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.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The Letter
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."
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."
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Landing
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.
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.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
50 Random Things to Know if You Plan on Living in Italy
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.
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.
Friday, August 10, 2007
SAHM
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.
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.
Monday, July 30, 2007
The Hostess
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.
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.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Surfacing
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.
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.
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