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