourine. I get it into her hand and she looks at it limply for a moment before letting it drop to the floor where it promptly breaks apart scattering plastic disks all over the stairs. I put Livia down and rush around, trying to pick up as many pieces as possible, shoving them into my coat pocket and swearing under my breath. God knows what the neighbours think we are up to first thing in the morning, what with yells, tears, and things smashing on the steps. And then Lorenzo appears behind me, not knowing anything of the charged 60 seconds we just had. “What’s that?” he asks about a stray disk that we find at the bottom of the stairs by the main entrance. “That? Oh, nothing.”
In the car I feel tired, really tired, as though the straining and warring of the morning has taken its toll. That and that the fact that I got up at 5:30 to go running. I ran a 12k race yesterday and today felt like I was running uphill the entire time. Giulio tells Lorenzo that they will have to buy another toy for Livia today because hers broke. “No,” I say weakly from the front seat. “No more toys.”
“Are you going to work Mommy?” Giulio asks.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go to work?”
And get away from a day of battles over toys, breakfast cereals, and chocolate eggs? After this morning? God yes. But no I can’t say that, and honestly, it’s not even 100% true. More like 75%.
“No, Giulio, I don’t, I would rather stay with you.”
“Why do you have to go to work?”
“To make money to feed you, and pay for clothes and toys. You know how sometimes you don’t want to go to school?”
“Yes, sometimes I cry because I don’t want to go to school.”
“Yes, well, once you get there and then you start playing with Andrea, and Filippo, and Simone, and Massimo, and Antonietta, and Angelica then you start to feel better.”
“I don’t like Angelica.”
“Yeah, but you like Antò, right?”
“Yes.” He’s quiet for a moment.
“Will you remind Daddy to come back and get me today?” I ask.
“Yes, I’ll say, Daddy we have to go get Mommy.”
“Yeah, don’t let him leave me at work.”
“Sometimes Mommy when you are at work I miss you and I cry.”
Oh God, I felt like crying right then too. And I felt terrible about every thinking that I couldn’t wait to get to work, I felt terrible about going to Germany last week overnight for work, and enjoying the silence of my hotel room and getting dressed without having to simultaneously dress and feed two small children. I’m totally verklempt as Linda Richman would say, but it wouldn’t be cool to start the day out with rivers of mascara running down my face so I blink back tears.
“Yes, but Giulio I always come back to you, you know that right?”
“Yes, Mommy.” He brightens. “Ok, see you tomorrow!”
“Not tomorrow Giulio—tonight! You better come back at 5:30 and get me!”
I feel good, very good as I head into work to start the day, in the end I guess it was a good morning after all.

The Lullaby

After a dark and foggy couple of weeks we woke up Sunday morning and found that spring has sprung. Or that this global warming is really scary and happening much faster than anticipated. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing (quick! Let's get some laundry on the line!) and best of all, it was warm. Just the day to take a walk, ride bikes, be outside with your nearest and dearest. We cleaned the house. Sad to admit it, but the house was yucky, I no longer have time during the week to clean it, and coming home when it's getting dark has its advantages because it hides the dust bunnies under the furniture. Cleaning when it's sunny has its disadvantages; you can see how badly you needed to have cleaned the house before today. But whatever, at least Lorenzo was there to help me so it went faster and he is an intense cleaner, he takes on the tasks that I am than happy to let go, like beating the couch to get the dust out of it. Or rather, the dust rises up in tremendous clouds and then settled back onto the couch again.
We had hoped to get done early so we could do something outside as a family before Lorenzo had to go to work at 2, but it became obvious around 12:30 that it wasn't going to happen. I was thinking of taking the kids to the park and then I remembered that as Friday was our town's feast day, then on this particular Sunday there would be serious celebrations in town. The story behind the town's celebration is that in February 28, 1528 the town risked being invaded (and having its butt handed to it) by the French army. But then a miracle occurred, a painting of the Madonna in the town's chapel began to cry real tears, which caused the French army to lay down it swords and leave the town alone. They do this re-enactment complete with soldiers on horses, people in historical dress, and long processions. There is also a mass where the sword and helmet of the commander of the French army is on display. More importantly, there are also market stalls selling candy, clothes, cds, food, as well as a carnival that comes to town every year and always coincides its visit with the town's feast day. I was all set to take the kids, go the see the procession, (Lorenzo said I could park the car at the police station, solving the stress of finding parking) and eat one of those famous sausage sandwiches with onions. But Giulio wanted to go to the pool. The indoor pool, which wasn't really the place I wanted to be on such a beautiful day. He hasn’t been since we had that awful month of illness back in January when he missed the last three of the nine lessons I had paid for. We haven’t been back since, I’ve been meaning for over a month now to go back and sign him up again, though it is one of those things on my list of things to do that I never forget but never remember to do.
Despite trying to tempt him with the promise of real live horses and a ride on the merry-go-round, Giulio stayed adamant about going to the pool so in the end I gave up trying to convince him and got our swimsuits. In fact, going to the pool turned out to be a rather good idea. Even though we had to park kind of far away because the pool parking lot was full of cars belonging to people who now thronged the streets and vendor stalls, the pool itself was practically empty. The warm day meant I was wearing a t-shirt, while Livia and Giulio wore light, long sleeve t-shirts. We kept passing people who were elegantly bundled up in sweaters and jackets, as though somehow their memory of the cold weeks we had just gone through would help keep them cool against the hot sun. I have noticed that Italians dress more according to the calendar than by the actual weather, at least when easing themselves out of winter. No Italian would go around in short sleeves in February if the temperature was in the high seventies anymore than they would go around in short sleeves with temperatures in the low thirties. You really want to shock an Italian? Show up at their house with your legs bare before the middle of May. I could always spot the foreign tourists when I lived in Rome because (among other things) of how lightly they were dressed, no self-respecting Italian leaves their jacket at home before the end of April, no matter how warm. The cold might leap up from behind you at any time and take you down.
Giulio and Livia had a great time at the pool, Giulio leaping confidently from the side into the shallow end with me holding his hand, and Livia stepping off the edge into the water without even breaking her stride. She was so confident that I would catch her she seemed like someone doing one of those trust exercises they make you do on office retreats. You know, when you call out “fall!” and then let yourself fall backwards into the waiting arms of the women from the HR department and the man with the cubicle next to you. It was a little unnerving actually, as Livia would just walk off the edge without any warning, but she seemed to really like it and Giulio got to show me all the moves he had learned during his swim lessons. Note to self: sign Giulio up again for swimming lessons! Best of all the locker room was empty when we took showers and got dressed so no one had to watch me run around with my bathing suit around my waist trying to pin Livia down and get a diaper on her with Giulio giggling hysterically sitting naked on the locker room bench trying to put one sock on.
Today was business as usual with the kids at school and Lorenzo and myself back at work. I’m getting used to work, how to plan my day, how to plan my week, and it seems for the most part that, barring sick kids, Lorenzo and I have found a way to get through the week in one piece. Today though I came home exhausted after a long day, after getting Livia from daycare and going grocery shopping, only to find a huge pile of dried laundry sitting on the bed, results of my rather over zealous running of the washing machine the day before. I was ready to start bitching but Lorenzo took the groceries and got busy with dinner and just then Giulio came running up to me, with on hand behind his back.
“Look Mommy, I have something for you.” He held out a slightly squashed purple flower without the stem. “I picked it just for you.”
Of course I melted. Took the kid in my arms and kissed the heck out of him. And then got down to folding laundry, putting it away, and getting the kids into their pjs. I know, I should have been enjoying these precious moments with my children, taking pleasure in being with them, but instead I just focused on the task of getting them into bed, with Lorenzo calling me to the table because dinner is ready, like I’m doing my nails and gadding on the phone with a girlfriend instead of trying to read “Peepo” to my children before kissing them goodnight and tucking them in. Only Giulio is mad because we are going to bed without reading the story again, and he kicks off the covers I have pulled up to his chin, he way of protesting. I’m too tired to argue and just turn to go when he calls out frantically to me: “Mommy!” And then, if nothing had happened he says in a much quieter voice. “Will you sing good night to me?” Our goodnight song is one I have sung to him every night since he was a baby, taking the song “Goodnight My Someone” from “The Music Man” and just changing the words. It’s a brief song, only four lines, the perfect length for a tired woman worn out by a long day with a baby, but tonight at this point the four lines loom as long as four Shakespearean sonnets. I bend over the bed, putting my face next to his ready to sing the song quickly.
“Good night my Giulio, Good night my boy.”
OK, almost there, I think. His cheek is against mine, his breath even and quiet in my ear.
“Good night my Giulio, I love you so.”
His cheek is so soft, My little baby, my little boy, a boy who in another few years won’t want me singing in his ear before going to sleep and checking to make sure he has his Pat the Bunny and stuffed elephant in bed with him. I take a deep breath and slow down, wanting to draw out the last two lines and remind myself of right now, not five minutes from now or after dinner, or what I have to do before the morning, but now, just me singing a lullaby to my son.
“The stars are shining their brightest light,”
I feel like crying, my very own Madonna of the Tears weeping over two children so wonderful I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve them. No, I won't cry, I’m going to enjoy this moment, not rush. My Giulio, the little boy who picked a flower for his mommy, the little boy who loves his mommy even though she isn’t perfect and who one day will see her faults better than he will see his own, but that hasn’t happened yet. Not today, not right now, not while I’m singing this song. I’m just a mommy singing to her boy, with his little arms around my neck and his breath in my ear.
“Now goodnight my Giulio, goodnight.”