Spaghetti Mommy

Under the Lombard Smog

2009-03-06T03:35:00.000-08:00

Work is slow, so slow in fact that I had time to read the Real Estate section of the New York Times the other day. The title “Collecting Houses in Northern Italy” popped out at me so I clicked on the link and found myself reading the story of an American woman who manages to acquire four quaint old farmhouses in Piedmont at bargain basement prices with the ease as if she was acquiring a second or third household cat. Reading the article one gets the impression that if you just looked hard enough you too could find that charming cascina to convert into a four bedroom vacation getaway for eager American tourists.
I thought about my apartment (or should I say condo because we own it), built in 1962, loved by us but certainly not New York Times Real Estate section worthy, and wondered why I hadn’t instead struck out to the Amalfi Coast when I first came to Italy. There I could have found a renaissance villa in almost complete disrepair, marry the son of the family it belonged to—whose name would be Gennaro and who would own and run a vineyard or something and look like he belonged in an underwear ad-- and then I could make millions selling my story as a novel about the trials and tribulations of fixing up the villa (I can’t tell you what a hard time we had with the mosaic fresco of the family crest on the floor of the main hallway!) before appearing a in a full page spread for the NY Times Great Escapes section, grinning toothily at the camera as I hoisted my glass of homemade limoncello in my spacious, beautifully tiled kitchen with muslin curtains billowing in the breeze behind me and with a eat-your-heart-out-bitches look in my eye. The local townspeople would welcome me into the fold as one of their own and offer up wise sayings about the tides and love, and parables about how growing grapes relates to life in general. I would have an endearing old widow named Maria to help me around the house who would offer up an “O Signore!” and cross herself anytime someone said something a bit racy and she would be so devoted to me and my family she would scrub the walls of my tiled kitchen every day, make our pasta from scratch, and wash all my children’s clothes by hand. Yes! And in the NY Times article there could be a charming photo of my two children dressed in white climbing up an olive tree with the pony running around in the paddock in the background, I did mention that we would have a pony, right?

Perhaps the thing I find most irksome about these kinds of articles is that they make me feel like I have to apologize to friends and family when they come to visit me. They must be thinking that I’ve missed out somehow and that the woman in the article could have been me if I had only played my cards right. They’ve seen “A Room with a View”, they’ve read “Under the Tuscan Sun”, they know all about what life is supposed to be like in Italy. I remember years ago writing my friend in the States to tell her that I had bought a bicycle and she wrote back saying she imagined me wearing a long, full skirt and riding it through a piazza where the pigeons would all scatter as I came blowing past, fresh flowers tucked into the basket on the front of bicycle. I had to break it to her that full skirts weren’t in that season, and that my new mountain bike didn’t have a basket mounted on the front.
I can also see the confusion on their faces when we pull up in front of our building, which is on a standard residential street in a residential neighbourhood. Where is the charming cobblestoned courtyard? The personable fruit seller who knows your name? (Actually you can find him down the street in front of the old elementary school two mornings a week.) Where is the café with the handsome men lounging around outside waiting for a woman to walk past so they can whistle? Why isn’t opera music playing in the background? Why don’t I own a Vespa? And above all, why is it raining?
Once we head into the center of town I can see them relax, and once I get them a aperativo at my favorite bar they become downright giddy. Here are the cobblestoned streets, the courtyards, the good food, the open air markets, the church bells ringing, the well dressed people taking their evening passaggiata that they were promised when they booked those airline tickets. I even show them the 16th century building where Lorenzo and I (and eventually Giulio) lived for the first 3 years after we moved up North from Rome. “Oh, how nice!” they sigh when I show them the building where we lived our two room apartment overlooking the courtyard below. And then I point out how we couldn’t wait to move from there once we realized they were putting in a restaurant in the tiny courtyard below us with al fresco seating where two people speaking in normal tones over plates of spaghetti carbonara could keep the whole building awake. And how there was no parking and nowhere even to legally unload your car so one person had to unload as fast as the could while ignoring the cars lining up behind them on the narrow street while the other sat at the wheel ready to tear off the second the last bag was removed from the trunk. Or how it was so damp in there in the winter that patches of mould would appear on the walls in the bedroom. Or how I choose Giulio’s stroller when he was a newborn based on if I could fold it and carry it one-handed while carrying Giulio in the other as there was nowhere to leave things at the base of the steps without worrying that someone might make off with them. (Like they did with the aforementioned mountain bike just a month after I bought it.)
We didn’t have to stay up North, in fact initially we dreamed of when we could return to Rome until one day we realized that we didn’t want to. We will never have a restored Renaissance villa where we are now, but there was even less of a chance of us even being able to buy a three room apartment on the outskirts of Rome. Somehow breathtaking scenery and lemon trees took backseat to bike paths for getting around town, good schools and day care programs for my kids, and the possibility of finding a decent job for me. That as nice as it to live in some old quaint building in the center of town, there is a lot to be said for a home where you have a huge fenced in yard where the kids can play and where you can unload your groceries without fearing a ticket from the municipal police. And while the idea of a rich husband is always nice, Lorenzo won me over because he was the first man I ever met who showed up at my door with two shopping bags full of food and announced he was going to make me dinner, the very thing I needed the most without even realizing it. And finally, let’s just say it, without Lorenzo I would never have Giulio and Livia who are worth more to me than 20 falling down renaissance villas.
But somehow this need to apologize to visitors is something stronger than me. I’m sorry, I want to say, sorry to have brought you here to an Italy you didn’t know about, where people shop in supermarkets, live in apartments built in the last 40 years, work long hours and worry about their jobs. Where people pay their taxes, follow rules, and do worry about getting to work on time, realize that smoking isn’t good for you and that running and cycling is, so I’m just waiting for the New York Times to do a piece on it. They can use my apartment for the shoot if they want to.

Formula One

2008-12-18T11:49:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-27T05:42:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-10-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-14T11:15:00.001-07:00

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

The Crocodile Hunter

2008-06-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-31T06:08:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

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.”

The Power Mommy

2008-02-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

I had to go to England this week for a business trip. OK, fine, I'm going to drop the cool and hopelessly blase' tone and say--Finally! I'm 29 years old and this is the first time I've ever been able to say the words "business trip" in a sentence pertaining to me and my work! It also makes my job seem very time consuming and important, which it really isn't. Well, it does take up a lot of my time as all jobs do, but it has its highs and lows. I mean it's like one minute they need me to be the company representative talking to the head of a huge international corporation about some very tricky problem, and then we finish on the conference call, I wipe the sweat from my brow and go back downstairs to where I answer the phone and do various mundane office tasks. It sounds like I hate my job, which I don't. I find it for the most part interesting, there is a ton to learn, much of which would prove useful if I ever decide to go work somewhere else. And I like my colleagues, who are a good looking, very Italian bunch, most of the women hopelessly skinny and sexily dressed, but who do wear jeans everyday, yet another bonus to working here.

What I wasn't expecting on Tuesday afternoon though was to be asked if I could be able to go to England the next morning because we had a problem and they needed us to go to the client in person to express our extreme availability and willingness to resolve the problem. They needed me to go to make sure that we were very clear about what was going on, and that our company and my colleague understood everything they were saying to us. So I'm not a translator exactly because my colleague does speak English, but a translator who is also apparently closely following and deeply involved in the project. Which I kind of am, at least when it comes to dealing with this client, just don't tell them that I also answer the phone. You can imagine Lorenzo's reaction when I called him. In the past seven years I have done little more than ask him if he could pick Giulio up from school, and now I was asking if he would be OK on his own for at least 36 hours with the kids. He initially panicked, but when I pointed out that he would be at work on Wednesday, Livia at school and Giulio at Giusys (with another fever!!) and by Thursday I would be home he relented. "Sure, go. Make sure they pay you a ton extra!"
So Wednesday morning found me traveling to the north of England with another colleague, luckily one who I work with a lot so there was no awkwardness and wondering what to say. Our trip was uneventful, and yet for me really strange. I could not remember the last time I had flown alone, well, actually, I can, it was when I flew to the US the summer I was pregnant with Giulio. It was so strange not to be sherpa-ed out with a bag, a diaper bag, three winter coats, a stroller and Giulio's backpack. I went to the bathroom on my own. There was no wiggling child on my lap who I had to keep amused while we sat on the runway, or frequently fed from beaten up cracker packs from my bag. When we boarded the first plane and they immediately announced that we would be waiting 40 minutes to take off my first thought was that we would miss our connecting flight and NOT how to keep my children from getting us thrown off the plane while we waited. I just sat and read my book. There were no awkward diaper changes in the confines of the airplane bathroom, no trying to eat from a try and not letting a baby spill my water, and no pained looks from my fellow passengers when I sat down next to them, in fact no one even knew that I had children. It was all so wonderful and yet I was missing my kids like crazy. In the airport cafe before our flight I saw a family with two small children the same age as mine, the eldest boy even had a hair cut like Giulio's and had the charming habit of exhaling "aahhhh" when he finished drinking a glass of water like they do on soft drink commercials to show that major thirst has been quenched, and which Giulio and Livia do as well. My heart flipped watching him and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Yes, I had been away from my children for under three hours and I already missed them.

Our trip was long and rather stressful, as I think most trips involving connecting flights are. The fear of the unknown delay keeps you stressed out and on your toes. Plus the sprint for your connecting flight, sweating under your wool coat and avoiding tripping fellow travelers with your suitcase confirms my belief that you should be in good shape to fly. The worst part was that after almost nine hours of being on the move when we finally arrived in Northern England all I wanted to do was put my feet up and have a stiff drink and instead I had to pull it together and concentrate more than I had all day, cause we left the airport and went directly to our client's offices. I felt like I was moving underwater. I hadn't been too out of it however to notice the new slogan for Northern England that met us as we came down the gate: Passionate People, Passionate Places. My colleague gave me an alarmed look as I let out a snort of laughter. My grandparents were from Northern England, my grandfather was a Yorkshireman through and through and while there are many lovely adjectives I could use to describe him and the people from the village where my mother grew up, passionate is not one of them. Kind with a dry sense of humor, yes. Passionate, no. It would be like getting off the plane in Italy and finding our new motto was Serene People, Serene Places.

We got a taxi and headed off for our meeting, and it was there that I realized why my company had asked me to go to. For one thing, due being rather tired himself, my colleague Enzo's english became extraordinarily contorted, so that I was translating in my head from Italian into English to understand what he was saying. And I noticed that 9 times out of 10 when anyone from the English company said anything they directed it at me. After three grueling hours though, we were done. We staggered out of there, got a cab and headed to the hotel where I found myself for the very first time in my life in a hotel room entirely for me. I felt like I should call someone and mark the grandness of the occasion but I decided I couldn't afford it and instead went to take a shower. The room was, if nothing else, delightfully warm, and I reveled in the carpeted floor, though in showing what an Italian I have become I wouldn't walk around on it barefooted and instead kept my slippers on the whole time.

Finding a place to eat proved challenging. Italians are the worst people in the world to go abroad with because the quality of the food always disappoints and disgusts them. On the flight earlier we had been given sandwiches which included mustard on one and mayo on the other and my colleague kept making faces like someone had thrown up on his shoes, and when I scarfed them down, commented on how all these foods with "sauces" weren't good for you. Yes, I agreed, eating mayo at every meal would cause long-term damage, but I didn't think one sandwich was going to do much harm. Plus this was coming from a man who insisted on smoking a cigarette before we could get into a taxi or go to a restaurant. When I suggested Indian for dinner I got the same vomit-on-shoes-look as before, but in the end we agreed on a Japanese restaurant that had been recommended to us. There Enzo was in for another shock. As we sat chowing down on our California rolls and bad white wine a group of about 20 young women, none older than 21, came in for a group meal. They were all in various stages of undress wearing shorts, halter tops, mini dresses, bare legs and stiletto sandals, apparently they would be hitting the clubs after eating. Enzo couldn't stop looking at them. Not because they were beautiful or sexy, but because he couldn't understand how they could walk around in February so scantily dressed and not get ill. Italian women dressed for a night out in winter will always be wearing tights and often a wool undershirt to protect themselves from the cold, it's a almost like a sign of character and good moral upbringing. I still remember how I got chastised when Giulio was a baby for letting him run around without an undershirt tucked in under his clothes in early September. What do these women wear when it gets hot? Enzo wondered. It didn't seem worth it to point out that there was little variation in the weather from summer to winter, if one waited in Northern England for the right weather to bust out with your mini-sundress, well, it almost wouldn't justify the price you paid when you bought it. As we walked back to the hotel after dinner we passed a woman in a t-shirt walking down the street. As Enzo started gaping yet again I couldn't help but add "Now you understand how England conquered half the world and built its Empire."

Back in the hotel, it was still strange to be alone, though it was an alone-ness that I relished for about 30 seconds before passing out into a sleep induced coma, not stirring until almost 9 hours later, the most I had slept in over week. I rolled over, opened my eyes, and thought, "Today I will see my kids again." The thought alone made me leap out of bed and start packing my meager suitcase. I said a brief prayer for decent connecting flight times, on-time departures, no fog in London or Milan, and a lack of traffic going to or from the various airports. I was woman on a mission: a mommy coming home to her babies. Move the heck out of my way.

Superman meets Power Ranger Filippo

2008-02-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

The kids are doing better. Giulio, after five days of fever, vomiting, and painful canker sores in his mouth, got up and started teasing his sister. He then proceeded to ignore me when I told him to stop so I knew right then that he was feeling better. Unfortunately, though he is better, schools are closed Monday and Tuesday for the Carnevale holiday, so Lorenzo has taken some vacation time to stay home with him, vacation time he had asked for weeks in advanced as soon as I saw them on the academic calender. It's this last minute, the night-before stuff that is killing us. Tuesday evening we stood there in the kitchen as Lorenzo tensely sliced yellow pepper and Giulio lay forlornly on the sofa. WHAT were we going to do? That morning I had gone to work late, Sig.ra Pala had come upstairs like the angel she is and stayed with Giulio until Lorenzo came home at 1. She also mended Lorenzo's uniform pants while she was there, but Sig.ra Pala is a busy woman, she certainly couldn't stay with Giulio for two days in a row. Lorenzo had already taken 3 days off the week before and once this week and while there is no risk of him being fired (he has the equivalent of tenure) his boss hadn't been happy that he had needed to stay home with his kids those days. It seems that caring for your sick children shouldn't really be the parents' responsibility, it's our responsibility as parents to find someone else to care for them. And apparently Lorenzo and I had let the side down because there we were at 7 pm on a Tuesday, the next work day less than 14 hours away and we had no one to stay with Giulio. Lorenzo called his colleague whose mother-in-law babysits children during the day and apparently, normally she would be happy to watch Giulio but unfortunately she had the flu. Join the club.
I ran through a mental list of people I know and then started running through the actual list of people I know on my cell phone. My female friends all work, the one I did try and call wasn't home, Terry downstairs was home because she has hurt her knee and is on sick leave, but she wasn't going to want Alessandro exposed to Giulio. And then it came to me, Giusy. Some of you may remember Giusy as the woman I flagged down from kitchen window to come upstairs and be with the kids for 10 minutes until Lorenzo came home because I HAD to leave for work. Giusy has been taking care of Alessandro in the mornings while Terry works, but as I mentioned, Terry isn't going to work right now. And Giusy had told me that if I ever needed anything all I had to do was ask. People offer things like that all the time, most of the time you know that if you did call them ready to cash in on that favor they would be seriously put out. I decided to think that Giusy had been sincere and meant it when she offered to help so I went downstairs to Terry's to get the number. Thankfully Giulio was, in Giusy's words, welcome to come and she hoped he would stay for lunch too, and Giulio, in spite of his illness, was quite pleased to be going to her house. And so we lived to fight another day, and the day after that when Giulio went back again, still ill but loving Giusy's house with its two firetrucks to play with, (Giusy's husband Angelo is a retired fireman.) I still felt awful leaving him with other people, he was sick and I couldn't (well, I probably could, but right now it is all about giving a good impression at work) be with him. On Friday Lorenzo was on for the night shift and so was able to be with Giulio during the day. Giulio spent the day with me on Saturday and I was so happy to be able to spend the whole day with my kids, enjoying them and cuddling with them and playing with them, but my son wasn't feeling the love, he spent much of the day asking if he could go to Giusy's.
In any case, Giulio recovered just in time because Saturday there was the Carnevale party at the church down the street, the same party we went to last year. Giulio has been asking for weeks to "go" to carnevale. Here's a typical exchange:
"Mommy, I want to go to Carnevale."
"Not yet Giulio, Carnevale hasn't happened yet."
"Please Mommy. I really want to go."
"Giulio, it hasn't happened yet. We have to wait for it, like your birthday or Christmas." He pauses for a second, thinking this over.
"Mommy? Can we go in one minute?'
Seeing that he was much better I used the party as a way to get him to eat all his dinner, though he still has these painful canker sores which make eating really hard. His costume this year was Superman, a kind of homemade concoction using blue long-johns, red rain boots, a pair of old red shorts and a cape that was handmade by my mom's best friend and given last year as a Christmas present, because all little children need capes, don't they? What made the costume so great was the Superman "S" which Lorenzo had handpainted on the front of the shirt. He found the logo on the computer and doing the kind of mathematical equation that one finds on Algebra tests but rarely in real life, adapted the size of the logo to fit on the shirt where he traced the outlines and painted them in. It was a true labour of love.
Livia was a ladybug, which for some reason has been deemed an appropriate costume for girls before moving into the princess costumes. She'll be a ladybug next year too, different costume, but same thing. My mom finds them and gets them on sale for us after Halloween, which is the best time to buy a costumes, though we weren't lucky this past year with Giulio, which is how the whole Superman thing came together. Livia wasn't thrilled with the costume, she cried and kept trying to pull it off without success, before resigning herself to the inevitable. The little headband with the antennae was a no-go however.
We walked to the party. Inside we found about fifty kids running around hurling confetti at each other, scooping it off the floor while parents sat on chairs along the walls and watched. There was a table loaded with food at one end and this year they hired a band for the event: three middle aged men with keyboards who seemed to have been hired to keep the over 50 group happy. We sat down next to Filippo's parents, comparing our health bulletins of the last few weeks. Filippo had scarlet fever, but only missed two days of school thanks to antibiotics, while another woman had two kids with re-occurring bronchitis, and a bout of scarlet fever thrown in for fun. As both these woman have many family members around to help, they couldn't truly feel my pain. Giulio began the party kneeling on the floor scooping up confetti and ignoring the children who kept asking him to play, including one darling little girl from his class dressed as a princess in a yellow dress who brushed dust off of Giulio's blue long johns and who Giulio barely even acknowledged. He finally got into the swing of things when Filippo, who was a sword carrying Power Ranger, presented Giulio with his own plastic pitchfork type thing to run around with, truly the finishing touch for the Superman costume. We stayed later than we planned, so glad to see Giulio running around acting like himself that it was after 11 when we left with the party in full swing, so today the kids are healthy but cranky. At least they can still go to school when they are cranky.

General Hospital

2008-01-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

We are sitting here, watching Prodi's Center-Left government come up for the final vote to decide if the government will fall or not. If it falls, it means new elections. Anyway, the news feed goes back to the Senate, to the President of the Senate, Marini who has been handed the paper with the outcome of the final vote. "The "SI"s 156, the "No" 161, so the government has fallen. As Marini is reading out the final vote he stops for a moment to ring the bell to get order. "No, no, no. Senator Ramazzi, no. Put that bottle away! It's not like we're at a restaurant!" It seems that Senator Ramazzi in his glee cannot restrain himself from busting out with a bottle of Spumante to celebrate, right there on the Senate floor. And so Prodi has fallen, not that it changes much. You learn living in Italy that the people who are disgraced on the front page of the politics page today will be government ministers of tomorrow.
On to something that has a much more immediate influence on my life: we are still in one of the inner rings from Dante's inferno: the ring of children with colds and viruses. Two weeks ago Lorenzo stayed home most of the week with either Giulio or Livia or both, as they seemed to be taking turns. Friday morning both kids seemed well, well enough at least to go to school, then Livia decided to one-up Giulio and got bronchitis and a trip to the ER on a Friday afternoon where the Doctor reamed us out because I had thought she was better and sent her to the nido that day. I felt like the worst mom in the world. And of course there was nothing I could say because she was right, Livia shouldn't have gone to the nido that day, it was my optimism triumphing over my common sense. (I should add that an ER visit doesn't mean what it would mean in the US, that she was gravely ill. It means that her pediatrician wasn't around on a Friday afternoon so we took her to the hospital where a ped. would take a look at her.) With the help of cortisone, Livia was a new baby by Saturday, but we had learned our lesson and Lorenzo stayed home with her on Monday, along with Giulio for a good measure, just to make sure she was really OK. Then Monday afternoon I got a call at work. "Are you ready to laugh or to cry?" I heard my husband ask. "Giulio has a fever." A low fever, 98.7, really the temperature you might get running around the room. And in fact, upon being checked out by the pediatrician, who at this point has seen the children more than most of my relatives and close friends, gave both of them a clean bill of health.
With the antibiotics warding off attacks we coasted along until Friday. Friday night I got into bed when suddenly I was summoned to the kids room by the loud command "Mamma! Mamma!" It was Livia, standing up in bed, holding her arms out. Assuming she simply wanted water I grabbed the bottle off the shelf and in the semi-darkness turned to give it to her. Strange, I thought, there appeared to be a large dark stain down the front of her pajamas. Then I realized that it was a stain, actually, it was in fact vomit. And not just on her pajamas, but also on the sheet and comforter cover, but not, thankfully and miraculously on her stuffed animals. By now I'm a pro at containing bodily fluids. I got Livia out of bed, stripped her off, stripped the sheets and the mattress pad (but not the mattress!) and somehow got the baby changed, and washer loaded and running, and Livia back into bed in like 10 minutes. Ok, I thought, maybe she had something that hadn't agreed with her at dinner. I seemed to have rinsed most of dinner of her Pjs and sheets. But the next morning she threw up two more times and went on to have a day and a half of diarrhea, and wanting just to sit on my lap with her head against my chest which, if you are the parent of a toddler, you know that this is one of the scariest things of all. Lorenzo came home from work on Sunday, took one look at her and announced he would stay home with her tomorrow. This morning she was doing pretty well, eating her breakfast, running around, smiling. And so I took Giulio to school, and I went to work, thinking that at last we had managed to break the cycle. Then today at lunch Giulio's school called me. He has a fever and wouldn't eat lunch and was crying. I called Lorenzo. "Are you ready to laugh or to cry?"
And so now I sit here waiting. It's not looking good. The fever went up in the evening, and while a tiny part of me wants to hope against hope that he will come bounding out of bed tomorrow, it's not looking promising. It all wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I have a new job, and the first two months are a trial period, so I don't get the full benefits of the other employees, meaning, mostly I don't get paid to take time off to stay home with Giulio, and seeing as I am still in a trial phase, I don't want to do anything that would encourage my boss to think that maybe they don't need me after all. What's worse is that I don't know how long he could be sick for, and I know we have to find someone, some fairy godmother who can come and be with the kids on the those days when they are sick and we can't miss work. For tomorrow Sig.ra Pala has come to the rescue, she can come at 10 and stay until Lorenzo comes home, so I will go to work late. But what if this goes on for days? And if Livia gets sick again? And in the long term, what are we going to do, because they will get sick again. It seems that in Italy if you really want to succeed in business you need to need to have your now retired parents, active but living close to your home, ready to sweep in and stay with the kids when you need it. Part of me also feels that feeling of desperation I felt when the ER doctor let me have it last week at the hospital. What I wanted to tell her is that we are doing the best we can. That we should be forgiven for making a poor judgement call when we have only ourselves to rely on. It's becoming more and more clear why so many Italians stay close to home, because in the end, your family is all you've got. And it's only January. Keep your fingers crossed for me, would you?

Dr. C, Medicine Woman

2008-01-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

It's a complete Murphy's law here. When the children were home from school on Christmas break for two weeks and my mom and dad were here to help us take care of them--no major illness. Now that my parents have gone back to the States and we are both back at work, well, guess whose sick? After four days of fever, coughing, and two visits to the pediatrician Giulio gave in to an ear infection and has been put on antibiotics. Livia, who seems to be on her way to matching her brother's previously unbeaten record of an ear infection each month until having his adenoids out at age 3, has a terrible cough, runny nose, fever and we are on stand-by for the latest development with her ears. At this point we practically have cold medicine running down the walls. Sit down to have dinner and you have to move six bottles, a nasal spray, and five packs of tissues before you can reach your plate. Pick up your daughter to give her a kiss before running off to work and you have matching silver snot marks decorating your shoulders all day--what all the best dressed mommies are wearing. All this illness means that I haven't been sleeping much. My evenings and small hours of the morning have been spent shuffling Giulio around from his bed to the couch and back again, doing the nebulizer (the medicine of choice here in Italy), administrating doses of Ibuprofen, and refilling the humidifier. And now Livia has suddenly found her voice, standing up in her crib at 20 minute intervals and yelling "Mamma!" Mamma!" until I go in and pick her up. And every night I tell myself that tomorrow we will wake up and this 24 hour, no 48 hour, no 72 hour, no 97 hour bug will have passed like a dream in the night. Except it hasn't. And while I know it's not the kids' fault, things have been made more complicated by the fact that I have changed jobs and now work a full-time day, instead of hours sprinkled throughout the day as I did before. Child care has become a challenge, Terry is reluctant to take the kids because, rightly enough, she doesn't want her little boy to get sick too. And honestly, if I find being alone with my sick children all day, how in the world can I hope to find someone who isn't a blood relative willing to do it? In the end Lorenzo, who spent his birthday arresting and processing the paperwork of some man who thought it would be funny to hold up three women and take their money and their phones using a fake gun before one of them realized it was fake and karate chopped him, has reluctantly offered to take time off and stay home with the kids. He finds my annoyance that there are so many things that still have to be done after I get home baffling. "I'm taking care of the kids!" he exclaims when I sigh audibly over the phone after being asked to "swing by" the supermarket on my way home and pick up 20 items, after having worked a 9 hour day. Or being told that we are almost out of Giulio's fever medicine so could I get more AFTER I have come home and changed my clothes. In his defense, he does other things like laundry, removes the mold off the ceiling (thank you humidifier!), and buys a new cartridge for the printer.
Of course life isn't all snotty noses and being up all night--even though right now it FEELS like it is. (As I type this Livia is yelling out for me from her crib). In the far distant past of only four days ago I went with my friend Theresa to a bachelorette party, for a woman I had met once when we all went out for drinks. When Theresa said the words "bachelorette party" the images of male strippers dressed as firemen, women wearing veils drunkenly weaving around the dance floor, and penis shaped lollypops as party favors came to mind. Then I remembered I live in Italy where when we "girls" meet up for a drink everyone but me orders a Coke and I feel like a huge lush cause I ask to see the mixed drink list. I was positive this would be a tame night. And it was. Other than the bride to be trying on her gift of matching bra and thong on over her clothes right there at the table, it was a quiet night, though a fun one. The dinner was held at this restaurant that specialized in Argentinian meat, I know, the Italians have the Bistecca Fiorentina and yet they are obsessed with the Argentinians and their meat. The restaurant had this enormous fake ship mast and deck in one corner, which looked like the owner had gotten at half price when they had struck the set for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, while the rest of the place has this soft, white design, like being in the courtyard of some 19th century building with fake windows and everything and with IKEA themed tables and chairs. I found the whole thing rather unsettling, as though the decorator had been unable to make up his mind. "What is the theme here?" I kept asking Theresa, who I don't think really knew what I meant.
All the women who came to the dinner were lovely. All wonderfully dressed and made up, with jewelry and gorgeous hair and some of them had obviously been given the dress code before they came out which turned out to be cute little jackets and blouses with jeans tucked into boots, like elegant tall jockeys. And some were married, and some weren't, and some had kids, and some didn't, and I remember thinking that I am so glad that I am married, because let me tell you, the competition here is fierce--i.e. Italian women are and always will be so pretty with a sense of style built into their DNA that I will never have. And I noticed a change, at least among the younger women, (when I say younger, I say the under 38 crowd.) Instead of the house salads and water that I was expecting women to order,(no one can deny themselves fantastic food better than Italian women can) we got starters, and steaks and potatoes, and dessert, and best of all wine, lots of red Argentine wine, and it wasn't even me to suggest ordering it. I remember when Lorenzo and I first moved up North we would have dinner at someone's house and I would be the only woman having wine, while the hostess would make some comment about how I liked my wine, didn't I, and me feeling offended because in the US or England saying someone likes their wine means that it's time they sign up for AA instead of just having a glass or two over a four course meal. It's like Italians and running (which we are still doing-at Christmas I ran a 15k, though Eugenio missed that one,) just seven years ago no one was doing it, now, at least at a bachelorette party an Italian woman can have some wine and no one bats an eye.

The Gift

2007-12-07T12:55:00.000-08:00

Giulio and Antonietta have made peace. After a week of torment Giulio came flying out of school one afternoon with the news that he and Antonietta were now friends, and the peace has held. Yesterday he sat at the kitchen table eating cookies with Nutella spread on top and talking about school.
"What did you do today, Giulio?"
"I played with the trucks."
"Was Filippo there?"
"Yes. And Antonietta and I are friends. I want to go to her house, Mommy."
"Did you play together at school today?'
"Yes." Then there is a pause as Giulio chews for a moment.
" Antonietta and I are friends, but me and Camilla no."
And so it goes. Giulio however doesn't seem the slightest bit unhappy that he and Camilla aren't friends, there is no yearning here! But seeing that Camilla lives across the street from us, and I actually know her mother, and that the times Camilla has come in our yard to play they have gotten along just fine, I'm hoping that this will pass. And knowing Giulio it will.
Eugenio has started running again. I knew me beating him by 10 minutes was too much for an ex-marathon runner to bear, and so at least twice a week we have started running together, including our second race two weeks ago, 11 kilometers of killer, muddy, hilly roads. He led in the beginning, I pulled up even towards the 6th kilometer and we ran together until the last 2 kilometers when I pulled ahead and beat him by 2 minutes. The race was characterized by the large groups of elderly walkers who did not take kindly to panting joggers trying to pass them on the narrow path that cut through woods and wound around a lake. I ran fearing for my ankles. There was the usual lavish "refreshment" afterwards, including tortellini in broth at 9:30 in the morning, and a box of cookies and a chocolate bar for every participant, no picture frames this time. This Sunday we have a 14 kilometer, so this may be the one where Eugenio beats me, I know it is simply a question of time.

Part of what helped my training so much was a visit from my in-laws Lucia and Antonio, which instead of being the customary 3 days lasted an entire week because Livia got sick and had to stay home from the nido. My in-laws, who are always at their best when someone is ill, stayed on to take care of her so Lorenzo and I wouldn't have to miss work. Having two people present who were handling all the cooking and most of the childcare left me with plenty of time for long runs around the neighborhood, breaks that were also necessary for my sanity. I like my in-laws, but we have very little in common. I come from a largish city in the US, they both come from small towns in Southern Italy, I enjoy food and like eating, they are obsessed with food and spend most of their waking hours planning, preparing, eating, or cleaning up meals. At 7:30 in the morning I would be in the kitchen preparing breakfast and Lucia would come in, say good morning and then ask me if I would prefer meatballs or steak for lunch. This would be before I'd had my morning coffee.
Antonio, in what was meant to be a purely loving and generous act brought us a whole prosciutto crudo. Prosciutto is ham, but in Italy you can get prosciutto cotto, which is closer to what we think of as ham in the US, and then there is prosciutto crudo, which is "raw", the meat has been smoked and aged but not cooked in an oven. Both are delicious. In my house we usually eat prosciutto at lunch, along with pasta as a kind of poor man's second course.
When you go to the supermarket or butchers to buy prosciutto they never have it ready, pre-sliced to be grabbed by the handful and dumped on the scale like they do at Kroger's. Instead they take from the shelf this whole prosciutto, put in on the slicer and carefully slice off pieces, laying them beautifully one by one on the paper sheet next to the slicer. They then weigh the amount, fold it up, put it in paper bag and hand it to you as a long flat package the size of a copy of "Newsweek." When I buy prosciutto I buy around 100 grams, which is around a quarter of a pound. As it only lasts about 2 or 3 days before getting a bit funky, I try not to buy any more than that or I will end up throwing it away before it is eaten. When my father came and lived with us for 3 months last year he had the staff at our supermarket in stitches because once when he ordered prosciutto he asked for 500 grams, or a little more than a pound, which seemed to the staff an enormous amount to buy at one time.

At any rate, here was Antonio with a 10 pound prosciutto for us to eat. Prosciutto crudo will keep for a long time if stored properly, but it has to be sliced correctly to get the slices at their correct thinness, and while I like prosciutto, I've never wanted one of my very own. For me, getting a quarter of a pound of the stuff three times a week was about as far as I wanted to go in my level of commitment. Now suddenly here was Antonio proudly displaying his ham and talking about how he would teach me how to slice it with the knife he would leave with us, and how we could store the ham in our storage area in the basement, it was nice and dry down there, wasn't it? I had images of myself staggering home after a long morning, hungry for lunch, getting to my apartment and then remembering that if I wanted any prosciutto I was going to have to go back down three flights of stairs and slice it myself with a knife. The thought alone made me feel tired. Then there was the question of the amount. My children (of course) won't eat prosciutto crudo, they only like cotto. That left Lorenzo and me the task of eating this thing every day, needing to consume it whether we wanted to or not before it was no longer edible. Lorenzo voiced his concern that perhaps a WHOLE prosciutto was too much for us to eat, a suggestion that was waved away, weren't your in-laws from America coming at Christmas Antonio asked. THEY would want to eat prosciutto, they would be so happy to be in Italy eating this wonderful ham, and we could also share it with our friends and neighbors......while I couldn't think of any friends who would fly over here to have a slice of ham, I realized that in the close vicinity of our apartment there are at least 3 or 4 people of a certain age who would certainly relish the chance to have some of this prosciutto. People who were born before or immediately after the Second World War have very particular ideas about what tastes good and what foods should be appreciated above all others. Our neighbor Piero would certainly love a few slices of this ham, as would Eugenio's dad who lives on the other side of the fence from us. Eugenio's dad drives up into the mountains to pick wild mushrooms, rather than buy the ones they sell in the store. They would taste this prosciutto and appreciate how it had been aged, would know that they were eating an excellent piece of meat, and they would be grateful to Antonio for letting them try some, even if their own fridges were stuffed with the same kinds of ham. But for Lorenzo and myself it was different. For Lorenzo slicing his own prosciutto is something he has little interest in doing, let alone storing it in his basement. Young men in Italy today may enjoy eating good food, but they don't necessarily want it sitting on top of their clothes dryer. As for me, well, I come from a place where the word "ham" always has the words "honey-baked" in front of it, I certainly didn't know what to do with this fatty leg of meat which I had only ever seen handled by the butcher when I buy cold cuts. In the end we convinced Antonio to leave us a plate of sliced prosciutto but to take the rest of it back to Rome with him, where he would certainly get much more pleasure out of it than we would. He was offended, and rightly so, no one likes their gifts to be refused. But now in the fridge sits that same plate of prosciutto, all but untouched since Antonio left it there. My excuse for not eating it is that he didn't slice it thin enough.

Here's to the Lady Who Runs

2007-11-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

Giulio is in love. Or at least infatuated with a little girl named Antonietta who is in his class at school. Last week he came home and told me that he wanted to go play at Antonietta's house, OK I said, even though I have no idea what Antonietta or her mother look like. My dropping Giulio and running in the morning, already late for work and dashing back with only a minute to spare in the afternoon when there is only Giulio and two other little boys whose mothers are later than me, leaves little time to get to know the names and faces of the other mothers. Then next day as we were walking to the car he mournfully told me that he has asked Antonietta to be his friend and she had said no.
“Why did she say no?”
“Because.” was the mournful answer, and then, “Mommy, I’m sad.”
The next day Lorenzo got Giulio from school and when I came home with Livia Lorenzo met me at the door with the question, “Whose Antonietta?” It seems that Giulio had tried again to be friends with her and once again his request had been denied, leaving him feeling hurt. Now my feelings went from amusement to annoyance. Who was this witch and why was she tormenting my son like this? Didn’t she know that she would rue the day she turned him down, that she would one day see that he was the best thing to ever happen to her???
The next day Giulio and I sat at them kitchen table eating clementines, the house was quiet, Lorenzo was at work and Livia was down for a nap. I decided to try again.
“So Giulio, what happened with you and Antonietta?”
“I asked her to be friends and she said no,” he said matter-of-factly, chewing on a piece of clementine. (I know, can you believe it, Giulio is eating something that comes from the ground!!)
“Who is Antonietta friends with at school?”
Giulio always knows the fragile social web that makes up his nursery school class.
“She’s friends with Sara.”
“Are you friends with Sara?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She can’t be my friend because Antonietta won’t be friends with me.”
It all seemed incredibly complex, especially for children who are barely four. I stupidly thought that Antonietta would be like Giulio, whose likes and dislikes can change in a matter of minutes, and yet here is someone who is dug in deep in her refusal.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have taken up seriously running again off the treadmill and outside thanks to the little push my brother gave me when he was home. Last week my neighbor Eugenio saw me coming back from one of my runs and asked me how far I had gone. ‘Oh, about 4 miles,” I told him. ‘Is that all?” he said, sort of joking, but sort of not, and it made me think of what Tim Parks says in his wonderful book about Italy, “Italian Education” about how Italians don’t do sport unless they are a) very good at it and b) intend to do it at the highest level possible. Meaning that I shouldn’t run unless I’m actually planning on running the New York Marathon, that the fact that I run because it’s good for my health, helps reduce stress, and basically makes me happy is entirely beside the point. I offer the excuse that I have to go to work in an hour and suddenly all is forgiven, it is understood I would have run for hours if didn’t have to go to work. Eugenio then tells me about a road race in a nearby town that’s happening on Sunday. There are four possible distances one could run, 6k, 10k, 14k, or 21k. The last two sound a bit daunting for the present, but the 10k sounds manageable. I ran a 10k once. 12 years ago. However I have been running a lot now for almost three months and having a goal would be nice so I tell Eugenio I’m interested and he says that in that case we can go together on Sunday, can I be ready by 7:30? I decide I’ll let Lorenzo have a few hours alone with the kids.
I was just about to leave at 7:20, Lorenzo was still in bed, though Giulio had just finished breakfast and was about to watch “Dumbo” when I heard Livia wake up. I pulled on my running shoes, gave Giulio a kiss and booked it out of there, deciding I would let Lorenzo deal with her for once. As I waited in the driveway for Eugenio to come around with the car I see the shutters in our living room and then in the kitchen open, so I know Lorenzo is up too.
I remember reading a book in college about life in Italy where basically the author sees one lone jogger as she arrives in Milan and then doesn’t see another one for the whole rest of her stay in Italy, which gave me the long assumed opinion that Italians didn’t really do sport, except football and racing with cars and motorcycles. Living here I have found that actually Italians are very athletic people, at least the men are, what with the swarms of cyclists I see on the road everyday, and the men and women I see out pounding the pavement on the bike path that goes by our house. I know several “bike widows” as I called them, condemned to pass long Sundays alone with children as their husbands go for 80 mile bike rides. This morning as we arrive at the event I see swarms of people in running gear, some warming up, some stretching, some already competing. It is a “non-competitive race” meaning that from 8 until 9 you start and you run or walk the distance you choose, no one has numbers, no prizes are given for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, but really just people running cause they want to. The race, no matter what distance you run, ends in the football stadium with everyone having to do a final lap around the track before crossing the finish line, where everyone will get something for running. Eugenio and I sign up and pay then strip off our coats, (it was really cold this morning), warm up, and then suddenly Eugenio is like, ok, we’ve started. And apparently we have, crossing over a white line painted in the road. I’m expecting Eugenio to take off, even though he did tell me he was out of shape, but he stays with me though I told him not to worry and go if he needs to. We don’t talk, I mean, we are racing, and there are thousands of people and the walkers are a pain in the butt walking six abreast in some places. There are old people, young people, people with dogs, people wearing running shirts with the name of their town’s running team on them, people bundled up in coats, and one man wearing shorts and a tank top which leads me to believe that he is running the 21k. The course takes us through the center of town and then out into these frosted fields which are very idealic and then suddenly we are running along these roads that are really meant only for trackers and are filled with stones and so I have to be very careful and concentrate to avoid spraining my ankles and so I don’t really get to enjoy the beautiful country scene, the sun shining, the gleaming frost, and then on the far side of the field, the 6 lane highway. After 2k I see a sign indicating “refreshment” and I expect people to be handing out cups of water that we will take without slowing down and then throw them on the ground when finished. It is too cold to do the dramatic pour-water-directly-onto-face move that you see at marathons. I turn the corner and find a large group drinking what appears to be hot tea and just standing around like you would after church on a Sunday. The walkers, apparently. I push through them, and here on the other side the course goes off in different directions for the various distances and I turn to check with Eugenio to make sure we are going on the right one, but he is gone, swallowed up by the tea crowd and so I go on without him.
I won’t bore you with the details but when I finally get to the stadium I’m feeling good, a little tired, but basically good and when I get over the finish line I find there are people handing out small cartons of milk and here I discover the best part of road races in Italy: the food. Instead of the usual bananas, breakfast bars, and Gatorade that you find in the States after road races, there are platters of bread and jam and bread and Nutella, and more hot tea, and over on the far side are the “Alpini” with their feathered caps grilling those wonderful large sausages and giving out those sandwiches that Lorenzo likes so much. The thought of eating such a sandwich after a race and at nine in the morning does not appeal to me, though others dig in with no problem. I do however eat piece of bread and Nutella without feeling the slightest bit guilty. When Eugenio comes across the line a full ten minutes after me(!) and informs me again that he is out of shape, we go to collect our “complimentary household items.”
“Waddaya want?” the guy distributing them asks me.
“Watcha got?” They’ve got candle holders, vases, picture frames, ornaments…...
“A picture frame, please.” And I collect my ugly silver plated frame that I probably won’t ever use but I am thrilled to have.
I’m feeling pretty good as we walk back to the car. I ran the 10k in the same time I ran it 12 years ago but today was a slower course with all the walkers to get around as well as the kilometers of rocky path that I had to really be careful and slow down for, so I’m thinking that maybe it is true that having a baby can help a woman athlete. Apparently they do these kinds of races every weekend in the small towns around here so next Sunday Eugenio and I have agreed that will go to the one closest to us. I wonder if this means that he will start running again. Apparently he ran a marathon 7 years ago and since then has gotten increasingly sedentary, though perhaps my beating him today will be the motivation he needs to hit the road again.
So here’s to my new life—A mommy who races!

The Accidental Lady who Lunches

2007-11-11T12:28:00.000-08:00

Lorenzo went online this morning and found there was a Thanksgiving Day Celebration in a small town about half an hour from us. No, the Italians are not getting on board with yet another American holiday, instead the Thanksgiving Day celebration was about giving thanks for the harvest, with the farmers doing most of the thanking. Apparently there would be animals, farm equipment (my son loves farm equpiment) and people dressed like peasants from 100 years ago, and surely good food somewhere in there too. I said let's go, it was sunny and Lorenzo didn't have to work until 5pm which gave us a good part of the day. We decided to wait on having lunch, because, as I said, when in Italy DON'T they have good food, and we rushed around getting the kids ready, though at some point in there "getting ready" involved emptying the vacuum cleaner filter and lifting the couch and vacuuming underneath it and finding two books and part of Livia's tea set hidden under it in the process.
Finally though we were putting the kids' shoes on and Giulio is singing some song he has learned at school about "Indiani" as Lorenzo ties he shoes, and so Lorenzo wants to know if this song is about Indians as in from the country India, or the Indians one finds in North America. Or, Lorenzo tells him, as they call them in Italy, Red Skins (Pelle Rossa). I leap in at this moment.
"Uh, actually in the US they would be called Native Americans." I suddenly see Giulio is 20 years time visiting his Uncle and cousins in the States, watching "The Last of the Mohicans" and casually referring to the above mentioned ethnic group as "Red Skins." Having people think that my son was not raised by Mel Gibson is going to be an upward battle on my part. Not 6 years ago I taught English at an after-school program for first graders and the teacher had made and hung posters teaching the different colors. The Green poster had neatly labelled pictures of green peppers, grass, lizards, and apples. The Blue poster had the sky, the sea, and blueberries. The Yellow poster had corn, polenta, and "the little chinese girl", choosen for her "yellow skin". Actually Asian people in general here are called "Chinese", I have a colleague who was born in the Phillipines, raised in Canada and students referring to her will be like, "You know that Chinese teacher? what's her name?" How will I ever be able to have Giulio's blundering Italian racial teachings co-exist with America's politically correct ones? This isn't going to be easy.....
At any rate, we had planned a day of petting animals, eating standing up, and possibly walking through cow dung. Therefore the children, both with runny noses has been dressed for warmth and comfort in things I wouldn't be too bothered about if they got really muddy. Giulio wore sweatpants and a sweatshirts that I usually just have him wear to school for the fact that I don't mind if he gets tomato sauce on it, and a pair of old sneakers. Livia wore a blue sweater that was mine when I was a baby and a pair of sweatpants that are getting too short. Lorenzo and I wore the classic jeans/sweater/sneaker combo. We finally set off a bit before noon, we tried to get some more cash before hitting the road but the roads to the center where our ATM is were blocked off to traffic as it was a "green" sunday, a day when cars can't go into the center. We figure the 35/40 euros we had between us was more than plenty for the three sandwiches and wine we were planning on having.
We find the town no problem ( a small suprise because I was navigating using a 25 year old map that Lorenzo won't throw out for sentimental reasons), and right away I get suspicious because even though the roads are closed off in honor of the celebration, we immediately find parking in a nearby half empty parking lot. We unload the kids, get jackets on, get Livia strapped into her stroller, load up the diaper bag and walk the long street down toward the main piazza where I can see smoke rising. "Where there is smoke there is food!" I call jokingly to Lorenzo, who I know is hoping for one of these fantastic sausage sandwiches they always sell at these things. Initially it looks promising, there are stands selling wine and cheese, animals standing in straw including a cow who is frantically mooing, and people dressed like late 19th century farmers. But there seems to be very few people besides that, and in fact, most of what seems to be going on is clean up, and we realize that basically we have shown up for an event that started at 8 this morning and basically wrapped up about half an hour ago. All the food that is being prepared (and wow did it look good) is just for the period dress people and is clearly not for sale. The town's one restaurant is obviously closed. The kids are going to be hungry soon if they aren't already, and I didn't bring anything to eat besides a few oranges and a bottle of water, plus it is already after one, dangerously late (in the North) to just be thinking about where one might want to have lunch. We drag Giulio away from the cows and hightail it back to the car, with Giulio protesting loudly that he doesn't want to go, he is hungry, as we pull out of the parking lot Lorenzo announces that we will stop at the first place we see. Except that we don't see anything. At least not anything open where one can eat. I see tons of pizzeria's, restaurants, bars all dark and shuttered and I wonder out loud where do people around here go for Sunday lunch. "Home" is Lorenzo's brief reply. I try not to look to often at the clock, but I know the unspoken rule of Sunday lunch at restaurants; they really don't want you turning up after two o'clock. We drive through one town after another until we finally see a sign for an agriturismo which makes it own wine and olive oil and inspired by it's name (San Lorenzo) we follow the signs through one narrow cobbled street after another until we come through a medieval tunnel and out into this golden valley filled with olive trees and there we see the entrance to the restaurant. I say entrance, but what I mean is a huge wraught iron gate with a long path with olive trees on each side leading off to the left. Lorenzo carefully follow the path but I can no longer hold back, "Go! Go! Go! It's 1:49!" Suddenly before us is this large, beautifully restored farm house and an almost full parking lot filled with gleaming SUVs, BMWs, Alpha Romeos. "Go in and see if they have room, "Lorenzo says, "and see if they accept credit cards." I go in, feeling inferior dressed in my jeans and sneakers when around me I see people wearing expensive "casual" clothes, women in dresses with high heeled boots, men in dress pants and Prada sneakers. There are two or three large groups doing what appears to be 1) the lunch following a christening, 2) a birthday party, and 3) people of a much higher income bracket than mine enjoying each other company. The staff however are welcoming. They don't look twice at my sneakers and immediately get a table ready, even though it is two o'clock and there are no more anti-pasti left. I glance at the posted menu and wince. 35 euros per person, which means 72 euros for lunch on a day when we weren't planning on spending more than 10 euros. I go out to Lorenzo who has got the kids out of the car and break the news to him. We debate for a minute, but it is after two, by now we aren't going to find anywhere else open so unless we want to drive 45 minutes back with two starving children raising hell in the backseat.........
We go in and are lead to a large, half empty room with a wooden timbered ceiling and a huge fireplace where a log sits smoldering. We sit down and my two children proceed to attack the bread like they haven't seen food in weeks, both loudly protesting when we try to stop them because Giulio (Livia eats like a trucker) won't eat any pasta when it comes. Crumbs soon cover the table and the floor. When the pasta comes however the are both good and sit still and eat, Livia sitting in my lap as there doesn't seem to be any kind of high chair. The place is noisy, outside well-dressed children run around on the green lawn, the baptism baby shrieks from the next room, so at least we wont be disturbing anyone too much. I'm still feeling bad about spending so much for lunch when suddenly I remember our anniversary more than two weeks away. I had thought that for our fifth anniversary we would get dressed up and go ALONE to our favorite restaurant and instead here we are in jeans with children crawling all over us, but all well. I raise my glass, "Happy Anniversary!" Lorenzo nods, then smiles and leans over and gives me a kiss. "Happy Anniversary."
After the first course the kids want to get up and move, Livia tottering drunkenly between tables, Giulio giggling behind her, Lorenzo and I sit and watch them tensely, waiting to spring into action like paratroops waiting to leap out of a plane. In the meantime one of the waitresses has gotten the fire going again in the fireplace, so we keep taking turns to jump up from our chairs and "re-direct" Livia the second it seems that she might be getting too close. It is at this point that I realize my children look vaguely like those ads you see for "Save a Child" in some poor Eastern European country, Livia in her old sweater which Lorenzo points out, also has a hole under the arm, Giulio in his grey unironed sweatshirt, both with snot dried around their noses, their shoes worn and scuffed. In a country that is based on keeping up appearances, I know we aren't making a good impression. I decide to pretend I'm a member upper crust of British society, the people who dress shabbily because they can, and get over it. Lunch proceeds in the usual manner of one sitting, the other herding children in the interminable waits between courses. The idea of hurrying people through their meal is unheard of here. I remember the "fancy" restaurant I bused tables at back in college and how the manager wanted the least amount of "wait time" from when the salad plate left the table to when the main course plate was set down, and fight a wave of homesickness. Our meal ended with me standing for the last 10 minutes of it, holding Livia in one arm and with my purse already over my shoulder, trying to convince Lorenzo to forget the coffee so we could just GO. Finally we go to pay and it was here that we discovered that this beautiful expensive restaurant, with all its well-to-do patrons has a cash only policy. Does that mean the father of the baby having her baptism showed up today with over 1000 euros in his pocket? I stand on the green lawn watching Livia crawl through dried olives that have fallen to the ground and wait as Lorenzo drives off to get more cash from the nearest ATM. I find this so irksome, all this wealth but no credit card machine, and I'm so fed up with lifting Livia off the ground and telling Giulio to not do that, whatever "that" is, that I begin to regret ever coming. We should have just gone home, nevermind the anniversary, the being together, the eating wonderful food in a good place. And then, a few minutes later Lorenzo is back and we are off, driving faster than we came because now Lorenzo has to get to work and he tells me that it has been a good day, and I'm glad for him and decide to stop being mad. Sometimes it is enough to be happy for someone else.

Going Through the Motions

2007-11-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

While on the phone a few minutes ago with mom Giulio asked me if he could play with Daddy's spaceship, our little model space shuttle that Lorenzo bought this summer at the Wright Patterson Airforce Base Museum which now proudly sits on our desk next to the computer. Giulio took the spaceship and lay on the floor, shouting orders to it in English, something about how you have to close the door, gee, I wonder who he got that from? Five minutes later he had added this robot he got for free from a box of Cheerios, so the space ship and the robot, a stand-in for the Red Power Ranger which is wildly popular among the four year olds in his class, were duking it out. Only Giulio didn't say Red Power Ranger the way I would, he was calling it a pa-WAIR range-AIR Rosso, which is what he has heard the other children call it. It suprised me to hear such an Italian pronounciation from him, but then again, how often does he hear me talk about Power Rangers, red or green ones at that? But it reminds me that he is growing up here in Italy and not in the US, where the Power Rangers are rosso and not red.
Nothing like Halloween to really hit that point home. Each year the Italian news talks about the growing popularity of Halloween and how much money is spent on the holiday in Italy alone but I still have yet to see anyone here going all out for Halloween. No one decorates their yard or sits by their gate to give out candy to little kids trick-or-treating, and why should they? It's not their holiday, and in fact I find it (almost) irksome that people celebrate it here at all, kind of like another triumph of marketing over tradition, simply because someone figured out there was money to be made.
Italians celebrating Halloween reminds me a bit of Americans trying to get into the spirit of the Soccer World Cup. They see it, they know it is important, they know they should really be getting excited that the US beat Columbia, and yet somehow their effort falls short and when the US is eliminated, it's not that big a deal. Not like what it would be if we lived in Europe they say. What Italians know about Halloween comes mainly from the movies and American TV shows depicting high school dances and parties where people dress up like vampires. They know about jack-o-lanterns, dressing up, trick or treating, the orange and black, and how it is a big holiday in the US. But they don't really get trick or treating, which is barely done at all, and done only by older kids with a very menacing side to it. I don't think it is clear that it's intended for smaller children, and that most kids stop by the time they are 13 or 14--there are easier ways of getting candy. My own children do not trick-or-treat, they were in bed asleep by 7:30 having no idea of what they were missing a continent away. Some English/American people I know arrange with friends ahead of time to have their children come by dressed up and do a kind of poor man's trick or treating, but as it is nothing like the real thing, I really don't bother because it just make me feel bummed out instead. The one thing I insist on though is the jack-o-lantern.
The first Halloween after we moved here to this building I did one and got so many compliments on it from Terry and Eugenio and Sig.ra Pala that I decided to do it every year, that it would be my way of flying the flag, even if no one was coming to ring the bell for candy. Italians are all about pictures and statues that protect homes, cars, and people, so when I explained the jack-o-lantern would scare away all the ghosts hanging around just before All Saints Day from hanging around our building, well, it went over very well. The last two years finding pumpkins has been super easy. I usually order them from the florist across the street from the nido and he's always found these huge, Legend of Sleepy Hallow type pumpkins that looked amazing when carved. I placed my order back in September and waited for him to call me and tell me that it was in, but nothing happened. Finally on Monday I went in myself and he told me that the reason he hadn't called me was because so far his distributor hadn't had any to sell. I began to panic slightly. It was Monday and Halloween was on Wednesday and I still didn't have a pumpkin. I then went and asked at my local market if they were ordering any and they told me they were expecting four bigs ones, one of which they could put aside for me. Whew, crisis averted. My kids may not trick or treat, but I want them to remember me carving the jack-o-lantern each year, I want it to be one of our traditions, something that our extremely different childhoods have in common, so having the pumpkin was a big deal. I had also agreed to come to Livia's group at the nido and make a jack-o-lantern for the kids, though Rosella told me that she would get the pumpkins.
On Tuesday I went back to the market to pick up my pumpkin. It was raining and I left my umbrella in the car and allowed my hair to get frizzy because I thought there was no way I could carry an umbrella AND a huge pumpkin back to the car. Imagine my chagrin when instead of a large heavy pumpkin I was handed something slightly larger than a volleyball, apparently instead of 4 big ones they had been sent 8 small ones, as though what was lacking in size could be made up for in numbers. All well, I thought, beggers can't choosers, I would make do with two little ones. Then that afternoon as the rain kept coming down I got a call from the florist, the pumpkin was in, but it was a small one. Fine, I said, great, I would have three little jack-o-lanterns.
The next day I went Livia's nido and made the JOL for the kids with Rosella's small pumpkin, though apparently HER grocer had pumpkins much bigger but she had requested a small one. Obviously I don't have the right connections with the right people; the people with the big pumpkins. Sig.ra Pala had told me that this year there were only "Chinese" pumpkins available. When she said that I first thought she meant that the Italian market was being flooded with cheap pumpkins from China, but then I realized she meant that this year there were only small pumpkins around, though, she went on to say that big ones could be found in Mantova if I wanted to make the trip.
Pumpkin number 3 from the florist was larger than the ones I had gotten the day before and had a nice shape and a long stem for the handle, so I was pleased. Then when I went back to get Livia after work Rossella handed me a large plastic bag and said that she and Daniela had decided to give Giulio the JOL I had carved as a gift, he would enjoy it much more than her now grown children would and hadn't I said that I only had little pumpkins? So now I had four pumpkins to put out that evening. On the way home after getting Giulio we went to the fruit/vegetable shop and there in a wooden box outside the entrance I found an 11 pound pumpkin for sale. How could I resist? And then there were five.
So I realized that I had four pumpkins to carve and about an hour to carve them in, while trying to involve the children and create childhood memories, all before making dinner, putting the kids to bed and then going back to work for my evening class. We piled into the house and I started filling up the kitchen with the four pumpkins that needed to be carved, the fifth one was already in place downstairs, and it was here that I realized that carving in hardly a child friendly activity, especially when you are on a tight schedule. Just what I wanted, Giulio and Livia weilding sharp knives and pumpkin goop in a small space. Giulio however was really excited so I had him get the footstool so he could at least see better and a marker for him to draw a face on to his chosen pumpkin. What music does one carve JOL to? I wanted something very American, in the end I settled for Johnny Cash, most Italians have never heard of him, though we did once hear a coffee house performer in Bolzano belting out "Folsom Prison Blues" which Lorenzo recognized about five bars before I did.
The first two pumpkins were fast, the small ones carve easy and can be scooped out quickly. I don't do much in the way of artistic faces, I do the two triangle eyes, a smaller triangle for the nose, and a large grinning mouth, though occasionally I carve a tooth if I'm feeling inspired. But by number 3 Livia was trying to climb the footstool and grab the gas knobs for the stove top, while Giulio had disappeared somewhere with the blue marker. I found him drawing tentively on the tiled floor in the office and promptly banished him to his room. Luckily the marker was washable, I quickly cleand the floor and then got back to work. I finished all four in under an hour, but not how I wanted to, I mean I wanted it to be something that Giulio felt a part of but other than drawing ears on the pumpkins and refusing to touch the squishy insides, and then being sent to his room amid much protest, he wasn't involved much. It was me cranking out pumpkins while trying not to make a mess and keeping Livia from hurting herself. Maybe they are too little. Or maybe the fact that like anything that happens in my house from Monday to Thursday after 4 o'clock there are always time restrainsts and me keeping a close eye on my watch.
I finally finish and round up candles, a lighter, and put the JOL into plastic carrier bags, along with the now over-flowing compost pail (we are required to seperate our garbage), get the kids' shoes on and hustle us out the door. Luckily we meet Sig.ra Pala on the stairs and she insists on carrying the four pumpkins and the garbage pail, though I had offered her Livia instead. We head out to the yard where we run into Vanda, who I had invited to come and help carve but who had fallen asleep instead, and everyone stands around and watches as I line up and light the five jack-o-lanterns which glow wickedly in the darkening evening. Giulio is so excited he runs around yelling and laughing across the lawn, then comes running back to look at the pumpkins before taking off again. He swings his white Pat the Bunny around and around in his hand. Clearly the tears and Time Out from earlier have been forgotten, maybe this little tiny bit is what he will remember about Halloween with his mommy when he his older. Livia is too busy concentrating on walking as Sig.ra Pala watches her every step to be interested in Mommy lighting some candles, but Vanda looks for a moment and then tells me that there is one pumpkin for each kid in the building, the two smallest are Alessandro and Livia, while Giulio and Vanda have the slightly larger two. "And the really big one is Stefano," she says, which is kind of funny because Stefano could be describes as three yards of standing pump water but I agree that she is right. Five turned out to be the right number after all.

Stay at Home Weekend

2007-10-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

We went and bought a new vacuum cleaner today. I am more excited about it than I'd like to admit, though I only used it for a moment. When we came home I took the kids to a birthday party for another one of Giulio's classmates, and left Lorenzo to clean the house, and he is pleased with our new vacuum, especially with its flexible head that makes it easy to get under furniture. The arrival of the new one meant it was time to take Signora Pala's back. There is something almost private about sharing a vacuum cleaner, in my opinion, a bit like lending out your shoes, so I had held back from using hers a lot and was glad to be able to return it. When I took it downstairs to her she told me that she has had that Hoover vacuum since 1962 when she got married. Talk about not making things the way they used to! She admitted that while she doesn't really need it just for herself she had noticed that when the grandkids come to visit the crumbs tended to multiply, something I know a lot about. Cleaning Livia off after breakfast is a bit like searching her for ticks. I find Cheerios everywhere. Signora Pala wouldn't let me take the vacuum down to the storage room for her, or help her disassemble it, wrap the various pieces in plastic, and carefully put it away. She shows more care with the vacuum than I do with my car which might explain why it has lasted for as long as it has.
When I came back upstairs I found on our hall table a folded piece of paper that Giulio had brought home from school yesterday; I assumed it was another one of his scribble drawings. Opening it I read "Menu" written in large letters at the top, with the name of our town and the words Winter Menu written below, followed by a chart with week 1 to week 4 going across the top, and the five days of the week going down the lefthand side. By now these menues no longer suprise me, but when Giulio first started going to the town's daycare and they sent home the menu I called my dad to read out the various dishes offered. This one was no different. For example, Monday, Week 1 they will be eating pumpkin risotto, bresaola (a very lean kind of beef), steamed carrots, bread, and fruit. Or Tuesday Week 3 they will be having vegetable soup, roasted pork, green beans and potatoes, bread, and fruit. The menu had been stamped and signed by the Board of Health of the province. I found the menu funny for several reasons. First of all if this was the winter menu that meant there was a fall and spring one as well. And second it was so far from the sloppy joe, tater-tots, jell-o, and milk menu of my youth that my homeroom teacher used to read out everyday. In America you run for your life from cafeteria food, in Italy you wonder if they offer a take-out option for parents. Now that's an idea! Come pick up your kid and dinner too-- that way mom doesn't have to rush around getting dinner but could instead dedicate herself to quality time with the kids. Except, knowing the other mothers the way I do, I'm sure they think that the cafeteria food isn't great shakes and that they could certainly do better. But at least these school lunches take a lot of pressure off of me. My spies tell me that Giulio eats a lot at school, always asks for seconds on the pasta. The news was relayed to me as proudly as if Giulio was showing strongs signs of being gifted compared to the other children. "Your kid can read at age 4? Well MINE always asks for seconds at lunch!" Thanks to these lunches I have no problem offering Giulio scrambled eggs for dinner, or a turkey dog, at least this way he will know that not all meals have four courses.
Lorenzo has been home all week on sick leave. He's sitting on the couch coughing as I write. It's been really nice having him at home, though we haven't been able to go anywhere even with him home. When you take sick leave as a state employee you have to be home from 10-12 in the morning and from 5-7 in the evening, the time when they supposedly send someone to check to make sure that you are actually sick, though because there are so many state employees and so few of these "checkers" no one has ever come by to see if Lorenzo is actually at home trying to get well instead of say, off skiing somewhere in the Alps. We have a pretty quiet evening planned, we are going to watch a movie that Lorenzo will fall asleep 45 minutes into and somewhere around midnight we will go to bed. Luckily I like to stay in and hang out on the couch. Except right now I have a student whose 22 and every weekend he goes out clubbing. Not that I want to go out clubbing, but somehow I feel like his middle-aged mother teaching this young whippersnapper instead of someone who is a mere (!) 7 years his senior. I have a husband and kids and I sleep no more than 7 hours a night. He has no responsibilities, other than to learn English, and can stay in bed until noon on the weekends and therefore goes out every weekend, which he should do, and if I think hard enough I can sort of remember going out on weekends to clubs and stuff, especially in Rome, when I was exactly his age. And not that I even want to go out to clubs again, the music alone makes me want to tear my hair out. But yesterday I came home, it was cold and raining, the computer was on the fritz and had been all day, making Lorenzo very grumpy as he tried to deal with it, and Giulio was hyper and Livia is teething and therefore unhappy unless I was standing there holding her, and suddenly I thought, God, what I want to do is put on my best "going out" clothes, make myself beautiful, and go out and be 22 again, just for one evening. To not feel like 29 going on 40, but just me. Instead, when Lorenzo had finished fixing the computer I put on my iPod, my running shoes, my reflective vest and went out into the damp evening and ran for four miles. When I came back I felt a young, happy 29, glad to be putting my kids to bed and drinking a glass of wine with my husband. At home on my couch.

Dream Home

2007-10-23T13:23:00.001-07:00

Last week I downloaded a song that my brother had played for me when I was home this summer, put it on my mp3 player, and now I frequently listen to it while I run. In the song the woman sings about her dream of growing old by the fire with her partner, in a house in the middle of the country on a dirt road that's barely on the map, surrounded by flowers in summer and knee deep snow in the winter. On Monday as I jogged along listening to the song, I thought of my mother. She lived for four years in rural New Hampshire when I was in college in a house with wood burning fireplaces, on a dirt road barely on the map, flowers blooming on the lawn in summer and knee deep snow from October to May and she HATED every minute of it. Interesting how one person's dream is another person's nightmare.
I could never have imagined my home, my "condo" (I feel so silly and pretentious writing that word) when I was growing up, people rarely sing songs about 70 square meters with two bedrooms and an enclosed porch. My song would also mention having 3 bedrooms so the kids can each have their own room when they are older, and maybe a mortgage that was paid off, but after that, hey, I'm easy. One of the first things I learned when I moved to Italy was that owning a home of my own would not be easy, and the longer I lived here and looked at prices the harder I realized it would be. I seem to know a large number of people whose family's have acquired over the years various properties waiting for the moment when their children are grown and in love and ready to get married to call in the architect and workmen to restructure and transform some 1970's nightmare into something modern, large, and fully furnished. For the most part I don't begrudge people their family's reale estate empire, the idea that two people can't live together until every last detail down to the number of teaspoons has been taken care of, but there are times I want to hang a sign on our door: THIS APARTMENT IS BEING PAID FOR EXCLUSIVELY BY THE PEOPLE LIVING IN IT. DADDY'S MONEY WAS NOT USED TO PAY FOR OR FURNISH IT. THEREFORE DUE RESPECT SHOULD BE PAID TO THE ABOVE MENTIONED OWNERS FOR THEIR TENACITY AND CAPACITY TO BUDGET, FURNISH AN ENTIRE APARTMENT, AND STILL PAY FOR TWO CHILDREN IN DAYCARE/PRE-SCHOOL AND THEIR MORTGAGE. But perhaps that is a lot for one sign. I'm proud of our little place, it is not much, but it is ours, well kind of ours, excluding the part that the bank owns, which I guess actually is a lot, but hey, those are our names on the deed. I say all this because of what happened last night. Our dear friend Piero, who is also Giulio's godfather came up from Rome with his girlfriend to visit. Piero is from a town north of Rome called Rieti, he is a police officer like Lorenzo and he lived up north near us for almost 4 years before obtaining a transfer to go back to Rieti, which he did while complaining the whole time about how he didn't want to go back there but in the end accepted the transfer and went. He had helped us move in here almost three years ago and he has always been very complimentary about what we have done with the place. He finally cut apron strings a few years ago and moved out of his family's house, and rented an apartment of his own for a while. Then he met his girlfriend, and the last I heard was that they had decided to move in together and see how things went.
So last night they are here and we are having dinner and all they can talk about it how they have decided that what they want to do it come back north, that Piero is sick of his office and wants to come back here and the girlfriend hates her job, the pay is lousy, the contract lousy, and she thinks as well that things could be better for them here. We are agreeing, saying that she would definately make more money here, they could buy a nice apartment maybe and that way we could hang out more, and then Lorenzo and Piero start talking shop again so I start clearing plates. The girlfriend and I are now in the kitchen and I'm loading the dishwasher and she is watching me, which sounds mean but if you saw how small my kitchen is you would realize she was actually doing it to be polite and stay out of my way, and she asked me where we got our kitchen. That may sound like a really strange question to Americans. In Italy when you buy a house you also buy a kitchen as the former owners will take their kitchen with them when they move. They also take the light fixtures, leaving just wires sticking out of the ceiling, and the bathroom sink/vanity but do leave the toilet, bathtub and shower, perhaps because they would be too hard to cart away. So when moving the question of where you got your kitchen and how much you paid, and did you know anyone who might offer a good price becomes a serious topic of discussion. Companies that make kitchen cabinets, counters, and stove caps advertize on TV. I could name at least three brands off the top of my head and tell you if they were considered high end, middle, or low. This does not include the appliances, though they are usually thrown in with the whole kitchen package. A decent kitchen, nothing too amazing will cost you around 10,000 euros though that of course depends on whether or not it was custom designed, what materials were used etc. Our kitchen is a nice design, but not of very high quality, though the appliances aren't bad. Anyway, Piero's girlfriend starts saying something about their kitchen being ok and asking how I clean my stove top (when was the last time YOU had that conversation??!!) and I said, so what is the deal with your apartment, are you renting?
"No, we own it."
"Oh, really? I didn't know that Piero had bought an apartment."
"Well actually it wasn't him. You see my dad had bought this apartment for my sister in Rome for when she was at university, and he decided to sell it, and when he heard that Piero was thinking about buying something he said why don't we look together, and in the end he used the money from the Rome apartment and bought it for us."
"Oh." I'm trying to be cool here. Nice. Your girlfriend's dad is in a good mood and offers to buy you a place. Happens to me all the time. Well, they are a young couple, not even married, I'm sure it is a "starter" home, maybe two rooms like the place Lorenzo and I first lived in, 460 square feet, which was fine, until Giulio came along and started walking and by the end I couldn't wait to see the last of that apartment even if it was in the historic center.
"How big is it?"
"Well, it's about 960 square feet (this is a good size for an Italian apartment) and it has got three bedrooms, and a double garage."
So much for the starter apartment. One signature on a check and the girl had what I had always dreamed of, and she didn't even have kids yet. Just like love means never having to say you are sorry in Italy three bedrooms means never having to move.
Suddenly I couldn't stop myself. I blurted out, "So why do you want to leave? It sounds like you are set." Three bedrooms, did she just say THREE BEDROOMS??!!
"Yeah, well, we're just fed up with it, you know? We don't even have very good friends there anymore."
"Yeah, I know." Three bedrooms. Who needs friends when you can leave the baby to cry it out without disturbing the older kid? Suddenly I felt silly, silly standing there in my tiny kitchen in my 42 year old building, feeling pleased with my little place when she obviously had something so much bigger and better. Except that she didn't see it that way, heck, they want to come move up here where we are, though I guess they could use the money they get from selling that apartment and get something with three bedrooms here. And with no mortgage to worry about. It's like starting the game already standing on third base, instead of all the innings that Lorenzo and I had to play to get enough balls and runs to finally make it to second. It was hard not to feel jealous. I stopped trying and just went ahead and felt jealous.
On Friday while cleaning the house the vacuum died. The Made in China, 40 euro vacuum died before we had even owned it six months, and it died about an hour before I had to be at work, so no time to rush out and get a new one. As Lorenzo sat on the floor surrounded by pieces of the vacuum, I ran downstairs to Terry and Eugenio's but they weren't home. I then crossed my fingers and went back up a flight to Signora Pala's, I wasn't even sure she owned a vaccum cleaner, people of a certain age here tend to be wary of these new-fangled things for cleaning floors. My own mother-in-law cannot be tempted to give up her broom, despite the vacuum cleaner and Swiffer that we have given her in the hopes of bringing her into the next century as far as cleaning. I knocked on Signora Pala's door and she answered smiling as usual, and when I asked about borrowing her vacuum cleaner she told me that she didn't use one anymore, because it was just her living alone there so she used a broom, BUT she did use one when her sons (now both well in their 40's) lived at home. We went down to her storage room in basement where she proceeded to unpack a very elderly but clean and functioning Hoover, which she gave to me telling me that she didn't use it any more and to just keep it for as long as we needed it. After offering a million thank yous I took the Hoover back upstairs where Lorenzo said that everyone knew that Hoover was the best brand and proceeded to use it to suck up all the dust balls in a very satisfactory manner. It was like having your car break down and asking your neighbor if you can borrow their car and they lend you an old Merecedes and tell you to hang onto it for as long as you need it.
So yes, Piero and girlfriend may have three bedrooms but they don't have Signora Pala who, as I know, is worth her weight in third bedrooms.

A Strike and a Spare

2007-10-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

In the end the bowling party for Giulio went well, though the signs were there that it might not go as planned. I ordered the cake on Monday and Lorenzo went to pick it up on Saturday morning and came home fuming. It was 43 euros. 43 euros! What was he, Berlusconi's son, he didn't have 43 euros to blow on a cake, what could I have been thinking?? I pointed out that it was for 14 people and had strawberries in it, but he wasn't interested. Then around three o'clock (the party was scheduled for 4) we got a call from the bowling alley asking if we were planning on coming because they hadn't gotten a confirmation from us. Except they had. Lorenzo had called them a week ago to confirm that we were coming with at least 10 people, and we had been told that it was all set.
"People or kids?" the lady on the phone now wanted to know.
Why did it matter? When we had originally planned the party we had explained that there would be more adults than children and the guy had told us no problem. Did this mean they would give each person a small piece of foccaccia and call it even because they were expecting children? Would we make a "brutta figura" and send people home hungry? Lorenzo got dressed, took Livia and drove over there, worried about what we might find if we waited any longer to show up. I followed about 20 minutes later with 2 guests and the cake, a plate of pizzette, and bottles of coke and spumante. And in the end there was no problem. The table was set with cups and napkins and when they brought out the refreshments there was plenty for everyone, and along with the stuff we had brought, including the cake, well, no one went hungry. What logistics were involved though in planning! In America if you put out food, people eat it. Here we had this long debate-- ah yes, well the party's at four and people really aren't hungry and planning on eating a whole lot at four, maybe just cake. But then what if they are hungry and there isn't enough. To Snack of Not To Snack, that became the question and it kept going around and around until I began to wonder why I ever let Giulio have a birthday party to begin with.
By 4:30 though, everyone had shown up, all the people who Giulio likes to say, "all together they love me." We got bowling shoes all round and we were actually able to relax and have fun though Giulio was less than enthusiastic about bowling this time, at least at the begining. The place was filled with video games and video poker machines. Instead of bowling Giulio wanted to sit in front of the race car video game and turn the steering back and forth with the words INSERT COIN flashing across the screen. I practically had to pull him out of the seat while hissing in his ear the inane threat: Giulio, you come now or next year no birthday party! He got into the spirit of things eventually, even bowled for a while, but soon he was drawn to the snack table and by the end of the afternoon I had to do his turns for him. Clearly bowling has lost its appeal, next year it's just going to be 30 of his closest friends and a big cake. I have had my fill of children's birthday parties for the time being.
The only other downside of the party was the staff at the bowling alley, the friendly guy we had spoken to wasn't there for most of the afternoon. The staff watched us like hawks and were annoyed when people got anywhere near the bowling lanes with food, something that I found hilarious. I mean, can you imagine being told in the US that you can't have food near the lanes? Who would go bowling any more? People have sit-down meals pausing only to get up and bowl strikes at some of the places in Cincinnati. I obeyed but some of our male friends would sneak a pizzette up onto the lane with them, though I doubt the eagle-eyed guy at the desk missed a thing. The staff also seemed to think we were taking too long with our party. Apparently this particular bowling alley closes for one hour between seven and eight and they seemed very worried that we were going to run past 7. One of my friends heard one guy complain to another, "They aren't here to have dinner, they are here to bowl!" when she walked by the counter while we were doing cake and presents. We did make it out in time, but I wasn't pleased, I don't like to be rushed especially when I'm about to shell out cash for the priviledge of using their fine facility.
Signs that I'm becoming Italian: I wasn't pleased with the 43 euro cake. They had obviously used frozed strawberries instead of fresh strawberries, and in a true Italian hostess tradition I passed around the cake plates while lamenting on the quality, just as Terry had done at Alessandro's birthday when she had spend over 100 euros on two cakes. No self-respecting hostess would ever taste the cake she bought and proclaim it fabulous. No, instead a debate must ensue over where one can find a really good cake without feeling ripped off, as the one you are eating is certainly not meeting the mark. A hostess can show her approval by not saying anything, offering only a vague, "really?" when people deem the cake to be edible. I had eaten this same type of cake at another birthday and I remember going on and on about it to the hostess, so much so that when it was time to order it last week for Giulio's birthday I even called my friend to double-check on what was in it so I could be sure that it was the right one. I also asked for it in the shape of the number 4. Unfortunately it was an "italian" 4, so that upside-down it looked like a 7, and the girl at the bowling alley when she put the candles on it thought it was a 7 too, so that in the end it the candles that spelled HAPPY BIRTHDAY faced the wrong way, and when we tried to switch them it started to ruin the fluffy wipped cream topping and in the end the cake facing Giulio in the photos just says HAPPY ---------, as the "birthday" part of the candles are still facing the wrong way. We only got one or two photos of the cake part. The batteries on my camera died the moment I tried to take a photo of the cake with the candles all lit, while at the same time my friend Luca, who had been given video camera duty, informed me that the video camera had just run out of the film. The new cassette that I tried to open wouldn't, and in the end I gave up. I will have to try again when Giulio turns 5.
Out of all his presents Giulio was most proud of the trophy he was given at the end of the party by the staff, which says "To the Number 1 player at the birthday party." It is now sitting proudly on the shelf in his room.

La Festa del Bowling

2007-10-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Giulio's birthday is on Friday. He has become obsessed with birthdays lately, actually his own birthday. It is never anyone's birthday but his. When I tried to tell him two weeks ago that today was my birthday he looked and me for a moment and then shook his head.
"No Mommy. It is not your birthday, it's GIULIO's birthday! Not Mommy's."
We had a similar conversation when preparing to go to a fellow classmate's birthday party last week, how it wasn't Carlo's birthday but Giulio's, though in the end he relented long enough to give Carlo the Power Ranger that Lorenzo had picked out. No educational, wooden toy for this kid--just China all the way. Carlo's mom was thrilled, this was THE Power Ranger that Carlo had wanted and they had been unable to find it anywhere, I just smiled and acted like it was a careful deliberate choice on our part, rather than reveal the nasty truth that he had gone to buy Spiderman and they had been sold out.
Giulio first started to "get" birthdays last year when he turned three. People were giving him gifts! And singing! And feeding him cake! And all because he was a year older. But what I think really piqued his interest was when Livia had her birthday when we were in Cincinnati in August. I'll admit it, I even posted on a website reviling people who gave big parties for babies too little to enjoy them and then went on to throw a large two-phase birthday for a one year old. We had 16 of our closest friends and family, though I fully admit that this party was all about me wanting to get the people I love together in one room with the excuse of celebrating Livia's birthday in Cincinnati. Giulio's birthday is too late in the year to ever be celebrated in the US with our family and friends back home
. We held the party at a (clean and smoke-free) bowling alley across the river in Kentucky, followed by aperativi and prosecco at our house afterwards. We bowled, kept Livia away from the balls and off the floor, ate pizza, drank a lot of beer and then opened presents and had cake, and it was a success, a sort of melding of the Best of The Red American States with a strong Italian twist. The only drawback was that Lorenzo wasn't there, he had flown back to Italy the week before to start work. The cheese and wine for the aperativi cost more than the entire party at the bowling alley, and it gave Giulio the die hard belief that he his birthday had to involve bowling as well. I don't even like bowling, and even though there are bowling alleys here in Italy, it just seems to me like the quintessential American activity, I mean, I have never seen an Italian bringing his own ball and shoes to go play, I don't even know where one could buy bowling shoes in Italy. Lorenzo always wants to go whenever we are back in the States, he was the one who was the most enthusiastic about the party for Livia, and he also happens to be very good at the game. We never go here. For one thing, I am a terrible bowler (yes-me the American), and another, who wants to bowl while trying to keep two small children from running/crawling down the lanes?
Luckily for Giulio there is a bowling alley two towns over that does actual party packages, the American version frozen pizza and pitcher of pop having been replaced by foccaccia, pizzette, and olives. We booked for about 12 people, the owner explained to us the phases of the party. Instead of eating as we bowl (isn't that the best part??) we would play a game and then adjorn to the tables where we would have the food and cake, before moving back to the lanes for one more game. There was no problem with bringing spumante, and they could order the cake too if we wanted. And so, on Saturday we will all be there, six adults, four children, and two toddlers and Giulio probably bouncing off the walls with excitement.
Part of me feels, well not guilty but sort of silly for doing this kind of party, though I can hardly justify that it was OK for Livia and over the top for Giulio. The parties we have been to so far have been your basic birthday party. The kids run around and play and then the mom comes out with food and then the cake, presents are opened and then playing is resumed. There are no themes, no bouncy castles, no pony rides. If your house is too small you book the game room at the church and have it there, though then it is up to you to clean and mop the floor afterwards. In doing the bowling party we also had to greatly limit numbers to avoid spending a small fortune, only inviting people we are close to, rather than a big group of kids from his class. At any rate on Friday Giulio will take cake and bottles of coke to school with him to share with his class and they will sing to him and I know that he can't wait, he keeps talking about taking the cake to school. But I have already decided next year we invite his whole class, I buy a bunch of pizzette, panini, Nutella, and birthday cake, and we book the game room down at the church. But as any parent knows what you want to do is make your child happy, even if it means a Saturday wearing rented shoe. Sometimes you worry: is it too much? Am I teaching him to always expect a lot?I don't think I am over doing it, at least not this time with Giulio. Is a bowling party for 12 more excessive than a sit-down 6 course meal for 10? Yes, that is how we celebrated Giulio's first birthday. You could argue it beats bowling hands down.

The Mommy Stroke

2007-10-04T01:09:00.000-07:00

Now that Giulio is about to be four I thought it was time to move onto a new phase in his childhood: afterschool activities. Well, just one activity actually; swim class. I got the idea when I ran into the mother of Giulio's little friend Daria, who told me that Daria was taking lessons on Wednesday afternoons and she would just love it if Giulio could be in the same class as her. The classes were being held at the town's public pool, a place that any woman who has had a baby here or in the surrounding area knows because they also offer special swim classes for pregnant women. There is something wonderful about being in a changing room with a bunch of women all as pregnant and uncomfortable as you are, everyone's body being hijacked by this little demanding foetus. Friendships are born, confindences are exchanged. But later after everyone has had their baby it is more than likely that you will pass one of these women on the street and not even recognize them, no longer do they have a big belly, swollen ankles, nor are they wearing a swim cap. But I digress. Let me just say that after six years and two children, I knew the town pool quite well. It is a beautiful, 7 lane olympic length tiled pool, with spectator stands on one wall, and two walls of floor to ceiling glass on the other. You don't feel like you are swimming down in the basement, shut out from all light as you swim back and forth, instead with the sun reflecting off the water and illuminating your legs and making them look white and fleshy, you feel almost as though you are outside. There is also a smaller, shallow baby pool, which in my expecting mom swim class we used for relaxation exercises that I completely forgot once I went into labour.
Along with its beautiful pool and well stocked upstairs cafe' the pool is famous for something else: its' lines on enrollment day. Apparently twice a year they open the various courses, not just swim class but also something called aqua gym which is hugely popular with women. There are also swim classes for the elderly, swim team, and private lessons. On the day they do enrollment the lines are legendary. Apparently you go, get a number, and wait. It's the aqua gym wait that gets really brutal. They only offer it twice a week so people go early to be sure to get a number that guarantees them a space, arguments have been known to break out, though I have never been there to witnessed them. Its similar, maybe not quite as heated for spots on the Saturday children's swim classes, for obvious reasons. This way your child can go swimming without having to worry about school, homework, staying late at the office, or other afterschool activities getting in the way, and it is also when parents have the most free time. Fridays are also popular, no school the next day, at least for the preschool-elementary school kids. By the time I saw Daria's mother and booked it over there to sign Giulio up Enrollment day sign-up had been ages ago, classes started the following monday, leaving very little open. Daria's class was all full, as were all the Friday classes. The women in charge of signing people up merely gave an evil laugh when I asked about Saturdays. Thursday? Two spots left at 5 o'clock. Tuesday? Full. Monday? There was one spot left for the Monday 4:30 beginners class. I did some mental calculations. The class lasted half an hour. The time it would take to get Giulio showered, changed and back at home would put me at about 5:30, which would give me time if I had to be at work at 6.
"I'll take Monday at 4:30."
There were nine lessons in a package, which would mean the course would finish in mid-november. However now that Giulio was signed up it would give him priority over any new child signing up for the first time in November, so that if a spot opened in Daria's class, then Giulio could possibly be moved.
That was three weeks ago, and the good new is that Giulio LOVES swim class. He has this tall, bronzed goddess of a swim teacher who has them play games that involve splashing and jumping into the water one at at a time. Right now the focus is just on getting the kids comfortable with being in the water, and not on breathing or doing any kind of strokes. The mothers can watch the lessons from the lobby where one wall has windows that overlook the pool and from here I can see Giulio following the teachers instructions, playing games, and generally having fun. It would be perfectly pleasant if it was just me and Giulio, but unfortunately I have Livia with me as well, and that makes everything much more difficult. To start with Livia is walking now, a kind of staggering walk, that still gives way to crawling. She is still experimenting, while crawling is her preferred method of getting about.
On this past Monday we mange to get there early and in the locker room I have no choice but to kind of prop her up against a bench while I help Giulio change into his swimsuit, swim cap, and sandals. Then I have to change into flip-flops because you are not allowed past a certain point in the locker room wearing regular shoes. The cleaning lady who is always lurking around, sighing because someone just walked over her newly washed floor, will ream you out if she sees you headed towards the pool wearing "outside" shoes. So you have women elegantly dressed with their gold jewelry and their Armani Jeans rolled up wearing either some kind of water shoes or these blue plastic bag type things for shoes that they have in hospitals for people to wear when they go into a sterile environment. The first two weeks it was hot so I was wearing sandles and it only took a second for me to slip them off and put my flip flops on. On Monday it had gotten a bit cooler and so I was wearing sneakers which I had to take off, hurling them into the locker along with Giulio's stuff, all the while trying to keep Livia from crawling underneath a changing booth. We just use the general, open changing room when we get dressed. I take Giulio down the long hallway towards the pool, walk gingerly through the shower stall that we have to pass through to get to the pool, though luckily the shower is off, over to the bench next to the baby pool. We are early, way early, 10 minutes by my watch, and fifteen judging from the official pool clock mounted on the wall. Giulio is fine waiting on the bench, watching the other children trickle in through the shower stall, it is Livia who wants to move, making determinedly towards the baby pool which is not more than 3 feet away. I reach over and snatch her up and try to get her interested in the direction of the windows, but it doesn't fly with her. I then try and just hold her but she squirms and squawks until I put her down again. I feel myself starting to sweat and no wonder the temperature in here, according to the official thermometer is 84 degrees and the sun is pouring in from the windows directly onto us. Fine if you are wearing a swim suit, not fine if you are wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt. After what feels like an infinity of struggling with Livia and telling Giulio to get back from the pool's edge, the goddess swim teacher shows up so I can leave. Livia and I go back through the locker room where I change into my sneakers and head out to the lobby to wait. As the lesson is only half an hour it should pass in no time but I'm with Livia in her tired-yet not ready to give up the fight-time of day. Which means she either wants to walk or crawl. She will tolerate being held, but only if I am standing up while I do it. I try and watch Giulio through the glass while at the same time keep an eye on Livia and her staggering. Now she is down on the floor which for some reason seems littered with hair. No,no, no, I bend down and pick her up, trying to interest her in the swimmers on the other side of the glass. Livia will have none of this, she wants to walk so down we go again, step, step, step, step, steeeeeeeep, fall, and she's down, and I'm bending over and picking her up and trying to distract her and she wants down and so......and so it goes on for the what seems like an almost endless half hour. By the time I head back to the locker room to meet Giulio as he comes out of the pool I am tired, and hot too as the locker room is like ten degrees warmer than the lobby. But now the hardest part is about to come, the showering and dressing. Not hard because Giulio won't cooperate, hard because you are fighting 20 other mothers for showers and space as you try and get your child ready. Giulio comes through beaming about his lesson, telling me he went under the water and as much as I would like to find out more we get in the shower room and find all the showers are taken by small children in various stages of bathing suit undress standing under the shower heads while their mothers shout instructions at them. Or in some cases shout and then go ahead and do the washing themselves. I wait, holding Livia with one arm, the towel and plastic bag with the shampoo and soap in the other, while some mother helps her pubescent daughter wash her hair. I roll my eyes in disgust, is this how they do it at home too? Finally they finish and I get Giulio under the shower, and as I am holding Livia I have to shout instructions and gesture as Giulio is not used to washing his own hair.
"Ok Giulio, put on the shampoo. Now rub! No, don't rinse! Rub! Rub Giulio! Rub! That's it..keep going! A little more! Ok rinse." Here I have to stick a hand in the shower and help him get all the shampoo out of his hair.
"Ok, now this is for your body. Rub it on your belly! Your belly, Giulio, your belly! Now your arms! No, don't rinse yet! And your legs! Good! OK, rinse now!"
It is not the most thorough cleansing, but he has been swimming, not playing in mud, so he comes out of the shower dripping wet, and I try and wrap him one handed in the towel, but can't do it right and suddenly half of the towel is dragging on the floor. We move onto the next stage of mayhem, the locker rooms where the benches and hooks are covered in bags and shoes and clothes. Some mothers ignore the signs telling you to keep everything put away in the lockers and instead keep everything out to guarantee themselves a place on the bench. We fight our way in and I put Livia on the floor where she is immediately drawn to the drain and I decide I won't think about it, and instead focus on getting Giulio dressed. He is still quite damp, but at that moment, with the heat, and the noise and Livia on the floor, and the fact that I am sweating, I don't bother to dry him anymore but just start tugging his clothes on. Why do clothes always take longer to put on when you are in a hurry? And especially when you are in a wet hurry? Ignoring the looks from the mother next to me, I have taken HER spot, I get Giulio into his clothes and start stuffing his feet into his shoes. This is no time to work on getting dressed by himself. I see Livia start to head out the door back towards the showers and bellow at Giulio to stop her. They both sit together on the locker room floor giggling. With my hair in my eyes and sticking to my nose I frantically tie my shoes and start stuffing things into the bag. I don't bother to seperate wet from dry, or to wrap up Giulio's suit in the towel. Nor do I dry his hair. It's short, he will be fine.
"Come on, let's go, let's go!' I call and hauling Livia on one arm and the swim bag on the other I make towards the exit with Giulio wailing behind me that he wants to carry his bag. We get out to the car and after getting everyone buckled in I flop into the front seat with a deep sigh. I'm exhausted, how is this going to work when I actually have to go to work immediately afterwards? Giulio however is happy, it seems that the swimming lessons are a big hit.

Down and Out in Italy

2007-09-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

Totally nasty weather here today--cold and pouring rain, Venice flooding and the Alps getting their first hit of snow. All we've had is rain, but with the Indian summer (though can you have Indian summer in Italy?) over, we used Lorenzo's day off to do the "cambio di stagione" the change of the seasons, taking our shorts and bathing suits down to our storage room and bringing up sweaters and coats in their place. I hate my winter clothes, it's all jeans and turtlenecks, some of which I have had for years, none of the cool, adult, sexy mom clothes that I wish I owned. It was also a jarring reminder of all the cute clothes that I see in the shop windows that I either can't afford or can't fit into, the standard size for women here being a size 4. When I mentioned to Lorenzo that I hated my clothes he tells me that he hates his too, which I found surprising, I've never heard a man say what is always seen as a women-only sentiment. I can't say I blame him; Lorenzo's wardrobe is heavy on wool sweaters.
The evening news was all depressing too. Besides monks being killed in Burma, and soldiers dying in Afghanistan there was the happy news about pensioners who don't have enough money each month to get by, and how families with 2 children just can't make it to the end of the month either. It also included this bizarre story about some destitute family near Herculanium in Naples who, because their home had collapsed back in May, had been living in the town's city hall for months. The report focused on how they took baths and where the son did his homework without the reporter ever explaining why their house collapsed or why the town agreed to have them living in these offices; quite nice of them if you ask me. Imagine going to City Hall to register the birth of your child and behind the city clerk processing your form sits a man watching tv and smoking. Or at least that is how I imagine it, the camera crew went when the office was officially closed. All of this worry and unhappiness has to do with the euro, inflation, how salaries stay the same while prices rise, and the mortgage crisis touched off in the US that seems to be wreaking havoc on the rest of the world. Imagining myself in 50 years, old and destitute, living on beans and day old bread Lorenzo and I lifted a glass of red wine to toast each other and knock it back to numb the pain, Lorenzo reminding me that at least our town's City Hall is a really nice building, if we are ever forced live there. Is there anything worse than a rainy day when you are feeling broke?
At 3:10 this afternoon I started my school run, going into the center to get Livia before coming back to our neighborhood to get Giulio from the nursery school down the road. Traffice was heavy, no one wanted their little dears to get wet in the downpour, though it really was wall-of-rain out there to be fair and it was almost an hour before we got back home, both kids happy, tired, and dirty from their long day at school/nido. Due to the ugly weather I was wearing an old pair of jeans and my college era North Face rain coat, though my children, after a summer of me shopping at Target, Gap, Value City, and Old Navy looking for deals, looked much nicer than I did. I always get mad compliments on whatever Livia is wearing, which is nice because it goes a long way to make up for the fact that she always looks adorable (though maybe that is because she is a baby) and I just look OK. A few weeks ago Judith Warner in the New York Times had this whole thing about the famous Yummy Mummy, most specificallly the French Yummy Mummy, based on an essay in last months French Vogue. These are women fashionably dressed, perfectly manicured and touseled, who always get their children into the right classes with the best teachers. Their homes are tastefully decorated and clean and they make sublime pastry in their spare time. I don't know about the pastry or the tasteful decoration (another post, another time), but the moms here sure do look cute taking little Francesco and Giulia to school. Forget the faded jeans and the "I don't do Mondays" t-shirts, here they wear little blouses with cute jackets, capri jeans with high heels, or elegant boots with dresses. They always accessorize nicely too, with enormous Chanel sunglasses and matching handbags. Even casual is more restrained than our idea of casual. Ironed jeans with a sexy sweater and beautiful leather loafers. They get their hair done once a week and wax regularly. They know to go early to sign their child up for swim classes to get the desired Saturday lessons, unlike me who forgot to sign Giulio up until about four days before lessons started and all that was left was the Monday slot.
These women are also helped by their mothers, something I envy more than anything. With two sets of grandparents on hand, all things are possible. Mothers can work full time without feeling guilty because she knows her mother will pick the kids up from school and take them to swim class. Preparing lunch is never a problem either, everyone just heads over to Grandma's house for a three course meal. This week I am helping a former student of mine translate pages of his website. Yesterday at lunch time we hopped in his car and drove the two blocks to his mom's house, where she had prepared pasta, steak, spinach, cake, fruit, and coffee. This was not done specially for me, he merely told her to prepare another 100 grams of pasta since I was coming too. In Italy there is no need for the government subisidized nanny that Judith Warner claims they have in France, all you need are grandma and grandpa and everything runs smoothly. I can't help but be jealous of these women who just don't seem to realize at times how lucky they are. They sigh over how stressful if all is, trying to manage it all, and I'm sure it is, but when was the last time they hailed someone down outside their house to come in and watch the kids until their husbands got home? The family unit, including aunts, uncles, and cousins is still fundamental in Italy, they are the people you turn to first. When you need to move and assemble a new bookshelf you don't call your best friend to help you, you call your Dad who comes over while your Mom keeps an eye on the kiddies.
Lorenzo and I, with our families far away have to be our moms/dads/aunts/uncles rolled into one. There is a scene in the Nick Hornby book "About a Boy" where the main character attends a Single parents group called S.P.A.T. or Single Parents Alone Together. Lorenzo and I are not single parents, but we are alone, together. I have helped carry various heavy pieces of furniture up the stairs and stood by to hand Lorenzo tools while he fixed the car or installed ceiling fans. He in turn vaccuums, prepares ragu sauce, and goes grocery shopping. This past spring when Giulio stayed over night in the hospital to get his adenoids taken out, we took turns standing in the waiting area with Livia in her stroller (she wasn't allowed into the ward) while the other sat with Giulio in his hospital bed. Sometimes I get so fed up with it being just us, though I know my parents would move here in a heartbeat if they could. I know they are here in spirit and on the phone cheering us on, and always making us feel like the 24 hours of hell that we endure to fly to Cincinnati was worth it once we see them at the airport so excited and happy to see us. But sometimes it would be nice to take off my load and spread it out a bit amongst other people. Like having someone else to do my ironing, or knowing that if Lorenzo wants to put new blinds up on the porch he won't be counting on me to hold the ladder and hand him things. But sometimes there is something exhilirating in our Us vs. Them mentality, the times Lorenzo and I have pulled off the impossible, licked the bureucracy, pulled off a perfect wedding, completed the seemingly endless list of things to do, got Livia into the right daycare, put a down payment down on a condo using our own savings. On Monday we managed to simultanously go grocery shopping and get the car fixed all in under 20 minutes. And it is moments like these we hug and we whisper in each other's ear: Insieme siamo troppo forte. Together we kick butt.

Baby Hold On

2007-09-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

I blame my lateness for posting on mental and physical exhaustion. Yes, the white flag has flown and I admit defeat, my children have kicked my butt. As I write this Livia is happily flinging our DVDs from their cabinet and onto the floor. Far from being the coveted "Yummy Mummy" I am officially Grouchy Mommy, Constantly Saying NO Mommy, Screaming Mommy, In Therapy for the Rest of the Their Adult Lives Mommy. Ok, well maybe not that. But being on my own with the kids since getting back to Italy has been HARD, compounded by the fact that Lorenzo is working hard at the office and the children have been home working hard on me every day. Last Saturday Livia woke up in bad mood and proceeded to yell/scream/express displeasure for much of the morning, mostly over the fact that I strapped her into her high chair while I cleaned the house. Around the time I was trying to spoon lunch into her I broke down, and called my mother, not giving a damn that it was 6am in the states and sobbed my frustration and exhaustion to her over the phone. She assured me that it was normal to feel like a mental breakdown was in order after four and half hours of wailing toddler. There are times when I see myself from an outside perspective thinking, this is not the mom I wanted to be. Giulio grates on my nerves as well, with his constant "why?" whenever he is asked to do anything. Last night we went out to a pizzeria for dinner and when dinner wasn't immediately forthcoming Giulio did his new way of expressing discontent: breath coming out in short puffs, bouncing up and down at the knees, arms held up towards me, a kind of "Mommy, want hug! " wail coming from his mouth. Lorenzo couldn't understand my impatience with this dance until I asked him how much he had seen Giulio awake in the last week and a half. He offered up a sad smile and was silent.
Relief is on the way though, Giulio started school on Monday doing half days all week before he starts full time next week. And this year he really seems to like school, the teacher is young and pretty and looks just how you think a nice nursery school teacher should look. Best of all the school is just around the corner, about a five minute walk from our house. Hello Bicycle, good bye car! But his time out the house was largely un-noticed because while he was at school I was helping Livia complete her day care placement period. Yes, we have switched day cares, Livia will now be going to the city run public daycare where Giulio went. She even has the same two teachers that he had, Rossella and Daniela. The word for daycare in Italian is nido, which means nest, a really great word to describe what you hope your child will see as a protected place, a kind of sanctuary, and they really go out of their way to make the child feel safe and comfortable there. Livia started her placement two weeks ago, and for the first week I wasn't allowed to leave the room where she was, not even to run to the bathroom. The point is at first to just get the child comfortable with the surroundings. Around Thursday she started having lunch, which I fed her the first time. It wasn't until this past Tueday (they never try anything new on a Monday after the kid has been home for two days with Mommy and Daddy) that I was allowed to leave the room for an hour while she played and then had lunch. I spent the last half of the week in the Parent's room, with a book, waiting for the occasional update as Livia went through her daily routine in the room across the hall. The first time she stayed for nap, I had to lie down with her which she seemed to find to be one big joke and proceeded to crawl all over me. On Wednesday and Thursday she went to sleep on her own. On Friday came the final challenge, if she could do her whole day, including nap and the snack that followed without me. She passed with flying colors. Actually home now must seem so boring to her after that place where everything is arranged for a small child. There is nothing she can't touch or play with or climb on. And she has gotten very attached to Rossella, just as Giulio was, which is just as well, as she will be with Rossella and Daniela for the whole two years (though for children who start when they are younger it is three years) that she is there. So no, I don't feel guilty or bad at all about leaving Livia there, with people who, compared to me as of late, are calm and aren't trying to prepare meals, do loads of laundry, or put away groceries while trying to take care of chidren.
There are two public day cares in our town, which means about 70 spots in total, and I still don't know how we managed to get in. Seeing as they are run by the town, they assemble a group of chidren that cover the whole socio-economic graph. There is a sliding pay scale, and they take a certain number of people from each braket so in the end you have a complete democratic mix of people, a doctor's child who is paying the full fee in the same class as an unemployed single mom's kid, who isn't paying anything. Much more democratic than anything I ever found in the States, including the concept that poor people should have access to top-notch childcare because they are probably the ones who need it the most. It is kind of interesting who you rub shoulders with, but that is how I have found Giulio's preschool to be as well, rich people have no problem sending their kids to the free public pre-school to be alongside their cleaner's children. Thanks to Lorenzo's policeman's salery and my 9 months out of the year job, we are paying the same amount for Livia to go full time that we were paying for her to go part-time at her old nido.
Yes, I'll admit it, there are times I think about leaving Italy. Not alone of course. I think about loading Lorenzo and the kids into the Boeing 767 and heading off to live in Cincinnati in my parent's basement until I can get a Master's degree and a good paying job. And Lorenzo can become the stay-at-home-dad that he is meant to be. But then I think about the nido and, to quote "The Sound of Music", then I don't feel so bad. And thinking that as of Monday I will have both kids being pleasantly occupied, fed, and tired out by other people from 9-3:30, well, I feel even better.

The Letter

2007-09-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get back on track here, we are alll sleeping at normal times now, even Livia. Now when I start singing "Baby Mine" she puts her head on my shoulder for a moment and pats my back, then sort of straightens up, looks at me as if to say, "You are still singing?" and then tries to free herself from my arms to drop into bed. And this is when I've barely sung the first verse! Guess my singing is worse than I thought, though Giulio likes me to sing the whole song anyway. I've also started running again, eager not to let go of the endurance I worked so hard at pounding the hot streets of downtown Cincinnati with my brother, and after the heat of the mid-west the cool air here makes running feel really easy. Something has changed since I first came to live here. Six years ago when I would try and go running around town I would get these cool looks from people like, "Whatever you are doing, please don't do it around me." I would occasionally see the odd dedicated, weathered male jogger about but otherwise I felt so conspicuous, like I was doing The Wave at a funeral that I joined a gym so I could do my running in peace, free to sweat as much as I liked. The memory of these stares has kept me off the streets and in the gyms for over six years now, rarely, if ever venturing out into the open air to pound the pavement, but in the meantime suddenly lots of people, at least in Northern Italy, have taken up running. And not just men either, women too, young, old, middle aged. Yesterday was a gorgeous day, the sky swept clean by the strong breeze which shows off the Alps to its' best and clearest advantage, and running down country roads with meadows and cornfields all around me and the sun warming my back was, well, let's just say, Cincinnati it was not. Maybe it was the good weather but I couldn't get over the scores of people I saw out running, including people running in packs. I felt like something out of The Wizard of OZ, Glinda the Good Witch waving her wand and telling us joggers to "come out come out wherever [we] are..."
Terry, my downstairs neighbor, has her sister Marta, Marta's two children, and Marta's dog staying with them for the week. It also turned out to be a blessing for me to have them because each morning this week and next Livia is doing "orientation" at her new day care center. As this daycare will have to be a topic of its' own posting I will leave it for now, but in any case I couldn't take Giulio with me so he's been staying downstairs with Eugenio and Marta and all the kids until I get home around 12. Giulio doesn't start school til Monday, but as he loves Terry's daughter Vanda, he's really enjoyed playing with her and her cousin Federica in our yard each day, and so when Marta asked me if I would be able to help Federica with her English summer assignment I quickly agreed.
This was not the first time I have been asked to help with homework. Occasionally, late in the evening there will be a quiet knocking on our door and Vanda or Stefano will be standing there clutching an English textbook and smiling sheepishly, needing help on a homework exercise. Once my neighbor across the street asked me if I would mind translating her niece's account of her class trip to Rome. Apparently she was expected to tell all about it in her 8th grade English class and just didn't feel up to the task. While I did suggest that if this niece didn't feel up to it then she probably often didn't "feel up to it" when she was in class and therefore the teacher would certainly know when the girl who had probably never used the past simple test correctly in her life suddenly presented this gramatically correct essay using all kinds of tenses, including ones she had never even been taught. Not to worry, my nieghbor said, showing me a neatly handwritten report, the niece would just be so relieved if I could do it! In the end I agreed to do it, though not because I think it is OK for an adult to do a child's homework for them, but because, as many of you are painfully aware, I never know when a babysitting emergency might strike and it might be good to have a favour owing from this woman. Ten days later she rang my bell and over the intercom told me that the niece got an "Ottimo" on her homework. Good to know that college education was good for something!
Federica's summer assignment was similar, the topic of so many back-to-school essays the world over, What I Did On My Summer Vacation. I was pretty sure I knew what to expect from Federica; a dull, straight forward account of her summer, most of it centered on her two weeks down in Calabria at her grandmothers. I told Federica just to write the letter like she was writing to someone in Italian and not to worry about translating it, we would do that together. The children and I were invited to lunch at Terry's house today, and as we were cleaning up the remains of the lasagna it came out that Federica still hadn't written the letter much to her mother's despair. "At this point," she said to Terry, "I will just let her get the bad grade at school and let her deal with the consequences." Terry snorted. "Is that what you want?" she asked her niece, "Nice way to start off the school year. Haven't even done your homework for the first day. You don't have to tell the truth, you know. Make something up, keep the teacher interested. Say you went all over Italy, seeing the amazing landmarks of each region. That way your teacher will know that you know something about history and geography too." In the end, with Terry wrangling the girls it was decided that at 2:30 Vanda and Federica would come upstairs to me, Vanda would keep Giulio entertained and I would help Federica with her letter.
At home I got Livia down for her nap, put a DVD on for Giulio, and went to work attacking my week's ironing, including one of Lorenzo's uniforms. (Do policemen's wives in the US have to iron their husbands' uniforms or do they have a laundry service?) At precisely 2:30 there was the timid knock announcing the girls' arrival. I should mention a little about Federica, she is two years older than Vanda, so she will be going into the eight grade this year and she seems like a nice enough girl, a little on the heavy side, polite, nice to Giulio, doesn't talk back to her mother, but very quiet around me.
"You got your letter?" I asked.
"My Aunt Terry wrote it."
An act of love? Or an aunt not knowing her boundries? I still can't decide but Terry's love/inability to respect limits filled two pages, single spaced. The letter started out Dear Chiara, and went on to tell a lively (fictional) account of Federica's fun filled 24 hours in Rome, complete with a tour of the Coloseum, breakfast in a "typical and characteristic Roman bar", a shopping spree in the Porta Portese market, and dinner at "quaint and delicious trattoria." Great attention was paid to what was eaten at meals, Pasta all'Amatriciana and a typical Roman dish involving fish at the trattoria, a cornetto and a frothy capuccino at the bar. Then it was back in the car and onto Calabria where they drove through the night, arriving in time to find that Grandma had lunch all ready. (Tagliatelle with tomatoes and peas, oven roasted potatoes, and fresh mozzarella.) Days passed on the beach taking cool, refreshing swims, and evenings spent at the outdoor candy stands that sold cotton candy before walking around with girlfriends through the town, engaged in wonderful conversations, until Mamma, sometimes passed midnight, called her home to bed. The letter closes with "Federica" saying she could fill a whole book with all the interesting things she had done that summer, but unfortunately dinner was on the table and getting cold so she had to sign off here. While Federica did spend two weeks at her Grandmother's, one would have been hard pressed to get even the barest details of her vacation out of her, and there was something remarkably touching about this hearty, epic letter complete with its detailed accounts of meals, as though it was the vacation Terry wished her niece had actually had, rather than the quiet, hum-drum one that had passed in its place. And now I was going to have to translate it.
My plan had been to see how much Federica could say on her own, and then help her shape that into complete sentences, but it turned out, in part because of the wordy text, that there was little if nothing that she could get out herself. When I help Vanda she always manages to come up with some possibilty of the answer, heading in the right direction if not immediately completely correct. Federica chocked on the first word and never recovered, though maybe she never had it in the first place, starting the opening sentence with "This summer..." and writing "this" as "dis." With my eye on the clock and an actual paying student coming within an hour, our little translation exercise quickly became a dictation exercise, a long tedious one at that. Part of the problem was that Federica had great difficulty spelling in English, perhaps nerves, or being unfamiliar with my pronounciation, or just not really knowing what I was trying to say, but whatever the case "and" kept showing up as "end", "at" as "et", "the" as "de". Due to the length of the letter and the waning time I found myself writing whole sentences myself without explaining what I was writing, and as she didn't seem very interested or bothered to know why something was written the way it was, I kept on doing it. When we ended with Love, Federica I reminded her again that "and" always starts with an "a", she nodded, took the letter, said thank you, and fled. The letter, written by her aunt, translated into English by her Aunt's neighbor and without a trace of the Real Federica will fool no one, but at least she did her homework for the first day. I'm hoping for another "Ottimo."

Landing

2007-08-30T12:25:00.001-07:00

It's now 9:25 and after two hours of false starts the kids seem to have finally fallen asleep. We have been back in Italy since Monday afternoon and I had hoped that rising at 8 and having no nap to speak of during the day would be incentive enough to make Livia fall asleep immediately. And in fact, initially that was the case, I read the kids their story, gave kisses all around and both of them rolled over and went to sleep. For five blissful minutes I sit on the couch, reading my old copy of "Anne of Green Gables" brought back from the States and enjoy the silence. The the doorbell rings, it's Lorenzo bearing pizza. Giulio comes running out of his bedroom like a shot yelling "Daddy! Daddy!" and Livia starts sceaming like she just got smacked. In the end I have no choice but to let the kids hang around and say hello to Daddy, Livia's face breaking out in a huge smile at the sight of her papa' even though there are still tears on her face. I feel like Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail whenever her husband shows up. All the savvy and know-how gone and forgotten as people crawl over each other trying to shake Bill's hand. I was the one who get the night lights right, took away the "scary" pillow, gave my best rendition of "Baby Mine", and all for me only to have to do it all over again in a moment. If he wasn't bearing dinner I would be more hostile, but as my pizza marinara (with just a little tomato sauce) smells pretty awesome I decide to let it slide. The kids are coaxed back to bed, but then, within minutes Giulio is up again, padding down the hall to talk about how his bed seems scary and setting Livia off again too. Another rendition of "Baby Mine", another discussion about how Giulio's light blue IKEA bed spread with a bubble pattern is the happiest, non-scariest thing around, and how I wish I had one just like it before they are out again. Or so I think. I hear the pitter-patter of little feet, groaning inwardly wait for Giulio to stick his little head round the doorway. "Mommy? My toys are scary." Livia yells out again from the next room. Sigh.
In all due respect they are doing rather well, coming all this way, re-adjusting to being back home. Livia obviously doesn't remember much about the apartment, though she does remember her Daddy. And Giulio? He's the happiest I have seen him in ages, agreeable, co-operative for the most part, and loving being re-united with Thomas the Tank Engine. It also reminds me that this, here, Italy, is their home, and that my home, Cincinnati, is not. They like the States, like the pools, the museum, and the zoo, love the grandparents and the Oreos, but here in Italy is where they belong. For me it always takes a bit of adjustment, though this time I only cried once and that was after unpacking four suitcases and rotating the children's winter/summer wardrobes on only three hours sleep. While sweating profusely. Maybe I was just missing the air conditioning.
The flight over went suprisingly well. Cincinnati-New York had its' usual awfulness, Giulio whining and squirming in his seat, Livia not quite standing but refusing to sit on my lap and squawking, me not daring to look at the teenager at the window seat on the other side of Giulio for fear of what he might say, and then a miracle: both kids fall asleep about half an hour before landing in New York. Peace. I listen to the flight attendant seated in the kitchen space behind me complain about last week when she was called back to do another flight when they were already technically on lay-over when the call came through, and stare down at Livia asleep against my chest, her mouth open.
At JFK we book it over to the gate from where our plane to Milan will leave, even though we have over an hour and a half, I'm hoping to nab the bulkhead before someone else does. The place is swarming with Italians, most wearing newly purchased sweatshirts or sneakers. It seems that they have put the Milan gate and the Rome gate right next to each other, though the change in accents you hear just by moving five feet to the left or right is startling. The gate desk is empty so I walk up to a guy wearing a tie standing by the walkway entrance and ask about who I need to speak to about the possibility of getting the bulkhead seats, especially the ones with the little crib that latches onto the wall for the baby. For once in my life I have asked the right question to the right guy, the guy with the authority and computer codes to unlock these seats and within moments he has handed over new boarding passes and sent me on my way. I cannot believe my luck, and try to walk away while still kow towing before him on both knees.
I go stand over in one corner of the waiting area and take in the view of largely young, corporate Italy with disposable incomes waiting to fly back to Milan. I know these people, I mean, I don't really know them, but I teach people just like them back at home. People who are in life long engagements with their partners, yet still live at home with their parents, waiting for the time to present itself for when it will be right to get married. In the meantime, their company job covers their car payment and leaves a lot of money left over for trips to places like California, Bali, and biking tours through Northern Europe. Lorenzo, who always felt it was important to save money, never revelled much in this lifestyle before meeting me, a policeman's salary really can't take you to Bali more than once, but sometimes I wonder what it would have been like it we had waited 10 years before saddling ourselves with two kids and a mortgage. Then I think of flying with a pre-schooler and a baby to America and back when I am 38 and realize that perhaps I have really done what is best for me and my life.
We eventually board the plane, and it is 3/4 full of Italians, all jolly and happy about going home and eating well again and showing off the crazy deal they got on a pair of Nike Shocks. I find that the heavens have blessed us again by having us share our seats with an Italian named Davide, young, friendly, and who apparently really likes children. I'm initially weirded out. Why is he being so nice to Giulio? What does he want? I realize that my two months in America has made me paranoid about men and small children and that actually this guy Davide is just acting how most men in Italy act around young children: outgoing and attentive. It is also clear that he loves speaking in English to Giulio, even trying to read "A Baby Sister for Frances" to him when Livia is demanding all my attention. At one point during the flight I compliment him, asking if he has kids of his own.
"No."
"Nieces or nephews?"
"No. I have a girlfriend."
"Oh, and SHE wants to have kids someday?"
He nods. It seems a strange logic, is he taking parenting classes or something? Whatever the reason it is nice to be next to someone who doesn't mind when Giulio's feet kick him in the leg. Giulio, aided by Benedryl sleeps until I wake him up when we land.
We finally stumble off the plane in Milan, me staying loudly upbeat to Giulio (Oh look! A moving sidewalk!) so he won't have a meltdown but he seems to know that Lorenzo is nearby, or maybe because I keep saying that Daddy is nearby but at any rate he is in a fantastic mood as we get on line at immigration. My phone rings, it's Lorenzo.
"What line are you on?" he asks.
"I'm on the non-EU line."
"Claire, just use your Italian ID card and go through the other line."
I should explain that I have dual citizenship, American and British, and I'm actually in Italy legally as a British-European Union citizen. (Thanks, Mom!) My ID card in Italy also lists me as British, and you can use an ID card when travelling between EU countries instead of a passport. But I didn't think that would work just then.
"Lorenzo, how am I going to do that? They will never let me in with just the ID card. And what about the kids? All I have is their US passports."
"The kids have Italian names. Trust me." He says and hangs up.
I look around. The line I'm in is stopped dead, the EU line is practically empty. I fish out my ID card and move Giulio and the stroller towards the booth where a police officer meets me at the doorway.
"Passports, Madame?"
I hand him the ID card which he looks at and then asks to see my British passport and I have to tell him that I only have my American one with me.
"Well then, you will have to go through the other line. Maybe someone will let you cut ahead, since you have children."
I stand there for a second, trying to ignore the stares from the other non-EU passengers who are surely thinking, "Whose this @#$hole who tried to jump the line?" when I see Lorenzo standing over by the baggage carousel on the other side of the glass. I wave. He sees me, and I try to mouth to him "They won't let me though, I'll have to go around, this is all your fault." He nods and comes closer and calls something out to another officer who has just taken the place of the one who negged me. "That's my wife." I hear Lorenzo say. The officer looks at me and gestures me over. "Prego, Signora." (I wonder what the other passengers are thinking now.) He quickly stamps our passports, bam, bam, bam, and we are through. Giulio races up to Lorenzo who I see has tears in his eyes. We are together. Back in Italy.

50 Random Things to Know if You Plan on Living in Italy

2007-08-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

1) You can buy real maple syrup in Italy, but you cannot find the fake imitation Aunt Jemima kind.
2) Italian supermarkets do sell Jiffy peanut butter and some places also sell organic peanut butter.
3) What we call bread, they call toast, or Pan Carre. Their bread is much better.
4) I have never been able to find Zip-Loc bags.
5) Fresh milk goes off after a few days, though lately you can find longer lasting fresh milk. Otherwise buy UHT milk which lasts for ages, and I honestly think tastes OK. It's in a cardboard cartons on the shelf, near the dairy freezer.
6) Skim milk ( scremato) can only be found in the UHT form.
7) Whole milk is called intero, while 2% is called parzialemente scremato.
8) They sell Philidelphia cream cheese, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Kraft cheese slices.
9) Kids clothes are expensive, so unless you are ok paying 30 euros for a sweater, you do better buying them in the States.
10) Never go the gym and then dash into the supermarket. The Italians will be weirded out by you looking disheveled and sweaty in their midst.
11) Never drop the kids off at school looking like you just came from the gym, the other well made-up mothers will look at you funny.
12) Your stroller is your friend.
13) Italian women really will look after small children in 3" heels and immaculate white suits and stay clean. We non Italians lack the genes to do this.
14) It is OK to go two or three days without washing your hair. It is not OK to have hairy legs.
15) Your child needs to keep his undershirt tucked in at all times. Otherwise other women will do it for you, telling you that your child risks having a stomach ache or that you have left his kidneys exposed to the elements.
16) Children's colds are not treated with syrups but with liquid drops of medicine mixed with sterile water and then blown out in vapor form through a mask by an aerosole machine. It is your responsibility to hold the mask over your screaming child's face.
17) Italian children don't have bedtimes. People will assume that the fact that your child goes to sleep at 7:30 it is because he asks to go to bed then.
18) Italian children are welcome at all restaurants at all hours.
19) Italian children are welcome just about anywhere at all hours. And it is OK if they make some noise, they are children, that is what they are expected to do.
20) No one wears all white gym shoes.
21) Women don't wear baseball caps.
22) Italians always wear slippers or flip flops when they are home. Walking around barefoot is kind of a no-no.
23) When at home, most Italians change out of whatever they were wearing and hang around the home in sweatpants and t-shirts, especially when cleaning.
24) Men only wear white gym socks when they are in the gym.
25) Italian women don't drink to get drunk.
26) They are also good at resisting dessert.
27) At movie theaters you get an assigned seat when you buy your tickets. People will ask you to move if you are in the wrong one, even if the rest of the theater is empty.
28) Movies also have an intermission half way through.
29) Most stores are closed on Sundays and Monday mornings, though that is starting to change at least among the big supermarket chains.
30) All phone calls from land lines, even to the person across the street are expensive.
31)The FAX machine is still a valid and popular way of sending documents.
32) People rarely, if ever, write personal checks.
33) It is completely normal to go to someone's house for dinner and they leave the TV on while you eat.
34) Always bring something when invited to someone's house. If it is for Sunday lunch it will be assumed, though never said, that you will bring pastries that you buy on your way to their house.
35) Italian network television is terrible. Walker Texas Ranger is a popular show. The Runaway Bride is a frequently shown film.
36) Get cable if you want to see something decent.
37) Always say "Buon Giorno" when entering a shop and say it again when you leave.
38) Don't expect an outpouring of help from shop assistants.
39) Waiters will never introduce themselves by saying, "My name is Paolo and I will be your server for this evening." Nor will he ask you if you are "still working on that?"
40) Sugar is just fine to give to children.
41) Italians tend to do things in droves. If you are going on vacation in the summer, probably 17 million other people had the same idea. If you go to IKEA on a Sunday, expect half of the region to be there as well.
42) If you plan to drive you need to know how to parallel park. Really.
43) It is hard to find a real Christmas tree, most stores only sell fake ones. The real ones will be small and most likely in a large pot so you can keep it for next year if you want.
44) Family always comes first, even if the members of the family don't seem all that fond of each other.
45) Italians fear strong breezes and drafts, especially in the presence of children. A breeze + sweating= certain illness.
46) When you buy fruit at the grocery store wear the provided plastic gloves before touching anything. NEVER start handling fruit yourself at a market or the fruit seller will go off on you.
47) At a supermarket you are expected to weigh your own fruit.
48) Italians are generally friendly welcoming people who tell you that you speak Italian well, even if it's not true.
49) The food is always soooo good.
50) You should always have a second glass of wine.

SAHM

2007-08-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

I have a whole new respect for Stay at Home Moms now. (Hereafter SAHM). Since Lorenzo went back to Italy two weeks ago it has just been me with the kids. Except it hasn't been just me. It has been my parents taking the kids first thing in the morning so I can sleep in 'til 7 or 8 because now, God help me, Giulio wakes up at 6:15 wanting breakfast and Livia is rising now around 7. I am very curious to know how I am going to handle this when we are together again---oh, wait--yes I do know, it will be ME who will be getting up at 6:15 to get Giulio his breakfast. So right now it isn't just me in the morning, and it isn't just me when at 5 o'clock my father puts a glass of wine into my shaking hand, but it is me throughout the day. Every day since I got here I wake up in our basement guest room (my brother's bedroom on the 2nd floor is the 1st guest room and Giulio is sleeping there) and hear Giulio scurrying overhead, followed by Liviaon all fours. Giulio is usually giggling uncontrollably and Livia is saying "Daaaaaaa! Daaaaaaaa!" Talk about the pitter-patter of tiny feet. And my goal for the rest of the day is to do what I can to tire out those tiny feet.
And yet, how does one manage to coordinate two different children at very different stages of their lives? By the time everyone has eaten, dressed, and I've cleaned up the kitchen and gotten Giulio excited about going somewhere, Livia has started to fuss and it is time for her morning nap. When she wakes an hour later, usuallly around 11 we then begin a whole new round of eating and changing to make another attempt to go out. Somewhere in there we have Giulio going into Time-Out a few times and those scenes drag on and on, and I'm also trying to convince him that he needs to try and go to the bathroom which takes some coaxing, and then there are also the snacks and the spats, and cleaning up a bit so the house doesn't look like someone with an anger management problem came by, and then you realize it is 2 o'clock and it is time for Livia's second nap and we still haven't gotten anything really DONE and I am wishing I could take a nap myself. I have also realized that there is an advantage to having a small apartment when you have two children; you can do other things like make the beds or clean the bathroom and the children are never more than a room away. While I love the fact that my parents' home is large enough to absorb my family and all its stuff, there there are times when I have to dress Livia and I'm on the groundfloor and her clothes are down in the basement but somehow the box of wipes has wound up upstairs in Giulio's room. Rather than leave the children to their own amusements which usually involves Giulio hugging Livia round the head, I heave her on my hip as we lurch downstairs to retrieve clothing before stomping upstairs to get the wipes.
There there is the dance of the shoes. As a way to keep Giulio moving towards the door I have him get his shoes or sandals and tell him to put them on while I'm rushing around trying to grab all the water bottles, snacks, diapers and wipes that go into an average family outing. Putting on his shoes is part of him being a Big boy, independent, capable of doing things on his own. I watch him run to retrieve his shoes and then his sits on the floor looking dejectedly at his sandals but making no attempt to put them on. "Come on, Giulio" I call. "Put your sandals on." He then makes a sort of half hearted attempt, Livia crawls over and sits down next to him, picks up a sandal and chews on the strap. "Mommy I can't." This is his new thing now, he can't. He can't go to the bathroom, he can't help me pick up his toys, he can't put his shoes on. Except that he can, and my patience is running thin. I hurriedly help him into one, and then he somehow finds the strength to put on the other. Finally we are ready. We head out the door to what is my car while I am in town, my brother's ancient Volvo stationwagon. What it lacks in engine power it makes up for with a top of the line sound system and cd/mp3 player. With Johnny Cash singing about how it ain't him, babe, we head over to the nearby museum, aka my home away from home. Pools are a good choice for tiring out the kids but I don't like to go alone, it really takes two adults to wrangle two small children in the water. I should also add that since Lorenzo left the weather has gotten unbearably hot so most outdoor activities are out and we are all taking refuge in the a/c, while Lorenzo, who left us in Ohio to escape the heat (yes, I know, a contradiction in terms) is enjoying breezy, pleasant temperatures in Italy. He even claims that he sleeps with a blanket at night. So the museum is our destination today. I pull into the parking lot, free Giulio from the car and get Livia into the stroller and in the steamy heat we begin the long, uphill treck to the museum.
We head inside, breathing a sigh of relief for the air conditioning. We go to the Children's Museum and to the Little Sprouts room, which is specifically designed for children 4 and under. Something always happens when we move into the children's museum: time stands still. On one hand it is wonderful to watch the kids play. Giulio is quiet and focused as he plays at the sand table, moving the sand from the dump truck into the bucket, and it is great to let LIvia crawl about without worrying about her knocking over a lamp. Or wrapping a cord around her neck. Or trying to get into the fridge. But then she discovers the slide and all she wants to do it climp UP it, and despite countless attempts to distract her she keeps heading back there. And suddenly I can't stop yawning and I keep glancing at my watch, waiting for the Promised time of 5 o'clock when the museum closes and we can go home, and I swear I looked at my watch 20 minutes ago and now I just looked again and only 5 minutes had passed. At least Giulio is happy here, this place is perfect for pre-schoolers. Instead it is Livia who gives me fits. The girl just wants to move and she manages to turn the child friendly, carpeted, padded play areas into the site of death defying stunts as she tries to go head first down three steps where I catch her in the nick of time or crawling over to the entrance gate where excited toddlers running past just miss stepping on her hands. I pick her up, carrying her back 20 feet only to have her leap forward like a race horse from the starting gate the moment I put her down and head right back towards the entrance. Eventually I lose patience with fielding Livia or Giulio gets bored and we head over to some other exhibit. Here Giulio loses himself again playing but now I have to focus constantly on Livia. Outside of the Little Sprouts Room is not set up for babies so I must protect Livia from being run over by big kids or putting something tiny in her mouth. She isn't OK with being held for long periods of time and we wrestle for a while before I finally give in, put her down, only to have her try and put a small peg in her mouth so then I go and pick her up again. I can only really stand doing this for about 30 minutes and then I have to go. My head starts to hurt, the kids get hungry and I have to try to convince Giulio that it is actually his idea to leave. "Come back tomorrow?" he always asks, and I can truthfully answer yes, if we want to.
We get home and I'm exhausted as if I just climbed a mountain and then if someone askes me what I did all day all I can come up with is,"We went to the museum." And along the way I got impatient, lost my temper, surely yelled at some point too. I would make the worst SAHM, I just lack the motivation and energy to entertain and keep my children busy all day. Next door to my parents lives a young couple with a little boy named Steven, the mom Nora is a SAHM she always seems to me to be such a shining example. She doesn't yell, is very patient with Steven, takes time to do interesting craft projects with him. They watch a tiny amount of television, eat limited amounts of sugar, and seem to truly take pleasure in each others company. Nora would never turn on the TV for Seasame Street and "forget" to turn it off because it kept Steven quiet. Or distract him from a melt down by offering him a Newman-Os. Or maybe she would. Maybe I seem like the perfect SAHM when I am in the Little Sprouts room, patiently removing Livia for the 10th time from the bottom of the slide or playing super market with Giulio. Meanwhile on the inside I am counting down the days until Giulio goes back to school and Livia goes back to daycare, and the minutes until I can sit on the couch with a glass of wine in my hand and let my tired parents deal with--I mean enjoy--the kids. Tomorrow, I promise myself, tomorrow I will get it right.

The Hostess

2007-07-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Livia's birthday went very well. Bowling proved to be a big hit with everyone, especially Giulio who had to be held back from bowling on everyone else's turn. He even developed a technique of lugging the ball to the begining of the lane and then sort of dropping/hurling it onto the floor, where it would then very s-l-o-w-l-y roll down the lane before taking out the bowling pins. He would then throw his arms in the air in a celebratory V-shape and yell "yeah!" before running back to his seat. My mom and I have decided that the next time he needs to get out of the house we are just going to take him to the bowling alley and let him wear himself out taking turn after turn. After the bowling, pizza, cake and ice cream, and presents everyone came back to our house for prosecco, crackers, cheese, and hummis, and because everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and devour every crumb, I realized how much easier it is to feed people and have them leave happy than it is in Italy.
My mother loves having people over, growing up having 6 people to dinner on the weekend was a common occurence, we had it down to a science. My father would cook, the kids would move enough chairs to fit everyone around the dining room table and my mother would host, and then lead the clean-up effort after everyone had left. I always thought that one day when I was grown up my house would overflow with love and laughter as my many friends and family members sat around my beautiful hardwood dining room table enjoying fine wine and the wonderful food that I, in the intervening years, had learned how to cook, the children playing at our feet.
Fast forward 15 years later and I find myself with a living room/dining room that doesn't hold more than five adults comfortably and living in a country that is nothing but dead serious about eating well. Add to the mix the fact that I never learned how to cook really well and you find that --suprise, suprise!--I don't have people over for dinner very often. I know that we've all seen enough Olive Garden commericals to have this idea that in Italy we sit around tables groaning with food drinking red wine as the men lovingly pat each other on the cheek exclaiming "Momma mia! Thees ees a wonnaful pasta!". And perhaps they do (the cheek slapping I mean.) They just don't do it at my house.
Italian women, generally speaking, are wonderful cooks. Even the ones who swear they inadvertently poison dinner guests somehow are capable of rustling up a savory risotto and a mouth watering roast whenever you are invited to their house for dinner. And these meals always leave me feeling slightly depressed because I am always thinking, what am I going to serve when I invite them back? I had been led on thinking that I would be able to match their culinary talent, only to find that I have been severely out-played. It's like thinking you are going to be playing against the local YMCA in a soccer cup final and you get there and find that actually the English National Team has decided to come by and play instead.
I remember a few year ago I invited a friend/colleague of Lorenzo's named Barbara plus husband to our house for dinner for New Year's Eve. It was sort of a last minute thing, we had just moved into our apartment on Christmas Eve and there was still tons to be done. We decided around 3pm on December 31 to actually make a point of doing something for New Years, even though we were all exhausted from moving and my parents, who were visiting at the time, were both coming down with colds. I spoke to Barbara on the phone around 3:30 and despite the fact that she had hadn't been feeling well for several days she agreed to come and offered bring the actual dinner ("Something very simple"). I was thrilled because I knew Barbara was a good cook and it saved me the hassle of having to try to make something myself, other than the typical New Year's dish of lentils cooked with pork. While this dish sounds complicated all it involves is adding the right amount of water and leaving the thing to cook itself. When Barbara came she was loaded down with all sorts of dishes, all of which involved seafood and being re-heated on my stove or in my oven. At any rate, she was underwhelmed by the limited selection of pots and pans that I had on offer but somehow managed to make do and pulled off a meal that my mother called "One of the best meals that I have ever eaten." We found out later she felt so lousy because she was in the early weeks of pregnancy. Understandably it was hard to feel confident enough to invite them back. Whatever was I going to make them? I have learned how to make a few things in the seven years I have lived in Italy, especially various pasta dishes but I was hardly on Barbara's level. I got around it by reverting to my roots and serving what I called with great fanfair a "True American Hamburger" which they ate and complimented me on. We plumped out the meal by serving pasta as a first course and by overwhelming them with antipasta at the begining, various vegetables in the middle, and a large luscious dessert at the end. What you can't do in quality you make up for in quantity. Lorenzo and I had one of our biggest fights ever about an hour before they arrived because I felt that two kinds of prosciutto was more than enough to offer for an antipasta and he felt that we also needed mortadella and insisted driving 25 kilometers to get it. (It was a Sunday and all the local supermarkets were closed.) All future meals with them have taken place in restaurants.
We actually do a fair amount of entertaining in local trattorias and pizzerias, as do many other people. Space is a problem in many Italian homes and by eating in a restaurant the wife is exempted from the stress and exhaustion of preparing a meal for many people and then cleaning up afterwards. Lorenzo is great, he cooks and cleans up afterwards, but I know men who would be hard pressed to say where their wife keeps the knives and forks. The other fall back is to order pizza, something that is always suggested when people plan to get together, especially among younger people who are not super friendly yet, but would like the chance to try and hang out more. I always suggest pizza when trying to think of what to cook and then, thinking of the fresh, homemade pasta we had at the other person's house the first time we went there, I chicken out and go for the standard three courses with Lorenzo initially helping and then pushing me out of the way and doing it himself. Strange that the only time I feel relaxed about cooking for people is when our good friends Adrianna and Luca come to dinner. She is English so she won't push back her chair in disgust if the roast is a bit dry. Luca, in being married to her, is used to Italian food being prepared by a non-Italian and therefore eats everything.
I'm giving the impression that I do nothing but have tense small dinner parties on the weekend followed by sniping at my husband over how I tossed the salad. We actually do lots of group dinners with friends at restaurants especially with Lorenzo's colleagues. 20+ people sitting around a long table, usually with the men at one end and the women at the other with the men talking about who arrested who and what il dirigente (the boss) said about it, and the kids running around. No one makes any comment about the kids making too much noise or tries to show off with the wine list if there is one. Eating out in Italy is not a status thing like it is in the States. It is about going somewhere to relax, because you don't feel like cooking yourself, and because you want something good to eat, not about bragging where you got reservations for the weekend. One of my favorite restaurants is up near Lake Como and it is also a favorite of famous football players and movie stars. The owners would no more turn me away from the door than they would George Clooney because they know that all anyone wants to do in Italy is to have a good meal.
Which I suppose is where all my stress comes from, I don't feel very capable of providing this aforementioned good meal. I go for the cheap trick of plying everyone with wine, or wowing them with the unfamiliar, like Sunday brunch where I make pancakes and American coffee. Not everyone worries like I do. Terry often has us over for dinner, and they are completely unpretentious meals where 10 of us sqeeze into her living room. Or at Theresa's, where we often have homemade pizza and the meal is about as simple as it can get. Theresa did grow up in the States and is as happy with homemade lasagna as she is with McDonald's. This is under-rated quality. Perhaps the hardest thing about being Italian is that when you leave Italy you find yourself suffering over the poor quality of the food. I remember driving out to Denver with Lorenzo two years ago and we stopped overnight in Lincoln, Nebraska where we found next to our motel a Perkin's Restaurant. Somehow I felt that whatever was on offer at the Perkins couldn't be much worse that anything else we might be able to find in Lincoln, and decided that we just have dinner there. I stupidly suggested we have one of the dinner specials instead of something off the breakfast menu and 15 minutes later found Lorenzo glaring at me as he tried to digest a Perkin's chicken strip. What was he eating, and where had I taken him to eat? he wanted to know. I suddenly had this vision of the four of us in 10 years in a restaurant somewhere in the US with Lorenzo and the kids glaring at me over their dinners. I decided in that moment that the kids would learn how to eat crap with smiles on their faces if it was the last thing they did. They would learn to crave chili dogs and Oreos if it killed them.
Of course some people will never be happy, no matter how good the food is. When looking over the photos from our wedding my father-in-law made the comment, "Oh, there's the restaurant where we didn't get a lot to eat," when picture from the reception came up. If I remembered correctly there had been aperativi, antipasta, two kinds of pasta, steak, three kinds of contorno (vegetable dishes) including platters of fried zucchini, fruit salad, wedding cake, coffee, spumante, and wine. My one regret from my wedding day is that my dress prevented me from eating very much. "What do you mean," I asked. "You didn't like the food?"
"I didn't say I didn't like it, I said there wasn't much of it."
"Did you leave that table hungry?"
He had to admit he hadn't.

Surfacing

2007-07-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

I had every intention of going to bed now, but Livia seems to be coming down with a cold and it looks like it is going to be a long night. I'm obviously guilty of giving her the cold because today I ran my finger over her cheek and cooed, "you're my healthy one, aren't you Livi baby?" compared to all the antibiotics and ear infections her brother had had by the time he turned one. Then tonight she wakes up with the sniffles and suddenly it's looking like runny noses and broken nights are in my future.
I just hope she is over whatever this is by next Sunday, when we have her party because Livia is turning one next week. In honor of the fact that she is my first child to have her birthday while we are in the US, we have decided to hold the party at a nearby bowling alley where the party package includes free shoe rental, chips, one large cheese pizza and a pitcher of pop, it is up to us to supply the cake. I have always thought people who organized parties like this for small children were really only doing it for themselves, it wasn't about the child, it was about the parents. I will proudly admit that for Livia's birthday this is the case. All I really want in an excuse to get people I like all together wearing rented shoes. Instead of a low key afternoon of cake and ice cream among a few highly selected people, Livia will ring in her first birthday to the clatter of bowling pins and the music of The Big Bopper. For Giulio's first birthday, lacking space and the talent to cook a large meal for many people, we invited a few friends to have lunch at our local trattoria. We had a 6 course meal including wild mushroom pasta and carpaccio and then we sang "Happy Birthday" while Giulio blew out the candle on his cake. The meal was washed down with spumante and espresso while Giulio and the other toddler present rode around on the bottom of a lunch cart. In what is one of the few advantages in having a spouse in the police, the meal was heavily discounted, the restaurant's owner was tight with the polizia.
Lorenzo doesn't mind in the least trading in "La Versa" moscato for pitchers of Budweiser. He thought the bowling party was a great idea, people in Italy would flip over a bowling party, it was so AMERICAN, his only regret is that he won't be here for it. Unfortunately, Lorenzo's month long vacation is over and now he is back in Italy while the kids and I remain in the land of air-conditioning, discount shopping, and the free refill.
I have to admit that the initial surfacing wasn't easy, the culture shock seems to get stronger each time I come back to the US. We stumbled into JFK, exhausted from our 9 hour flight with a baby whose eyes only started to close upon descent into the New York area. (Giulio however was much improved--!)We were then bumped from our next flight, leaving us with over 3 hours to take in all the the beauty and splendor of the Delta terminal of the airport. The food seemed huge, tasteless, and excessive and Americans themselves seemed so much bigger than I remembered. I realized how much the Italian way of thinking had set in. I couldn't get over why so many people would sit on the floor when there were chairs available. I could barely supress my shudder when I saw a women who had taken off her Teva sandles and was walking barefoot from one part of the terminal to another-eeeeewwwww. The air conditioning on the plane seemed too cold (me! who loves air-conditioning, always complaining that they should turn it up whenever we go to the supermarkets in Italy-me!), and when I offered ice in my drink during the flight I quickly declined, thinking what a shock to the system it would be.
I also found myself wondering what I was going to do with Lorenzo while he was here. I could only go to Target so many times. Hence the search for something different and "American" and all within a few hours drive from Cincinnati. I wanted to here him say "wow.." to be impressed, to take back something that he would tell people about back in Italy. Initially the thing that impressed him the most was all the hubbub surround Miss New Jersey and these apparently x-rated photos that she was being blackmailed with. Fox News devoted long hours to discussion on the topic. When the photos turned out to be nothing more than her messing around, fullly clothed, with some friends at a bar, Lorenzo turned to me and said, "You guys are nuts, you know that?"I could only meekly odd and agree.
It was from this search for "good" Americana and not our nation's obsession with talent pageant contestants that took us to the aforementioned bowling alley, which Lorenzo loved with its oldies soundtrack and cheap beer. It was there that we came up with the idea for Livia's birthday, as The Four Seasons played over the loud speakers. And when we came outside after two games into the muggy summer's night, there were fireflies glowing in the trees around the edge of the parking lot, and crickets making a racket in the bushes. It's moments like this that I miss when I am in Italy, these sounds and these smells together that always make me feel like I am eight years old again, standing in my yard on a summer's night catching fireflies in my hand and letting them go, before being called inside to bed.
This was not Lorenzo's first trip to the States, but his 7th. He has seen New York, Chicago, Boston, New Hampshire, and driven from Cincinnati to Denver and back. But one of the things he liked the most, not including of course New York, Chicago, or Boston, was the Wright Patterson Airforce Museum in Dayton OH, something my dad has been suggesting for like 6 years that we take Lorenzo to see. Giulio, despite our expectations, was underwhelmed. After the first 20 or so airplanes he stopped being impressed and started running around, luckily an airplane hangar is the place to do that. Lorenzo was impressed. He said "wow....." He had to be torn away from the Cold War exhibit when the kids were starving for lunch and he said he wants to come back to the museum next year. Good suggestion Dad! The best part of our day came for Lorenzo on our way back to Cincinnati after lunch. We were taking the two lane road when we passed an Amish style dairy, which sold Soft Serve ice cream. (Yet another treat I just can't get Lorenzo excited about. We order cones, all he wants is a coffee. Humpf.) I say Amish style because, despite the Amish buggy on display outside the store, this place was obviously not run by Amish. You walk through the door and are immediately met by a wall of sound. The there was an electric train that wound around bins of candy and a large mannequin dressed like George Bush over in the corner. The owner thought it was hiliarious to have the sound of a freight train playing over the store's sound system, so every 45 seconds or so it would sound like a high speed train was passing overhead. Lorenzo loved it. "This," he told me once we were back in the car, "this is what I like about America!" Other things include Goose Island beer, bagels, Reds baseball games watched at the stadium, honey mustard pretzels, cashew nuts, and Juicy Fruit gum.

The Plunge

2007-06-19T04:38:00.000-07:00

Exhaustion is my excuse for being so slow to post this week. Livia is going through a difficult period of waking up, furious every night between eleven and two o'clock, and it takes ages to get her to go back down. I hate to admit it but I have been relying very heavily on benedryl these past few days. I feel more tired than I did when Livia was a small baby, as opposed to the crawling, pulling up baby that she is now. And when I think of the fact that in a few days we will be cooped up a in plane for 9 hours, it makes me feel even more tired. On Tuesday we are all flying to the States to see my parents and take in the beauty of Target and TJMaxx. There is something rather ironic in the fact that after choosing to live so far from home, I now spend large amounts of time and money trying to get back. I view the day of travel kind of like that initial plunge you have to take when you get in the pool. It's really hot and you want to get into the pool, where incidentally, George Clooney is paddling around as well, but the water is just really cold, and you know it won't be pleasant. So you hold you breath and jump in, going deep under the water because when you come up to the surface you will be so glad that you decided to jump in and go swimming with George.
I no longer have pity for people travelling alone, or even for people travelling in couples. In my opinion if you aren't travelling with two small children for more than five hours you really have nothing to complain about. Yes, the seats are small, but have you tried to sit in the small seats with a wiggling 10 months old on your lap so you won't have to pay for a full price ticket? Ever tried to cut up your half frozen Little Debbie cherry cake as the baby grabs for the miniscule cup of water on your tray and manages to pour it in your lap? By now I should be a pro at travelling with small children. Giulio took his first flight to America when he was almost nine months old, and there was some mix-up in the seating and the bulkhead seats were given to someone else. The Italian flight crew felt terrible, Giulio wouldn't be able to take a proper nap (!) and so they gave him a seat all for himself next to me. This was right before he could crawl, and I remember him sitting up in his seat, looking around and seeming so pleased with himself. On the return flight we had an American flight crew, whose attitude towards people who had opted to fly with children was something in the lines of, "You're flying with a baby? That's your f@%##ing problem." Giulio, who in the interveening month had learned to crawl, spent the flight from New York to Milan crawling over our ankles and being pulled back from going into the aisle. He conked out, exhausted, about two hours before we landed. It was the first time that I was so preoccupied with what was going on that I didn't even think about the flight. It was also the first time that I was able to fall asleep on a plane without any sort of a sleep aid.
Fastforward to a year later, with Giulio who stood the entire flight between our knees, wide awake the whole flight to New York. My friend Theresa had sworn by this all natural sleep aide that her own son Luca, (who woke up every night for the first two years of his life,) and had told me that it would knock Giulio right out. I was so convinced that I didn't even bother trying it out, only to find that mid-flight it had no effect on him. Thinking we were underestimating the dose we kept trying to give him more drops, which only had the effect of making him more hyper. That particular trip I flew back alone to Italy alone with Giulio, Lorenzo had gone back a few weeks earlier for work. It had been a long, tiring day and in New York my connecting flight had been late so I had had to run pushing the stroller, while wearing cowboy boots (don't ask) to make the flight. I came aboard, panting and sweating, clutching Giulio and immediately came face to face with some immaculate member of the Alitalia flight crew, the tall, dark, handsome kind of man that makes women decide to move to Italy for La Dolce Vita, and who you never find working in coach. He greeted me with a courteous "Buona Sera" and I just managed to not drip sweat on him. I sqeezed past two newly-weds on the end of the aisle on their way back from their honeymoon in America, holding Giulio and still sweating, and took my seat next to them. Giulio almost immediately started crying. Not weeping, sad, needing comfort crying, but full throated screaming that nothing could stop. Trying to give reassuring smiles to the couple looking warily at Giulio, (it will only be a minute folks! I have no idea why he is doing this!) I did my best to try and comfort him, but nothing worked until I was practically in tears myself. The (luckily) Italian flight crew were sympathetic ("O, che caro! Poverino! Perche piangi?") but nothing could stop the onslaught. I managed to get half of a Melatonina tablet (we had discovered in the States that these made him sleep) down Giulio's throat, making his screams of outrage even louder. At this point one of the flight attendants came over and offered the couple next to me the possibility of two seats in another part of the plane, which they gratefully accepted. Giulio stopped crying, and 15 minutes later he was asleep, passed out on the floor of the plane. The rest of the flight, with two empty seats next to me passed without incident.
Then last November, I did perhaps the bravest-dumbest thing ever. I decided to fly alone with TWO children, with Livia just three months old, and Giulio having just turned three. "It's going to be awful," I told my mother. "Yes, it is," she said, "but you will survive." She was right, it was awful. Not that there was one peak moment of awful, at least not on the plane, but sort of a long sustained note of awfulness that lasted the entire time. That time I decided that I wasn't going to be forcing sleep pills down Giulio's throat. Two days before flying I cut the Melatonina in half, and slipped the halves into two of Giulio's favorite chewy candies, which I then re-wrapped and put in my purse. Moments after the plane had pulled back from the gate I got them out and casually offered them to Giulio who immediately accepted and ate them. I watched him chewing, feigning calm, thinking, He's eating them! He's eating them! Now he will sleep for five-six hours! The men who tried to poison Rasputin, the advisor to the Russian Tzar, must have felt much the same way-- their plan had worked! And yet, as with Rasputin, who in the end had to be shot twelve times, put in a sack and thrown into the river before he died, the melatonina wasn't enough. Giulio slept precisely one hour before being wide awake and difficult in a way that only a three year old can be for the whole rest of the flight. Livia who was still too little to be very difficult, was luckily wonderful, flashing 100 watt smiles at the people in the row behind us, and falling asleep on and off. We had started the flight with a women in the seat next to me, saying she needed to sit in the bulkhead for the circulation in her legs, but who after an hour must have decided that her circulation could risk it, because she moved, leaving us with the three seats to ourselves, so at least I had somewhere to put Livia for some of the time. What saved the day was how truly kind people were, or maybe how pathetic I looked. In New York, after getting off the plane and heading towards customs, I was carrying Livia (jfk keeps all the strollers and only gives them back along with the rest of the luggage), three bags, three coats, and Giulio's carseat which hadn't worked with the airplane seats and had become an albatross around my neck. Giulio, tired, confused, and basically fed-up, demanded to be carried, and when I said I couldn't, collapsed to the floor and refused to move. I was about to collapse too when suddenly I heard a kind voice saying "Can I help you?" It was a women from our Milan flight. She took LIvia, her husband took the car seat, and I took Giulio and so we went on to fight another day, or at least another flight. My mom said that when I came up the ramp where they were waiting for me in Cincinnati I looked like a refugee.
On the flight back home after Christmas, this time thankfully with Lorenzo, Giulio wouldn't keep his tray table up, Livia didn't want to be held and kept wiggling, Lorenzo turned to me and asked, "How did you ever do this on your own?" All I can say is that I must really like Target.
As a p.s. think of me on Tuesday 6/26 and offer up a little prayer to the airline gods that all goes smoothly. This time I am taking Benedryl with me for the kids!

Housewife

2007-06-12T02:09:00.001-07:00

Giulio's surgery went very well, and yesterday, four days after the fact, he went back to school. Lorenzo was also granted time off because his son was having surgery, so we were able to actually have a normal weekend with Daddy home the whole time. Home of course is a relative term. Lorenzo never just hangs out at home. If he is here he is doing some sort of home improvement, putting up a book shelf, fixing a tap, painting a chipped corner of the wall, or calling around about getting new blinds for our tiny study. Otherwise he is making sandwiches and hustling us out the door to go somewhere and have a picnic or a big meal, or a hike. In two days we went up to Lake Garda for a picnic and up to the Valle Brembana which is on the edge of the Alps for lunch and a walk. He only flops on the couch, tv remote in his hand when it is too late in the evening to do anything else, and of course within minutes he is asleep. It is hard to be lazy with some one like that around, but then my life grants me few possibilities to sit around and do nothing, as does most people's, as there is always something to be done. Only a few weeks ago, both children were sick, the laundry was piling up, the house was messy, and I was sick too. As Livia whined and squirmed in my lap I turned to Lorenzo and told him that I was tired of being the Mommy, I wanted someone to come and take care of me. I was fed up with finding piles of clean laundry on the bed and knowing that if I didn't fold them, no one else would. He laughed and gave me a kiss, but what I wanted was someone to come in and whisk the children away, clean the house and let me sleep right through it. In other words I wanted my mommy. Lorenzo could keep his kisses, they weren't going to let me stay in bed for another two hours.
I am grateful that my job gives me free hours at odd times of the day, so that way I can get things done while the kids are at school. Things stay put away when Giulio is not a home, crumbs do not accumulate in and around the kitchen with Livia at daycare. Because one thing I've learned living in Italy is that housekeeping is not something done on the weekend when you have a free half hour. No, it is an on-going full time job keeping a household up to Italian standards. I always thought Americans were clean people, we pride ourselves on our cleanliness, and admit it, the first thing that we like to imply about Europeans is that they are perhaps not as clean as us. Now I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but Italians are CLEAN. Yes, it is true, they smell different from Americans, but I'm speaking to you as a shower taking-deodorant/anti-perspirant wearing-US citizen, and I've notice that I smell differently here as compared to when I am in the US, so obviously it's diet and not lack of hygene that causes this.
At any rate, when it comes to housecleaning, I have never met women so driven about cleaning as Italians. In the US, we vacuum our wall-to-wall carpet, we do laundry, we dust, and we clean the bathrooms. For most of us, if the house looks orderly, doesn't smell, and the floors aren't sticky, well, we've done a good job. House cleaning in Italy means lifting up couches each week to clean underneath them, wiping down the hood over the stove for any grease that may have gotten there, and cleaning all windows at least twice a month. Wall-to-wall carpeting is viewed as unsanitary, and so in its place there is parquet, tile, or marble, which is vacuumed and dusted once a day and washed at least once a week. Every morning the bedroom windows are flung open and the bedding is hung out the window to allow it to air out. Carpets are taken off the floors, vaccumed, and the hung outside. Sticky fingerprints are wiped off of doors and lightswitches, and children's toys are carefully cleaned and dusted off. When the show "Wife Swap" came to Italy, ( a show where for 7 days two women switch houses and families to see what happens) it shows women in their daily routine as wives and mothers, the one thing I couldn't get over was how many women get up at 6 am so they can clean the house before going to work. I'm lucky if I get all the dishes out of the sink and into the dishwasher first thing in the morning. The ultimate insult on that show is for a woman to say that she had found dust in the other woman's home, implying the ultimate shame: you keep a dirty house. Cleanliness does not stop at the inside, there are women who weekly wipe down the shutters on the exterior of the house or apartment, and mop all outside patios and balconies. Gardens, no matter how small, are tended to with military precision and are often tider than most American's living rooms. When I think of an American housewife, I think of her pushing a huge grocery cart through the supermarket, folding laundry from the drier, or driving little Cadyn to soccer practise. When I think of an Italian housewife I think of a woman dressed in old clothes down on her hands and knees cleaning the dirt that has accumulated behind her oven. And then we compare notes about it. Never in my life I thought I would have conversations with other people about housework, other than the basic, "today I cleaned the house." Now I find myself down at Terry's, having long connversations that contain phrases like," Well, I just vaccumed the floors, now I have to go mop the kitchen and outside balcony." Or I listen to Terry run down the list of things she accomplished that morning, "I mopped the whole house, organized the kids' bedroom. Now I just have to clean all the kitchen counters with bleach." Just to clarify, I clean my house once a week, with the occasional touch-up on the floor when I see too many crumbs overflowing from the kitchen,
And then of course there is the laundry. Yes, laundry is a cross that women all over the world have to bear. Men think, including my husband, that because they have put dirty clothes into the machine and pressed a few buttons they have "done" the laundry, but that is like saying because they were present at conception a man has given birth to a baby. In Italy the button pushing part is the easiest part, it's what comes after that is so time consuming and tiring. I do have a drier, but because it causes spikes in my electric bills I try to use it sparingly, only in the months when clothes take a long time to dry on their own. Therefore for the rest of the year, and especially right now, all clothes are hung up to dry, either on a drying rack on my balcony or on the clotheslines we have down in the yard. There is something suprisingly satisifying about hanging up clothes on the line, you can see all your hard work and effort right before your eyes, and there is something so wholesome about white sheets flapping in the breeze. If it's hot the clothes I hang up in the late morning are bone dry by early evening, but if the weather is sort of iffy and damp it can take several days, and while you are waiting for that load to dry more clothes pile up until you have mountains of laundry to deal with. Lorenzo is a good guy, works hard, helps in the house, but he has no problem walking right past laundry piled on the bed waiting to folded, ironed, and put away. For some reason this is "my" job, though in a pinch he will help me fold if I ask. But ironing is my responsibility. What's the big deal? you may ask. So you iron a few shirts, big whoop. In my house growing up ironing was all do it yourself, clothes came out of the dryer relatively wrinkle free, were folded and put away. Occasionally, the morning before some big meeting I would find my father ironing his dress shirt on top of a towel on one end of the kitchen counter, or my mother would drag out the board to freshen up something of ours that we wanted to wear to church minutes before tearing out the door saying we were going to be late. Ironing was optional, something done only in extremely needy cases. Imagine my surprise when coming to Italy to find that ironing wasn't just mandatory, it was a competitive sport. My neighbor irons EVERYTHING. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks, sheets, towels, baby bibs, and believe me she is not the only one. I, unable to break free from my non-ironing roots, take a more moderate approach. If it can't be seen outside the house, I don't iron it. Therefore, I iron basically "only" shirts and pants, I leave my sheets and towels with wrinkles and hope that no one will ever discover the shameful fact that I don't iron everyone's underwear. I do however have a secret weapon: I have a five star iron. Before I had your basic iron, with the little platic vial that holds about half a cup of water. Using that I felt at times like I had decided to climb Mount Everest wearing only a pair of Keds. The wrinkles, perhaps made more resistant by our calcium-heavy water, simply deepened, one shirt could take 30 minutes. My loathing of ironing made me simply avoid doing it, while Lorenzo's work shirts piled up in the closet. Then I found what I suppose would be a called a "professional" iron, basically its a small metal iron with a long tube attached that feeds into a small 1-liter tank. The iron sits on top of the tank when not in use. The tank heats the water and keeps it under pressure so the steam shoots out of the iron in hot powerful gusts. It's like watering your garden with a fire hose. Nothing stands a chance against this work of superior craftsmanship, and in under an hour I can do my week's quota. Just to prove how great this iron is, my mother when she came to visit last spring enjoyed using it so much I had to hold her back from ironing our underwear. My father said she had ironed more in those three months than she had in her entire life. It was truly a miracle.
And now I have a pile of Giulio's shirts I must attack. Sigh. An Italian woman's work is never done........

Dress Rehearsal

2007-06-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Giulio is set to get his adenoids out on Thursday. He has suffered from ear infections since he was four months old and by now has had more rounds of anti-biotics than I'd like to count. Along the way he has also suffered from two extreme allergic reactions to penicillian, one in which he wound up in the hospital, and another four day hospital stay over what was on its way to becoming mastoiditis. Everyone has told me that this surgery will change all that, that the rounds of antibiotics, the doctors' visits, the stress everytime he so much as coughs will vanish. Here's hoping. He was set to have the operation last week. We booked the operation 40 days earlier, and then 10 days before the set date he had to go the hospital for various tests and it was then that they gave us the definitive date for the operation. Which was just as well because organizing an overnight stay in a hospital required military precision and planning.
Our plan was that Lorenzo and I would be at the hospital all day with Giulio, and then in the evening I would go home to Livia and Lorenzo would stay overnight with Giulio. In Italian hospitals a parent or grandparent must be with the child at all times, which includes sleeping on a cot next to the child's hospital bed during the night. I remember my one overnight stay in a hospital when I was 9, they kicked the parents out at 8pm and practically barred them from re-entering before morning. (My dad still managed to sneak back in and sat by my bed until I fell asleep.) Even in Italy it wasn't always like this. Lorenzo has the horrific childhood memory when due to some illness he was isolated in hospital from his parents for something like 10 days! He remembers calling for his mother and not understanding why she wouldn't or couldn't come.
Luckily such draconian methods have gone by the wayside, perhaps to the point where we have gone a little too far in the other direction. There is nothing like trying to keep an energetic toddler entertained for four days on in a hospital ward to make you question if your parental presence is always absolutely necessary. Perhaps the hospitals smartened up to the fact that with mom or dad always present, the nurses would have more time to take care of patients, rather than running down the hallway after them. The only time we weren't allowed to stay overnight was when Livia was a few days old and being treated for jaundice. Ironically those first few days after birth is the one time when a woman is hormonally wired to not want her baby away from her for a moment, where as when they are older there are many times when you would pay to have them far away from you.....
Anyway, at least this time we had advanced notice, in the past Giulio's hospital stays have always come without any warning. Lorenzo asked for days off from work, and I moved my students and classes around in order to have the whole day free. I begged the lady as Livia's daycare for permission to leave her from 6:30am until 4pm, when Terry would go and get her and keep her until I came home, hopefully around 6:30 or 7. I felt terrible about leaving Livia all day, but as Lorenzo pointed out, Giulio was going to want his mommy. I lovingly packed his suitcase, and nervously presided over his cough that seemed to be only a cough, but was worrisome all the same. And we worried about the operation itself, how long it would take, how Giulio would feel afterwards, if he would be ok with the anesthetic. He needed the operation, WE needed him to have this operation, and would this cough keep him from having the operation because they had told us that if Giulio was sick they wouldn't do it? Then there was organizing for when Giulio was home again, how much school would he need to miss, I moved around more classes, promising to make them up the next week.
On Thursday morning we got up 5:45 and Lorenzo and Giulio were out the door by 6:15, the operation was set to take place around 7:30. I left around 6:40, left Livia at daycare and headed off to the hospital. Oh, yes, this was the other thing, the operation was not at our local hospital, the one five minutes from our house where both Giulio and Livia were born, and home to Giulio's previous hospital stays, but instead at a hospital 30 kilometers from home where they are well known for their ENTs. That was the other factor in this long day, the traffic. At any rate, I made good time and I was almost there when my phone rang. It was Lorenzo. I looked at the clock, only 7:15, still too early for any action.
"Yes?"
"CeeCee--we forgot the impegnativo from Giulio's pediatrician, I don't know if they will admit him without it."
"WHAT???!!"
The impegnativo is the pink slip of paper where your GP or Ped has to state what treatment needs to be done and why. This way the public health system pays for the treatment, it is certifying that this is a necessary operation, and it is being performed by doctors who are part of the NHS. If we didn't have it, it was very unlikely that they would admit Giulio for the operation, because it meant that the hospital would risk not being payed. Without the impegnativo the NHS wouldn't reimburse them for the cost of the operation, meaning it would be up to us to pay. But we could also just as easily promise to pay and then slip away without doing so.
I wasn't just irate about the forgotten impegnativo, I was irate about the WE. What WE?!! I hadn't known that we needed any sort of impegnativo, I had just spoken to Giulio's doctor a few days ago about a prescription and if I had known I would had asked her then for this super important piece of paper. Lorenzo had said nothing to me about needing an impegnativo, I had watched him check the list of papers we needed to bring with us just the night before. And now it seemed for a one small piece of paper, they wouldn't do the operation at all. I didn't know whether to laugh of cry. It's easy to sigh and say, oh Italy and its' bureucracy, but try getting admitted for an operation in the States saying you left your insurance information at home, but you would be sure and bring it tomorrow. They wouldn't let you into the parking lot.
At any rate, since I was practically there, I parked the car and went in the hospital to track down Lorenzo. I found him with a surprisingly cheerful (he hadn't eaten or drunk anything that morning) Giulio in tow. "Hi Mommy!" he cried, running over to me. "Hey, baby." I said, shooting snake eyes at Lorenzo over Giulio's head as I bent down to hug him.
"Ok," I said, straightening up. "What do we have to do?"
The first thing was to head up to the ward where Giulio's operation would be. There we found other parents with children and suitcases, and all surely, I thought grimly, with their impegnativi in hand. We explained our situation to Giulio's doctor, who referred us to the head nurse who did pre-surgery admittance for the ward. Her response when we told her that we didn't have the impegnativo was to beat her head on the door frame for a moment.
"I can't do anything," she said when she lifted her head. "Downstairs they won't admit him without it, meaning he won't be in the computer. For me, as long as you hear from his pediatrician and they promise to send the impegnativo over today, I don't have a problem. See what they say downstairs at Patient Admittance."
I looked at the clock, it was five minutes to 8, Giulio's pediatrician doesn't start taking calls until 8:30. You can call between 8:30 to 9:30 to get an appointment either for that day, or if you are calling about a check-up, later in the week. You call, describe your kid's symptons and she will tell you if they need to be seen that day or if you can wait and see for a day or so. Usually she will ask to see you that day. You also call about doctor's notes, prescriptions, and impegnativi, which she writes out and leaves in a basket in her office waiting room, with the child's name written on the outside for you to pick up. I decided to take a chance and go ahead and call, maybe she was answering early this morning. I immediately got her voice mail. Damn. I shook my head at Lorenzo, and then we went downstairs and outside where the phone reception was better, huddling in a tense group around Giulio's suitcase. I kept picking up the phone, calling, getting the dr's voice mail, cursing, and hanging up again. My stomach churned. Giulio needed this operation today, we had planned for today, I wasn't going to let some minor detail like an impegnativo stop me. At 8:32, the doctor picked up, I threw the phone at Lorenzo and let him ask her to help us. She was sympathetic, but she wasn't going to be in the office before the afternoon, one of us could come by and get the slip at 2, but not unfortunately not before then. It would have to do. We went back to the Patient Admittance desk downstairs, where Lorenzo had been rejected earlier to see what they would say about the impegnativo now that we had talked to the pediatrician. The lady wasn't moved. It wasn't us, she said, it was those doctors, always promising these forms, then forgetting to send them, and then the hospital gets stuck with the bill. She shook her head. I sat there on a bench next to the desk with Giulio in my lap and fixed her with my saddest,-come-on- we're-mothers,- I- know-you-have-been-here -too-look. I could see her weaken. "I will go there personally to pick up the form, this way you won't have to wait." I said. The woman was silent a moment. "Fine," she said. "It's not the parents,"she said again, typing away into the computer. "It's those doctors. Bring the form here as soon as you can!" We offered her thanks and our most dazzling smiles, and clutching the necessary admittance forms, ran upstairs once again to the third floor.
The head nurse was glad to see us, even though it was now 9:15. Smiling she ushured us into her office to start filling out forms. "Ok," she said, as I sat down across the table from her. "So, he hasn't eaten anything today, right? Any allergies? Ok......Now, how is he doing? Any health problems?" "Um," I said. "He has a bit of a cough, but other than that he is fine." She looked up from her paperwork. "Let me hear him cough." Giulio coughed. The nurse narrowed her eyes a moment. "Better check his temperature," she said, tucking a thermometer under his right arm. She continued with her questions. "Now Giulio there is a big girl in the same room as you, and you have to listen and do what she says." Giulio solemnly nodded. He knew all about listenting to older kids and doing what they said from preschool. I placed a well trained Mother's hand on Giulio's forehead and back. He didn't feel feverish. If we were at home right now, I would send him to school based on this forehead temperture reading. God Giulio, don't be sick, please don't be sick. We have made it this far, don't be sick. Giulio coughed again, this time it sounded more chesty, sick-y than the one he produced only moments before. The nurse got up and took the thermometer from his mouth. "Uh-uh." She shook her head. "He's got 98.9. Let me get the doctor." She left the room and came back almost immediately with someone in a long white coat. He looked in Giulio's mouth, ("well, he doesn't have tonsellitis.") and informed us that in doing surgery with even a low fever considerably raised the risks. Giulio would not be getting his andenoids out today. "Come back next week and we will do it then." The nurse smiled sympathetically, told us that the impegnativo that the pediatrician gave me today would still be good for next week, that she would see us soon, and escorted us out the door. It's didn't seem possible. We had overcome a lack of blood relatives, crazy work schedules, adversity, the Italian NHS, and low cell phone reception, only to be thwarted by a 98.9 fever. Defeated we slumped back to the car, Lorenzo headed off to the office, Giulio and I went home and watched "Babe".
The surgery was rescheduled, but this time Lorenzo is going by himself with Giulio, I have to work and I can't miss anymore lessons as this is the last week of school, and I don't feel like asking for any more favours from people, even if they would be more than willing to oblige. No, this time Lorenzo will be on his own. At least this time he has the impegnativo.

He's my Donkey

2007-05-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

I went to the doctor this morning after being sick all weekend. I should have gone on Friday afternoon, but I had things to do and I remember thinking-ah, how sick could I be? My children may get sick, my husband may get sick, but Mommy, no Mommy doesn't get sick. She can't. I then spent all weekend thinking that my head was going to explode and wincing every time I swallowed, and then after a phone call with my mother, felt sure that I was succumbing to a terrible staph infection. It is also a little difficult in our house to "take it easy". Livia has started crawling and Lorenzo had to work both Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Enough said. What I really wanted was my mother to come in and sweep the children off for about 12 hours so I could stay in bed and sip orange juice, but there is no point on dwelling on that when my mother is on another continent, and several time zones away. Pumped up with ibuprophen I managed to go out and buy a birthday present, take the kids out for pizza Saturday night, and attend two birthday parties on Sunday, all the while trying not to swallow too often. Perhaps it wasn't just being sick that made me feel so wiped out, but also Giulio's end of school party that was held on Friday afternoon.
While Giulio's school doesn't officially close until the end of June, on the basis that some kids will be gone for vacation or whatever, they hold the party at the end of May, at a large outdoor pavillion on the edge of town. The kickoff was at 12, when the kids would be having their picnic lunch (no pasta!) of sandwhiches and fruit. I arrived at 12:30 with Livia, Lorenzo arrived around 1:15. The heat was intense, made worse by the fact that it had rained a little that morning, making everything excessively muddy and humid, in the end the most comfortable place to be was in the shade of the pavillion, but the teachers would have none of it. They had organized an action packed afternoon of performances by the children, along with games involving the parents, a treasure hunt and graduation ceremony. At 1:30 things got started off by the children dancing and singing along with a tape recording of "Old MacDonald", doing a carefully choreographed number. With my camera fixed on Giulio, I watched as he stood there, smiling shyly, watching his classmates sing and dance around him. It dawned on me that I would never be able to say, "Giulio always loved performing, ever since he was little!" to some journalist as I am being interviewed about my son's great Oscar win. Clearly he didn't love it, could barely tolerate standing there next to them as they e-i-e-i-o-ed around him. Then they all sat down as the 4 year olds launched into their individual number, some other song involving animals, the children serious and stern as they performed. Is there anything cuter than small children focused on a task? It is moments like that that make you glad to have children, glad to sit in 90 degree heat video tape them, glad to attend an end of the year picnic. And Giulio was going to have no part in it. I would just have to be glad to watch someone else's child shimmy around the circle. And then Giulio's group got up, and led by two five year olds went into their dance, or at least wiggled their hips around, immitating sheep and frogs and cats, in time to the song booming out of the CD player. And Giulio was right there, wiggling along with them, apparently having a great time. My Oscar fantasy, like Marcel Proust's memories, came flooding back.
After that there were games, endless games, all involving running and carrying children under the hot sun. The children all donned donkey ears, carefully made by the teachers for the games portion. Yes, it was pretty much the cutest thing I had ever seen though I am still confused about what it had to do with racing while carrying Giulio on my shoulders. Or running across the grass to some far corner, blindfolded in some gauzy material that did not block my vision but did make my face sweat, to scoop Giulio up and run back across the lawn with him. There was also a potato sack race, with garbage bags instead of sacks which resisted two hops before your legs went through the bottom. I pretended to be preoccupied with Livia and sat that one out.
Then there was the treasure hunt which ended disastrously because Giulio's prize, a small plastic gun that blew bubbles didn't work, which caused him to have a meltdown, which caused him to almost miss the "graduation ceremony" when each child was called one by one to received a medal, a class photo, and a diploma rolled up and tied with a piece of ribbon. I went up on Giulio's behalf to receive his diploma, with Giulio hanging on my leg and shrieking as I walked towards the teacher. Which ended with me telling Giulio that if this was how he was going to behave we would leave now, and me avoiding eye contact with any other parent. Everyone else's child was seated correctly, mine was a wailing mess of tears and hiccups. In the end, it was his teacher who intervened, telling us we couldn't leave now, we were about to have a special snack--bread and Nutella! It may sound ridiculously simple, but there are few things better than bread and Nutella, and nothing better for calming down a three year old. Giulio ate his snack and then we fled the hot picnic grounds for our car's air conditioning.
On Sunday was had to attend two birthday parties, one was a joint party for Alessandro and Vanda, my neighbor's children, and the other was for the daugher of Lorenzo's good friend and colleague Massimo. Italian birthday parties haven't reached the level of hype that we have in the United States. One of my favorite baby websites had a thread about planning our babies' first birthday party, six months before they were to turn one. There are women for whom it is very important that 1 year old Kaitlyn has the right hat to wear to go with her Strawberry Shortcake themed birthday cake, which she would then be allowed to smash her little fist into. Apparently no birthday party is now complete with out a smashcake for little Landon to destroy. There was no theme for Alessandro's party, Terry had not been out hunting all corners of Nothern Italy for the table cloth that would really fit a Harley Davidson themed party, nor was she using a glue gun moments before the party began to make sure that rubber ducks would stay upright and afloat in a wadding pool. No, there was none of that. Instead the party resembled more what birthday parties were like 15 years ago in the States. Terry had 3 of her sisters come with their husbands and children, she invited me and one other non-family member, plus her husband Eugenio's family, and Vanda invited 3 friends of her own. She rented the room that the local church rents out for birthday parties, mainly because our living rooms don't hold more than eight people very well, let alone children running in and out. In total there was maybe 20 people, including children. They set up a large table and covered it with pizza, chips, sandwiches, candy, three birthday cakes (but no smashcake), spumante and coke. They sang Happy Birthday, they opened presents and then the children were free to run about, occasionally splashing each other with the small fountain that sits outside the parish office. The adults ate and talked and played with the babies. There were no organized games, though apparently you can hire a teenage girl specifically for the purpose of organizing the children for games if you want, and though simple it fulfilled the purpose of what you want at a party; a time to be together with the people you like and enjoying good food in the bargain. The one fly in the ointment were the cakes. They were delicious, and had cost 190 euros all together, far more than Terry had anticipated paying. Apparently Eugenio had picked them up and paid for them, no questions asked, and Terry planned to go the bakery tomorrow and have it out with them. It seemed the baker had said she would make three 15 person cakes for the event, and instead had made what appeared to be three 30-person sized cakes and more than doubled the cost.
Our visit to the second party revealed more of the same thing, lots of food, people sitting around, and no theme, no organized games, and no one seemed to know or mind what was missing. I sometimes wonder who switched the rules on us, who upped the ante in the US. Who decided that such a simple idea like a child's birthday party was no longer valid and instead one needed themes, reception halls, smashcakes and the like. I'm sure these parties are fun too, but all the same, if you asked Giulio what he liked the most about the party he would tell you it was putting his hands in the fountain and getting his t-shirt soaked.

Festa della Polizia di Stato

2007-05-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

Today was Festa della Polizia, at least in our house anyway. Like most organizations in Italy, the police get their day once a year. Though officially celebrated last week in Rome with the President of Italy and various ministers present, it was done here today on a smaller scale with everyone heading to Bergamo for the ceremony and reception afterwards. It was not my first Festa. The first one I went to was five years ago, when I didn't have kids and was not yet married. I went and stood in the rain to watch Lorenzo and a row of other police officers decked out in full uniform stand and salute at various intervals during the ceremony. I always get a kick out of seeing Lorenzo in uniform, as he usually works wearing his regular clothes, so I didn't mind too much standing in the rain to see him. I did mind that I was in jeans and a Northface raincoat and all the other women were much more elegantly dressed, despite the weather. The ceremony was held in the front yard of some enormous villa, its' owners long gone, now used for weddings and formal events like this. Afterwards we all trooped inside for refreshments; wine, risotto, cheeses, meat, cake, fruit, champagne, all consumed while standing up. As I lolled against the wall, sipping my champaigne and gazing up at the ceiling frescoes, I decided that living in Italy and dating a police officer had its advantages. I, who come from a town where if you don't have baked beans and potato salad at the wedding reception you cannot consider yourself legally married, was sold. I decided I would never miss a Festa if I could help it. Three years ago Lorenzo was set to receive an award so I went, properly dressed this time, with Giulio then a wriggling seven month old on my lap. That Festa always stays with me because the Chief of Police at that time gave a speech where at the end he thanked the families of all the officers, recognizing that we also make sacrifices and thanking us for our support. That year though the Festa was held in a theater so while the food was good, it lacked the ambience of the 18th century villa, even if there was more elbow room. Then I sat it out for a few years. Last year we went because my parents were here and wanted to see the whole shabang (and eat the food!) They were not dissapointed. The Festa was held at the Catholic seminary named for John the 23rd (who was born not far from there) which is in Citta Alta (the high city) of Bergamo, so we had a spectacular view of the city below during the garden reception. "This is incredible!" my father exclaimed, shoveling in his second helping of mushroom risotto in truffle oil, indicating towards the view. The only fly in the ointment on that day was that Giulio was four days into being potty trained and proceeded to wet himself three times in about 45 minutes, usually only moments after I had asked him if he needed to go and him adamantly denying that he did. In the photos he is wearing a different pair of pants in each photo, the last pair being this ancient pair of sweatpants that lived in the diaper bag for unexected bathroom emergencies. I can't say that they really went with the freshly ironed polo shirt that he was wearing.
This year we have potty training firmly under our belt, but this year we have Livia, who is battling some virus that causes high fever and never ending grumpiness. I feel a bit like the woman in the fairytale where evil gnomes come in the night and take away my happy, smiling baby and leaving me with her fussy, unhappy twin. Where was my Livia? I didn't know this grumpy baby at all. I might have forgone the nice reception and stayed at home; honestly, sitting through a half hour ceremony with a sick baby and a energetic three year old all for a free plate of pasta seemed a bit much. But this year Lorenzo was getting another award for capturing and arresting some mob guy and I wanted to be there. The Festa is the one day out of the whole year where all those long hours and lost Sundays when Lorenzo's at work seem worth it and I didn't feel like missing it. I had initially asked Vanda to come with me give me a hand with Giulio, but she couldn't come at the last minute, so I followed two women Lorenzo knows from his union on the drive up because they had offered to give me a hand with the kids.
I was glad that I had a made an effort to look nice, because the two women, Gianna and Monica, were dressed to the nines when they pulled. Head to toe elegant black clothes, manicured nails, and long dramatic earrings, I didn't think they would take to kindly to having Livia leave snot on the shoulders of their jackets.
After parking we walk up the hill to the seminary where Lorenzo meets us at the gate, all decked out in his uniform. We let Giulio check out the bomb-sniffing dog and then go into the auditorium to stake out a place on the end of an aisle where I could keep the stroller next to us. The ceremony wasn't set to start for an hour and there was lots of room. No sooner had we sat down than Giulio begins demanding food, though this time I had come prepared with drinkable yoghurts and crackers, and then he starts demanding to go to the bathroom. I give a whiny Livia over to Lorenzo (let's hope she doesn't get snot on his shoulder, won't go with the uniform) and take Giulio to the scene of so many of last year's potty mishaps. We come back and Lorenzo hands me a wailing Livia and the video camera. "Ok, so it's really important you get the moment when I get the award, and maybe also a bit of the National Anthemn, and oh!" he says, putting the photo camera in the stroller, "Don't forget to take photos!" Geez, maybe I could take a ten page introspective photo shoot on the whole event and send it to Vanity Fair while I'm at it? I'd like to see Mario Testino use a video camera with one hand and bounce a grumpy baby with the other. Monica offers to hold Livia so I can film, but Livia will have no one of it. She keeps arching her back and wailing, clearly only Mommy will do today. In the end I hold her on my left hip, while with my right hand I operate the video camera as they kick things off with the National Anthemn. The camera shakes like an elderly Katherine Hepburn is holding it. I roam over the crowd, taking in the choir singing onstage; a mix of young children wearing matching t-shirts and baseball hats and an elderly group with all the men wearing tuxedos. The combination of the two sounds is intense, part bleating, part vibrating. They sing the first verse of the anthemn, against a taped orchestral accompionment, of which most people know the words, and then they launch into the second verse of which no one knows the words. The audience promptly drops out, though all the police who rose at the first chord to salute must remain standing, though fortunately after two verses the choir has had enough and we all sit down, except for me, while the Chief of Police comes up to speak. I turn the camera off and put Livia in her stroller and try to slowly rock her to sleep, listening to the Chief go through his laundry list of numbers and statistcs for the last year. You can be sure that there will be no thanking the families of the officers today. Livia has just dropped off and I am about to sit down when the man's speech ends and suddenly there is a thunder of applause. Livia wakes with a start and immediately starts wailing. They then move into the awards, which in some way is worse, because they are now applauding every two minutes or so. I resign myself to standing for the rest of the ceremony, easing the stroller back and forth.
I look across the packed auditorium to where Lorenzo and the other officers who are getting awards today are seated together, I assume that the ones who are standing are next to be called so I think I have a few minutes before I have to do any more filming. Suddenly Lorenzo stands up, shit, shit, shit they are about to call him! I fumble with the camera waiting for it to click and whirl into life, and then it comes on and not a moment too soon cause now they are reading out Lorenzo's name and he and his superior are marching on stage and saluting, and the officials are giving him his award and the audience is clapping, and I would clap to except that I am still holding the camera one handed, while rocking the stroller with the other. I film until he comes off the stage and then I turn the thing off and throw it into the diaper bag, and just as well, cause someone had thought it would be a good idea to end the ceremony with the choir singing the gospel standard "Oh Happy Day", not exactly the sentiment I would use to describe the police. Ask Lorenzo when he comes staggering in at 2 am after working 12 hours if it's a happy day that he works for the police. And is there a choir any less suited to sing this number than the group we have before us? Italians for some reason love Gospel music, it offers something that is foreign and that they themselves are unable to produce, and yes, Gospel music can be wonderful, when sung by the righ choir with the right spirit. These octongenarians and their 10 year old counterparts are not what the composer had in mind when he wrote the piece, this all white group of non-english speaking Italians who are not used to clapping together or improvising high notes, as the skinny soloist is now attempting to do. The spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak. The song doesn't sound exhaulted, but only tired, sung by people ready to go and eat lunch. The crowd doesn't seem to mind though, they join in clapping including Monica and Gianna, but their flesh is weak too and after a few bars they lose the beat and have to drop out. I bite my lip and look down at a sleepy Livia and try not to laugh out loud. Lorenzo told me later that he had to struggle not to laugh as well.
I realize as the choir winds down that in a matter of moments everyone is going to make a run to the door and to the buffett lunch outside and that I will have to battle the crowds while steering a heavy stroller and holding onto Giulio. I make the decision to get out early, Monica rises to the occasion and offers to bring Giulio out with her, leaving me to navigate the stairs on each side of the auditorium and then enourmous flight which leads to the outside. Luckily there are some firemen present, perhaps for eventual crowd control (things getting heated in the buffet line?) and two of them take the stroller and, like the Pope sitting in his chair, lower Livia down the stairs. She and I wait outside in the blinding sunshine as people stream out the enormous door and head towards the long tables loaded with food and wine glasses. The staff seems to be mostly teenagers, no doubt brought in from one of the technical high schools which teaches, along with hotel management, catering skills. It says a lot for my self-control that I do not make a beeline for the tables but wait until Giulio arrives with Monica, followed by Lorenzo who wants to know if his hat was on straight when he went up to get his award. He has obviously never held a baby and used a video camera at the same time or he would know that such attention to detail was beyond me at that time. We take a few family photos and then head towards the now long line to get something to eat.
All I can say is that I must be becoming a little Italian because even though the printed menu lists no less than 15 different dishes, the food just wasn't as good as last year. There was no pasta dish or risotto, though there were three different cold meat dishes, including roast beef with rocket and grana. But Lorenzo agreed, this year it just wasn't as good. Last year there had been two sets of tables as well, one inside and one outside, this year there was just the one set outside meaning there was more jostling and less elbow room. And I had Livia in her stroller to wheel around, trying not to nip the well-heeled ankles of the ladies and gentleman around me. So I have come to the conclusion that unless Lorenzo gets any more awards in the meantime, I'm not going back until Livia can walk distances without a stroller.
As a post script, I am writing this now on Sunday, the good gnomes gave me Livia back and she is here smiling and crawling and being generally good humored. Instead it seems Giulio is now ill, with a fever and a new developement: throwing up. I have a feeling it is going to be a long night........

It Happened One Night

2007-05-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

We had a broken night here on Friday. Giulio had been trying for two days with lots of tears and little success to move his bowels and by Friday night I knew it wasn't going to be good. He passed out on our friend's couch around 11 o'clock, after an evening of false alarms, running to the bathroom and the changing his mind once he got there saying, "I just fine!" My friend Theresa offered me a suppository, or what we call around my house Up the Butt, and it was very tempting to go ahead and use it. However, when we use the UTB it results in tears and screaming from Giulio before there is any action. I didn't think Theresa really wanted a 3 year old hopping and crying around her dining room in pain while the rest of us ate dessert so I decided to hold off until we got home. Once at home though Giulio was sleeping so well that I didn't feel like waking home, decided he could try again tomorrow to go, and so, exhausted we all went to sleep around 12:30.
At 2:30 I am woken by the sounds of crying. I lie there for a second deciphering which child it is. It takes a moment to realize that it is Giulio, and no sooner have I thrown back the covers and my feet have touched the floor that I hear Livia joining in. This isn't that confused-where-am-I-bad-dream crying. This is open mouthed-full throat yelling from both of them. Did I mention that it is 2:30, oh, and did I mention that we are sleeping with the windows open? Fair enough you say, but I really don't want to wake the neighbors, who are undoubtably sleeping with their windows open too. Not my neighbors below me, we're cool, I mean the neighbors in the building next to ours. Once, about a nine months after we had lived here, towards the end of August a tenant in the building next door asked me if Giulio suffered from stomach problems, as they had often heard him crying during the night. What they were hearing were not stomach problems but a jet lagged toddler still on American time, outraged that his mother had left him in his crib to cry it out, rather than letting him get up at 3 am. While I smiled and assured the neighbor that no, Giulio had no stomach problems, I got the hint. From then on, all crying jags that occur late at night in the summer months involve immediate damage control i.e. shut bedroom windows so the neighbors won't hear. Last summer I got off easy, Giulio when he would wake up would simply go and get into bed with my parents who were here last summer for four months to give me a hand before the second baby showed up. Now it's back to all hands on deck i.e. my hands on deck. My husband, Sleeping Beauty's younger brother, rarely wakes for these late night damage control sessions.
He did wake for this one, with both kids screaming to wake the dead. I went into immediate action, shutting the bedroom windows, giving Livia some water to drink and then leaving her to cry while I carried a wailing Giulio into the bathroom, closing the bedroom door behind me. She would have to wait. Giulio tried for the upteenth time to go, screaming and hopping up and down in pain, tears running down his face. "Sshhhh Giulio!" I said, closing the bathroom window. Lorenzo and I held a quick conference to Up the Butt or not Up the Butt. Lorenzo was all for waiting. I, who had no interest in passing the rest of the night getting out of bed every hour or so while Giulio tried in vain to go, quickly dismissed that suggestion. We needed to do it, and we needed to do it now. We carried a still crying Giulio to the living room, while in the bedroom Livia was still wailing away. Lorenzo got the UTB, a plastic collapsible vial with a narrow straw at one end, while I got Giulio on the couch. Upon seeing the vial Giulio started yelling even louder, "nononononono!" Like two coyboys wrestling a wild calf to the ground so they can brand it with the hot iron, Lorenzo and I pinned Giulio down to the couch, me holding his flailing body into place, while Lorenzo inserted the UTB. Giulio's yells turn to screams. Shit, we are sitting under an open window, who knows what the neighbors are thinking now? It sounds like we are either a) branding Giulio with a hot iron or b) trying to kill him. I put my hand over his mouth to muffle him, and in a moment it's over. Screams return to regular crying, and once I get his diaper back on him, Giulio ceases to cry, other than the occasional shuttering hick-up. In the kid's room there is silence; Livia has fallen back asleep. I carry Giulio back to his room and get him settled back into bed, and then I join an already sleeping Lorenzo. I am asleep before my head hits the pillow.
3:30 Crying sounds coming from the kids room again but before I can open my eyes I hear the patter of little feet running down the hallway to the bathroom and the sounds of a diaper being ripped off and then discarded. I join Giulio where he is sitting on the potty, crying. "Oh sweetie, it hurts, doesn't it?" He nods, I sit down opposite him on the rim of the tub, and he leans over and puts his head in my lap. I make some soothing noises and rub his head, he sighs and relaxes a bit. And then lo and behold! He goes! I get him cleaned up, new diaper, and then back to bed. I re-open the kid's bedroom windows, as well as the one in the bathroom, damage control no longer an issue. Both kids are now asleep, Lorenzo (who couldn't be woken for this round) is asleep too. I am sure that now Giulio will sleep late this morning...............
7:30. A small voice in my ear whispers: "Mommy, I hungry." And he was, of course, in the worst mood all day Saturday!
Today is Mother's Day, my present: Lunch out with the family somewhere in the mountains. Except that any day trip of ours is kind of like preparing for a mini trip to Rome. We have to dress the kids, pack backpacks with jackets, sweatshirts, change of clothing, diapers, and sunscreen. Lorenzo insists on making sandwiches, and I have to organize Livia's food, all while watching the clock and yelling at each other repeatedly, "We need to go! Do you know what time it will be by the time we get there....!" And then there is of course the journey; me trying to read a map and give Lorenzo directions, while Giulio demands water and breadsticks from the backseat. And once I have dug out the water bottle and filled up the cup (yes, I know a Good Mother would have a spill-proof bottle all ready for him to drink from especially for the journey) and handed it back to him, he then takes one small sip and tries to give it back to me, announcing "I fine!"
I ran into a friend of my on Friday afternoon and wished her a Happy Mother's Day, she is the mother of three boys. She grabbed my arm and looked me in the eye."Do you know what I would like to do for Mother's Day? I want to be on the top of a mountain. All by myself. Alone. I know you know what I am talking about." I did. I do. Sitting in the front seat trying not to be carsick as I look for some town on the map while Lorenzo swings the car around a hairpin turn while Giulio demands water from the backseat, I can't help but think how nice it would be to be alone today. As long of course that I knew that the kids would be home that evening. We end the day by going to a church with Romanesque frescos. It's down a lane, with high stone walls on each side and a cherry tree bearing fruit out front. Next to the church is a small cemetary which is obviously full, no one has been buried there since the 1970s, other than the row of nuns down at one end. A large number of the tombs are of the wordy, Victorian variety, something I have never seen with Italian tombs. "Most loving mother and devoted wife, goodness personified" and "Devoted to his widowed mother he was taken too soon from this life at 16 years of age." And of course, many old people. I am walking hand and hand with Giulio reading some of the gravestones when a woman comes in. She looks at me a minute with Giulio and then comes over. "These women were mothers too," she says. "Life is like a wheel, it just keeps turning." Then she smiles and wishes me a good day before going over to visit a particular grave. I smile too and squeeze Giulio's hand, happy to be a mother, with my young child together on Mother's Day.

Crystal Ball

2007-05-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

The heat is coming back. We had a much needed week of rain, though not enough to deal with the drought that has been going on here since the winter. And I am still Giulio's donkey! Nice to know, something to cling to when he is 15 and no longer speaking to me in public. I had one of those days when I felt like I had a crystal ball that can see into the future for when Giulio is older. I taught fourth graders today, including the class at the school across the street from me. I like teaching there because I see the children and I wonder, what will Giulio be like? Will he be the kid with papers exploding from all corners of his desk, or will he be the one who sits quietly and gets his homework done on time? Will he be well-behaved or will he be the one that all the teachers tell each to "keep on eye on."? And most of all what kind of mother will I be? Along with the Mine Will Be Different sentiment that you had before you had kids, you also certainly had that I Will Be Different feeling about being a mother. Screaming at your kid because he got Nutella on the couch? Not you. Furious that he has now woken you four times in one night and will not go back to his own bed without a fight, are you kidding? Willing to take your child's side over the teachers? Never. I always swore that I would try and see things the teacher's way if it ever came time to having a parent-teacher conference, seeing as I teach children, I know that behind every Mother's Blue Eyed Innocent lurks the Wild Child beneath, the side that all mothers know exists but like to fool themselves into thinking that your child would have the decency to keep hidden when outside the house. It turns out that I Wasn't Different. I have yelled at Giulio, I have lost my temper in the small hours of the morning, and when Giulio's teacher told me that he was pushing kids at school I wanted to say "It's because you don't understand him!" I know the score though, I know Giulio is no picnic, though as I said before, I like to think that he saves his difficult side only for me. I am now 2 for 3, as in I take to heart what two of his teachers have to say about his behavior (which is improving) and ignore the third one as she is old and cranky and needs to retire. And how awful can any boy who tells his mother that she is his donkey be? ( you see? What did I tell you! I am as bad as them!)
But back to my fourth graders. On Sunday most of them are doing their First Holy Communion, so I was asking them what they had planned after the Mass. Part of this is for my own private research into how things are done here in Italy, so that when my children reach that age I know what to expect. Like how some women go to weddings to get ideas for their own, I pick small children's brains about the Italian Child Experience so I am ready and prepared for when the time comes. I have baptisms down pat, and as it turned out, it didn't take that much imagination to figure out what goes into the average child's First Holy Communion. They get new clothes to wear to the service, the girls go the hairdresser they day before to have their hair done in curls or blown out straight and to have it worked into complicated hairstyles. I am already worrying if I will be able to revive Livia's upsweep after she has slept on it a night when the time comes. And then after the Mass they all go to a restaurant for a large meal with friends and family and there are party favours to give out. Ok, fine, basically like a baptism except the guest of honor can now walk, talk, and feed himself. The thing that suprised me were the gifts. When I asked the children what they were getting as presents I expected standard answers, a watch maybe or a bracelet. A new track suit or maybe some CDs. Instead the children named portable video games, a motorized scooter, computers, MP3 players, new furniture for their bedrooms, and several at the end of these long lists also said money ranging from 800-1000 euros. Wait, what? When my kids were baptized we got some picture frames, some clothes, and a necklace. Either we are hanging out with the wrong people or things really get hyped up for the F.H.C. Though, if you are getting gifts like that now when you are 9 what are you gonna do when you get married? Anything less than a quarter of a million in cash will seem like people were being cheap. Who are these parents who a)have all this money to blow and b) don't see anything wrong with spending thousands of euros on gifts because you child has finally confessed to a priest and can take communion? So I want to say it right now, I Will Be Different! I will not be the mother buying Giulio a computer, and mini-motorcycle, and a cell phone just because it's the thing to do. I will not give out 81 (yes some kid said 81) party favours to all and sundry simply because my child is having the FHC.
I was still mulling over these Daddy Warbucks style communions when I went to get Giulio from school. A large sign hanging on the bulletin board notified all parents that due to a strike on Friday among the food service company that prepares and serves all school lunches, they would be unable to guarantee a hot lunch. Lunch would instead be of the brown bag variety. I have been hearing about this strike in all the schools where I work, the children were sent home days ago with a notice for their parents so they could plan ahead. All nursery school kids eat at school, but in the elementary school a lot of children go home for the lunch hour and come back at the end of recess. Their mothers meet them at the school door, whisk them home and bring them back within the hour well fortified. Vanda downstairs comes home for lunch whenever her mother is home to cook, though she had told me that the food at school is good. No one brings lunch from home, I don't know if it is forbidden or if the idea of eating a sandwich when there is pasta available is so preposterous to the Italian family that it is not even worth considering. I remember in high school when they would read out the school menu, sloppy joe on bun, tator tots, green beans, jello, and milk. I shudder to think. I always brought my lunch, even calling my dad to bring it if I had forgotten it, rather than face those sloppy joes. This is not a predicament that any Italian child is called upon to face. When I asked some of my students if they liked the food in the cafeteria one small boy told me, "It's so-so. There is something not quite right about the tomato sauce." Ah, if only it was a question of the tomato sauce in the average American cafeteria. It was with this in mind that I asked the school caretaker if I should send Giulio with a packed lunch from home, or would he get one there. "Don't worry," Pina, the caretaker told me."They get a brown bag lunch. Unfortunately it means they don't get a hot lunch." "Honestly," I said without a hint of irony. "I'm an American and things like that just don't bother me." Perhaps she thought I was kidding because she laughed. I imagine that even the Italian bag lunch wil be 100 times better than tator tots, green beans, and sloppy joes, even if it does not constitute a hot lunch.

Home Sweet Home Part 2

2007-04-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

Today we were all home, Giulio's school is still closed as is mine, they won't open until Wednesday here in Italy. We kept Livia home too since we planned to go and see the horse show going on in the center of town but an unexpected thunder storm kept us inside. With the darkening clouds, Lorenzo's mood darkened too. He has to do patrol tonight, from 7pm to 1 am, a part of the job that he really hates. He doesn't do patrol everyday, but once a week he usually gets assigned to it, and worse yet, he got assigned to the evening shift which means beligerent drunk people and fisticuffs. Although in Italy the police always patrol with two officers in the car, Lorenzo hates it, especially because in a small town like ours backup could be kilometers away. And if they end bringing someone in, it's worse for him because he ends being stuck with all the paperwork and arranging the arrest. I alway send him off with a prayer that all will go well at that by 1:30 he will be at home and in bed. I started getting dinner ready early, around 5:30, while he started getting ready for work. At 5:55 I had three things going on the stove, Giulio was in the bathroom trying to go poop and Lorenzo had finished shaving and was about to get into the shower. Livia was sitting in her high chair watching me rush around, waiting for her own dinner to finish cooking. Suddenly the doorbell rang. I went to get it, thinking it was probably Vanda asking to borrow an egg or requesting to have their DVD of "Cars" back. I peered through the peep-hole and saw Signora Pala, the sweet elderly lady who lives below me standing outside the door. Sig.ra Pala is decidedly low-maintanence and I wondered what she could possibly want, in two and half years here she has never asked so much for a glass of water. I didn't think anything of the old t-shirt and baby food stained shorts I was wearing but quickly unlocked the door and opened it to find not only Sig.ra Pala but also Don Vincenzo complete with surplice and cassock and carrying a black bag with what looked like a jar of Holy water. "Hello!" called Don Vincenzo, "We've come to bless the house!" "Oh," I said, slapping a big smile on my face, "Come in, please, come in." All the while I'm thinking, 'Bless the house? I never ordered any house blessing. And man, does this guy know how to time it!"
"Excuse me just a moment, " I say, big smile still in place. I whip round and closing the door that seperates the living room and the hallway behind me, I knock on the bathroom door and say cheerily, "Lorenzo, Don Vincenzo and Sig.ra Pala are here!" Meaning: watch what you say, you grump. "Oh," he says. There's a pause. "Just a minute." I go to the bedroom and close the wardrobe doors which were wide open as I had been in the middle of hanging up drycleaning when the door bell had rung. House blessing? Did this mean the priest was going to go from room to room, blessing as he went? I hoped not, slamming shut the wardrobe doors but leaving the clothes on the bed. I go back into the living room where our guests have just discovered Livia, who has remained quietly in her high chair, Sig.ra Pala cooes over her. "How beautiful! What a beautiful baby!" I squeeze past Sig.ra Pala and turn off the three stove top burners so we are no longer being assaulted by the smell of veal with mushrooms, and take Livia from her chair and bring her out into the living room where Don Vincenzo gets in on the act and starts cooing too. I tell him that Livia's baptism had gone really well, that we really liked Don Giovanni (yes, that's his name) who performed the service. I also tell him about a baptism we went to in Rome where the priest banished all the crying babies to the sacristy so he could give his sermon undisturbed, and told the rest of the congregation to "Be quiet." As I talk I keep glancing desperately towards the bathroom waiting for Lorenzo to appear, I can't hold them off forever. Finally he comes out, nicely dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, making me look even more slovenly than ever, and Giulio gives up trying to poop and comes out too.
After a few moments of small talk, mostly asking Giulio if he is nice to his sister and Giulio holding forth on the fact that is was raining, we get down to business. We are both given prayer cards with the blessing rites on one side and a prayer from Saint Ambrogio on the other. With Sig. Pala taking the lead, we respond to the priest's prayer as indicated on the card. I'm following along when suddenly drops of water hit my arm. Good Lord the man is waving holy water around the house, liberally at that. "It's raining again!" Giulio calls, touching his head where some of drops had fallen. I shoot him the hairy eyeball, but luckily we were at the end of the prayers by then, and it seemed that blessing the living room was enough to consider the house sufficiently blessed. The dry cleaning was safe. We chatted a few more minutes, mostly about The State of the World Today, and then with many hearty farewells they were on their way, on to bless the next house. Gosh, my (extremely devout Catholic) grandmother would have been so proud! I was suprisingly happy about having our house blessed, though completely blindsided. While it was not something I would have sought out myself, it was a nice thing to do, and hey we can use all the help we can get, be it divine or otherwise. It's just the kind of thing that Sig.ra Pala would be involved in, and her bringing the priest to our house after he had blessed her home and before they went on to bless many others was her way of doing something nice for us. A house blessing is just the kind of thing that she likes and therefore kindly assumed it was just the thing we would want for our home.
Signora Pala, like Terry and Eugenio, is one of life's good people. She brings me candles that have been blessed in church by the priest to hold against the children's throats to protect them from sore throats, church bulletins, and olive branches from Palm Sunday. The fact that I have yet to go to Mass here is no problem. She understands that for obvious reasons I can't take my children yet, assuming that my lack of involvement is simply a question of having other time commitments. While she asks nothing of me, I often go downstairs to her, to have her patch Giuio's jeans, or iron Livia's christening gown. Twice I have gone begging to see if she can sit with the kids for 10 minutes until Lorenzo gets home. She is always smiling, rushing off on her blue bicycle to help with the Mass or administer communion to some invalid. Every morning she rides into the center of town to put flowers on her husband's grave, and while she hates cooking, will happily sew anything that needs sewing. During many of Giulio's early morning meltdowns on the stairs she will come out and hold him while I go and get the car out of the garage, and he will be smiling, the whole crisis forgotten by the time she brings him out to the car. She also never complains about the noise going on directly over her head, be it Giulio running back and forth or Livia crying in the dead of night. Whenever I apologize for some late night goings on she always laughs and tells me she is just sorry that she can't come up and take care of the baby and let me and Lorenzo sleep. Believe me, it took all my restraint not to hand her my keys and with a hearty slap on the back say, "Come whenever you want, don't feel you have to knock first!" She suffers from insomnia and likes to hear us overhead so she doesn't feel so alone, her two sons are married and moved out years ago.
Sig.ra Pala has lived in this building since it was built, she moved here as a newly-wed, after living with her mother in the apartment building next to our. Apparently it was another priest who convinced her to buy her apartment on the west side of the building, instead of the one on the east side. "I wanted the other one, because the bedrooms get direct sun in the morning, while ours get the afternoon sun, so I thought they would be cooler. And also that way I could see my mother's apartment from my window. But he told me that by afternoon all apartments are hot anyway, at least on the west side they would be cool in the morning. And having an apartment farther from my mother's meant I could argue with my husband in peace!" Downstairs in her little plot of land, she has put down flat stones in lieu of a vegetable garden and a statue of the Virgin Mary that has a little light on top that she turns on every night.
And then there's Piero, but I will get to him next time.
As a sort of p.s. that has nothing to do with anything, Giulio when he comes and gives me a big hug and kisses now says "You're my donkey." It's his new way of expressing affection. I have no idea where it comes from.

Home Sweet Home Part 1

2007-04-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

Today, April 25, is a holiday here, it's to celebrate the liberation of Italy after WWII. Usually there are veterans parades and some towns roll out old American army tanks and jeeps for people to admire. The mayor usually gives a speech. Most people use this day to do what is called here a bridge, using the holiday and all the days between it and the nearest weekend to do a kind of five or six day vacation. Imagine if Martin Luther King Day was not observed on the Monday but on whatever day it happened to fall, like a Wednesday. Then you would have the holiday off, and then take off the Thursday and Friday and then head straight into the weekend for a nice 5 day break. It varies from year to year, some years if the holiday happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday there is nothing you can do about it, but some years, like this year, we hit the jackpot. Today, Wednesday is a holiay, but then, so is next Tuesday, May 1st, as it is Labour Day. Therefore some schools are closed from today until next Wednesday, and a lot of people are taking advantage of that and going away to the beach for a pre-summer getaway. Since it is already hot it's not a bad idea.
Lorenzo worked. Police don't get holidays, and seeing that tomorrow I do have to work, (before getting Monday and Tuesday off) I asked him to work today so that tomorrow he could be home with Giulio who is for the above mentioned reasons off from school. No beach getaway for us. We instead went to my friend Theresa's parents' house for a cookout, though it was not your typical American cookout. We ate ribs and bread with truffle oil on top, tomatoes with basil, and red and yellow peppers. Due to the large amounts of meat we gave the pasta course a miss, though we did eat a lot of bread. Our contribution was fresh canoli, that Sicilian pastry filled with ricotta cream that I drove 10 kilometers to get from the real Sicilian pastry shop. The guy filled the shells right in front of me, so I knew they hadn't been sitting in the case all morning. All of this food was washed down with copious amounts of wine and water. I mentioned that it was an Italian bbq, but there is no reason why it couldn't have been an American one. Theresa, though Italian and with Italian parents, was born and lived the first 15 years of her life in Pittburgh and has the accent to prove it. She also has two boys, Christian five and Luca almost three years old who get along like a house on fire with Giulio. Giulio never hesitates for a second when I say we are going to see Christian and Luca. He puts his shoes on and heads for the door. To see the three of them play together makes me realize why I don't want three children, least of all three boys. I don't think my house could survive the damage. How poor Livia is going to fit into their play when she is older I don't know. Theresa at times doesn't seem to know either, she finds her two children as tiring as I find mine. What I like about Theresa is that she gets it, she gets both cultures and I don't have to explain to her about what it's like in America versus Italy because she knows. She isn't shocked that Giulio drinks cold milk throughout the day. She gets why I miss Oreo cookies and Target stores. She knows the difference between American birthday cake and Italian birthday cake. She realizes back copies of People Magazine are worth their weight in gold. I also like her parents because they remind me of my old next door neighboors, kind, welcoming, good with kids. Lorenzo likes them because they came from Southern Italy and remind him, in a good way, of his family; good food, large servings, insistence on seconds. After lunch we went back with Theresa and her husband Ermano to their house so the boys could play in their yard and we could hang out some more. Theresa and Ermano have a very nice house, it's big, four floors, with a large grassy yard on three sides because it's the last one on the end of a row of attached houses. It's much bigger than the average Italian home.
When we came back Lorenzo was saying how nice it would be to have a house like that, big, with a yard, and a home that was actually a house and not an apartment like where we live. While it is true that I would love a bigger space I have to say that I am very happy where we live. Our building, or condominio as they say in Italian, was built in 1962, so no, it is not some gracious palazzo with wooden shutters and large elaborate oak doors leading into a quaint courtyard. I have lived in several buildings like that and they are nice, however none were for sale at a price or a size that we wanted when we were looking. I was suprised that I liked this apartment so much the first time I saw it, because it wasn't how I imagined my house would look like. As I said, it is not new, and new is very "in" now. The hallway needs a facelift and the facade could use some work too, but I fell in love with large sunny rooms, the parquet floors, as well as beautiful oak doors, door frames and windows. I was pregnant at the time with Giulio and what I loved the most was the yard, a huge yard for everyone, and where everyone also has their own small patch of land to have a vegetable garden. Ours has beautiful rose bushes, thanks to the gardening skill of the previous owner, and in the summer we grow vegetables and I am also trying to grow four lavender plants. Best of all, the yard is enclosed by a fence on all sides so Giulio can play soccer, ride his bike, dig, run around whatever, without me having to worry about cars though it is also nice that the building is on a dead end street. It was one of the first apartment buildings built in this part of town, though now it has become extrememly popular and there are buildings going up all over, though not next to us, as all the plots around us have been built on and we are nicely spaced. Nowadays they would put three buildings on the space they left for our one, so in some ways old is not bad. We saw it the first time, and then I went to America, and then after a week there I called Lorenzo and told him that I couldn't stop thinking about the apartment, he said he couldn't either and that was it. It's a two bedroom, one bathroom, with a living room, kitchen, a balcony that has been enclosed so we use it like a study, and an open balcony off the master bedroom. There is also a basement storage area and a garage. That's it, nothing special, sort of the typical Italian sized apartment, here two bedrooms are the norm.
Three of the original owners still live here, another original owner rents his out, and another is rented as well, though the owner stays in close contact with the rest of us. We are the newcomers, buying from an elderly widower named Signore Agosti who had come to live here with his family in the early eighties, and was now going to live with his daughter and her family in a villa they were building. Seeing as we are a bit new to the neighborhood not everyone around here knows us but when I start to talking to any elderly neighbors all I have to say is that "we live in the Agosti's apartment" and they immediately understand who we are and where we live. The best thing about my building though are my neighbors. I won't go into the people who rent, cause they are nice but it's not quite the same with them, they aren't tied up with this place the way we are. On the ground floor is Terry and Eugenio and their three children Stefano, Vanda, and Alessandro. Eugenio was born here and has lived in that apartment all his life. His father, in what would turn out to be one of the greatest real estates moves of the 20th century, bought the land next to this building and built himself a villa to live out his old age, where he lives with his unmarried daughter, Eugenio's sister Candida. The house and the land must be worth about 4 times what he paid for it over 20 years ago, though it is a bit strange how Eugenio's dad is living in this large house with only his daughter and Eugenio and his family are crammed into the apartment next door, but I don't want to ask about it. I get the impression it has something to with Eugenio's wife, Terry and how she never got along with Candida. Terry came to live here when she got married to Eugenio, she grew up in Milan and is the oldest of 6 children. She is tall and large, not your typical size zero Italian, and she has a heart of gold.
Terry is our patron saint, the woman who has saved us so many times when Lorenzo has to work or I have to work and he hasn't come home yet. She willingly takes the children, cuddles them, feeds them, talks to them, reprimands them, and treats them like her own. Giulio loves being at their house, the cookies are kept on the bottom shelf where he can get them, and cartoons are on the TV, and there is Vanda to play with. Vanda (spelled Wanda, but pronounced Vanda) is almost 11 and is patient and sweet with Giulio. She will play with him, read books outloud to him, do puzzles, play hide-and-seek, and tell him stories. Up until fairly recently she used to come up here and play with Giulio without being asked to and he loved that. She is growing up a bit now and has friends and dance and school, so she is busy, but if Giulio is at her house she keeps him close by. Stefano is their son, he is 14 and in his first year of high school. He used to come up here too and play with Giulio but now he is "big" he rides his bike around the neighborhood or plays on the computer. I buy him jeans when I go back to the States as they have the fit that he likes. I used to sometimes envy Terry on Sunday mornings when it was clear that it was after 10 and they were still all asleep, though as she had her children young like I did, I consoled myself thinking that my day of sleeping in again would one day return. But then about two summers ago Terry started saying that she wanted to have another baby, something I couldn't understand. Why have a baby when you already have two children who can feed themselves and put themselves to bed and can be counted on to stay there all night? It seems that that didn't matter to Terry and now they have Alessandro who was born May 30, just about two months before Livia was born. At the time I thought, selfishly, I will admit, that this was the end of ever being able to ask Terry to watch my children, one toddler was one thing, one toddler plus two small babies plus two adolescents was something else. But in the end, perhaps because she is the eldest of 6, having 3 more children around didn't seem any harder for her than having one. She also has Vanda to help her. Poor Vanda, she has gone from being the baby of the family to being mother's helper, something I know she didn't sign up for. Stefano also finds himself babysitting more than he had planned, but then Eugenio also helps, at least with the children. Eugenio is great, nice, funny, and helpful, the kind of guy you ask to help carry your new couch up the stairs, or pick you up late at night from the airport and he will. He loves to grab Giulio and throw him in the air and make him laugh and Giulio for some reason calls him Jack. In the two and a half years we have been here our two families have become friends, we might have pizza together, or Lorenzo and Eugenio will watch the pay-per-view soccer game together. I stop in and say hello to Terry whenever I have a few minutes just to say hi and have a coffee. I know if I need an egg I can ask them for one, just like they know if they need olive oil it's not problem to come and ask me. I gave Terry all of Giulio's hand-me-downs for Alessandro, she will take Livia for an hour while I am trying to clean the house. Once when Lorenzo and I came back from Milan after registering Livia's birth at the American consulate we walked in and found she had a made pasta with ragu for us to take upstairs and eat, instead of me having to rush around, starving, trying to throw together lunch. Lorenzo is non-negotiable about having pasta for lunch. It is a must. Lorenzo was able to sort out a problem they had in getting a passport for Vanda in time for her to go away on a cruise with her grandparents. I don't know if we would neccesarily be friends if we met through other circumstances, it is the fact that we live in the same building that we have had time to build up this friendship, and we are able to sustain it with one of us stopping by to ask about painting the gate and staying for an hour chatting. Terry and I don't actually have that much in common as far as interests and background, but I enjoy seeing her and Eugenio and I enjoy their company. It also makes me happy to see how much Giulio loves them, and they are always present at birthday parties and christenings. They are good people and we are lucky to have found them.
Now about the other neighbors.............I will have to get to them next time.

Under the Tuscan Smog

2007-04-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

We left for Rome at dawn. Actually no we didn't we left more around noon, due to Giulio having an appointment with the ear doctor. We got up early, loaded the car, shut up the house and drove to the appointment with the car all set for the trip, but due to a back up on the highway we decided after Giulio's appointment to drive back down and get on the interstate further along. In the end we practically drove by our front door to get to the highway, and added another hour and a half to our journey. It was hot, well, very warm at any rate, and rather alarming considering that we are only in the first half of April and one already has to worry about the heat. Within minutes of getting on the highway we opt to turn the air conditioner on and roll the windows up. I turn it on, cupping my hand over the vent, waiting for the warm air to turn cool. Nothing happens. I turn the air on and off and then back on again. Nothing, we will have to make the trip with the windows down. Which you really can't do on the highway with cars zooming past at eighty miles an hour, so in the end we leave the windows closed but crank up the fans, letting hot air blow through the car. I can't take my eyes off the thermostat that we have inside the car, it gauges the temperature inside and outside. Apparently outside it is a pleasant 72, inside it's an uncomfortable 82. I keep staring at the rising numbers, as the temperature slowly goes up, and then, like in one of those prison movies where the guy decides to make a break for it and runs to the fence, even though he knows he's a goner even before he touches the wall, I turn to Lorenzo. "I'm sorry, I can't take it any more!" and roll down my window, letting the wind come roaring into the car. We drive the whole way to Rome with the front two windows rolled down about four inches, the only part of us feeling better are our hands when we stick them outside.
The first part of the trip is uneventful. The DVD player is a huge success, Giulio is glued to "Babe" and then later on"The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." I don't make any suggestions that he do anything but watch movies. He is quiet and occupied. Livia sleeps. I do my usual flight attendent bit of serving drinks and sandwiches around the cabin, then settle back to watch the ride. The roar from the windows makes any conversations seem like we are two eighty year olds who have left our hearing aides at home, lots of huh? and whats?? Lorenzo is also prone to want to concentrate on the road when he drives rather than gossip and rip large chunks out of the people we know, making me wish at times that during our road trips he would get more in touch with his femine side, the side that makes him want to discuss how much weight our friend has gained since she had her last baby. Perhaps driving on the Italian autostrada, playing leapfrog with the trucks and moving in and out of the passing lane leaves little room for anything but the most brutal testosterone.
For me the trip is always divided into three stages, from Milan to Bologna which is flat, open highway, Bologna to Florence, which is nail biting twisting highway that goes through the mountains, and then from Florence to Rome, when the drivers become more agressive and risk taking.
For many Florence is the art capital of the world, the cherry atop their long awaited trip to Italy. For me it is the halfway mark between my home and Rome, a place where I can really figure out how long it is actually going to take us to get to my in-laws. The trip is supposed to take 6 hours from start to finish, if there is no traffic and we have no children it can be done in under 6, however all we need is two trucks to have a fender bender somewhere south of Bologna and we are looking at eight hours. Throw in Giulio being car sick and throwing up, or a wailing baby for unidentified reasons and then you could be looking at 10 hours. My mother did the trip with us once. "God," she said, as the Tuscon countryside whipped past our windows, "This trip takes FOREVER." We make it to Florence in the usual three hours and find the usual backed up traffic. Florence sits in a kind of basin, someone told me that they have their own micro-climate. When it's cold in Italy, it's freezing in Florence, and when it's hot everywhere else, it's boiling there. We come flying down the hill and into the long lines of backed up traffic, the outside temperature shooting up from a pleasant 68 while in the mountains to 82 the moment we are in the vicinity of the city. If I lean all the way over to the left I can just make out the dome on top of the Duomo. We lower the windows all the way down and creep along. Once when Giulio was really small we found ourselves completely stopped there for a good half hour there on the highway so in the end I decided to nurse him. I wasn't the pro I am now about nursing in public so I snuck a look around to make sure that no one was watching, but seeing that there was only an empty tour bus on my right, I had him latch on. It was only later that I realized that the bus was not only full, but that I had accidentally flashed the whole left side of it.
We finally push through Florence but it is here on the other side the Livia starts to lose it. She wails, her head soaked with sweat, the bottle of water I manage to get into her mouth doing no good. It is times like these I wish I had a Mr. Gumpy type breast that I could just stretch around to the back seat so she could nurse without us stopping the car. In the end we get off at the nearest rest stop and I go around and free her from her carseat. The minute she is out of the car she is cooing and smiling again as if nothing had happened, she was just sick of sitting in the car seat, that's all.
One advantage to Italy are the rest stops called Autogrill. Here you find cafes loaded with fantastic sandwiches, snacks, ice cream, coffee, cappucinos, water and soda. In addition to these well stocked bars there is always a store which sells all kinds of salami, cheese, mortadella, crackers, cookies, candy, magazines, CDs, t-shirts, and cigarettes. There is also an enormous gas station and of course, bathrooms. It takes the word "rest stop" to a whole new level, a far cry from the American version with a bathroom, a pop machine, and map of the interstate pinned up on the wall.
We get ice cream and Livia gets a jar of meat. We also try and convince Giulio that he really does need to go to the bathroom. He insists "I just fine!", and while it is really tempting to say that if he announces in 10 minutes time when we are back on the road that he needs to go it will be his problem. Except that it won't be just his problem, but ours as well. And it will be completely and truly our problem to clean up the pee aftewards and try and remove the smell of urine from the car. So we keep trying. Giulio keeps saying no, finally when Lorenzo goes into the bathroom alone Giulio waits just long enough for Lorenzo to be possibly out of sight to go tearing in after him. I start to follow, Livia in my arms, but some strange looks from the men coming out of the bathroom stop me. Lorenzo and Giulio are back in a moment, Giulio beaming. He has gone pee. The next battle is to get him to wash his hands, which we make him do by force, and then the hand dryer which he finds fascinating and stands below it, extending both arms up into the air stream, his eyes closed. We have to eventually tear him away from that and head back out to the car. I try and nurse Livia who doesn't seem all that interested and after a few minutes I stop and announce that we can go. It is pointless to tell Livia that is she doesn't nurse now it will be her problem once we are back on the road. I start "Babe" up again on the DVD player and the next 45 minutes are quiet as Giulio watches his movie and Livia dozes. However about two hours north of Rome, and Christ is it really 6 o'clock?!! Livia starts wailing, an ear piercing-we're-not-gonna-take-it-anymore kind of cry, which from the my place in the front seat, I can do little about. The sun has shifted, so at least the car is not as hot, Lorenzo has that concentrated look as he expertly passes a truck loaded with cows and is barely able to give more than one word answers to any questions I ask. Livia keeps wailing, Giulio remains oblivious, fascinated by the world of pig sheep dog trials. I eye the back seat, seeing how little room there is between the two car seats, then start to clear out a little space for more possible leg room. Lorenzo has the car in the slow lane again, his eyes are glued to the road. "I'm going over." I say, now in a cold-war era movie about the Berlin wall. I take a deep breath, unfasten my seatbelt and vault over into the back seat, squeezing in between the two carseats. The middle seat belt is suprisingly easy to find and fasten and in a moment I am in place. I have done it! Livia is so suprised to see me back there next to her that she stops crying for a moment. I rummage around and dig out from under my leg a baby yoghurt. Upon seeing the yoghut Giulio announces that he wants a baby yoghurt too. I deny his request, as I only have a limited number of these babies, and ignore his whining as I start spooning up the yoghurt with a slightly sticky spoon I found in the bag along with the baby food. After awhile I find myself drawn to Giulio's movie, wow, this DVD is a good idea, I can't look away from a movie I must have already seen 50 times over. With Livia chewing on my left hand and Giulio clutching my right, Lorenzo still mono-syllbic in the front seat, we complete our driving to Rome in the dusk. "God," I thought as we got off the exit for Roma Nord, "This trip takes @#@! forever!"

It's Wabbit Season

2007-04-12T03:26:00.000-07:00

It is still baptism season here in Italy. This weekend we are headed to Rome for not one but two baptisms, both just a few hours apart. Rome is the reason why I came to Italy, it is also were I met my husband and where we were married. We spent our first few years in Northern Italy trying to get back to Rome as much as we could. A small baby didn't really slow down our passion for going. Though we sometimes stayed at my in-laws, we often stayed with my husband's best friend who would give up his bedroom whever we were in town. Then the longer we were here up North and the bigger Giulio got, the less I wanted to go. It's one thing to go for an action packed weekend of planning a wedding or sightseeing when it's just you and your significant other, quite another when it involves an active three year old, a small baby, and sleeping on my in-laws 20+ year old sofa bed. The more nights you sleep there, the more uncomfortable it gets. Their apartment in small, not my in-laws fault, and Giulio finding himself in The Land Where the Word "NO" Is Never Uttered gets more and more crazy the longer he is there (my in-laws fault.) In that regard my in-laws revert completely to form, allowing Giulio to do whatever he wants, eat whatever he wants, and by the end I have a kid who won't sit still for a moment and is also constipated to boot, having eaten nothing but cookies, pastries, and the occasional mouthful of pasta since he got there. This time however we are leaving on Friday, so we won't be there until Friday evening, and we are going back on Sunday so the I.L. efffect will be greatly minimized, though I am bringing a suppository just in case. My friend Theresa is also lending me her portable DVD player for the minimum six hour ride down. How I used to mock parents who said they used DVDs for long journeys! What, they couldn't find a way to keep their child seated for a few hours? Their kid lacked the capacity to sit still for more than half an hour? Hah! MINE would be different! Now I am just wondering how long the player can be used before it starts to put a drain on the car battery. Are there any 3 hour length versions of Bob the Builder on DVD?
I started packing last night, just cause today there really won't be time. In theory I could leave it to Lorenzo to do this afternoon when he is here with the kids, but the last time I let him pack he only brought two pairs of socks for Giulio for a 5 day trip and three pairs of underwear. Ok, fine, but one pair of socks Giulio had last worn when he was 18 months old, and I still don't know where Lorenzo dug them out from under the huge pile of clean 3T socks in the kids' room . The underwear was a pair someone gave me when Giulio wet himself when we were at their house, and had told me not to bother with giving them back. The frayed elastic was giving way and wouldn't stay up around my son's slender waist, so I ended up having to hand wash laundry in the hotel sink. I have learned my lesson and will handle all the packing from now on.
Packing for small children always worries me. Pack too few clothes and they will fall in a mud puddle, wet themselves, have diarrhea, or dump an entire plate of pasta down their front within an hour of arriving at the location, leaving you with one pair of jeans to last four days. Pack too much and you resemble a Borghese Pope transferring from the Vatican to his summer residence. I know if pack three pairs of pyjamas for Livia she will only need one for the entire trip. Pack one pair and she will have wet herself in them before midnight. Speaking of wetting oneself, I gave in on Tuesday night and let Giulio sleep sans diaper, which went well, he woke up dry at almost 8 am without having got up once in the night to go. Last night feeling full of hubris I let Giulio go to bed without a diaper, though he refused to go before getting into bed insisting "I just fine!" Around 10 pm, as I root around in the darkness through their drawers for clothes to pack, I decide to check just to make sure that Giulio is still dry. He isn't. He's soaked, his pyjamas are soaked, the sheets are wet, the mattress pad is wet, the mattress is wet because in a cruel twist of fate, the rubber sheet that is supposed to keep it dry for times like these has moved slightly and it has soaked the area around it. Even the rubber sheet is feeling a bit damp. I undress a comatose Giulio, put a diaper on him and clean pjs, and then dump him on our bed so I can flip the mattress and change all the sheets without bothering him. In the middle of this my brother calls long distance from New York City. My brother is 24, single, no kids. He doesn't seem to fully grasp how much mess one small child's urine can make.
Later, after I have flipped, changed, and Fabreez-ed the bed, got Giulio into it, loaded and turned on the washer, and taken a shower, I stand in the bathroom blow drying my hair and flipping through a back issue of SELF magazine. I have been avoiding SELF lately. I know it's supposed to be about empowerment and encouraging you to exercise and be strong, but lately to me it feels like it's nagging and a reminder of all the things I am doing wrong. I'm not eating enough green leafy vegetables and fiber, I am not saying enough positive mantras throughout the day, nor am I eating brain energy boosting fruits. I flip to the article of Rebecca Romijn, talking about how she got herself back in shape to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuite Issue in 2006. Apparently her energy level is much better now that when she was younger. I think of myself in college, not all that long ago. I did crew and rugby, I got out of bed at 5 am and ran to practise. I worked out 4 hours a day, doing double workouts and in all kinds of weather. Of course I did, I didn't have two small children, a husband, and a job to tire me out at the end of the day. Back then it was just me. You can be sure as hell that Rebecca Romijn isn't flipping pee soaked mattresses at 11 o'clock at night. I slam the magazine shut in disgust and finish drying my hair. I keep telling myself that I shouldn't put myself last, that next week I am going to get it together, be the best mommy with the hot body, eating all the right energy boosting foods. Then when I finally find myself with a free 30 minutes I am so happy just to sit down that it doesn't cross my mind that I should be out running instead. Like today, I found myself with a free hour so I came home and blogged. I am still that girl, that girl who likes to run and be physical and take care of herself, but I am going to have to wait til next week before I can get back to her.

All God's Children got....

2007-04-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

I have decided that the perfect adult to three year old ratio is 4 to 1. My mother thinks so too. My parents were just here in Italy for three weeks and we all found that handling Giulio and Livia is so much easier when there are four able bodied adults around. One to hustle Giulio out of a restaurant when he starts to pitch a fit while the other sits and swills white wine. Another adult to get up in the night with the baby while the other, in this case me, sleeps on and on in the next room too tired to hear anything. We only had one bad run in with too many adults around, Livia rolled off the couch during a chaotic moment when we all assumed that another person was watching her.
Otherwise she was the star of this trip as it was for her baptism that my parents decided to come. The whole thing had been planned months in advanced, as things often are when there are airline tickets involved. We came back from the US at the end of December and I think January 2nd I had my husband on the phone to handle the details with the priest. As are so many other things in our lives, the intial organzation proved to be a bit complicated. First of all it seems, we were planning too far ahead. No one, least of all a parish priest, still recovering from Christmas wants to plan a baptism in January set for April. Plus, I didn't want to have the baptism at the church in our neighborhood, but at the basilica in the historic center where Giulio was baptized, so we were going to need permission from "our" priest (I have yet to set foot in our neighborhood church during mass) to do it at the basilica. Why, you may ask, was this so important? I'm not even Catholic, I grew up in a Jewish-Episcopal household where the menorah rubbed shoulders with the Christmas tree ornaments, and the Passover sedar sometimes came on the heels of Easter dinner. However we live in Italy where being Catholic is part of the Italian national identity, you do it not so much out of strong personal belief but because it is what everyone does. Children do one hour of religion in school a week in the public schools(though they can opt out of it if their parents don't want them too), and all classrooms have a crusafix hanging over the blackboard. The church youth clubs called Oratorio are where many kids go after school and on weekends to hang out or play sports. In the summer they organize day camps and also go on week-long trips to the beach, and each oratorio has its own feast day where they set up a huge tent and sell food and organize a band to come and play music and people dance.
So no, I wasn't going to keep my children from partaking in all this fun, all this stuff that makes living in Italy worthwhile. They will be good little Catholics, though how good depends on their father, I have left their religious upbringing up to him. Giulio is already learning about Gesu' at school and brought home at Easter break a little book that told the story of Easter. The best part was when we came to the page about Palm Sunday and he started waving his arms and yelling "Yay Gesu'!" as his religion teacher had obviously taught them in class.
So while we have a very active church right here in our neigborhood, it has one drawback. It is terribly ugly. Yes, I know, how shallow can you get? But somehow I felt that asking people to come thousands of miles to Italy for a baptism, it should be in a place that looks like how you think churches in Italy should look like, i.e. elaborate Baroque design with an ornante baptismal font and not a little concrete building with a grey cement ceiling. I was an Art History major in college, though I have come to term with the post Vatican II architecture that one finds here, other people new to Italy may not be ready for it.

In the end though our priest gave the OK to our doing the baptism at the main church. The nun and personal attack dog of the Basilica gave her OK too and we were able to book the date for April 1st. All we had to do was meet with "our" priest beforehand, and make a contribution to the church. I was fine with meeting with Don Vincenzo, say in the parish office some afternoon after school. Instead he decided to come over to explain the whole service to us right as we were sitting down to eat. The phone rings just asI have sat down to eat and I am raising my first spoonful of soup to my mouth and I hear Lorenzo tell someone on the other end that now is a great time to come over. Giulio is still in various stages of undress (read:naked from the waist down), Livia is still wailing from the next room, and I have to be at work in less than 90 minutes. Lorenzo hangs up and throws the phone down on the table. "That was the priest, he's coming over now." and takes our uneaten dinners back into the kitchen, and starts straightening the cushions on the couch. I wrestle Giulio into some pajamas while Lorenzo starts cleaning as though Don Vincenzo upon his arrival will start inspecting our closet and bathroom drawers to determine if we are worthy enough to baptize our daughter. I just hope she stops wailing before Don Vincenzo gets here or he is going to think that we neglect her by leaving her to cry it out in the next room. She has just settled down when Lorenzo goes into the bedroom and carries the baby out, rubbing her eyes and blinking. "What are you doing??!!" I yell "She was finally asleep."
"He is going to want to see the baby who is getting baptized!'
I'm about to say something back when the buzzer goes.
"Whatever you do," I say before opening the door, "Don't mention that I am not Catholic or we will be here all night." Don Vincenzo is a young for a priest, in his mid forties and rather sloppily dressed, a t-shirt visible through the top of his black sweater, white tube socks on his feet. He comes and takes the seat offered to him on the couch, not seeming to notice how tidy our house (now) is. All is smooth sailing until we mention that Giulio, who has been sitting on my lap opposite the priest, has been really enjoying religion at school. The teacher is young, blonde, and pretty, and it's the one class that Giulio is always well behaved in, perhaps already appreciating pretty blondes at the age of 3. "Oh, well then," says Don Vincenzo "Can you show me the drawing you did of the Madonna in class?' What drawing the Madonna? Shit, I don't remember seeing anything like that, though it would be hard to tell. Giulio's art work is mostly scribbles and I am suprisingly unsentimental about it. I usually empty his backpack at the end of the day, look at it, and then throw most of it away. I certainly did not see, or save, any drawings of the Madonna. Lorenzo gets up and starts looking around, going through folders where we keep his 'good" art work, and the priest waits, long after most people would have said to just forget about it. In the end we have to admit defeat. Don Vincenzo leaves, but not before saying the Lord's prayer over us. Lorenzo joins in with him and afterwards asks why I wasn't praying as well. Hey, I tell him, I may speak Italian well, but I don't know the Lord's prayer in Italian. This whole Religion thing in Italy, I remind him, is your department.

Good morning!

2007-03-22T03:09:00.000-07:00

Utter craziness here this morning. Lorenzo mentioned last night before going to bed that he had to be at work by seven, which meant that it was going to be up to me to get both kids ready and take them to school/daycare, instead of sharing the job like we usually do. It is maybe the time to explain that my husband is a policeman for the Polizia di Stato, here in Italy. His job is demanding and exhausting and has odd hours. Sometimes I think that if someone was ever to turn our lives into a play, some kind of post modern director would have Lorenzo's job represented by an actor dressed in a policeman's uniform on stage with us. Maybe seated on the couch, reading the paper, as Lorenzo dozes in front of the TV after working a 10 hour day, or maybe in bed with us, still in uniform, still reading the paper as Lorenzo passes out within moments of getting into bed. Or maybe just me alone with the guy in uniform, representing all the nights he's out following some drug dealer and therefore not at home asleep. His job is always with us. I have gotten used to going to friends' houses where we have been invited for dinner with just the kids and the excuse that Lorenzo, even though he went to work 12 hours earlier, has not come home yet but will be here as soon as he possibly can. Our town is small, there are only so many officers, so if something happens, an arrest, a drug bust, illegal immigrants, usually my husband is involved, and that includes doing all the paperwork afterwards. That's what irritates him the most about cop shows on TV, American or Italian, it never shows them doing all the paperwork that would be involved if an officer had actually fired his gun or God help them, hurt someone. I have gotten used to it, these strange hours, the plans falling through. It remains to be seen how Giulio and Livia, as they grow older, handle plans changing at the last minute, disappointment of not doing something with their dad that they had been promised earlier. We'll see.
Anyway, this morning he was out the door before seven, but we were both up by 6:30 because as anyone knows, getting two small children ready and out of the house involves more planning and tactics than a large scale military invention. Giulio was like a tiger with a toothache this morning. He slept horribly last night, waking four times between 8 and midnight. He would wake up and cry for 10 minutes, unable to explain what was wrong or what he wanted, though finally the fourth time he said it was because his ear hurt. Oh crap. Giulio has had as many earaches as George Clooney has had girlfriends, it's impossible to keep track of the exact number. He has no fever, and while it's tempting to claim that he is faking, his worst ear infection ever came without any fever at all, and next thing I knew he was in the hospital for four days being treated for possible mastoiditis. So I can't shrug this one off. I give him ibuprophen and tell Lorenzo he will have to call the pediatrician tomorrow morning for an appointment, and seeing that her office hours are tomorrow afternoon when I have to work, I tell Lorenzo that he will have to take Giulio as well. I also think Giulio is constipated, again. I jinxed it when I wrote here that he was finally regular, and now its two days that he says he has to go without any action, yet another factor contributing to his discomfort. We finally convinced Giulio to go to sleep on the couch (for some reason I am ok with that, it's in bed with us that I don't want. see previous post for reasons why.) In the meantime Livia has her upteenth runny nose and also pink eye to add to the mix, so she wakes frequently as well, though is always smiling within moments of being picked up despite the stuffy nose and red eye. Finally around 12.30 we are all asleep, Livia waking at 5 for an early breakfast. At 6:30 I am hustling to get Livia changed, dressed, and with Lorenzo's help, get that antibiotic cream in her eye, when I hear a mixture between a wail and a groan from the couch. Our Lord and Master has woken. Lorenzo coaxes him to the table for breakfast while I hurry and pick out his clothes and then take Livia into the kitchen with me. I am still in my pjs, have to do my face and everything and eat, as well as dress Giulio, feed Livia and rush out the door and I have only 40 minutes. Lorenzo leaves for work. I put Livia in her highchair with a bottle of water while I tackle getting Giulio dressed. He is not happy about getting dressed, and instead runs into his room and throws himself on his bed saying, "Mommy, I want to sleep!" I feel terrible, he is obviously tired, his ear hurts, but as he has no fever, and as I have no babysitter to call at 7 in the morning, I have no choice but to send him to school, doped up again with ibuprophen. He won't be able to see the doctor until the afternoon anyway, and I can't call in sick to work. There is a fifth grade class in a town 20 kilometers from here expecting a mother tongue English teacher this morning at 8:30. I just have to make it till tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow my parents are coming for 16 days so if Giulio doesn't feel well while they are here he can stay with them. Ditto for Livia, who as of today is allowed back at day care despite the pink eye, since 48 hours have passed since it started. Is there a time limit in America? I can't remember and at this point am just grateful to have someone watch her, so I really don't care.
Giulio, once completely dressed including shoes, goes and flops on the couch, complaining that he needs to poop, but refusing all suggestions that he might go and sit on the potty and try. Livia bangs on her high chair tray, so I feed her some baby yoghurt standing up as I make coffee, pour juice and eat a piece of bread with Nutella, all with careful attention to the clock. I feed Livia a few spoonfuls and then take a break and feed myself. This coming and going keeps her on her toes, so she rapidly eats the bites I offer without hesitating. I do get dressed, though I don't remember exactly how or when, and in the bathroom I forgo contacts for glasses as it saves time and my eyes just feel too tired this morning for contacts.
"Ok," I cry, rushing back into the living room after brushing my teeth. "Coats!" I grab coats off their hooks and take them to the couch, where Giulio is still there, though now he is better. Five minutes ago he came smiling into the kitchen like a different person to announce that he wanted to take his ambulance to school. The coat suggestion is met with resistance. Yesterday our neighbor and patron saint and saviour Terry (more on her later) gave Giulio a multi-colored Mickey Mouse poncho, the kind of thing you would wear in a spring downpour. He was so pleased with it, and she carefully explained that this was for when it rains. "Yes," he had said, nodding seriously, "when it rains."
"Mommy, want to wear Mickey Mouse."
"Giulio, remember what Terry said, that coat is for when it rains. Is it raining today?"
Giulio looks at the sun pouring in through the windows. "Yes." he says.
Normally I would just say yes and let him wear it, but while it is sunny it is cold this morning and a thin plastic coat isn't going to do it.
"Giuge, it's cold out, you need your coat and a hat."
He thinks for a minute and then says he wants to wear his Bob the Builder jacket. My mother bought this jacket at Value City two years ago because it came with a pair of snowpants that were worn the two times it has snowed here in Giulio's lifetime. The five dollar-made in China-bright red and blue jacket stayed in my closet until last fall when I brought it out in a moment of weakness to get him to wear a jacket. It is now his favourite item of clothing. Pair it with his Bob the Builder baseball cap and you have one happy kid. But today is not Bob the Builder weather. He needs his down coat and fleece hat, both of which are put on with a struggle. Livia cooes and bounces in her red snowsuit and Giulio roars nexts to her. At least she is still too little to resist what she wears. I force a crying Giulio out the door, lock it and start down the stairs. Giulio initially refuses to move, and I fix him with the hairy eyeball before heading down the stairs. Great, now I will have to load everything into the car and then come back and get him. I start to go down the stairs when behind me I hear, "Mommy, hug!" I should mention I am carrying two bags, Giulio's backpack, a 7 month old baby, house keys, and a fleece hat. I have no arms left for a hug.
"In a moment, Giulio." Shit is it really 7:40? I need to have both kids in their respective schools/daycare and be on the road by 8. I keep moving down the stairs and out to the car as behind me Giulio sobs. I have just snapped Livia into her car seat when he comes out the door and towards the car, still crying. I get him into his car seat and by the time we are out of the driveway he has stopped. He is quiet as I take Livia into daycare, still a little teary when he drops his ambulance on the floor, but smiling by the time I park in front of his school and let him out of the backseat. 'What are all those kids doing?" he asks, pointing to the clumps of middle school students who attend the school directly behind his. I kneel down and give him a big hug. "You are know you are my favorite boy in the whole world, don't you Giulio?" As an answer he puckers his lips out for a kiss. I kiss him, then stand up, taking him by the hand. It's 7:50, I've got time, it's gonna be ok. "Come on," I said "let's go see the kids."

p.s. A ray of hope

2007-03-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

As a p.s. for my last post in the end I managed to get us downstairs and outside. Giulio got his tricycle and Livia went in her stroller and we walked over to the park. There we ran into a little boy who goes to school with Giulio, named Carlo, and his mother Lorena. Lorena and I started talking, comparing notes as it were on our two boys.
"Carlo won't eat," she told me as we watched our kids playing in the gravel underneath the big kid climber.
"Oh," I said with a laugh, "Giulio won't eat either, there are days I think he gets by on air."
"Carlo won't eat anything," she said. "Only roasted potatoes, a little fruit, and milk. Only the milk he won't drink from a cup, so I have to feed it to him with a spoon."
"Really? A spoon, huh? And at school?"
"Nothing," she said with a sigh. "He won't eat anything. I have to come get him at 1 o'clock and take him home and try and feed him there. Now we are trying twice a week to leave him until four to see if he will eat there, but so far nothing."
"Not even pasta?" Pasta was such a staple of the Italian diet, it could be prepared in so many different ways and rarely contained anything a small child would refuse.
"Not even pasta. He was sick once after eating a plate of pasta and now he won't eat it." I didn't bother asking what kind of pasta he had refused, if it was with tomato sauce or ragu', or if it was pasta done in a white sauce, or pasta with beans or some kind of vegetable or shrimp, or spaghettia carbonara. The list was endless, and did she really mean to say that he wouldn't eat any of it?
Carlo was impressive. While it was normal for Giulio to refuse to eat anything resembling a meal when at home with me, he once went a whole week where he only ate cheese and cookies, he always ate at school, frequently having seconds on the pasta. At school there is a chart with each child's name on it and a box for pasta, for meat, and for fruit. These boxes are checked off by the teacher during lunch time, and if a child has seconds the words "bis" are written in the box. This list is carefully checked by each parent at the end of each day.
Eating is such an important part of Italian life that any kid who really wants to drive his mother around the bend knows that all he has to do is refuse to eat dinner and suddenly he is surrounded by parents imploring, begging him or her to eat. Giulio once spent four days in the hospital due to an allergic reaction from medication. He shared the room with another little boy named Marco and every meal time was the same:
"Come on, honey, you've got to eat. Please, Marco, just a little. Come on Marco, you see how well that other little boy is eating? You need to eat or you won't get better and then we won't be able to leave the hospital. Please Marco! Just today that doctor told me that if you don't eat you can't go home. You want to go home, don't you? Please Marco, please eat, just try the pasta...no? The meat, you like meat...no, well, have some fruit, ok, well, some bread. Please Marco!" And so on. At every meal. After four days of this it took all my effort not yell, "If he didn't have you begging him all the time to eat, he might actually go ahead and do it!" Apparently Marco's mother didn't know the aforementioned law of children, the more you want them to do something the less likely they are to do it.
I for the most part try and stay away from this game, and try also to keep my husband's concern about Giulio and eating to a minimum. Mostly I leave it to his caregivers to provide him with one carefully made 3 course meal. Giuio learned at daycare before he could walk that all meals consist of a first course of pasta or rice, a second course of meat and vegetables, and a third course of fruit. The food is always very tasty, though sometimes the mothers complain about the quality. I had a friend send her child to a different school because she wasn't pleased with the quality of the pesto sauce they used. No such problems for Giulio. He eats everything at school, and then comes home and refuses to eat much of anything from me, though I can usually get him to eat pasta at lunchtime on Saturdays.
I refused and still refuse to make a big deal out of eating, cause what am I going to do, you can't make a child chew and swallow against his will, though I tend to go back and forth on my thinking as far as cooking for him. Sometimes I think, well, he won't eat much, so I won't make much of an effort, and offer things like grilled cheese, eggs, french toast, and turkey dogs for dinner. Then other times, usually after spending time with some Italian female friend and seeing what culinary masterpieces she makes for her children, I feel guilty about Giulio and his turkey dogs so I go to the butcher's and ask for extra tender steak for a small child. And the butcher knows exactly what I am talking about and gives me the most tender cut he has because mothers all the time are asking him for steak for a small child. Or I make pasta with homemade broth, or rack my brains thinking of something nutricious yet healthy to feed him for dinner. But after a few times of watching Giulio take one bite of the 8 euro steak carefully procured just for him and having him announce, "Mommy don't like this. Gulio non vuole." (translation Giulio he doesn't want this) I give up and go back to making grilled cheese for dinner. And comfort myself thinking, well, I know he is getting enough to eat at school. And I'm an American. We don't go in for three course meals at preschool.

Cat Fight

2007-03-17T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm the eldest in my family, so I don't know what it is like to have an older brother or sister. When I was younger I couldn't understand why my parents wanted to take our beautiful family unit of me and them and ruin it by adding my brother. They already had me, I was fun and cute, why bother? We lived side by side for 14 years, me barely tolerating him, and sometimes not tolerating him at all, and then one day, when I was home on break after my first year of college I realized that he wasn't so bad. Quite funny actually. Now my brother is one of my favorite people in the world, and one of the best at making me laugh. Yes, but I'm 28, so I am asking myself, am I going to have to put up with another 20 some years of me telling Giulio, "You have to be nice to your sister!!!"? I try and remind myself how I felt when my brother came along when I was four, but honestly, I liked him in the begining, it was later that I felt my parents had made a terrible mistake. I know we are in early days here, Livia isn't old enough to retaliate or to intentionally tease Giulio, but some days he sure makes it his mission to bother her, i.e. bother me.
It's Saturday. Lorenzo is at work, like most Saturday mornings, but he should be back by two. Saturdays in Italy are in many ways like weekdays, a lot of kids have school, and many people work Saturday morning. Yesterday I made a special effort to get many things done, the shopping, the cleaning, etc so as to be as free as possible for the kids. We start out OK. When I ask Giulio why he is walking around without his pyjama bottoms on he tells me in English that it's because they smell like cheese. He picks them up off the floor and holds them out to me. "Smell them, Mommy." I demure, but looking at his white pj's I realized that it might be a good time to do a load of whites. I'm sorry, but you let it go a few days and suddenly you find yourself to doing three loads in one day because no one has any more clean socks.
All goes well until I have Livia on our bed and Giulio comes in from playing with his trains and gives Livia a "friendly" bop on her head. I hear myself speak to him and suddenly realize that I have become my mother. "You don't have to like her but you may not hurt her!" I say as I kneel down and hold Giulio by the shoulders and look at him. Where have I heard this line before? Oh, wait when I was about 8 sitting in the back seat of the car en route on our summer vacation. Behind me on the bed Livia wails due to the fact that Giulio's bop has knocked her from sitting up to lying down on her tummy, and I haven't yet propped her back up. Giulio looks back at me and giggles in this high pitched way that drives me nuts. "Just walk away," I tell myself, thinking of my mom's advice. "Don't draw attention to his negative behavior." Which is easier said than done when his negative behavior is all over our bed where I am trying to fold laundry. The neatly folded stacks of onesies crumble and fall as Giulio romps around Livia on the bed, like a dog on all fours. Livia picks up a onsies and tries to stuff it into her mouth. "Giulio, you have to get down. I need to fold the laundry." More giggles. "Wanna help Mommy ?" Giulio ignores me and tries to climb back up on the bed, Livia beams at his antics, flaps her arms and call "ehhhhh!" "Giulio, you can't be on the bed right now. Go play with your trains." Another devious laugh, and then a small car flies through the air, not close enough to hurt Livia, but close enough in her general direction to leave not doubt about the intended target. I pull my trump card and stalk into the living room and start throwing the pieces of track and the metal trains into the blue plastic box. "Mommy NO!" Giulio falls to his knees screaming, then collapses on his stomach, lying prone on the floor. He's crying, Livia due to the fact that her favorite person, Giulio, has left the room, starts crying too. The Dixie Chicks, playing at high volume on the stereo manage to drown out some of the noise, so at least the neighbors won't be too alarmed. I drag Giulio to him room and put him on his bed. He immediately leaps up and follows me screaming and crying. "Get back on your bed!' He drops to his knees again, still crying. And I was so close to doing it right this morning. I was going to be that organized super mom that I dream about and have all three of us outside on our way to the park by 9:30 this morning. I had both kids dressed by eight, breakfast cleaned up and laundry going in the washer by 8:30, and yet somehow I wasn't fast enough. All it took was a few minutes and one household chore too many for the whole thing to collapse just like that stack of onesies.
I take immediate action. Livia, I decide, needs a nap. Giulio's trains can go into time out. I pick up the baby and carry her to her room as Giulio follows me while walking on his knees like a religious pilgrim in front of a holy shrine, screaming "Mommy, hug! Mommy hug!" as I move from room to room. My immediate desire is not to hug him but to smack him, so I keep moving. I finally sit on my bed where he throws his head and arms in my lap, a guilty man pleading for forgiveness. Livia, now outraged at being put to bed, is still yelling from the other room. There is unfolded laundry on the bed, I am still in my pyjamas, the jeans that I had been about to put on about an hour ago are stilll on the chair, and both children are inconsolable. Help. I take Giulio, still shuddering with sobs and hold him on my lap. The Dixie Chicks sing on in the next room about how they could have made it easier on themselves, and while I know they are not talking about dealing with preschoolers I feel at that moment that they are singing to me.

In the wee small hours of the morning

2007-03-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

I read in the New York Times a few weeks ago that sleep has become the new sex. To paraphrase Alison Pearson, I used to dream of going to bed with other people, now I dream of going to bed alone and sleeping for 12 uninterrupted hours. I have very talented children. They always know exactly when Mommy has just collapsed into a exhausted sleep and choose that moment to be hungry, thirsty, have a nightmare, or just suddenly find their cover is no longer to their liking. My one rule is not let Giulio get into the habit of sleeping with us during the night. This has nothing to do with being for or against the family bed, but when Giulio sleeps with us Lorenzo and I end up hanging on with a death grip to each side of the matress while Giulio sprawls confortably between us. Or he gets in with us and then strokes our eyebrows (yes, and I don't know why he likes eyebrows) until he falls asleep. Ever try to sleep while a three year old grips your forehead? I can't say I recommend it. Some nights the kids are very good, they go to sleep when I put them to sleep and then they stay asleep until morning. But those nights are few a far between. More likely my evenings go something like this:
10:30--Giulio appears at the door of the living room. "Need to go pee" he informs us before ripping off his diaper, throwing it on the floor and running into the bathroom. Giulio is potty trained. Night after night he goes to sleep with a diaper on, wakes up with it still dry. We go on like this, with him complaining about having to wear the diaper until I decide that he doesn't need it anymore and let him sleep in his underwear, and then that's the night he wets the bed. As I have decided that I am too tired at 3 am to be ripping sheets off beds and digging around in a dark bedroom to find clean ones while my husband sleeps the sleep of the dead in the next room, Giulio will just have to put up with the diaper at night for a while longer.
He finishes in the bathroom, and comes back to the living room, looking all cute and adorable as he rubs his eyes. "Want to sit on the couch, Mommy." And I let him. He's wonderful right now, quiet and calm, happy to sit and be cuddled in my lap, and yes, I do feel guilty about all the times during the day I yell, tell him no, lose my patience with him, so I let him stay there, occasionally giving him a kiss on the head or cheek. And that's fine until I realize that it's getting on for after 11 and we have to be thinking about going to bed ourselves soon, and that I want Giulio back in his own bed before I get into mine. Only now Giulio has no intention of going sweetly back to bed. "Mommy, don't wanna go to bed, wanna sleep with mommy and daddy." I carry him back to his room, his protests growing louder until they are full fledged sobs as I put him on his bed. "Sshh!" I hiss. "You'll wake Livia!" I start to leave the room, trying to ignore him when he yells "kiss!" Mommy, kiss!" I go back, the kiss works, he agrees to lie down and close his eyes. I give him a kiss and I am heading for the door when I hear Livia whimper and roll over. I freeze. She sighs, and then it's quiet again. I remain frozen for a moment and the creep slowly back into the hallway. Time for bed. Now.
12:15--I get into bed, where Lorenzo is already asleep, though he was awake and talking to me two minutes ago, and turn off the light. The sheets are just getting nice and warm when I hear it. A sort of whine/cry from the next room. Livia. I wait, trying to use the power of positive thinking. Pleasepleaseplease go back to sleep. Silence. Maybe I heard wrong. No, there it is again. She's awake, and not happy about it either. I go back into their bedroom, the one advantage to living in a small apartment is that their bedroom is the room next door, and take her out of the crib. Giulio is sleeping like the scene from 20 minutes ago never happened. I take Livia back to our room and get back into bed, letting her nurse once I am comfortably on my side. She's hungry poor dear, dinner was a long time ago so I will let her nurse for like 20 minutes, and then I am taking her back to her bed. Yes, that's that plan, that's what I'll do....she'll just be a few minutes...........
1:50--I wake wake to find that arm of my pyjamas soaked with sweat where Livia is sleeping in the crook of my arm. God, what time is it? I couldn't tell you what day it was right now if you asked me. I pull Livia onto my chest, roll onto my other side and get up, and take her back to her bed. I have just put her in the crib and covered her when "Mommy? Want water." A good mother would have water in spill proof cup by the bed ready for emergencies like this, but all we have is an empty plastic cup rolling on the floor from when Giulio had a drink of water two nights ago. I go to the kitchen, fill up the cup, and take it back. He downs it like a college student pounding a beer and immediately sticks that cup back out at me. "More." I go back to the kitchen.
3:30--Another yell from the bedroom. Livia again? Geez, she must be growing or teething or hungry or whatever it is that makes babies wake up in the night. Some old tip from a mommy-baby website comes to mind. Give the baby water and she will lose the habit of waking and asking to nurse. I go to the kitchen to get a baby bottle, except I can't find one. I look in the drying rack above the sink where it should be, only it's not there. Livia's cries grow louder. Where is the damn bottle, the last thing I want is Giulio to wake up again. I finally find the bottle in the half empty dishwasher which contains only dirty dishes. I quickly wash it out, fill it with water, screw the cap back on, and take it to Livia. In the dark it's a bit difficult to see exactly so I just poke around with the bottle until it finds Livia's mouth. Jesus, she was thirsty, listen to her suck it down. She lets go for a moment and I hold the bottle up to the nightlight to see how much she drank. The bottle is empty. That's impossible, there is no way she drank 5 ounces of water is 30 seconds. I suddenly feel a drop of water on my foot, then another one, then a stream. I look at the bottle again and realize the top is on crooked. No, please no. I put my hand on the crib matress and feel it. It's soaked. I have just poured 5 ounces of water all over my daughter and her bed. Livia cooes as I pick her up and take her over to the changing table to remove her wet onesie and baby-gro, hey might as well changer her diaper while I'm at it. When I am finished I take her into our room and leave her with a still sleeping Lorenzo. I go back to the room and take the sheets off the bed, mop the water from the floor, flip the matress and put clean sheets on it. I go back to our room, Livia is lying there cooing, wide awake and waving her arms around. I guess I will just nurse her, that is what started all this. It's 4:10. I lying there dozing, as Livia nurses and finally lies back, content and full, and then I carry her back for the 100th time to her now dry bed. She sleeps. Giulio sleeps. It is now 5:00. I stumble back to our room and get into bed. Lorenzo sighs in his sleep and rolls over.
6:30--" Mommy?" A voice in my ear, a hand on my eyebrow. "Mommy, I'm hungry. Wanna watch Thomas the Tank Engine." I kick Lorenzo under the covers."Giulio's hungry." I mumble. He can handle this one.