Dream Home

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