Under the Lombard Smog

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

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

Formula One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of Trees and Turkeys

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

Fear of Flying

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

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

The Rock

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

Thanks Kristin!

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