London Weather

      I would love to complain to you about London's weather. You know I would. 

      I could say things like, "how could my husband make a hot-blooded, sun-loving Italian-American like me live in this miserable wet climate, and then expect me to be happy?"

     You might even commiserate. Especially if you're a sun-worshipper like me.  

     Problem is, folks, the weather just isn't cooperating. 

     It's been really quite nice here -- okay, I'll say it, EVER SINCE WE MOVED HERE.

     London's had an amazing spring -- days upon days of sunshine actually. And even, days of unbroken sunshine, like Italians like, not just a peek-through for an hour or so.

     It's rained a bit, sure, but really not much. In English terms, certainly.   

     And London is majestic when the sun is shining. All that green looks so luscious.

     And it's almost June now too, so it doesn't get dark until past 10 p.m. So we've had some long sun-lit evenings that just seem to go on forever.

     But before we go all gooey-eyed here, the thing to keep in mind is that you just never know how long it's going to last. The Brits will tell you that in a minute. That's why they're all out there in their underwear sunbathing in the parks -- gotta take advantage of it while you can is the mind-set.         

     In Italy, and where I used to live in the States, once hot set in, that was pretty much it. You painted your toenails, broke out the sandals, and didn't think about it again until fall.

     Can't do that here. Tomorrow could be a gale. Or you could get hail later tonight. Or even in a few minutes.  

     Weather just moves over this island at an incredible speed. You can get all four seasons in one day. (Try dressing for that.)  

     A British friend of mine says last year, it was the same. Beautiful spring. And then summer set in, and it never stopped raining. 

     I'm not listening to that though. That would be negative of me. 

    And I've got to figure out what the hell to wear today.

     

                                    

     

Settling Down?

     Had a lovely day out in the English countryside yesterday. (Everything's lovely now, folks, even if it isn't). And then a scary revelation.

     My husband had a day off so we drove out of London to meet an old friend of his and his wife for lunch at a country pub in the South Downs, a majestic, rolling, green (the English do green like nobody else), impossibly quaint area near the south coast of England.

      Lovely lunch in one of the oldest pubs in Surrey. Food not that great, but we don't talk about that (probably shouldn't have picked fish -- especially so soon after my Italian calamari).       Setting gorgeous. Biggest, most perfectly trimmed hedges I've ever seen. Cutest little winding wooded country lanes. 

      Coming back into London, my husband decided to do a little detour along memory lane, and show me all the different houses and flats he lived in when growing up. Poor little guy moved around a lot. 

      Nothing had changed in the area so he easily knew the way to his old school, the pool he used to hang out in, the park where he met his friends, the pub where his father drank too much and the back lane short-cuts to and from his old hang-outs.  

      I could just see him in my mind's eye, riding his bike here and there, laughing, his little school cap sliding off his young head.

      I looked over at him driving. Since I had been in Italy, he had gotten completely used to driving on the left again, much more confident with it than when I left a month ago. He said London had all come back to him now too, and he could find pretty much find anything again, just like a quarter-century ago. 

      This just after I tried to get into the wrong side of the car -- again. (and no, I didn't drink anything at lunch).      

      And then it hit me: This guy is settling down. He's comfortable here. And getting more and more comfortable as time goes on. Completely the opposite of me.

      AND he's not crazy. 

      What the hell am I going to do?                                        

      

     

            

     

The Unpacked Suitcase

    Been back for a couple days now but my suitcase still sits open on our bedroom floor, waiting for me to unpack it. I can't. 

    I don't know where to put the stuff in it until I move a bunch of other stuff somewhere else. But I'm not sure where to move that stuff yet (is there anywhere?). So consequently, I haven't done anything. I've noticed my husband eyeing my suitcase nervously, afraid to comment, I would think.           

    He knows as well as I, of course, that I'm the kind of person who unpacks immediately when they get home, an organized soul. At least I used to be.

    In our old house, the one we were so lucky to have sold, we had put in a walk-in closet, so it was a cinch to unpack. Took five minutes. Room to put everything. Summer and winter clothes divided.

    Here, we're stuffed into three closets in two rooms together. Our winter coats don't fit anywhere so we bought some hooks and hung them all by the front door. My husband took his big bulky winter coat to his locker at work.  More than half of our stuff is in storage.

   We have a spare room so the boys can come and stay, but that's where two of the overflowing closets are, so I better tell them that when they do come, it'll be better if they just come naked.

    I threw away so much stuff when we left our house. I donated bags and bags of stuff. And I'm not a woman with a lot of clothes actually. Or shoes. My girlfriends will attest to that. 

    And although I'm loathe to admit it, this flat has pretty decent closets -- for England. Boy could it be worse. I can't even describe to you how much worse it could be.

    Okay, so I'm an ugly American who likes closet space. Who's used to closet space. And I'm a 55-year-old woman who's lived in her own house for a long time, who's collected things, who's inherited things from her dead parents, who's raised two kids who also had things. 

    I admit it. Shoot me now.

    Am I just too old for this?  

                

               

         

      

Quiet Civility

    I think it's safe to say England is a country without a soundtrack. Unless the gentle patter of rain on your bedroom window counts. Which it doesn't. Because that's nature, not man. 

   It is so quiet here after Italy I can hardly believe it. How can one of the biggest cities in the world -- a sprawling metropolis of some 8 million people -- be so much quieter than the side of a hill in central Italy?

   Because the Brits wouldn't have it any other way. They wouldn't want to impose.

   When I woke up this morning just after dawn, I couldn't hear anything except the distant white-noise drone of planes starting to take off from London's Heathrow airport. And it's not like we're out in the country here. We're in London, only a five-minute walk from our local "high street" and less than ten minutes from the nearest Underground station.

    It's a busy area. But we're on a residential side street of terraced houses -- like most of the rest of this town. And nobody would dream of making any noise until at least 9 a.m. And then only if they really couldn't help it. 

    I thought of my neighbor's dog in Italy, who barks at the slightest noise any time of the night or day. In Italy, people mostly keep their dogs outside, as guard dogs to protect them from robbers. They're supposed to bark like mad. That's their function.  

    On my street here in London, lots of people have dogs. I've seen them, but never heard one of them -- not even once.

    In Italy, life is punctuated by routine. Pretty much everyone still closes their shops at 1:30 p.m. for the afternoon where I am, so every day at about that time, it's a crescendo of shutters closing. 

   Here, people don't do things en masse. There's no national routine.  

   The Brits are quieter, unassuming people, who don't interrupt. They keep their emotions in check (unless they've had too much to drink  --   more about that later). They think a beautiful day is one where the sun comes out every now and again.

   In Italy, a beautiful day is when the sun blazes all day long, the sky is acquamarine blue and you get to top up your tan. Italians talk loudly. Everyone talks over each other. They complain about anything they can think of, the second they think of it.

    Americans are loud too. 

    So, here I am, back in the land of quiet, stoic people. 

    A loud Italian-American from Naples who loves her summer tan. Emotional as can be. Someone who wears her heart on her sleeve. And has no problem baring her soul.

    Mt. Vesuvius is back. And it's raining. 

    I feel sorry for my husband.

              

     

        

                    

      

          

   

          

Back to London Town

Help! I'm leaving Italy tonight, going back "home" to London. And if you thought I was bad here, just wait.
I wasn't going to leave. I was going to stay a lot longer. But a whisper of work has come my way there, so in the effort of settling, I'm going back. For awhile anyway.
I have no idea how much work it'll be, if it will lead to anything, or hardly anything about it at all. But if I never get any work in London, there's no chance I'll ever settle down there. And the longer I stay here, the less I can settle there.
And then and then and then...there's my British husband, who on good days, I actually still love.
Can you stay married if you live in two cities? Even if there's cheap flights between you?
Not sure about that.
And really, I can't afford to lose him now too. Then I'll really have nothing left.
So I'm off, back to our rented flat with no outside space in crowded old London, after my glorious side of the hill here.
What will I miss?
The calamari. The sun. My own house. Being Italian. Cappuccino in the piazza.
What will I gain?
My husband. Good bookstores. Movies in English. Great newspapers.
When will my life stop being about newspapers?

It's the Food, Stupid

  Forget fancy fish restaurants with white tablecloths, complicated sauces and big price tags. All you need is a hot grill -- and an Italian. 

  I just had the best seafood of my life here yesterday -- cooked on an outside barbecue at a shack with picnic tables and plastic utensils beside a little lake in the woods. 

  The calamari were as soft as butter -- never tasted calamari that tender, never knew calamari COULD be that tender. The salmon melted in my mouth, a little charred on the outside, just cooked on the inside. The king prawn (king prawn at a shack open only on the weekends?) as succulent as they possibly could be.  

   How do the Italians do it time after time? How do they know how to make the tastiest, but also the simplest, food in the world, ALL THE TIME? Is it genetic? Is it that they just won't accept it otherwise?

   A friend and I went to spend Sunday afternoon at this little lake near my house. It's been as hot as August here recently so we wanted to cool off.

  We saw the little shack at the far end of the beach and decided to see if they might have a "panino" -- a sandwich -- something easy we could have for lunch. When we got there, we saw there were no sandwiches, but rather a big smoking grill and a hand-written menu that offered everything "a la brace", or on the barbecue -- sausages, kebabs, lake fish, salmon and a king prawn-calamari combo.

    While we waited in line to order, we saw the salmon go by, the lines of the grill visible on the fish steak.

    "That looks good," I said to my friend. We ordered a salmon and the seafood combo to share.

     Oh. My. God. The two of us could barely speak as we ate. We kept looking at each other in disbelief as we chewed, the only words between us intermittent "mmmmmms."

     After we ate, we went to talk to the cook.

     "How did you do it?," we asked. "Did you marinate it? Is there some secret ingredient?" 

     Nope. Nothing at all. Just a hot grill. And knowing to not overcook it.

     And then a drizzle of oil and a shake of salt.

         

             

      

    

Reality Check

    Went down to buy my newspaper this morning from the loveliest paper vendor I've ever met...and got the biggest reality check of my life. It gives me goose bumps thinking about it. 

     I've always loved the woman who runs the newspaper stand in my little town here. Even if she's run out of the paper I want, which often happens since she only gets two copies a day, she's always there with a big wide smile and a welcoming ciao.

    Not all Italian shopkeepers are like that. As a foreigner -- even an Italian foreigner like me (not from this town), it can take years for an Italian shopkeeper to warm to you, to even acknowledge you. 

    But this woman has always been different.  

    Because she's so "simpatica",  I'm always looking for ways to crack that cute smile and get her laughing. So today, I started on about whether Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's marriage was on the rocks. (Yesterday, it was Berlusconi's marriage that had us chuckling over my newspaper). 

    "She'll be fine Angelina no matter what happens, huh?," she said to me. "She's not changing all those shitty diapers, is she?" We laughed, two mothers having a giggle together. 

    And then, because I've always wanted to know more about this special woman (and because I'm a nosy reporter -- okay, ex-reporter), I asked: "How many children do you have?" I knew it was her son who ran the stand for her when she wasn't there.

    "Only the one now," she said, suddenly serious, suddenly looking down. "I've lost two of them."

     "My god, what do you mean?" I asked.

     "I had three sons," she said. "Lost the second one just a few months ago. Of a pulmonary embolism. I've lost two sons in the last ten years."

     Oh my god. Oh no. How does she keep smiling at her customers every day?

     "He died suddenly on February 16," she said. "He was 30." 

     That was the day my husband and I arrived in London to start our new life, the day I started to miss my boys so much I thought I might crack.

     But my sons are alive and well; they're just in the States. And I picked this life. 

     Tears sprang to my eyes. Tears sprang to her eyes. We hugged.

     And then I took my paper and walked back up the hill in shock.

                    

              

          

            

                     

     

      

   

The Italian Soundtrack

    Can a country have its own sound? Anyone who's spent any time here knows that Italy does.

    When I used to come for the summer as a child, I'd lie in bed that first night in my grandmother's apartment in Naples listening to the wondrous soundtrack of Italy. That's how I'd know I was back. So different from the States. 

    It's a mixture of sounds -- motorized scooters or "motorini" in the distance, car horns, shutters and gates opening and closing, dogs barking, sirens blaring, and of course, Italians talking (or screaming). 

    It's all loud. Italians have a great tolerance for noise -- and a great capacity to make it. (me included).  

    It's all the more striking when you've been gone for awhile. And living in the U.S. suburbs, which can be eerily quiet.

    This morning, not long after the sun came up, Italy was already in full swing here on my side of the hill.

    First, my neighbors were outside on their lawn, chatting loudly (Italians don't know how to talk softly, me included), which was strange. They sell vegetables in the local market, so they're usually gone in their truck laden with produce long before dawn.

    Then the dogs of the neighborhood started, one sparking the other in what quickly becomes a symphony of barking. 

     I lay in bed thinking, what the hell is going on?

    Not long afterwards, an earth-shattering bang, followed by a few more of the same. If I had been in the States, I would've run for cover. 

    But here, I just rolled over, got up and opened my shutters to look out.

    Fireworks. Really powerful ones. Before 8 a.m. You gotta be kidding.

    But stupid me. It was my town's patron saint day. I didn't even know. Never been here in May before. Never lived here before.

               

    

    

      

     

  

Calling Home

   Got a phone card yesterday to be able to save money calling my boys. The shop I went to only sold 5 Euro cards, but a friend had told me she could talk to her daughter in New Zealand for a long time for 5 Euros.   

   I settled in bed at about midnight to call my youngest son using the card. It was so nice to hear his voice.  

   As soon as we really started talking though, as soon as he started telling me what he was up to, the card ran out. Costs a lot more calling cellphone to cellphone, I guess, and like many young American kids, my sons only have cellphones. And we don't have a landline here (used to, but it got cut off -- long, boring Italian story). And his Internet isn't working at the moment.       

   The phone went dead. I sat there staring at it, wanting to hurl it across the room.

   Instead, I texted him telling him the card had run out and that I loved him. He texted me back saying he loved me too.

   My heart cannot stand this ache. 

   I was going to stay a lot longer here. But this morning, I'm thinking I need to get back to London. To be near my landline, where I can call the States for next to nothing. So I can talk to my boys whenever I want, for as long as they feel like it, before they don't want to talk to me anymore.

   How am I doing creating a great, new life for myself?    

   

Working 9-5

  What is it about work? And so the lack thereof?

  Is it the structure you don't have to create? The routine you don't have to plot out every morning when you wake up? The easy camraderie with people you don't have to arrange to see?

   A. All of the above.

   But then when you're working full-on, you think, if only I could be free for awhile, if only I had more time off to do the things that interest me. Ah, the stuff I would do, the places I would go. 

   Careful what you wish for.

   I knew I had a great job. I'm not that stupid. I loved being a reporter at a big newspaper. It doesn't get much better than that in terms of employment -- for me, anyway.  

   But as my husband always said, it's just a job after all. 

   Since he was right, it had its good days and bad, its bad years and good, its moments of triumph and disappointment, like every other job. 

   So I would fantasize about not doing it, about all the things I would do if I didn't have to do it.

   Now I don't have to do it. But I'd much rather still be doing it. Can I take all those fantasies back?

   It all came too quickly, prematurely. Boys still in college. My beloved newspaper business going down the toilet like a super-fast flush.  

   A friend of mine says that a wise old television reporter once told her that journalists hate working, but hate not working too.

   I'm pretty sure it's not just us.      

Ciao Bella!

   Who is this gorgeous, remote creature, the modern Italian woman?

    I went to my cousin's 50th birthday party over the weekend (He's 50? He was always the runt of my brood of male cousins).

    It's always great to see my cousins -- they come with floods of warm childhood memories. But what really caught my eye at his party were the women. Italian women are fascinating to me. I guess because technically I am one. But not. My mother definitely was.   

   Let's start with my cousin's wife, who's a judge and a mother of three, who threw the party for her husband.

   A petite, slim woman, she wore a skin-tight black jumpsuit with a sparkly sash circling her hips and a dramatic open V-back that exposed her tanned back down to her waist. Black heels. Blonde highlights.

   The spread she laid out was just as elegant as her look. Appetizers included bite-sized tomatoes -- "pomodorini" -- stuffed with rice with the tops put delicately back on, and three kinds of mini-quiches with different stuffings -- ricotta and asparagus (in season, of course) just one of the selections.

   She made three kinds of "primi" or first courses, including a mouth-watering swordfish pasta. That was only the beginning of the meal. She made most of it herself. No Costco involved. She does have a housekeeper, I'll give you that. But it was all her creation.

   Other women at the party included a psychiatrist, a criminal defense attorney, an accountant and various other professionals -- not that they ever talk about their jobs (you don't talk about your jobs in Italy -- food, vacation and family much more interesting topics).

   One woman, with thick dark hair and wearing a one-shouldered clingy pumpkin-colored dress, talked about how she was sandwiched between parents, kids and job (she might not have mentioned her job actually) -- a modern situation for women all over the world. 

   "Do you cook dinner for the family every night?" I asked.

   "Of course," she replied. And when she says dinner, she's not talking Hamburger Helper.

   Another stylish woman leant over on the sofa, smiling. 

   "She bakes her own bread, too. It's really good."  

   But these mysterious, beautiful creatures are not easy to really get to know. Especially for foreigners. None of my long-time expat friends can name a single Italian woman as a life-long friend (not family). Why, nobody is completely sure.  

    And in the mixed marriages involving Italians, it's almost never the Italian woman who falls for the foreign guy. It's always the other way around.

   Ciao bella! Who the hell are you?

      

    

A Fitful Night

  Hardly slept last night here on the side of my hill in Italy. Tossed and turned until dawn with fitful, fragmented dreams of my Italian parents, my sons in the States, and my own childhood.

   It didn't help that I didn't get home until past 1 a.m. -- and shouldn't have had that last Averna -- after an extraordinary evening with my American-gone-Italian friend from the other night. She graciously introduced me to a friend of hers, who made dinner for us at her staggeringly beautiful house: an Australian-Italian woman who lives nearby with her Italian man. (A lot of the expats are hyphens here.)   

   As we sat eating fish carpaccio in her big, open living room-dining room-kitchen with its wide glass door thrown open to the smooth stone terrace outside, she told the story of how an Australian girl from Sydney ended up calling central Italy home -- at least for now.  

   Boy did it sound familiar. It was all about her Italian father. That's what mine's about too.

   Didn't take long to realize our stylish Australian hostess doesn't fully know where she belongs either, although she's created one helluva nest trying to figure it out.

   No way is this just me, although I am at the sharp end of it now, an exposed nerve, or as one old newspaper buddy called me recently: an unpacked box.

    Way beyond this tattered old box, the search for belonging is an universal condition in today's world. 

   Oh good. That means lots of other people have felt this shitty too...and come out the other end.

   I reassured myself with that as dawn broke over the hill and my pillows lay next to me in a heap. 

     

                

          

Graduation from Afar

   What kind of a mother misses her eldest son's graduation from college to sit on a side of a hill in Italy contemplating her destiny?  

    I wanted to go, I swear. But HE didn't even go. But that's actually my fault too.

    He did graduate with honors, though, so that's good, right?

    Even if his mother has abandoned him -- and his brother -- to a life with no family home to run home to with his laundry.  

    My son graduated from college on Mother's Day. Anything else I happened to miss out on that day? 

    But he was insistent he didn't want to go to the ceremony. He was going to work instead at his job delivering pizzas to save money for his big European trip this summer. It was going to be a good weekend to make money with so many people in town. 

    But, but? Can't his dad and I come back to see him graduate? Considering, I'm suicidal and stuff? 

    No need, ma. Not going. Plenty of parties with friends. See you later in the summer.

    But isn't everyone going? Why don't you want to go to your graduation?

    You didn't go to yours, did you, ma? I remember you told me that once.

    But, that was different. I was stupid. That was then. This is now. And I want to come.

     

     

          

           

    

        

            

Settled Envy

 

  Ever heard of settled envy? It's a syndrome I've invented. Many people suffer from it, I bet. I've got it bad.

  Last night, I went to an old friend's house near the side of my hill here in Italy for dinner. She's American, but has lived in this area for 30 years now and just got back from a great trip home to the States full of family and friends.

  Sitting on her gorgeous terrace having a drink as the evening sun set in the distance though, she sighed over her chilled prosecco and said it was great to go home, yes, recounting everyone she had seen and all she had packed in, but really, Italy is her home, and that was made ever more clear to her, yet again, over the past ten days.   

   Over dinner in her big stone kitchen, my eyes kept darting to her sets of beautiful hand-painted Italian dishes, all stacked neatly in the huge Neapolitan china cabinet she's had for years.

   I want to stack my dishes in my china cabinet again. But my china cabinet is with all the rest of my furniture in a storage container in east London. I want to say things like I know Italy is my home, too, because I have a house here too, like her, that I spent years building and decades fantasizing about.  

   But even more than her, I was born here, grew up speaking Italian, and still have a delightful family here, cousins I spent a lot of my childhood summers with in southern Italy. There's a big part of me that's Italian. And it's the part I like best.

    I built a house here so I could feel like her. But the truth is, I don't. I still just want to run back to my old life in the States, where I just raised my boys and buried my parents. I want to go back to where my boys live, but they live in different places now.

    I want to go back to the time I was a newspaper reporter with a house and a life and two boys at home. All that's gone now though. And anyway, I live in London. Where I don't have a life. 

    Shall I bring all my furniture here? Shall I stack my dishes in nice, sturdy piles here like my friend?     

 

       

      

Home?

 Where is home? Is it where you were born? Where you grew up and went to school? Where your family is? Where your kids are? Where your friends are? Where you've been for a long time?

   If it's any of the above, I'm screwed. And using that criteria, the side of a hill in central Italy doesn't apply either. Even though, it'd be really good if it could.

   I was born in southern Italy, in Naples, almost 55 years ago to Italian parents, the youngest of two children. When I was three, my parents and my 11-year-old brother and I immigrated to America, where I grew up and went through school.

   Although we were in America, I was raised in a completely Italian home (like many first-generation Americans), my parents already in their 40s by the time we got there. Maybe that's my problem. A friend of mine says if you don't grow up where you were born, where you were destined to grow up, you're forever doomed to rootlessness. 

    Anyway, that's all to explain why I'm sitting on the side of a hill in central Italy by myself at the moment, staring at a glorious view, yes, but also wondering where the hell I am. And why.

    My British husband is in London working. He's home too, now, ever since we moved back in February. This is the first time he's lived in England in more than 30 years -- the only other time a short 3-year stint in the mid-1980s when our eldest son was born in London. 

   Recently, we've been in the States for 12 years, raising our boys and working. They're both still there. But we're both home. If someone could just remind us where that is again. 

          

          

My New (non)-Identity

 American Expat Wife. That about sums it up now. Although you would've never guessed it just a mere six months ago. Okay, okay, ten months now, since I had my own identity.  

 Anyhoo, not that long ago, I was a reporter at a big American newspaper in a big American town, where I grew up. I lived in a nice suburban house with my husband and our dog and occasionally our two boys, who were both in college. (the older one just graduated). I had a car. A yard. A job. A house. You know, the whole American thing.

  And then my big American newspaper, keeling over like every other big American newspaper, offered yet another buy-out and suddenly, I was eligible too, even though I didn't consider myself that old at a mere 53. (54 now, 55th looming this summer). 

  My husband and I talked about what we should do long and hard (I guess) and we came to our decision together, even though you KNOW -- even though you don't even know me -- that I've had to blame him at least a couple times on bad days. Gimme a break. We've been together 30 years. 

  Anyway, back to the plot. 

  I left my newspaper job last summer. We sold our nice suburban house. Although prices had come down, we were lucky to have sold it at all, although I have to remind myself of that now. We stayed in the U.S. through the election and Obama's inauguration for my husband's job. Then we moved to London with his job in February.   

  Which is technically where I live. Even though I wouldn't call what I have there a life. (more of a non-life, to go with my non-identity).    

  But that's all there. Right now, I'm sitting on the side of a hill in Italy, where I'm going to be for awhile.

  That's one of the big reasons we moved to London -- to be closer to where I am now, a house in Italy that my husband and I built over the past fifteen years -- the fulfillment of a lifelong dream (I guess).  My husband and I met in Italy three decades ago, when we were both living here in our mid-20s. I'm an Italian-American. He's British.   

   My husband is back in London working now. My boys are in the States. I'm here. Most of our furniture is in storage in London since none of it fit in our rented flat. My life is scattered all over the place. And everything feels like it's in the wrong place.

   I miss everything from my old life, even though I grumbled plenty when I was living it. I miss having a life. I miss my boys terribly, sometimes so much it physically hurts, even though I know they're supposed to be grown up now (I'm not sure they are).   

  Nobody forced this on us -- or me. We decided this. And it all made sense at the time. Really?  

  It's a great opportunity for me, people have told me. The beginning of the rest of my life and all that. Then why doesn't it feel like that?