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.
Monday, July 30, 2007
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.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Plunge
Exhaustion is my excuse for being so slow to post this week. Livia is going through a difficult period of waking up, furious every night between eleven and two o'clock, and it takes ages to get her to go back down. I hate to admit it but I have been relying very heavily on benedryl these past few days. I feel more tired than I did when Livia was a small baby, as opposed to the crawling, pulling up baby that she is now. And when I think of the fact that in a few days we will be cooped up a in plane for 9 hours, it makes me feel even more tired. On Tuesday we are all flying to the States to see my parents and take in the beauty of Target and TJMaxx. There is something rather ironic in the fact that after choosing to live so far from home, I now spend large amounts of time and money trying to get back. I view the day of travel kind of like that initial plunge you have to take when you get in the pool. It's really hot and you want to get into the pool, where incidentally, George Clooney is paddling around as well, but the water is just really cold, and you know it won't be pleasant. So you hold you breath and jump in, going deep under the water because when you come up to the surface you will be so glad that you decided to jump in and go swimming with George.
I no longer have pity for people travelling alone, or even for people travelling in couples. In my opinion if you aren't travelling with two small children for more than five hours you really have nothing to complain about. Yes, the seats are small, but have you tried to sit in the small seats with a wiggling 10 months old on your lap so you won't have to pay for a full price ticket? Ever tried to cut up your half frozen Little Debbie cherry cake as the baby grabs for the miniscule cup of water on your tray and manages to pour it in your lap? By now I should be a pro at travelling with small children. Giulio took his first flight to America when he was almost nine months old, and there was some mix-up in the seating and the bulkhead seats were given to someone else. The Italian flight crew felt terrible, Giulio wouldn't be able to take a proper nap (!) and so they gave him a seat all for himself next to me. This was right before he could crawl, and I remember him sitting up in his seat, looking around and seeming so pleased with himself. On the return flight we had an American flight crew, whose attitude towards people who had opted to fly with children was something in the lines of, "You're flying with a baby? That's your f@%##ing problem." Giulio, who in the interveening month had learned to crawl, spent the flight from New York to Milan crawling over our ankles and being pulled back from going into the aisle. He conked out, exhausted, about two hours before we landed. It was the first time that I was so preoccupied with what was going on that I didn't even think about the flight. It was also the first time that I was able to fall asleep on a plane without any sort of a sleep aid.
Fastforward to a year later, with Giulio who stood the entire flight between our knees, wide awake the whole flight to New York. My friend Theresa had sworn by this all natural sleep aide that her own son Luca, (who woke up every night for the first two years of his life,) and had told me that it would knock Giulio right out. I was so convinced that I didn't even bother trying it out, only to find that mid-flight it had no effect on him. Thinking we were underestimating the dose we kept trying to give him more drops, which only had the effect of making him more hyper. That particular trip I flew back alone to Italy alone with Giulio, Lorenzo had gone back a few weeks earlier for work. It had been a long, tiring day and in New York my connecting flight had been late so I had had to run pushing the stroller, while wearing cowboy boots (don't ask) to make the flight. I came aboard, panting and sweating, clutching Giulio and immediately came face to face with some immaculate member of the Alitalia flight crew, the tall, dark, handsome kind of man that makes women decide to move to Italy for La Dolce Vita, and who you never find working in coach. He greeted me with a courteous "Buona Sera" and I just managed to not drip sweat on him. I sqeezed past two newly-weds on the end of the aisle on their way back from their honeymoon in America, holding Giulio and still sweating, and took my seat next to them. Giulio almost immediately started crying. Not weeping, sad, needing comfort crying, but full throated screaming that nothing could stop. Trying to give reassuring smiles to the couple looking warily at Giulio, (it will only be a minute folks! I have no idea why he is doing this!) I did my best to try and comfort him, but nothing worked until I was practically in tears myself. The (luckily) Italian flight crew were sympathetic ("O, che caro! Poverino! Perche piangi?") but nothing could stop the onslaught. I managed to get half of a Melatonina tablet (we had discovered in the States that these made him sleep) down Giulio's throat, making his screams of outrage even louder. At this point one of the flight attendants came over and offered the couple next to me the possibility of two seats in another part of the plane, which they gratefully accepted. Giulio stopped crying, and 15 minutes later he was asleep, passed out on the floor of the plane. The rest of the flight, with two empty seats next to me passed without incident.
Then last November, I did perhaps the bravest-dumbest thing ever. I decided to fly alone with TWO children, with Livia just three months old, and Giulio having just turned three. "It's going to be awful," I told my mother. "Yes, it is," she said, "but you will survive." She was right, it was awful. Not that there was one peak moment of awful, at least not on the plane, but sort of a long sustained note of awfulness that lasted the entire time. That time I decided that I wasn't going to be forcing sleep pills down Giulio's throat. Two days before flying I cut the Melatonina in half, and slipped the halves into two of Giulio's favorite chewy candies, which I then re-wrapped and put in my purse. Moments after the plane had pulled back from the gate I got them out and casually offered them to Giulio who immediately accepted and ate them. I watched him chewing, feigning calm, thinking, He's eating them! He's eating them! Now he will sleep for five-six hours! The men who tried to poison Rasputin, the advisor to the Russian Tzar, must have felt much the same way-- their plan had worked! And yet, as with Rasputin, who in the end had to be shot twelve times, put in a sack and thrown into the river before he died, the melatonina wasn't enough. Giulio slept precisely one hour before being wide awake and difficult in a way that only a three year old can be for the whole rest of the flight. Livia who was still too little to be very difficult, was luckily wonderful, flashing 100 watt smiles at the people in the row behind us, and falling asleep on and off. We had started the flight with a women in the seat next to me, saying she needed to sit in the bulkhead for the circulation in her legs, but who after an hour must have decided that her circulation could risk it, because she moved, leaving us with the three seats to ourselves, so at least I had somewhere to put Livia for some of the time. What saved the day was how truly kind people were, or maybe how pathetic I looked. In New York, after getting off the plane and heading towards customs, I was carrying Livia (jfk keeps all the strollers and only gives them back along with the rest of the luggage), three bags, three coats, and Giulio's carseat which hadn't worked with the airplane seats and had become an albatross around my neck. Giulio, tired, confused, and basically fed-up, demanded to be carried, and when I said I couldn't, collapsed to the floor and refused to move. I was about to collapse too when suddenly I heard a kind voice saying "Can I help you?" It was a women from our Milan flight. She took LIvia, her husband took the car seat, and I took Giulio and so we went on to fight another day, or at least another flight. My mom said that when I came up the ramp where they were waiting for me in Cincinnati I looked like a refugee.
On the flight back home after Christmas, this time thankfully with Lorenzo, Giulio wouldn't keep his tray table up, Livia didn't want to be held and kept wiggling, Lorenzo turned to me and asked, "How did you ever do this on your own?" All I can say is that I must really like Target.
As a p.s. think of me on Tuesday 6/26 and offer up a little prayer to the airline gods that all goes smoothly. This time I am taking Benedryl with me for the kids!
I no longer have pity for people travelling alone, or even for people travelling in couples. In my opinion if you aren't travelling with two small children for more than five hours you really have nothing to complain about. Yes, the seats are small, but have you tried to sit in the small seats with a wiggling 10 months old on your lap so you won't have to pay for a full price ticket? Ever tried to cut up your half frozen Little Debbie cherry cake as the baby grabs for the miniscule cup of water on your tray and manages to pour it in your lap? By now I should be a pro at travelling with small children. Giulio took his first flight to America when he was almost nine months old, and there was some mix-up in the seating and the bulkhead seats were given to someone else. The Italian flight crew felt terrible, Giulio wouldn't be able to take a proper nap (!) and so they gave him a seat all for himself next to me. This was right before he could crawl, and I remember him sitting up in his seat, looking around and seeming so pleased with himself. On the return flight we had an American flight crew, whose attitude towards people who had opted to fly with children was something in the lines of, "You're flying with a baby? That's your f@%##ing problem." Giulio, who in the interveening month had learned to crawl, spent the flight from New York to Milan crawling over our ankles and being pulled back from going into the aisle. He conked out, exhausted, about two hours before we landed. It was the first time that I was so preoccupied with what was going on that I didn't even think about the flight. It was also the first time that I was able to fall asleep on a plane without any sort of a sleep aid.
Fastforward to a year later, with Giulio who stood the entire flight between our knees, wide awake the whole flight to New York. My friend Theresa had sworn by this all natural sleep aide that her own son Luca, (who woke up every night for the first two years of his life,) and had told me that it would knock Giulio right out. I was so convinced that I didn't even bother trying it out, only to find that mid-flight it had no effect on him. Thinking we were underestimating the dose we kept trying to give him more drops, which only had the effect of making him more hyper. That particular trip I flew back alone to Italy alone with Giulio, Lorenzo had gone back a few weeks earlier for work. It had been a long, tiring day and in New York my connecting flight had been late so I had had to run pushing the stroller, while wearing cowboy boots (don't ask) to make the flight. I came aboard, panting and sweating, clutching Giulio and immediately came face to face with some immaculate member of the Alitalia flight crew, the tall, dark, handsome kind of man that makes women decide to move to Italy for La Dolce Vita, and who you never find working in coach. He greeted me with a courteous "Buona Sera" and I just managed to not drip sweat on him. I sqeezed past two newly-weds on the end of the aisle on their way back from their honeymoon in America, holding Giulio and still sweating, and took my seat next to them. Giulio almost immediately started crying. Not weeping, sad, needing comfort crying, but full throated screaming that nothing could stop. Trying to give reassuring smiles to the couple looking warily at Giulio, (it will only be a minute folks! I have no idea why he is doing this!) I did my best to try and comfort him, but nothing worked until I was practically in tears myself. The (luckily) Italian flight crew were sympathetic ("O, che caro! Poverino! Perche piangi?") but nothing could stop the onslaught. I managed to get half of a Melatonina tablet (we had discovered in the States that these made him sleep) down Giulio's throat, making his screams of outrage even louder. At this point one of the flight attendants came over and offered the couple next to me the possibility of two seats in another part of the plane, which they gratefully accepted. Giulio stopped crying, and 15 minutes later he was asleep, passed out on the floor of the plane. The rest of the flight, with two empty seats next to me passed without incident.
Then last November, I did perhaps the bravest-dumbest thing ever. I decided to fly alone with TWO children, with Livia just three months old, and Giulio having just turned three. "It's going to be awful," I told my mother. "Yes, it is," she said, "but you will survive." She was right, it was awful. Not that there was one peak moment of awful, at least not on the plane, but sort of a long sustained note of awfulness that lasted the entire time. That time I decided that I wasn't going to be forcing sleep pills down Giulio's throat. Two days before flying I cut the Melatonina in half, and slipped the halves into two of Giulio's favorite chewy candies, which I then re-wrapped and put in my purse. Moments after the plane had pulled back from the gate I got them out and casually offered them to Giulio who immediately accepted and ate them. I watched him chewing, feigning calm, thinking, He's eating them! He's eating them! Now he will sleep for five-six hours! The men who tried to poison Rasputin, the advisor to the Russian Tzar, must have felt much the same way-- their plan had worked! And yet, as with Rasputin, who in the end had to be shot twelve times, put in a sack and thrown into the river before he died, the melatonina wasn't enough. Giulio slept precisely one hour before being wide awake and difficult in a way that only a three year old can be for the whole rest of the flight. Livia who was still too little to be very difficult, was luckily wonderful, flashing 100 watt smiles at the people in the row behind us, and falling asleep on and off. We had started the flight with a women in the seat next to me, saying she needed to sit in the bulkhead for the circulation in her legs, but who after an hour must have decided that her circulation could risk it, because she moved, leaving us with the three seats to ourselves, so at least I had somewhere to put Livia for some of the time. What saved the day was how truly kind people were, or maybe how pathetic I looked. In New York, after getting off the plane and heading towards customs, I was carrying Livia (jfk keeps all the strollers and only gives them back along with the rest of the luggage), three bags, three coats, and Giulio's carseat which hadn't worked with the airplane seats and had become an albatross around my neck. Giulio, tired, confused, and basically fed-up, demanded to be carried, and when I said I couldn't, collapsed to the floor and refused to move. I was about to collapse too when suddenly I heard a kind voice saying "Can I help you?" It was a women from our Milan flight. She took LIvia, her husband took the car seat, and I took Giulio and so we went on to fight another day, or at least another flight. My mom said that when I came up the ramp where they were waiting for me in Cincinnati I looked like a refugee.
On the flight back home after Christmas, this time thankfully with Lorenzo, Giulio wouldn't keep his tray table up, Livia didn't want to be held and kept wiggling, Lorenzo turned to me and asked, "How did you ever do this on your own?" All I can say is that I must really like Target.
As a p.s. think of me on Tuesday 6/26 and offer up a little prayer to the airline gods that all goes smoothly. This time I am taking Benedryl with me for the kids!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Housewife
Giulio's surgery went very well, and yesterday, four days after the fact, he went back to school. Lorenzo was also granted time off because his son was having surgery, so we were able to actually have a normal weekend with Daddy home the whole time. Home of course is a relative term. Lorenzo never just hangs out at home. If he is here he is doing some sort of home improvement, putting up a book shelf, fixing a tap, painting a chipped corner of the wall, or calling around about getting new blinds for our tiny study. Otherwise he is making sandwiches and hustling us out the door to go somewhere and have a picnic or a big meal, or a hike. In two days we went up to Lake Garda for a picnic and up to the Valle Brembana which is on the edge of the Alps for lunch and a walk. He only flops on the couch, tv remote in his hand when it is too late in the evening to do anything else, and of course within minutes he is asleep. It is hard to be lazy with some one like that around, but then my life grants me few possibilities to sit around and do nothing, as does most people's, as there is always something to be done. Only a few weeks ago, both children were sick, the laundry was piling up, the house was messy, and I was sick too. As Livia whined and squirmed in my lap I turned to Lorenzo and told him that I was tired of being the Mommy, I wanted someone to come and take care of me. I was fed up with finding piles of clean laundry on the bed and knowing that if I didn't fold them, no one else would. He laughed and gave me a kiss, but what I wanted was someone to come in and whisk the children away, clean the house and let me sleep right through it. In other words I wanted my mommy. Lorenzo could keep his kisses, they weren't going to let me stay in bed for another two hours.
I am grateful that my job gives me free hours at odd times of the day, so that way I can get things done while the kids are at school. Things stay put away when Giulio is not a home, crumbs do not accumulate in and around the kitchen with Livia at daycare. Because one thing I've learned living in Italy is that housekeeping is not something done on the weekend when you have a free half hour. No, it is an on-going full time job keeping a household up to Italian standards. I always thought Americans were clean people, we pride ourselves on our cleanliness, and admit it, the first thing that we like to imply about Europeans is that they are perhaps not as clean as us. Now I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but Italians are CLEAN. Yes, it is true, they smell different from Americans, but I'm speaking to you as a shower taking-deodorant/anti-perspirant wearing-US citizen, and I've notice that I smell differently here as compared to when I am in the US, so obviously it's diet and not lack of hygene that causes this.
At any rate, when it comes to housecleaning, I have never met women so driven about cleaning as Italians. In the US, we vacuum our wall-to-wall carpet, we do laundry, we dust, and we clean the bathrooms. For most of us, if the house looks orderly, doesn't smell, and the floors aren't sticky, well, we've done a good job. House cleaning in Italy means lifting up couches each week to clean underneath them, wiping down the hood over the stove for any grease that may have gotten there, and cleaning all windows at least twice a month. Wall-to-wall carpeting is viewed as unsanitary, and so in its place there is parquet, tile, or marble, which is vacuumed and dusted once a day and washed at least once a week. Every morning the bedroom windows are flung open and the bedding is hung out the window to allow it to air out. Carpets are taken off the floors, vaccumed, and the hung outside. Sticky fingerprints are wiped off of doors and lightswitches, and children's toys are carefully cleaned and dusted off. When the show "Wife Swap" came to Italy, ( a show where for 7 days two women switch houses and families to see what happens) it shows women in their daily routine as wives and mothers, the one thing I couldn't get over was how many women get up at 6 am so they can clean the house before going to work. I'm lucky if I get all the dishes out of the sink and into the dishwasher first thing in the morning. The ultimate insult on that show is for a woman to say that she had found dust in the other woman's home, implying the ultimate shame: you keep a dirty house. Cleanliness does not stop at the inside, there are women who weekly wipe down the shutters on the exterior of the house or apartment, and mop all outside patios and balconies. Gardens, no matter how small, are tended to with military precision and are often tider than most American's living rooms. When I think of an American housewife, I think of her pushing a huge grocery cart through the supermarket, folding laundry from the drier, or driving little Cadyn to soccer practise. When I think of an Italian housewife I think of a woman dressed in old clothes down on her hands and knees cleaning the dirt that has accumulated behind her oven. And then we compare notes about it. Never in my life I thought I would have conversations with other people about housework, other than the basic, "today I cleaned the house." Now I find myself down at Terry's, having long connversations that contain phrases like," Well, I just vaccumed the floors, now I have to go mop the kitchen and outside balcony." Or I listen to Terry run down the list of things she accomplished that morning, "I mopped the whole house, organized the kids' bedroom. Now I just have to clean all the kitchen counters with bleach." Just to clarify, I clean my house once a week, with the occasional touch-up on the floor when I see too many crumbs overflowing from the kitchen,
And then of course there is the laundry. Yes, laundry is a cross that women all over the world have to bear. Men think, including my husband, that because they have put dirty clothes into the machine and pressed a few buttons they have "done" the laundry, but that is like saying because they were present at conception a man has given birth to a baby. In Italy the button pushing part is the easiest part, it's what comes after that is so time consuming and tiring. I do have a drier, but because it causes spikes in my electric bills I try to use it sparingly, only in the months when clothes take a long time to dry on their own. Therefore for the rest of the year, and especially right now, all clothes are hung up to dry, either on a drying rack on my balcony or on the clotheslines we have down in the yard. There is something suprisingly satisifying about hanging up clothes on the line, you can see all your hard work and effort right before your eyes, and there is something so wholesome about white sheets flapping in the breeze. If it's hot the clothes I hang up in the late morning are bone dry by early evening, but if the weather is sort of iffy and damp it can take several days, and while you are waiting for that load to dry more clothes pile up until you have mountains of laundry to deal with. Lorenzo is a good guy, works hard, helps in the house, but he has no problem walking right past laundry piled on the bed waiting to folded, ironed, and put away. For some reason this is "my" job, though in a pinch he will help me fold if I ask. But ironing is my responsibility. What's the big deal? you may ask. So you iron a few shirts, big whoop. In my house growing up ironing was all do it yourself, clothes came out of the dryer relatively wrinkle free, were folded and put away. Occasionally, the morning before some big meeting I would find my father ironing his dress shirt on top of a towel on one end of the kitchen counter, or my mother would drag out the board to freshen up something of ours that we wanted to wear to church minutes before tearing out the door saying we were going to be late. Ironing was optional, something done only in extremely needy cases. Imagine my surprise when coming to Italy to find that ironing wasn't just mandatory, it was a competitive sport. My neighbor irons EVERYTHING. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks, sheets, towels, baby bibs, and believe me she is not the only one. I, unable to break free from my non-ironing roots, take a more moderate approach. If it can't be seen outside the house, I don't iron it. Therefore, I iron basically "only" shirts and pants, I leave my sheets and towels with wrinkles and hope that no one will ever discover the shameful fact that I don't iron everyone's underwear. I do however have a secret weapon: I have a five star iron. Before I had your basic iron, with the little platic vial that holds about half a cup of water. Using that I felt at times like I had decided to climb Mount Everest wearing only a pair of Keds. The wrinkles, perhaps made more resistant by our calcium-heavy water, simply deepened, one shirt could take 30 minutes. My loathing of ironing made me simply avoid doing it, while Lorenzo's work shirts piled up in the closet. Then I found what I suppose would be a called a "professional" iron, basically its a small metal iron with a long tube attached that feeds into a small 1-liter tank. The iron sits on top of the tank when not in use. The tank heats the water and keeps it under pressure so the steam shoots out of the iron in hot powerful gusts. It's like watering your garden with a fire hose. Nothing stands a chance against this work of superior craftsmanship, and in under an hour I can do my week's quota. Just to prove how great this iron is, my mother when she came to visit last spring enjoyed using it so much I had to hold her back from ironing our underwear. My father said she had ironed more in those three months than she had in her entire life. It was truly a miracle.
And now I have a pile of Giulio's shirts I must attack. Sigh. An Italian woman's work is never done........
I am grateful that my job gives me free hours at odd times of the day, so that way I can get things done while the kids are at school. Things stay put away when Giulio is not a home, crumbs do not accumulate in and around the kitchen with Livia at daycare. Because one thing I've learned living in Italy is that housekeeping is not something done on the weekend when you have a free half hour. No, it is an on-going full time job keeping a household up to Italian standards. I always thought Americans were clean people, we pride ourselves on our cleanliness, and admit it, the first thing that we like to imply about Europeans is that they are perhaps not as clean as us. Now I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but Italians are CLEAN. Yes, it is true, they smell different from Americans, but I'm speaking to you as a shower taking-deodorant/anti-perspirant wearing-US citizen, and I've notice that I smell differently here as compared to when I am in the US, so obviously it's diet and not lack of hygene that causes this.
At any rate, when it comes to housecleaning, I have never met women so driven about cleaning as Italians. In the US, we vacuum our wall-to-wall carpet, we do laundry, we dust, and we clean the bathrooms. For most of us, if the house looks orderly, doesn't smell, and the floors aren't sticky, well, we've done a good job. House cleaning in Italy means lifting up couches each week to clean underneath them, wiping down the hood over the stove for any grease that may have gotten there, and cleaning all windows at least twice a month. Wall-to-wall carpeting is viewed as unsanitary, and so in its place there is parquet, tile, or marble, which is vacuumed and dusted once a day and washed at least once a week. Every morning the bedroom windows are flung open and the bedding is hung out the window to allow it to air out. Carpets are taken off the floors, vaccumed, and the hung outside. Sticky fingerprints are wiped off of doors and lightswitches, and children's toys are carefully cleaned and dusted off. When the show "Wife Swap" came to Italy, ( a show where for 7 days two women switch houses and families to see what happens) it shows women in their daily routine as wives and mothers, the one thing I couldn't get over was how many women get up at 6 am so they can clean the house before going to work. I'm lucky if I get all the dishes out of the sink and into the dishwasher first thing in the morning. The ultimate insult on that show is for a woman to say that she had found dust in the other woman's home, implying the ultimate shame: you keep a dirty house. Cleanliness does not stop at the inside, there are women who weekly wipe down the shutters on the exterior of the house or apartment, and mop all outside patios and balconies. Gardens, no matter how small, are tended to with military precision and are often tider than most American's living rooms. When I think of an American housewife, I think of her pushing a huge grocery cart through the supermarket, folding laundry from the drier, or driving little Cadyn to soccer practise. When I think of an Italian housewife I think of a woman dressed in old clothes down on her hands and knees cleaning the dirt that has accumulated behind her oven. And then we compare notes about it. Never in my life I thought I would have conversations with other people about housework, other than the basic, "today I cleaned the house." Now I find myself down at Terry's, having long connversations that contain phrases like," Well, I just vaccumed the floors, now I have to go mop the kitchen and outside balcony." Or I listen to Terry run down the list of things she accomplished that morning, "I mopped the whole house, organized the kids' bedroom. Now I just have to clean all the kitchen counters with bleach." Just to clarify, I clean my house once a week, with the occasional touch-up on the floor when I see too many crumbs overflowing from the kitchen,
And then of course there is the laundry. Yes, laundry is a cross that women all over the world have to bear. Men think, including my husband, that because they have put dirty clothes into the machine and pressed a few buttons they have "done" the laundry, but that is like saying because they were present at conception a man has given birth to a baby. In Italy the button pushing part is the easiest part, it's what comes after that is so time consuming and tiring. I do have a drier, but because it causes spikes in my electric bills I try to use it sparingly, only in the months when clothes take a long time to dry on their own. Therefore for the rest of the year, and especially right now, all clothes are hung up to dry, either on a drying rack on my balcony or on the clotheslines we have down in the yard. There is something suprisingly satisifying about hanging up clothes on the line, you can see all your hard work and effort right before your eyes, and there is something so wholesome about white sheets flapping in the breeze. If it's hot the clothes I hang up in the late morning are bone dry by early evening, but if the weather is sort of iffy and damp it can take several days, and while you are waiting for that load to dry more clothes pile up until you have mountains of laundry to deal with. Lorenzo is a good guy, works hard, helps in the house, but he has no problem walking right past laundry piled on the bed waiting to folded, ironed, and put away. For some reason this is "my" job, though in a pinch he will help me fold if I ask. But ironing is my responsibility. What's the big deal? you may ask. So you iron a few shirts, big whoop. In my house growing up ironing was all do it yourself, clothes came out of the dryer relatively wrinkle free, were folded and put away. Occasionally, the morning before some big meeting I would find my father ironing his dress shirt on top of a towel on one end of the kitchen counter, or my mother would drag out the board to freshen up something of ours that we wanted to wear to church minutes before tearing out the door saying we were going to be late. Ironing was optional, something done only in extremely needy cases. Imagine my surprise when coming to Italy to find that ironing wasn't just mandatory, it was a competitive sport. My neighbor irons EVERYTHING. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks, sheets, towels, baby bibs, and believe me she is not the only one. I, unable to break free from my non-ironing roots, take a more moderate approach. If it can't be seen outside the house, I don't iron it. Therefore, I iron basically "only" shirts and pants, I leave my sheets and towels with wrinkles and hope that no one will ever discover the shameful fact that I don't iron everyone's underwear. I do however have a secret weapon: I have a five star iron. Before I had your basic iron, with the little platic vial that holds about half a cup of water. Using that I felt at times like I had decided to climb Mount Everest wearing only a pair of Keds. The wrinkles, perhaps made more resistant by our calcium-heavy water, simply deepened, one shirt could take 30 minutes. My loathing of ironing made me simply avoid doing it, while Lorenzo's work shirts piled up in the closet. Then I found what I suppose would be a called a "professional" iron, basically its a small metal iron with a long tube attached that feeds into a small 1-liter tank. The iron sits on top of the tank when not in use. The tank heats the water and keeps it under pressure so the steam shoots out of the iron in hot powerful gusts. It's like watering your garden with a fire hose. Nothing stands a chance against this work of superior craftsmanship, and in under an hour I can do my week's quota. Just to prove how great this iron is, my mother when she came to visit last spring enjoyed using it so much I had to hold her back from ironing our underwear. My father said she had ironed more in those three months than she had in her entire life. It was truly a miracle.
And now I have a pile of Giulio's shirts I must attack. Sigh. An Italian woman's work is never done........
Monday, June 4, 2007
Dress Rehearsal
Giulio is set to get his adenoids out on Thursday. He has suffered from ear infections since he was four months old and by now has had more rounds of anti-biotics than I'd like to count. Along the way he has also suffered from two extreme allergic reactions to penicillian, one in which he wound up in the hospital, and another four day hospital stay over what was on its way to becoming mastoiditis. Everyone has told me that this surgery will change all that, that the rounds of antibiotics, the doctors' visits, the stress everytime he so much as coughs will vanish. Here's hoping. He was set to have the operation last week. We booked the operation 40 days earlier, and then 10 days before the set date he had to go the hospital for various tests and it was then that they gave us the definitive date for the operation. Which was just as well because organizing an overnight stay in a hospital required military precision and planning.
Our plan was that Lorenzo and I would be at the hospital all day with Giulio, and then in the evening I would go home to Livia and Lorenzo would stay overnight with Giulio. In Italian hospitals a parent or grandparent must be with the child at all times, which includes sleeping on a cot next to the child's hospital bed during the night. I remember my one overnight stay in a hospital when I was 9, they kicked the parents out at 8pm and practically barred them from re-entering before morning. (My dad still managed to sneak back in and sat by my bed until I fell asleep.) Even in Italy it wasn't always like this. Lorenzo has the horrific childhood memory when due to some illness he was isolated in hospital from his parents for something like 10 days! He remembers calling for his mother and not understanding why she wouldn't or couldn't come.
Luckily such draconian methods have gone by the wayside, perhaps to the point where we have gone a little too far in the other direction. There is nothing like trying to keep an energetic toddler entertained for four days on in a hospital ward to make you question if your parental presence is always absolutely necessary. Perhaps the hospitals smartened up to the fact that with mom or dad always present, the nurses would have more time to take care of patients, rather than running down the hallway after them. The only time we weren't allowed to stay overnight was when Livia was a few days old and being treated for jaundice. Ironically those first few days after birth is the one time when a woman is hormonally wired to not want her baby away from her for a moment, where as when they are older there are many times when you would pay to have them far away from you.....
Anyway, at least this time we had advanced notice, in the past Giulio's hospital stays have always come without any warning. Lorenzo asked for days off from work, and I moved my students and classes around in order to have the whole day free. I begged the lady as Livia's daycare for permission to leave her from 6:30am until 4pm, when Terry would go and get her and keep her until I came home, hopefully around 6:30 or 7. I felt terrible about leaving Livia all day, but as Lorenzo pointed out, Giulio was going to want his mommy. I lovingly packed his suitcase, and nervously presided over his cough that seemed to be only a cough, but was worrisome all the same. And we worried about the operation itself, how long it would take, how Giulio would feel afterwards, if he would be ok with the anesthetic. He needed the operation, WE needed him to have this operation, and would this cough keep him from having the operation because they had told us that if Giulio was sick they wouldn't do it? Then there was organizing for when Giulio was home again, how much school would he need to miss, I moved around more classes, promising to make them up the next week.
On Thursday morning we got up 5:45 and Lorenzo and Giulio were out the door by 6:15, the operation was set to take place around 7:30. I left around 6:40, left Livia at daycare and headed off to the hospital. Oh, yes, this was the other thing, the operation was not at our local hospital, the one five minutes from our house where both Giulio and Livia were born, and home to Giulio's previous hospital stays, but instead at a hospital 30 kilometers from home where they are well known for their ENTs. That was the other factor in this long day, the traffic. At any rate, I made good time and I was almost there when my phone rang. It was Lorenzo. I looked at the clock, only 7:15, still too early for any action.
"Yes?"
"CeeCee--we forgot the impegnativo from Giulio's pediatrician, I don't know if they will admit him without it."
"WHAT???!!"
The impegnativo is the pink slip of paper where your GP or Ped has to state what treatment needs to be done and why. This way the public health system pays for the treatment, it is certifying that this is a necessary operation, and it is being performed by doctors who are part of the NHS. If we didn't have it, it was very unlikely that they would admit Giulio for the operation, because it meant that the hospital would risk not being payed. Without the impegnativo the NHS wouldn't reimburse them for the cost of the operation, meaning it would be up to us to pay. But we could also just as easily promise to pay and then slip away without doing so.
I wasn't just irate about the forgotten impegnativo, I was irate about the WE. What WE?!! I hadn't known that we needed any sort of impegnativo, I had just spoken to Giulio's doctor a few days ago about a prescription and if I had known I would had asked her then for this super important piece of paper. Lorenzo had said nothing to me about needing an impegnativo, I had watched him check the list of papers we needed to bring with us just the night before. And now it seemed for a one small piece of paper, they wouldn't do the operation at all. I didn't know whether to laugh of cry. It's easy to sigh and say, oh Italy and its' bureucracy, but try getting admitted for an operation in the States saying you left your insurance information at home, but you would be sure and bring it tomorrow. They wouldn't let you into the parking lot.
At any rate, since I was practically there, I parked the car and went in the hospital to track down Lorenzo. I found him with a surprisingly cheerful (he hadn't eaten or drunk anything that morning) Giulio in tow. "Hi Mommy!" he cried, running over to me. "Hey, baby." I said, shooting snake eyes at Lorenzo over Giulio's head as I bent down to hug him.
"Ok," I said, straightening up. "What do we have to do?"
The first thing was to head up to the ward where Giulio's operation would be. There we found other parents with children and suitcases, and all surely, I thought grimly, with their impegnativi in hand. We explained our situation to Giulio's doctor, who referred us to the head nurse who did pre-surgery admittance for the ward. Her response when we told her that we didn't have the impegnativo was to beat her head on the door frame for a moment.
"I can't do anything," she said when she lifted her head. "Downstairs they won't admit him without it, meaning he won't be in the computer. For me, as long as you hear from his pediatrician and they promise to send the impegnativo over today, I don't have a problem. See what they say downstairs at Patient Admittance."
I looked at the clock, it was five minutes to 8, Giulio's pediatrician doesn't start taking calls until 8:30. You can call between 8:30 to 9:30 to get an appointment either for that day, or if you are calling about a check-up, later in the week. You call, describe your kid's symptons and she will tell you if they need to be seen that day or if you can wait and see for a day or so. Usually she will ask to see you that day. You also call about doctor's notes, prescriptions, and impegnativi, which she writes out and leaves in a basket in her office waiting room, with the child's name written on the outside for you to pick up. I decided to take a chance and go ahead and call, maybe she was answering early this morning. I immediately got her voice mail. Damn. I shook my head at Lorenzo, and then we went downstairs and outside where the phone reception was better, huddling in a tense group around Giulio's suitcase. I kept picking up the phone, calling, getting the dr's voice mail, cursing, and hanging up again. My stomach churned. Giulio needed this operation today, we had planned for today, I wasn't going to let some minor detail like an impegnativo stop me. At 8:32, the doctor picked up, I threw the phone at Lorenzo and let him ask her to help us. She was sympathetic, but she wasn't going to be in the office before the afternoon, one of us could come by and get the slip at 2, but not unfortunately not before then. It would have to do. We went back to the Patient Admittance desk downstairs, where Lorenzo had been rejected earlier to see what they would say about the impegnativo now that we had talked to the pediatrician. The lady wasn't moved. It wasn't us, she said, it was those doctors, always promising these forms, then forgetting to send them, and then the hospital gets stuck with the bill. She shook her head. I sat there on a bench next to the desk with Giulio in my lap and fixed her with my saddest,-come-on- we're-mothers,- I- know-you-have-been-here -too-look. I could see her weaken. "I will go there personally to pick up the form, this way you won't have to wait." I said. The woman was silent a moment. "Fine," she said. "It's not the parents,"she said again, typing away into the computer. "It's those doctors. Bring the form here as soon as you can!" We offered her thanks and our most dazzling smiles, and clutching the necessary admittance forms, ran upstairs once again to the third floor.
The head nurse was glad to see us, even though it was now 9:15. Smiling she ushured us into her office to start filling out forms. "Ok," she said, as I sat down across the table from her. "So, he hasn't eaten anything today, right? Any allergies? Ok......Now, how is he doing? Any health problems?" "Um," I said. "He has a bit of a cough, but other than that he is fine." She looked up from her paperwork. "Let me hear him cough." Giulio coughed. The nurse narrowed her eyes a moment. "Better check his temperature," she said, tucking a thermometer under his right arm. She continued with her questions. "Now Giulio there is a big girl in the same room as you, and you have to listen and do what she says." Giulio solemnly nodded. He knew all about listenting to older kids and doing what they said from preschool. I placed a well trained Mother's hand on Giulio's forehead and back. He didn't feel feverish. If we were at home right now, I would send him to school based on this forehead temperture reading. God Giulio, don't be sick, please don't be sick. We have made it this far, don't be sick. Giulio coughed again, this time it sounded more chesty, sick-y than the one he produced only moments before. The nurse got up and took the thermometer from his mouth. "Uh-uh." She shook her head. "He's got 98.9. Let me get the doctor." She left the room and came back almost immediately with someone in a long white coat. He looked in Giulio's mouth, ("well, he doesn't have tonsellitis.") and informed us that in doing surgery with even a low fever considerably raised the risks. Giulio would not be getting his andenoids out today. "Come back next week and we will do it then." The nurse smiled sympathetically, told us that the impegnativo that the pediatrician gave me today would still be good for next week, that she would see us soon, and escorted us out the door. It's didn't seem possible. We had overcome a lack of blood relatives, crazy work schedules, adversity, the Italian NHS, and low cell phone reception, only to be thwarted by a 98.9 fever. Defeated we slumped back to the car, Lorenzo headed off to the office, Giulio and I went home and watched "Babe".
The surgery was rescheduled, but this time Lorenzo is going by himself with Giulio, I have to work and I can't miss anymore lessons as this is the last week of school, and I don't feel like asking for any more favours from people, even if they would be more than willing to oblige. No, this time Lorenzo will be on his own. At least this time he has the impegnativo.
Our plan was that Lorenzo and I would be at the hospital all day with Giulio, and then in the evening I would go home to Livia and Lorenzo would stay overnight with Giulio. In Italian hospitals a parent or grandparent must be with the child at all times, which includes sleeping on a cot next to the child's hospital bed during the night. I remember my one overnight stay in a hospital when I was 9, they kicked the parents out at 8pm and practically barred them from re-entering before morning. (My dad still managed to sneak back in and sat by my bed until I fell asleep.) Even in Italy it wasn't always like this. Lorenzo has the horrific childhood memory when due to some illness he was isolated in hospital from his parents for something like 10 days! He remembers calling for his mother and not understanding why she wouldn't or couldn't come.
Luckily such draconian methods have gone by the wayside, perhaps to the point where we have gone a little too far in the other direction. There is nothing like trying to keep an energetic toddler entertained for four days on in a hospital ward to make you question if your parental presence is always absolutely necessary. Perhaps the hospitals smartened up to the fact that with mom or dad always present, the nurses would have more time to take care of patients, rather than running down the hallway after them. The only time we weren't allowed to stay overnight was when Livia was a few days old and being treated for jaundice. Ironically those first few days after birth is the one time when a woman is hormonally wired to not want her baby away from her for a moment, where as when they are older there are many times when you would pay to have them far away from you.....
Anyway, at least this time we had advanced notice, in the past Giulio's hospital stays have always come without any warning. Lorenzo asked for days off from work, and I moved my students and classes around in order to have the whole day free. I begged the lady as Livia's daycare for permission to leave her from 6:30am until 4pm, when Terry would go and get her and keep her until I came home, hopefully around 6:30 or 7. I felt terrible about leaving Livia all day, but as Lorenzo pointed out, Giulio was going to want his mommy. I lovingly packed his suitcase, and nervously presided over his cough that seemed to be only a cough, but was worrisome all the same. And we worried about the operation itself, how long it would take, how Giulio would feel afterwards, if he would be ok with the anesthetic. He needed the operation, WE needed him to have this operation, and would this cough keep him from having the operation because they had told us that if Giulio was sick they wouldn't do it? Then there was organizing for when Giulio was home again, how much school would he need to miss, I moved around more classes, promising to make them up the next week.
On Thursday morning we got up 5:45 and Lorenzo and Giulio were out the door by 6:15, the operation was set to take place around 7:30. I left around 6:40, left Livia at daycare and headed off to the hospital. Oh, yes, this was the other thing, the operation was not at our local hospital, the one five minutes from our house where both Giulio and Livia were born, and home to Giulio's previous hospital stays, but instead at a hospital 30 kilometers from home where they are well known for their ENTs. That was the other factor in this long day, the traffic. At any rate, I made good time and I was almost there when my phone rang. It was Lorenzo. I looked at the clock, only 7:15, still too early for any action.
"Yes?"
"CeeCee--we forgot the impegnativo from Giulio's pediatrician, I don't know if they will admit him without it."
"WHAT???!!"
The impegnativo is the pink slip of paper where your GP or Ped has to state what treatment needs to be done and why. This way the public health system pays for the treatment, it is certifying that this is a necessary operation, and it is being performed by doctors who are part of the NHS. If we didn't have it, it was very unlikely that they would admit Giulio for the operation, because it meant that the hospital would risk not being payed. Without the impegnativo the NHS wouldn't reimburse them for the cost of the operation, meaning it would be up to us to pay. But we could also just as easily promise to pay and then slip away without doing so.
I wasn't just irate about the forgotten impegnativo, I was irate about the WE. What WE?!! I hadn't known that we needed any sort of impegnativo, I had just spoken to Giulio's doctor a few days ago about a prescription and if I had known I would had asked her then for this super important piece of paper. Lorenzo had said nothing to me about needing an impegnativo, I had watched him check the list of papers we needed to bring with us just the night before. And now it seemed for a one small piece of paper, they wouldn't do the operation at all. I didn't know whether to laugh of cry. It's easy to sigh and say, oh Italy and its' bureucracy, but try getting admitted for an operation in the States saying you left your insurance information at home, but you would be sure and bring it tomorrow. They wouldn't let you into the parking lot.
At any rate, since I was practically there, I parked the car and went in the hospital to track down Lorenzo. I found him with a surprisingly cheerful (he hadn't eaten or drunk anything that morning) Giulio in tow. "Hi Mommy!" he cried, running over to me. "Hey, baby." I said, shooting snake eyes at Lorenzo over Giulio's head as I bent down to hug him.
"Ok," I said, straightening up. "What do we have to do?"
The first thing was to head up to the ward where Giulio's operation would be. There we found other parents with children and suitcases, and all surely, I thought grimly, with their impegnativi in hand. We explained our situation to Giulio's doctor, who referred us to the head nurse who did pre-surgery admittance for the ward. Her response when we told her that we didn't have the impegnativo was to beat her head on the door frame for a moment.
"I can't do anything," she said when she lifted her head. "Downstairs they won't admit him without it, meaning he won't be in the computer. For me, as long as you hear from his pediatrician and they promise to send the impegnativo over today, I don't have a problem. See what they say downstairs at Patient Admittance."
I looked at the clock, it was five minutes to 8, Giulio's pediatrician doesn't start taking calls until 8:30. You can call between 8:30 to 9:30 to get an appointment either for that day, or if you are calling about a check-up, later in the week. You call, describe your kid's symptons and she will tell you if they need to be seen that day or if you can wait and see for a day or so. Usually she will ask to see you that day. You also call about doctor's notes, prescriptions, and impegnativi, which she writes out and leaves in a basket in her office waiting room, with the child's name written on the outside for you to pick up. I decided to take a chance and go ahead and call, maybe she was answering early this morning. I immediately got her voice mail. Damn. I shook my head at Lorenzo, and then we went downstairs and outside where the phone reception was better, huddling in a tense group around Giulio's suitcase. I kept picking up the phone, calling, getting the dr's voice mail, cursing, and hanging up again. My stomach churned. Giulio needed this operation today, we had planned for today, I wasn't going to let some minor detail like an impegnativo stop me. At 8:32, the doctor picked up, I threw the phone at Lorenzo and let him ask her to help us. She was sympathetic, but she wasn't going to be in the office before the afternoon, one of us could come by and get the slip at 2, but not unfortunately not before then. It would have to do. We went back to the Patient Admittance desk downstairs, where Lorenzo had been rejected earlier to see what they would say about the impegnativo now that we had talked to the pediatrician. The lady wasn't moved. It wasn't us, she said, it was those doctors, always promising these forms, then forgetting to send them, and then the hospital gets stuck with the bill. She shook her head. I sat there on a bench next to the desk with Giulio in my lap and fixed her with my saddest,-come-on- we're-mothers,- I- know-you-have-been-here -too-look. I could see her weaken. "I will go there personally to pick up the form, this way you won't have to wait." I said. The woman was silent a moment. "Fine," she said. "It's not the parents,"she said again, typing away into the computer. "It's those doctors. Bring the form here as soon as you can!" We offered her thanks and our most dazzling smiles, and clutching the necessary admittance forms, ran upstairs once again to the third floor.
The head nurse was glad to see us, even though it was now 9:15. Smiling she ushured us into her office to start filling out forms. "Ok," she said, as I sat down across the table from her. "So, he hasn't eaten anything today, right? Any allergies? Ok......Now, how is he doing? Any health problems?" "Um," I said. "He has a bit of a cough, but other than that he is fine." She looked up from her paperwork. "Let me hear him cough." Giulio coughed. The nurse narrowed her eyes a moment. "Better check his temperature," she said, tucking a thermometer under his right arm. She continued with her questions. "Now Giulio there is a big girl in the same room as you, and you have to listen and do what she says." Giulio solemnly nodded. He knew all about listenting to older kids and doing what they said from preschool. I placed a well trained Mother's hand on Giulio's forehead and back. He didn't feel feverish. If we were at home right now, I would send him to school based on this forehead temperture reading. God Giulio, don't be sick, please don't be sick. We have made it this far, don't be sick. Giulio coughed again, this time it sounded more chesty, sick-y than the one he produced only moments before. The nurse got up and took the thermometer from his mouth. "Uh-uh." She shook her head. "He's got 98.9. Let me get the doctor." She left the room and came back almost immediately with someone in a long white coat. He looked in Giulio's mouth, ("well, he doesn't have tonsellitis.") and informed us that in doing surgery with even a low fever considerably raised the risks. Giulio would not be getting his andenoids out today. "Come back next week and we will do it then." The nurse smiled sympathetically, told us that the impegnativo that the pediatrician gave me today would still be good for next week, that she would see us soon, and escorted us out the door. It's didn't seem possible. We had overcome a lack of blood relatives, crazy work schedules, adversity, the Italian NHS, and low cell phone reception, only to be thwarted by a 98.9 fever. Defeated we slumped back to the car, Lorenzo headed off to the office, Giulio and I went home and watched "Babe".
The surgery was rescheduled, but this time Lorenzo is going by himself with Giulio, I have to work and I can't miss anymore lessons as this is the last week of school, and I don't feel like asking for any more favours from people, even if they would be more than willing to oblige. No, this time Lorenzo will be on his own. At least this time he has the impegnativo.
Monday, May 28, 2007
He's my Donkey
I went to the doctor this morning after being sick all weekend. I should have gone on Friday afternoon, but I had things to do and I remember thinking-ah, how sick could I be? My children may get sick, my husband may get sick, but Mommy, no Mommy doesn't get sick. She can't. I then spent all weekend thinking that my head was going to explode and wincing every time I swallowed, and then after a phone call with my mother, felt sure that I was succumbing to a terrible staph infection. It is also a little difficult in our house to "take it easy". Livia has started crawling and Lorenzo had to work both Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Enough said. What I really wanted was my mother to come in and sweep the children off for about 12 hours so I could stay in bed and sip orange juice, but there is no point on dwelling on that when my mother is on another continent, and several time zones away. Pumped up with ibuprophen I managed to go out and buy a birthday present, take the kids out for pizza Saturday night, and attend two birthday parties on Sunday, all the while trying not to swallow too often. Perhaps it wasn't just being sick that made me feel so wiped out, but also Giulio's end of school party that was held on Friday afternoon.
While Giulio's school doesn't officially close until the end of June, on the basis that some kids will be gone for vacation or whatever, they hold the party at the end of May, at a large outdoor pavillion on the edge of town. The kickoff was at 12, when the kids would be having their picnic lunch (no pasta!) of sandwhiches and fruit. I arrived at 12:30 with Livia, Lorenzo arrived around 1:15. The heat was intense, made worse by the fact that it had rained a little that morning, making everything excessively muddy and humid, in the end the most comfortable place to be was in the shade of the pavillion, but the teachers would have none of it. They had organized an action packed afternoon of performances by the children, along with games involving the parents, a treasure hunt and graduation ceremony. At 1:30 things got started off by the children dancing and singing along with a tape recording of "Old MacDonald", doing a carefully choreographed number. With my camera fixed on Giulio, I watched as he stood there, smiling shyly, watching his classmates sing and dance around him. It dawned on me that I would never be able to say, "Giulio always loved performing, ever since he was little!" to some journalist as I am being interviewed about my son's great Oscar win. Clearly he didn't love it, could barely tolerate standing there next to them as they e-i-e-i-o-ed around him. Then they all sat down as the 4 year olds launched into their individual number, some other song involving animals, the children serious and stern as they performed. Is there anything cuter than small children focused on a task? It is moments like that that make you glad to have children, glad to sit in 90 degree heat video tape them, glad to attend an end of the year picnic. And Giulio was going to have no part in it. I would just have to be glad to watch someone else's child shimmy around the circle. And then Giulio's group got up, and led by two five year olds went into their dance, or at least wiggled their hips around, immitating sheep and frogs and cats, in time to the song booming out of the CD player. And Giulio was right there, wiggling along with them, apparently having a great time. My Oscar fantasy, like Marcel Proust's memories, came flooding back.
After that there were games, endless games, all involving running and carrying children under the hot sun. The children all donned donkey ears, carefully made by the teachers for the games portion. Yes, it was pretty much the cutest thing I had ever seen though I am still confused about what it had to do with racing while carrying Giulio on my shoulders. Or running across the grass to some far corner, blindfolded in some gauzy material that did not block my vision but did make my face sweat, to scoop Giulio up and run back across the lawn with him. There was also a potato sack race, with garbage bags instead of sacks which resisted two hops before your legs went through the bottom. I pretended to be preoccupied with Livia and sat that one out.
Then there was the treasure hunt which ended disastrously because Giulio's prize, a small plastic gun that blew bubbles didn't work, which caused him to have a meltdown, which caused him to almost miss the "graduation ceremony" when each child was called one by one to received a medal, a class photo, and a diploma rolled up and tied with a piece of ribbon. I went up on Giulio's behalf to receive his diploma, with Giulio hanging on my leg and shrieking as I walked towards the teacher. Which ended with me telling Giulio that if this was how he was going to behave we would leave now, and me avoiding eye contact with any other parent. Everyone else's child was seated correctly, mine was a wailing mess of tears and hiccups. In the end, it was his teacher who intervened, telling us we couldn't leave now, we were about to have a special snack--bread and Nutella! It may sound ridiculously simple, but there are few things better than bread and Nutella, and nothing better for calming down a three year old. Giulio ate his snack and then we fled the hot picnic grounds for our car's air conditioning.
On Sunday was had to attend two birthday parties, one was a joint party for Alessandro and Vanda, my neighbor's children, and the other was for the daugher of Lorenzo's good friend and colleague Massimo. Italian birthday parties haven't reached the level of hype that we have in the United States. One of my favorite baby websites had a thread about planning our babies' first birthday party, six months before they were to turn one. There are women for whom it is very important that 1 year old Kaitlyn has the right hat to wear to go with her Strawberry Shortcake themed birthday cake, which she would then be allowed to smash her little fist into. Apparently no birthday party is now complete with out a smashcake for little Landon to destroy. There was no theme for Alessandro's party, Terry had not been out hunting all corners of Nothern Italy for the table cloth that would really fit a Harley Davidson themed party, nor was she using a glue gun moments before the party began to make sure that rubber ducks would stay upright and afloat in a wadding pool. No, there was none of that. Instead the party resembled more what birthday parties were like 15 years ago in the States. Terry had 3 of her sisters come with their husbands and children, she invited me and one other non-family member, plus her husband Eugenio's family, and Vanda invited 3 friends of her own. She rented the room that the local church rents out for birthday parties, mainly because our living rooms don't hold more than eight people very well, let alone children running in and out. In total there was maybe 20 people, including children. They set up a large table and covered it with pizza, chips, sandwiches, candy, three birthday cakes (but no smashcake), spumante and coke. They sang Happy Birthday, they opened presents and then the children were free to run about, occasionally splashing each other with the small fountain that sits outside the parish office. The adults ate and talked and played with the babies. There were no organized games, though apparently you can hire a teenage girl specifically for the purpose of organizing the children for games if you want, and though simple it fulfilled the purpose of what you want at a party; a time to be together with the people you like and enjoying good food in the bargain. The one fly in the ointment were the cakes. They were delicious, and had cost 190 euros all together, far more than Terry had anticipated paying. Apparently Eugenio had picked them up and paid for them, no questions asked, and Terry planned to go the bakery tomorrow and have it out with them. It seemed the baker had said she would make three 15 person cakes for the event, and instead had made what appeared to be three 30-person sized cakes and more than doubled the cost.
Our visit to the second party revealed more of the same thing, lots of food, people sitting around, and no theme, no organized games, and no one seemed to know or mind what was missing. I sometimes wonder who switched the rules on us, who upped the ante in the US. Who decided that such a simple idea like a child's birthday party was no longer valid and instead one needed themes, reception halls, smashcakes and the like. I'm sure these parties are fun too, but all the same, if you asked Giulio what he liked the most about the party he would tell you it was putting his hands in the fountain and getting his t-shirt soaked.
While Giulio's school doesn't officially close until the end of June, on the basis that some kids will be gone for vacation or whatever, they hold the party at the end of May, at a large outdoor pavillion on the edge of town. The kickoff was at 12, when the kids would be having their picnic lunch (no pasta!) of sandwhiches and fruit. I arrived at 12:30 with Livia, Lorenzo arrived around 1:15. The heat was intense, made worse by the fact that it had rained a little that morning, making everything excessively muddy and humid, in the end the most comfortable place to be was in the shade of the pavillion, but the teachers would have none of it. They had organized an action packed afternoon of performances by the children, along with games involving the parents, a treasure hunt and graduation ceremony. At 1:30 things got started off by the children dancing and singing along with a tape recording of "Old MacDonald", doing a carefully choreographed number. With my camera fixed on Giulio, I watched as he stood there, smiling shyly, watching his classmates sing and dance around him. It dawned on me that I would never be able to say, "Giulio always loved performing, ever since he was little!" to some journalist as I am being interviewed about my son's great Oscar win. Clearly he didn't love it, could barely tolerate standing there next to them as they e-i-e-i-o-ed around him. Then they all sat down as the 4 year olds launched into their individual number, some other song involving animals, the children serious and stern as they performed. Is there anything cuter than small children focused on a task? It is moments like that that make you glad to have children, glad to sit in 90 degree heat video tape them, glad to attend an end of the year picnic. And Giulio was going to have no part in it. I would just have to be glad to watch someone else's child shimmy around the circle. And then Giulio's group got up, and led by two five year olds went into their dance, or at least wiggled their hips around, immitating sheep and frogs and cats, in time to the song booming out of the CD player. And Giulio was right there, wiggling along with them, apparently having a great time. My Oscar fantasy, like Marcel Proust's memories, came flooding back.
After that there were games, endless games, all involving running and carrying children under the hot sun. The children all donned donkey ears, carefully made by the teachers for the games portion. Yes, it was pretty much the cutest thing I had ever seen though I am still confused about what it had to do with racing while carrying Giulio on my shoulders. Or running across the grass to some far corner, blindfolded in some gauzy material that did not block my vision but did make my face sweat, to scoop Giulio up and run back across the lawn with him. There was also a potato sack race, with garbage bags instead of sacks which resisted two hops before your legs went through the bottom. I pretended to be preoccupied with Livia and sat that one out.
Then there was the treasure hunt which ended disastrously because Giulio's prize, a small plastic gun that blew bubbles didn't work, which caused him to have a meltdown, which caused him to almost miss the "graduation ceremony" when each child was called one by one to received a medal, a class photo, and a diploma rolled up and tied with a piece of ribbon. I went up on Giulio's behalf to receive his diploma, with Giulio hanging on my leg and shrieking as I walked towards the teacher. Which ended with me telling Giulio that if this was how he was going to behave we would leave now, and me avoiding eye contact with any other parent. Everyone else's child was seated correctly, mine was a wailing mess of tears and hiccups. In the end, it was his teacher who intervened, telling us we couldn't leave now, we were about to have a special snack--bread and Nutella! It may sound ridiculously simple, but there are few things better than bread and Nutella, and nothing better for calming down a three year old. Giulio ate his snack and then we fled the hot picnic grounds for our car's air conditioning.
On Sunday was had to attend two birthday parties, one was a joint party for Alessandro and Vanda, my neighbor's children, and the other was for the daugher of Lorenzo's good friend and colleague Massimo. Italian birthday parties haven't reached the level of hype that we have in the United States. One of my favorite baby websites had a thread about planning our babies' first birthday party, six months before they were to turn one. There are women for whom it is very important that 1 year old Kaitlyn has the right hat to wear to go with her Strawberry Shortcake themed birthday cake, which she would then be allowed to smash her little fist into. Apparently no birthday party is now complete with out a smashcake for little Landon to destroy. There was no theme for Alessandro's party, Terry had not been out hunting all corners of Nothern Italy for the table cloth that would really fit a Harley Davidson themed party, nor was she using a glue gun moments before the party began to make sure that rubber ducks would stay upright and afloat in a wadding pool. No, there was none of that. Instead the party resembled more what birthday parties were like 15 years ago in the States. Terry had 3 of her sisters come with their husbands and children, she invited me and one other non-family member, plus her husband Eugenio's family, and Vanda invited 3 friends of her own. She rented the room that the local church rents out for birthday parties, mainly because our living rooms don't hold more than eight people very well, let alone children running in and out. In total there was maybe 20 people, including children. They set up a large table and covered it with pizza, chips, sandwiches, candy, three birthday cakes (but no smashcake), spumante and coke. They sang Happy Birthday, they opened presents and then the children were free to run about, occasionally splashing each other with the small fountain that sits outside the parish office. The adults ate and talked and played with the babies. There were no organized games, though apparently you can hire a teenage girl specifically for the purpose of organizing the children for games if you want, and though simple it fulfilled the purpose of what you want at a party; a time to be together with the people you like and enjoying good food in the bargain. The one fly in the ointment were the cakes. They were delicious, and had cost 190 euros all together, far more than Terry had anticipated paying. Apparently Eugenio had picked them up and paid for them, no questions asked, and Terry planned to go the bakery tomorrow and have it out with them. It seemed the baker had said she would make three 15 person cakes for the event, and instead had made what appeared to be three 30-person sized cakes and more than doubled the cost.
Our visit to the second party revealed more of the same thing, lots of food, people sitting around, and no theme, no organized games, and no one seemed to know or mind what was missing. I sometimes wonder who switched the rules on us, who upped the ante in the US. Who decided that such a simple idea like a child's birthday party was no longer valid and instead one needed themes, reception halls, smashcakes and the like. I'm sure these parties are fun too, but all the same, if you asked Giulio what he liked the most about the party he would tell you it was putting his hands in the fountain and getting his t-shirt soaked.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Festa della Polizia di Stato
Today was Festa della Polizia, at least in our house anyway. Like most organizations in Italy, the police get their day once a year. Though officially celebrated last week in Rome with the President of Italy and various ministers present, it was done here today on a smaller scale with everyone heading to Bergamo for the ceremony and reception afterwards. It was not my first Festa. The first one I went to was five years ago, when I didn't have kids and was not yet married. I went and stood in the rain to watch Lorenzo and a row of other police officers decked out in full uniform stand and salute at various intervals during the ceremony. I always get a kick out of seeing Lorenzo in uniform, as he usually works wearing his regular clothes, so I didn't mind too much standing in the rain to see him. I did mind that I was in jeans and a Northface raincoat and all the other women were much more elegantly dressed, despite the weather. The ceremony was held in the front yard of some enormous villa, its' owners long gone, now used for weddings and formal events like this. Afterwards we all trooped inside for refreshments; wine, risotto, cheeses, meat, cake, fruit, champagne, all consumed while standing up. As I lolled against the wall, sipping my champaigne and gazing up at the ceiling frescoes, I decided that living in Italy and dating a police officer had its advantages. I, who come from a town where if you don't have baked beans and potato salad at the wedding reception you cannot consider yourself legally married, was sold. I decided I would never miss a Festa if I could help it. Three years ago Lorenzo was set to receive an award so I went, properly dressed this time, with Giulio then a wriggling seven month old on my lap. That Festa always stays with me because the Chief of Police at that time gave a speech where at the end he thanked the families of all the officers, recognizing that we also make sacrifices and thanking us for our support. That year though the Festa was held in a theater so while the food was good, it lacked the ambience of the 18th century villa, even if there was more elbow room. Then I sat it out for a few years. Last year we went because my parents were here and wanted to see the whole shabang (and eat the food!) They were not dissapointed. The Festa was held at the Catholic seminary named for John the 23rd (who was born not far from there) which is in Citta Alta (the high city) of Bergamo, so we had a spectacular view of the city below during the garden reception. "This is incredible!" my father exclaimed, shoveling in his second helping of mushroom risotto in truffle oil, indicating towards the view. The only fly in the ointment on that day was that Giulio was four days into being potty trained and proceeded to wet himself three times in about 45 minutes, usually only moments after I had asked him if he needed to go and him adamantly denying that he did. In the photos he is wearing a different pair of pants in each photo, the last pair being this ancient pair of sweatpants that lived in the diaper bag for unexected bathroom emergencies. I can't say that they really went with the freshly ironed polo shirt that he was wearing.
This year we have potty training firmly under our belt, but this year we have Livia, who is battling some virus that causes high fever and never ending grumpiness. I feel a bit like the woman in the fairytale where evil gnomes come in the night and take away my happy, smiling baby and leaving me with her fussy, unhappy twin. Where was my Livia? I didn't know this grumpy baby at all. I might have forgone the nice reception and stayed at home; honestly, sitting through a half hour ceremony with a sick baby and a energetic three year old all for a free plate of pasta seemed a bit much. But this year Lorenzo was getting another award for capturing and arresting some mob guy and I wanted to be there. The Festa is the one day out of the whole year where all those long hours and lost Sundays when Lorenzo's at work seem worth it and I didn't feel like missing it. I had initially asked Vanda to come with me give me a hand with Giulio, but she couldn't come at the last minute, so I followed two women Lorenzo knows from his union on the drive up because they had offered to give me a hand with the kids.
I was glad that I had a made an effort to look nice, because the two women, Gianna and Monica, were dressed to the nines when they pulled. Head to toe elegant black clothes, manicured nails, and long dramatic earrings, I didn't think they would take to kindly to having Livia leave snot on the shoulders of their jackets.
After parking we walk up the hill to the seminary where Lorenzo meets us at the gate, all decked out in his uniform. We let Giulio check out the bomb-sniffing dog and then go into the auditorium to stake out a place on the end of an aisle where I could keep the stroller next to us. The ceremony wasn't set to start for an hour and there was lots of room. No sooner had we sat down than Giulio begins demanding food, though this time I had come prepared with drinkable yoghurts and crackers, and then he starts demanding to go to the bathroom. I give a whiny Livia over to Lorenzo (let's hope she doesn't get snot on his shoulder, won't go with the uniform) and take Giulio to the scene of so many of last year's potty mishaps. We come back and Lorenzo hands me a wailing Livia and the video camera. "Ok, so it's really important you get the moment when I get the award, and maybe also a bit of the National Anthemn, and oh!" he says, putting the photo camera in the stroller, "Don't forget to take photos!" Geez, maybe I could take a ten page introspective photo shoot on the whole event and send it to Vanity Fair while I'm at it? I'd like to see Mario Testino use a video camera with one hand and bounce a grumpy baby with the other. Monica offers to hold Livia so I can film, but Livia will have no one of it. She keeps arching her back and wailing, clearly only Mommy will do today. In the end I hold her on my left hip, while with my right hand I operate the video camera as they kick things off with the National Anthemn. The camera shakes like an elderly Katherine Hepburn is holding it. I roam over the crowd, taking in the choir singing onstage; a mix of young children wearing matching t-shirts and baseball hats and an elderly group with all the men wearing tuxedos. The combination of the two sounds is intense, part bleating, part vibrating. They sing the first verse of the anthemn, against a taped orchestral accompionment, of which most people know the words, and then they launch into the second verse of which no one knows the words. The audience promptly drops out, though all the police who rose at the first chord to salute must remain standing, though fortunately after two verses the choir has had enough and we all sit down, except for me, while the Chief of Police comes up to speak. I turn the camera off and put Livia in her stroller and try to slowly rock her to sleep, listening to the Chief go through his laundry list of numbers and statistcs for the last year. You can be sure that there will be no thanking the families of the officers today. Livia has just dropped off and I am about to sit down when the man's speech ends and suddenly there is a thunder of applause. Livia wakes with a start and immediately starts wailing. They then move into the awards, which in some way is worse, because they are now applauding every two minutes or so. I resign myself to standing for the rest of the ceremony, easing the stroller back and forth.
I look across the packed auditorium to where Lorenzo and the other officers who are getting awards today are seated together, I assume that the ones who are standing are next to be called so I think I have a few minutes before I have to do any more filming. Suddenly Lorenzo stands up, shit, shit, shit they are about to call him! I fumble with the camera waiting for it to click and whirl into life, and then it comes on and not a moment too soon cause now they are reading out Lorenzo's name and he and his superior are marching on stage and saluting, and the officials are giving him his award and the audience is clapping, and I would clap to except that I am still holding the camera one handed, while rocking the stroller with the other. I film until he comes off the stage and then I turn the thing off and throw it into the diaper bag, and just as well, cause someone had thought it would be a good idea to end the ceremony with the choir singing the gospel standard "Oh Happy Day", not exactly the sentiment I would use to describe the police. Ask Lorenzo when he comes staggering in at 2 am after working 12 hours if it's a happy day that he works for the police. And is there a choir any less suited to sing this number than the group we have before us? Italians for some reason love Gospel music, it offers something that is foreign and that they themselves are unable to produce, and yes, Gospel music can be wonderful, when sung by the righ choir with the right spirit. These octongenarians and their 10 year old counterparts are not what the composer had in mind when he wrote the piece, this all white group of non-english speaking Italians who are not used to clapping together or improvising high notes, as the skinny soloist is now attempting to do. The spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak. The song doesn't sound exhaulted, but only tired, sung by people ready to go and eat lunch. The crowd doesn't seem to mind though, they join in clapping including Monica and Gianna, but their flesh is weak too and after a few bars they lose the beat and have to drop out. I bite my lip and look down at a sleepy Livia and try not to laugh out loud. Lorenzo told me later that he had to struggle not to laugh as well.
I realize as the choir winds down that in a matter of moments everyone is going to make a run to the door and to the buffett lunch outside and that I will have to battle the crowds while steering a heavy stroller and holding onto Giulio. I make the decision to get out early, Monica rises to the occasion and offers to bring Giulio out with her, leaving me to navigate the stairs on each side of the auditorium and then enourmous flight which leads to the outside. Luckily there are some firemen present, perhaps for eventual crowd control (things getting heated in the buffet line?) and two of them take the stroller and, like the Pope sitting in his chair, lower Livia down the stairs. She and I wait outside in the blinding sunshine as people stream out the enormous door and head towards the long tables loaded with food and wine glasses. The staff seems to be mostly teenagers, no doubt brought in from one of the technical high schools which teaches, along with hotel management, catering skills. It says a lot for my self-control that I do not make a beeline for the tables but wait until Giulio arrives with Monica, followed by Lorenzo who wants to know if his hat was on straight when he went up to get his award. He has obviously never held a baby and used a video camera at the same time or he would know that such attention to detail was beyond me at that time. We take a few family photos and then head towards the now long line to get something to eat.
All I can say is that I must be becoming a little Italian because even though the printed menu lists no less than 15 different dishes, the food just wasn't as good as last year. There was no pasta dish or risotto, though there were three different cold meat dishes, including roast beef with rocket and grana. But Lorenzo agreed, this year it just wasn't as good. Last year there had been two sets of tables as well, one inside and one outside, this year there was just the one set outside meaning there was more jostling and less elbow room. And I had Livia in her stroller to wheel around, trying not to nip the well-heeled ankles of the ladies and gentleman around me. So I have come to the conclusion that unless Lorenzo gets any more awards in the meantime, I'm not going back until Livia can walk distances without a stroller.
As a post script, I am writing this now on Sunday, the good gnomes gave me Livia back and she is here smiling and crawling and being generally good humored. Instead it seems Giulio is now ill, with a fever and a new developement: throwing up. I have a feeling it is going to be a long night........
This year we have potty training firmly under our belt, but this year we have Livia, who is battling some virus that causes high fever and never ending grumpiness. I feel a bit like the woman in the fairytale where evil gnomes come in the night and take away my happy, smiling baby and leaving me with her fussy, unhappy twin. Where was my Livia? I didn't know this grumpy baby at all. I might have forgone the nice reception and stayed at home; honestly, sitting through a half hour ceremony with a sick baby and a energetic three year old all for a free plate of pasta seemed a bit much. But this year Lorenzo was getting another award for capturing and arresting some mob guy and I wanted to be there. The Festa is the one day out of the whole year where all those long hours and lost Sundays when Lorenzo's at work seem worth it and I didn't feel like missing it. I had initially asked Vanda to come with me give me a hand with Giulio, but she couldn't come at the last minute, so I followed two women Lorenzo knows from his union on the drive up because they had offered to give me a hand with the kids.
I was glad that I had a made an effort to look nice, because the two women, Gianna and Monica, were dressed to the nines when they pulled. Head to toe elegant black clothes, manicured nails, and long dramatic earrings, I didn't think they would take to kindly to having Livia leave snot on the shoulders of their jackets.
After parking we walk up the hill to the seminary where Lorenzo meets us at the gate, all decked out in his uniform. We let Giulio check out the bomb-sniffing dog and then go into the auditorium to stake out a place on the end of an aisle where I could keep the stroller next to us. The ceremony wasn't set to start for an hour and there was lots of room. No sooner had we sat down than Giulio begins demanding food, though this time I had come prepared with drinkable yoghurts and crackers, and then he starts demanding to go to the bathroom. I give a whiny Livia over to Lorenzo (let's hope she doesn't get snot on his shoulder, won't go with the uniform) and take Giulio to the scene of so many of last year's potty mishaps. We come back and Lorenzo hands me a wailing Livia and the video camera. "Ok, so it's really important you get the moment when I get the award, and maybe also a bit of the National Anthemn, and oh!" he says, putting the photo camera in the stroller, "Don't forget to take photos!" Geez, maybe I could take a ten page introspective photo shoot on the whole event and send it to Vanity Fair while I'm at it? I'd like to see Mario Testino use a video camera with one hand and bounce a grumpy baby with the other. Monica offers to hold Livia so I can film, but Livia will have no one of it. She keeps arching her back and wailing, clearly only Mommy will do today. In the end I hold her on my left hip, while with my right hand I operate the video camera as they kick things off with the National Anthemn. The camera shakes like an elderly Katherine Hepburn is holding it. I roam over the crowd, taking in the choir singing onstage; a mix of young children wearing matching t-shirts and baseball hats and an elderly group with all the men wearing tuxedos. The combination of the two sounds is intense, part bleating, part vibrating. They sing the first verse of the anthemn, against a taped orchestral accompionment, of which most people know the words, and then they launch into the second verse of which no one knows the words. The audience promptly drops out, though all the police who rose at the first chord to salute must remain standing, though fortunately after two verses the choir has had enough and we all sit down, except for me, while the Chief of Police comes up to speak. I turn the camera off and put Livia in her stroller and try to slowly rock her to sleep, listening to the Chief go through his laundry list of numbers and statistcs for the last year. You can be sure that there will be no thanking the families of the officers today. Livia has just dropped off and I am about to sit down when the man's speech ends and suddenly there is a thunder of applause. Livia wakes with a start and immediately starts wailing. They then move into the awards, which in some way is worse, because they are now applauding every two minutes or so. I resign myself to standing for the rest of the ceremony, easing the stroller back and forth.
I look across the packed auditorium to where Lorenzo and the other officers who are getting awards today are seated together, I assume that the ones who are standing are next to be called so I think I have a few minutes before I have to do any more filming. Suddenly Lorenzo stands up, shit, shit, shit they are about to call him! I fumble with the camera waiting for it to click and whirl into life, and then it comes on and not a moment too soon cause now they are reading out Lorenzo's name and he and his superior are marching on stage and saluting, and the officials are giving him his award and the audience is clapping, and I would clap to except that I am still holding the camera one handed, while rocking the stroller with the other. I film until he comes off the stage and then I turn the thing off and throw it into the diaper bag, and just as well, cause someone had thought it would be a good idea to end the ceremony with the choir singing the gospel standard "Oh Happy Day", not exactly the sentiment I would use to describe the police. Ask Lorenzo when he comes staggering in at 2 am after working 12 hours if it's a happy day that he works for the police. And is there a choir any less suited to sing this number than the group we have before us? Italians for some reason love Gospel music, it offers something that is foreign and that they themselves are unable to produce, and yes, Gospel music can be wonderful, when sung by the righ choir with the right spirit. These octongenarians and their 10 year old counterparts are not what the composer had in mind when he wrote the piece, this all white group of non-english speaking Italians who are not used to clapping together or improvising high notes, as the skinny soloist is now attempting to do. The spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak. The song doesn't sound exhaulted, but only tired, sung by people ready to go and eat lunch. The crowd doesn't seem to mind though, they join in clapping including Monica and Gianna, but their flesh is weak too and after a few bars they lose the beat and have to drop out. I bite my lip and look down at a sleepy Livia and try not to laugh out loud. Lorenzo told me later that he had to struggle not to laugh as well.
I realize as the choir winds down that in a matter of moments everyone is going to make a run to the door and to the buffett lunch outside and that I will have to battle the crowds while steering a heavy stroller and holding onto Giulio. I make the decision to get out early, Monica rises to the occasion and offers to bring Giulio out with her, leaving me to navigate the stairs on each side of the auditorium and then enourmous flight which leads to the outside. Luckily there are some firemen present, perhaps for eventual crowd control (things getting heated in the buffet line?) and two of them take the stroller and, like the Pope sitting in his chair, lower Livia down the stairs. She and I wait outside in the blinding sunshine as people stream out the enormous door and head towards the long tables loaded with food and wine glasses. The staff seems to be mostly teenagers, no doubt brought in from one of the technical high schools which teaches, along with hotel management, catering skills. It says a lot for my self-control that I do not make a beeline for the tables but wait until Giulio arrives with Monica, followed by Lorenzo who wants to know if his hat was on straight when he went up to get his award. He has obviously never held a baby and used a video camera at the same time or he would know that such attention to detail was beyond me at that time. We take a few family photos and then head towards the now long line to get something to eat.
All I can say is that I must be becoming a little Italian because even though the printed menu lists no less than 15 different dishes, the food just wasn't as good as last year. There was no pasta dish or risotto, though there were three different cold meat dishes, including roast beef with rocket and grana. But Lorenzo agreed, this year it just wasn't as good. Last year there had been two sets of tables as well, one inside and one outside, this year there was just the one set outside meaning there was more jostling and less elbow room. And I had Livia in her stroller to wheel around, trying not to nip the well-heeled ankles of the ladies and gentleman around me. So I have come to the conclusion that unless Lorenzo gets any more awards in the meantime, I'm not going back until Livia can walk distances without a stroller.
As a post script, I am writing this now on Sunday, the good gnomes gave me Livia back and she is here smiling and crawling and being generally good humored. Instead it seems Giulio is now ill, with a fever and a new developement: throwing up. I have a feeling it is going to be a long night........
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)