Reality time

There's something about working that makes reality just set right in. Which is what is happening to me now. And as you know, I have no idea how I feel about any of it.
Here's the reality as I see it: I live in London now, like it or not. No longer have a well-paying job in the States. (what was I thinking?). Husband got transferred here, to the land of high taxes and really expensive everything, so he no longer has a job in the States either. (what was he thinking?) We signed a lease here until next April. Okay, that settles that pretty much.
One kid still in college and one kid unemployed and flopping at a friend's house (thank you, friend) near where we used to live. Waiting to hear about an unpaid internship in Milan. Will need supporting IF he gets it.
One plus one equals not enough money and I gotta work as much as I can.
Got a week's guarantee of work a month where I'm freelancing. So that's good.
Not enough though.
I wish it could be, just work one week a month and spend lots of the rest of the time in Italy chasing lemons and writing to you.
All premature.
Gotta still pay for lots of stuff, even though Suze Orman would tell you in a heartbeat that one shouldn't, at our age, give your savings to U.S. colleges. Too late for that, Suze.
Do I qualify for a free financial make-over? I've screwed it all up, doesn't that count?
Hardly need it, really. I've watched enough of you to know what you'd say.
Shouldn't have done it. But since you have, now, do these things: Get a job. Move to a cheaper, even smaller, place.
Stop chasing lemons in Italy. Rent that side of a hill full-time to someone. (Used to rent it lots. All dried up with the global recession).
Dump the crappy old car I just bought.
What the hell was I thinking?

The New Generation

The working world belongs to the young. At least my new working world does.
Most of the people at my freelance office here in London, a television company, are around 30 years old, give or take a few years.
Which is kinda fun, but also scary. They're all cool, and really techy.
I feel really old, but my husband says it's good for me. I'll learn a lot. It'll keep me sharp.
Shut up.
Everyone has been super-friendly and really helpful. They've made me feel welcome. It's a friendlier work environment than my old newspaper, if truth be told.
Most of the employees here are young, hip Brits, but there's some young Americans, too, a smattering of Europeans, and some nomadic types, transplants who have grown up in various parts of the world. An Arab-American woman I was working with today actually spent most of her childhood as a diplomat's daughter in Finland, of all places.
It's a cool work environment, a huge roomful of young, attractive, friendly people. There's a few people more my age, but they're all in the offices with the windows.
I'm in the big room with all the young'uns. I'm not sure I belong there. I have to wear my glasses to see my computer screen.
Don't notice anyone else wearing reading glasses. One cool Spanish dude wears a thick headband over dreadlocks, but haven't seen a single pair of magnifiers.
Yesterday, a young, cute American woman in a belted polka-dotted dress under a short, nipped jacket, smiled and waved at me across the big room, and then laughed as I got closer and said she had mistaken me for someone who's on maternity leave.
Wow. Does that young woman have any idea how long it's been since I was on maternity leave?
Try not to tell anyone.

The Office

I haven't told you anything about my workplace, all wrapped up in my Italy robbery and all.
You know what the most striking thing about it is, from a purely physical point of view?
All the cute, adorably dressed women.
Women just make more of an effort here. Than in the States, I mean. Not in Italy. They make an effort there too.
It's not that European women are better-looking, per se. Although taken as a whole, they do look better. They try harder, that's for sure. And the American expats who work here try harder too. Because everyone does. Because you have to.
One stunning woman from New York was wearing five-inch heels today with a short pencil skirt that showed off her toned, bare legs, a la Carrie Bradshaw. Her British boss wore a clingy black dress, also short, with a cute pair of ankle sandals. A Polish woman who sits near them looked fabulous in shimmery tight black trousers paired with a tight black t-shirt with a boat neckline that showed off her sleek neck bones.
Granted, all the women were young and had good bodies. But some of the women at my old newspaper were young and had great bodies too. They didn't dress like that, though.
The women at the office here were sexy, attractive, and trying to make the most of what they had. Like most of the women in this office of some 160 people. They all tend to dress like that.
It's striking.
Maybe New York is like that, I don't know, but Washington wasn't.
Thank god I noticed it the first day.
And that my new short cardy looked decent over a long t-shirt and skirt today and my big stone Italian bracelet highlighted my tan.

Where am I?

Could I be more disoriented?
When you're working, and you're a woman, you need your routine, to know what you're doing, what you're wearing, how you get there, how long it takes, what you do when you get there, stuff like that.
Missing all of the above.
Not sure what to wear. Yesterday, it was hot, so I wore a cotton skirt and sandals. Today it was cold when I left the house. Now it's hot. Is it hot at the office? Or cold? Don't know.
A jacket? Stockings? God no.
Yesterday, and the day before, I rode my bike to the Tube. Today, it was raining when I left the house. Ride my bike anyway? Carry my umbrella?
I need a small umbrella I can fit into my bag. I need to carry a cardy with me so I'm prepared when it suddenly gets cold. I need a back-pack to carry stuff in without hurting my shoulder. It's almost an hour on public transport -- at least fifteen minutes of that outside -- to get to my freelance job.
Not to mention what I do when I get there.
All new systems. All new work. All new people.
Where's the bathroom? Where do you get a sandwich for lunch?
How do you move this into that?
What is this? And that?
Not to mention London.
I've been gone for six weeks. Do I live here?
If so, how come I don't know anything?

Mac and me

Add to the list another thing I now really miss: my stolen lap-top.
Damn that gang of thieves.
I know that's pathetic and sounds so materialistic. Forgive me. But that hunk of smart metal had become like a soul-mate to me during this time of tremendous upheaval.
I bought the Macbook right after I left my newspaper job, a year ago now, as a present to myself. The newspaper had loaned me a lap-top to use at home for years, so that was my very first one.
It intimidated me in the beginning -- so much smarter than I was. And it still was, of course, up until the moment it vanished, but I had learned to live with that.
We had spent so much time together over the past year.
First, in the apartment downtown where my husband and I moved in the States for six months after we were so lucky to have sold our house last summer. My husband wasn't there very much, since he was covering the U.S. election, so Mac and I spent hours alone there together, getting to know each other.
Then here, of course, and in Italy too, since we moved to Europe in February, so much time alone at home with Mac, writing, poking around, trying to keep up with home, with the news, with my old newspaper, with everything that felt familiar.
Then there's my photos, which I hadn't backed up. My son's playlist.
I wasn't ready to lose Mac this quick.
I have to replace him, I know. But this may be one of those irreplaceable-type relationships.
I don't feel I can splurge on a new Mac anymore. That was so last summer. So like someone with a job.
My husband needs a new lap-top too -- and he's working.
So I'll just go look for a cheapo, a deal, an inexpensive lap-top at some discount store here soon. When I can face it.
When I was coming home from my freelance job this evening on the tube, it hit me again that Mac wouldn't be there when I got home. That Mac wasn't there this morning either, or I would've written to you early.
It was such a pleasure to be with him. Which then made it so easy to be with you.

A (Romanian?) Gang of Thieves

One step forward, two steps back. And all because of a gang of thieves.
A Romanian gang, according to the carabinieri paramilitary police who came to my house afterwards.
Got burgled on my side of the hill on Friday night, just before dawn, while I was asleep by myself in the house. The day I was leaving to come back to London.
Horrible. And right when I was starting to feel at home there.
The carabinieri think three or four guys, probably Romanians (it was striking they just speculated about their nationality like that. Isn't that racial profiling?) came quickly into my house by breaking a lock on the front terrace door. They stole my new Mac, my digital camera and a couple hundred Euros and pounds.
It wasn't so much what I lost, even though I cried plenty over the pictures I had in both my computer and my camera, pictures of my sons mostly. And I miss my lap-top, i.e. lifeline to the outside world, hugely (is that pathetic?).
What was really hard to take, though, was the fact that a gang of men broke into my house while I was there alone in my nightgown in bed in the next room (I wasn't sleeping upstairs in our room, like I normally do, because it was too hot).
The carabinieri said it was much better that I didn't wake up. I heard Nero barking at some point, but just turned over and went back to sleep. He's always barking -- a classic case of a crying wolf you don't heed.
A neighbor down my hill said that last year, he surprised four hooded guys -- one a Romanian he thought he recognized from the town -- in his house one night when he came home just before midnight. They had a gun, he said, although it could have been a toy. They fled when he arrived.
Robberies are pretty commonplace in Italy. Almost everyone has their story.
After I discovered the burglary in the morning, I went shaken, crying to see my next door neighbor, an elderly Italian man, who's also my caretaker. He kept saying it must've been someone who knew my movements, since it happened the day I was leaving. I thought so too, although the thought terrified me.
The carabinieri insisted it almost certainly wasn't. Two other local villas were also burgled that night, they said. The robbers' modus operandi was typical of how they do it. Although they took my lap-top, they removed the wireless Internet key, which can be used to trace the computer. They took all my cash, but thankfully left my wallet and passport, which is what they do, the carabinieri said. A quick little job. Over in less than five minutes.
It could've been so much worse, I know. I could've been hurt. I could've been traumatized by the sight of four hooded men in my living room, not an image easily discarded. I could've lost my entire wallet, with all my cards and I.Ds, which is a huge hassle.
And it was actually good that I was leaving that day, so I didn't have to spend the night there alone right afterwards. I was with my husband in our bed here in London instead. I'm grateful for that.
And I'm going to be here at least a couple weeks now, so time will ease the shock of the robbery.
But I am planning on going back alone, before my husband can take more vacation. And I was certainly planning to be there alone for extended periods of time.
Hopefully, a gang of thieves won't also rob me of the progress I've made.

Don't Give a Damn

      Italy is one of the most beautiful countries on earth, right? Can everyone agree with me on that? Even if you're, let's say, a France person, or a Thai freak, or a Guatemalan aficionado, you'll still agree I know, that this is one helluva bit of eye candy here.

      But do the Italians cherish that?

      Hell no. What do I care? 

      Non me ne frega niente. I do not give a damn -- one of Italy's best-loved and most-internalized sayings.

      Which leads to attitudes like, I will leave all my trash behind here on this beautiful beach when I leave, because, really, I don't give a damn about what it's like when you get here. Care a whole lot more about changing my son into his dry bathing suit after his afternoon swim.

      I will push ahead of you in line when you're not looking, too, because, well, I'm in a hurry. Who cares if you are too?  

      And so on.

      Italians have no sense of civic duty, only duty to their family. Trust me on this. I've got shades of it in me too (Neapolitans might have invented it), although, I think I was somewhat tamed by growing up in the States. 

       My husband may not agree with that statement. This has been a source of conflict over the years. The Brits are all about civic duty.

      Back to my ancestors. 

      That's a good metaphor -- the taming of wild animals. My new Australian-Italian friend reminded me of this yesterday (two new friends in one summer? What bounty Italy provides!)

       She was saying how she remembered Aussies yelling at Italians at staggeringly beautiful, empty beaches in Australia when she was a kid when they would just leave their trash there after well, a day at the seaside with their families. (What do I care? We had fun.)

      I thought about a newspaper story I once wrote about Hmong immigrants in Minneapolis. Mimicking their lives in the wilds of northern Thailand, they would go to Minnesota parks in the summer and shoot at anything that moved pretty much -- felling birds, hawks, squirrels, rodents, anything, to bring home for supper. The local police were stymied as to what to do with them. 

      Italians are truly like wild animals when it comes to this majestic land they've inherited, this staggering amalgam of mountains, seas, and spell-binding cities. 

      They just take it all for granted. Throw their trash everywhere. Drive like maniacs. Treat their neighbors like crap. Only nurture their own infinitesimal piece of this amazing country.   

      I mean c'mon, be serious, non me ne frega niente about the rest of it.

      I've got lunch with my family to think about.                                         

            

           

      

                      

The Girls

     Had my girls lunch today. It was pretty successful, I think. The food was fresh and tasty, like I knew it would be (thank you, Italy). The ladies who didn't know each other really seemed to hit it off. And it was a lovely, diverse, and interesting group of women from four different countries. All of which kinda made me sad.

     What?

     First of all, I couldn't even approach a lunch like that in London, which is allegedly where I live. Don't have a dining room -- not to mention a terrace with an astounding view of a lake. Kitchen table isn't big enough for the number I had -- and the food I laid out -- not even close. And after you're sitting in the kitchen there, what do you look at, the stove?  

      And then there's the limited guest list. Who would be on it?  

      At the end of the meal, a group of the women were excitedly exchanging cellphone numbers and email addresses to start a book group.  

     Great. Yet another book group I'm going to miss out on. I already have the one I started where I used to live in the States, which I think is going fabulously without me. It almost killed me when they dropped me from their email list (why did they do that?).  

     Now my lunch guests here on my side of the hill are gonna start one too. And I get to miss that as well. 

     Jealousy is not pretty. 

     Because the ladies are all lovely and sensitive, though, they quickly noticed how I felt. And since I was the host, and introduced them all to each other, they felt bad. 

     One of them put her arms around me and and said, "you're going to be part of it too, whenever you come, whenever you're here," she said to me. 

     I stuck my lower lip out in a pout. 

     "Aw," another one piped in, also hugging me. "We're going to put you on the email list and tell you everything we're reading. So when you're not here, you can read it too, in London. And email us what you thought."

     Wonderful. Can't wait.

                     

             

                   

To Air-con or Not to Air-con?

      It is hot here on the side of my Italian hill. Temperatures have risen the last few days in Italy -- and they were high already. It's basically been sunny and hot here for weeks.

      Now it's hotter. 

      Okay, it's not as hot as it could get in the States where I used to live, not as humid certainly, but there's one big difference between there and here.

      Air-conditioning.

      Don't have air-conditioning here and don't feel like I really need it most of the time. We have ceiling fans in the bedrooms, it does generally cool off in Italy at night, and it's not that humid here, so usually it's fine. Nice even.

      Our bedroom is the hottest room in the house, though, because it's under the roof. And the noisiest too, because it's as close as you can get to the German shepherd next door without actually living outside in the garden with him.

      So I'd be lying if I told you I didn't at times yearn to be as American as an American can be -- blast that air-con, shut all the windows, snuggle under my duvet (yes, in the summer), and sleep like a rock, especially when it's 95 degrees outside.

     Yeah, baby.

     Just the thought of it makes me want to break out into the Star Spangled Banner.

     I don't like that massive U.S. air-con in malls and stores, though. Mostly because I want to wear a summer dress without goose bumps ruining the effect -- or carrying a sweater around. And I don't like feeling guilty about how we're using more than our fair share of resources. 

     But sleeping with massive air-con, pretending it's the dead of winter, now that's another story. Just get me under that duvet, and all thoughts of American over-consumption vanish under the steady drone of zzzzzzs.

     I've been sleeping in the guest room the last couple nights since my son left. It's cooler there; our bedroom is just too hot to get any rest when it's like this. And then there's Nero next door (yep, he's got a Roman name. No wonder he thinks he owns the 'hood.)

     Yesterday, I went to a big discount store near here to look for a new toaster and a lampshade. But guess what caught my eye instead?

     You know. A room air-conditioner.

     They're expensive though. And you gotta drill a big hole in your wall to accomodate it, and put half of the unit outside.

     I can just hear my neighbors hassling me about it now. (Italian neighbors are the stuff of several blog posts -- or a thick book). 

     I may have to just bite the bullet and do it anyway, though.

     Sod the expense, as the Brits would say. Sod the potential hassle with the neighbors, the hole in the wall, the Roman German shepherd, everything really.

     And sing 'Oh Say Can You See' just as loud as I possibly can.

               

                       

Alfresco Lunch

     I've invited a few women over for lunch on Thursday -- a combination of British, American and Australian women, all smart and interesting, all expats who live around here. 

    That's a post in itself, or even a book, how they all have made their lives around this lake, but they might not like it and I wanted to tell you about the food anyway. (Sorry. I know.)   

     It is just so easy to do an alfresco lunch like that here.    

     It's the food, stupid. 

     It's all so fresh -- and tasty, and ripe. Cannot go wrong.

     That single, indisputable fact may be why Italy has to ultimately be home. Because food is just so important.

     What will I serve at my ladies lunch? Nothing that fancy. Nothing that hard. Yummy, nevertheless.  

     I may pick up some thinly sliced prosciutto crudo and serve it with a perfectly ripe melon and some juicy little bite-sized figs.

     Or a big tomato or two (at their prime, natch) with a  big old hunk of mozzarella di bufala drizzled with olive oil and basil.

     I could do bresaola, a thinly sliced cold cut, with rucola and fresh parmesan. 

    For a vegetable, I could pick up some french beans, thin and curly, in season of course, perfect not too cooked with just some olive oil and lemon. 

     A nice big salad with rucola, fresh parmesan and chick peas?  

     A few mussels, maybe?  

     A long piece of pizza bianca to go with it all -- freshly baked plain pizza with bits of salt on it from the bakery down the street. 

     A mouth-watering watermelon for dessert? A medley of berries with lemon and sugar?  

    Or some homemade fruit gelato? Melon? Kiwi? Lemon?

    Not sure. Will decide when I go to the grocery store Thursday morning.

    Mmmm.

             

                               

                  

Flying Out

      My youngest son, who's been here on the side of our Italian hill with me for five days, is leaving tonight -- going back to London for a night with his dad, and then back to Charleston, his college town, for his senior year.

      It's been so special to have him. It just hit me last night that we've never spent so much time alone together. We're almost always together as a family, the four of us.

      I know other families divide the kids up occasionally so they can spend individual time with their mothers, or their fathers, but we've never done that except for the odd movie or dinner. 

      Maybe we should have, because it does make for an unique bonding time. I can't speak for my husband, but I'm just guessing the five days our son spent with him in London before he came here were special for him too. 

      Anyway, that's it for awhile. I probably won't see him for about four months, until his Christmas break.

      I hate that.

      Last night, at dinner by the lake, we were talking about all his high school buddies and how much time they had been home this year too. It seems the only time I've really missed with him, compared to them, was Easter, when my son said he wouldn't have come home anyway (if he had had a home to come to) because they didn't get any time off school -- and we lived several hours from Charleston.

      That made me feel better. I hadn't really missed out on anything. But that's going to change now.

      Everyone will go home for Thanksgiving in November, my favorite American holiday.  And flying them to London for Thanksgiving is just not feasible financially, so close to Christmas break.

      I didn't want to broach Thanksgiving last night. It just makes me feel sad. He'll have plenty of invitations from his friends, of course, so he won't be alone, but still. We will be. Will we be every year from now on? 

      While we were talking about his friends, and his looming graduation next May, my son said, you know, most of them are going home, for awhile anyway, after they graduate. Until they find jobs.  

      We've spent a lot of time discussing what he's going to do after he graduates -- and coming to London to work is one of his options. Just one of many that he's tossing around.

      I've told him there's no pressure for him to do that -- and he knows that. It would be good for him in a lot of ways, building on what he studied at college, but it's something he needs to decide for himself, of course. 

       My face fell, I was jealous, it was obvious, when he told me a lot of his friends would be moving back home, even if that's not really what they want to do, or what he would want to do, he told me.

       I have no right to feel that, though, something he quickly pointed out.

       "You're the ones who moved, Mom," he said.

        My eyes welled.

             

       

                  

Caffe

     Un caffe, per favore.  

     Corto, lungo, macchiato, corretto, al vetro -- thick, thin, with a spot of milk, a dash of whisky, or in a glass. Those are just five ways I can think of quickly that Italians order espresso. There are more. Those are just the most obvious.   

     Not one of them is "con panna", or "doppio," which are the two variations on espresso you usually can get in the States, with whipped cream or a helluva lot of it. I know this from experience, because well, I've had lots of espressos in the States.  

     Had to. No choice. Unshakably lodged in the DNA.

     Even more so in the Neapolitan gene pool, a subtle distinction I learned more about yesterday.

     Stopped at my local for a mid-morning cappuccino on the fly. My husband and I have now firmly chosen the bar (I'm just talking coffee) at the bottom of our hill, the bar closest to us, as our local. 

     All Italians have their local -- the bar they go to every day for caffe (day after day, year after year, all together now, the comforting, rigid rhythms of Italian life).  

     And this bar has won out for us. The caffe -- however you order it -- is always perfect (and when I say perfect, that's what I mean) and the family who owns it has finally warmed to us. Many Italian shopkeepers can take a long time to warm to a new customer, because seriously, I mean, who are you and where do you come from? And what do I care?   

    But when they finally do warm up, it's like the sun's come out. 

    So. Went in, started to order cappuccino (long before lunch, so still okay) but then noticed an attractive, older, smartly dressed woman standing at the bar (that's the only way to have caffe), with the most sublime little caffe macchiato al vetro  -- espresso with a spot of milk in a glass -- in front of her.  The black caffe sat in a distinct line at the bottom of the squat little glass with its silver handle, and on top of it, a small, perfectly-formed dollop of milk. 

    A still-life painting more than a beverage. 

    Had that. Was there a choice? Two other people came in and ordered it too. This is what you have at that bar at about 11:15 a.m.   

    Started talking to the barrista (son of the owner). And explained to him that even though the Americans and the Brits have all bought the latest espresso machines (don't think his was the latest, just any old one), they didn't have a clue how to make coffee. Espresso especially. Any of it really, though.

    It's the grind, he says. They don't have the right grind. 

    The grind? That really seemed an unlikely culprit. How about the proportion of milk? The bitterness of the blend? The fact they don't even like small, short coffee -- that inimitable jolt of java -- and so have no idea how it's supposed to taste? That it's too watery, too hot, too bitter, has whipped cream on it or they've given you a boatful of it?   

    Doesn't Lavazza, Illy, or whoever manufactures Italian coffee for these big industrial machines just sell the same stuff? And so if you buy the stuff the Italians buy, the grind the Italians want, then you can do it too? 

   Nope. Seems not. There's the international grind for export. And that's the only grind you can buy overseas, he says. 

   And then for Italy, there's three different grinds -- Northern, Central and Southern. A looser grind for northern Italians, getting more compact as you move down the boot. Neapolitans are very fussy about their coffee, he says. They like it forte. With a small glass of water beforehand to clear their mouths.  

   I think of my Neapolitan father and the tiny swivel-top coffee maker, called la Napoletana, that my mother used to make his caffe at least twice a day when I was growing up.  

   Hmm, okay. He goes on.

   I only buy the central Italian grind, he says, because we're in central Italy, of course. 

   Of course. That makes sense.

   I've got a few Neapolitan customers, though, he explains. 

   I can still make it how they want it, of course.

   Of course. 

Work

    Work. Yeah! Damn!

    Maybe the universe does answer when you ask. 

    I'm not sure I asked. In a way, I was just about to turn the corner into hardly caring, but there it is.

    Just after I whined to you about what to do, I got an email from the company I worked for in London for a week in June. The last time I left Italy early to go back to London. 

    Now, they've got two weeks work starting the week after next -- just enough to make going back worthwhile. Flights -- even the cheapo, cheapos from weird airports -- are expensive now, because it's August and plenty of Italians are flying to London.

     The Italians love London -- and all things British -- at the moment. Italians love different places at different times, all together. Italians find comfort in doing things together. It keeps them psychologically healthy, too, is my assessment. You're never without your group here. It's not a country for flying solo. 

     Back to work.

     So, I'm going back to London in 10 days for a couple weeks. And then coming back. (I've got a car now, so I HAVE to come back). 

     This is dividing your time, right? Is this what I was asking the universe?

     There's a big part of me that wants to stay here, of course. C'mon. It's the glorious Italian summer vs. the crappy English excuse for one.  

     A girlfriend suggested I might go down to the Aeolian islands off Sicily with her for a few days to a villa she's rented during that time. Love it down there. And would love to spend a few days with her and her daughter there.  

     And I've still got lots of errands here. Need my resident parking sticker so I don't have to pay one euro an hour to park down the street from my house, but the place you get them is only open on Saturday mornings from 11:00-11:15 (okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but only by a few minutes, I swear).

    And I'm so ashamed to admit I haven't started recycling yet, even though my little town has, because well, I wasn't here to get the special bags you need to put your plastic in and I still haven't gone to get them (tried at the post office, yes, the post office, but they were out). So I'm still driving my trash a few miles down the street to the next town, which is not recycling yet.

     That is just so lame. And so Neapolitan.

    And I've hardly been alone yet either. To be scared, or happy, or whatever I would be, which I'm really not sure about yet.  

    My eldest son and his merry band of back-packers left this morning for Florence. I'm only going to see them at the Rome train station next weekend to give them a big suitcase they couldn't carry around with them. Unless they get robbed again, I guess.

    And my youngest son is here now until Monday, until he goes back to college for his senior year. So I've actually got to go now.

    A closing thought about work.  

    Even though there's all kinds of good reasons to stay, I have to go, I know. Otherwise they won't want me in the winter, when I will really want them.

    And then I have to be honest. It felt good when I saw the email. I was in a good mood all afternoon. And how tanned can one person get, even if they are Italian. (that's a stupid question actually, because the answer is never enough.) 

    Work. Can't live with it. Can't live without it. 

    10 more days of lemon-chasing. Stay with me. 

       

Just Today

     Woke up feeling panicky this morning. I don't know what I'm doing, and that is not a state that is good for me. Forget all the nostalgic Italian stuff, all the lemons, and names and family and everything else.

     I'm American, for chrissakes -- I need a plan, a goal, a roadmap. And I don't have one.

     I bought a used car here yesterday (when you have plenty of time to kill, I'll tell you what that entails). 

     If I'm going to be here for awhile (am I?), I can't just keep renting cars. It's expensive, and I don't even have a job anymore. (Why don't I have a job anymore? I felt a lot stronger when I did. Why did I leave my job? Can't remember any of the reasons this morning).

     I bought the car also because if my older son gets an internship in Milan for the winter, the company told him he'll need a car there. We have no idea if he's going to get an internship though, because well, the global economy sucks and it's mid-August now, so Italy is coming to a grinding halt until early September. (Went to Rome last night. Not a soul there except the foreigners. My cousins have all left town now too.) 

    My son will go back to the States next weekend and we have no idea where he's going to live. The arrangement we had set up for him before this possible internship came up is gone now. He's given up his two jobs and his apartment in his college town. He got his wallet stolen in Barcelona (natch) so money is tight for him now.   

    We're no longer there so there's no place for him to go home to for even a month, a week, or a night. It's been exactly a year since we were so lucky to have sold our house in the States.

    I feel like crying when I think about that house, our so comfortable American home of 12 years. I just want to run back there so I can open the front door for my son when he gets back from his trip next weekend. And needs help with his laundry.  

    What am I doing here chasing lemons while my husband works in London and my son searches for a couch to flop on where we used to live?  

    And now I've bought a car too, so if I don't stay, it'll feel like such a waste. When it was supposed to be just the opposite. 

    I'm the happiest here that I've been anywhere this past year of upheaval. I've even made a new friend.  

    It feels familiar here, comforting. London feels strange, full of strangers with habits I don't share and weather that is alien to my Neapolitan soul. But does that matter? Who cares? I've lived everywhere with people much more alien than the Brits. And my husband is British. 

   But I feel like I need to belong now and to create a new home that can endure. That I can build on. And I'm pretty sure London isn't it.    

    Nobody knows me there, so working means starting all over with people who don't know what I can do and couldn't care less what I've done in the States. I have no life there beyond waiting for my husband to come home. (A mediocre cappuccino on the high street in the afternoon does not a life make.)    

    And here? Can I make a permanent life here? I've tried that before, in Rome, and it didn't work. A friend reminded me of that recently. Will it work now that I'm older, now that my options have shrunk? Can I actually live full-time on my side of the hill in this little town on the lake? 

    And if I stay here and my husband stays in London, will that work? We've raised our children now. There's no pressing need for us to be together all the time -- the empty-nester dilemma. That's scary.

    Or can I make a life shuttling back and forth between London and here on cheap flights? (which when you add it all up, are really not that cheap).     

    Gotta get out of this mood. The merry back-packers have come back (money running low; pickpockets haven't helped) and they're here for only one more day. My younger son is coming tonight for five days.

    Don't know when I'll see either of them again after that. So cannot ruin it.

    Gotta quash that American need for a plan, for a clear way forward.

    And try to just live for today. Like my son and his friends.   

A Name

      Is there nothing in a name? Is it really true that a rose would smell as sweet whatever you called it? 

      I've got my doubts. 

      Just how much my name, Daniela, is a part of who I am was brought home to me with a serious splash yesterday afternoon at a water aerobics class I've found here in my little Italian town.

      In an afternoon awash in throwbacks. 

      First, the class was held at the pool of a little hotel we stayed at for three summers in a row when we came from the States 13, 12 and 11 years ago while we were building our side of the hill a few miles down the road.

      The hotel, a modest, sprawling, family-run place with little cottage-style rooms with porches, suited my husband and I like no hotel we've stayed at in 31 years together. 

     The family who owned it had three sons, two of whom were near the age of our young boys, so we got to leave our kids there every afternoon -- to swim in the pool, play cards, kick a soccer ball around -- completely happily with the boys who owned the place while we ran around town trying to build a house on a two-week vacation. 

      Both the Italian boys, now men, were there yesterday afternoon since well, the family still owns the place and hot summer afternoons are still spent lying around the big pool in the sun (day after day, year after year, season after season, the comforting, rigid rhythms of Italian life). 

     Water aerobics there are new in Italian terms though. They've only been doing them for three years. I just found the class yesterday.

     Hadn't been back to the hotel in a decade. (Went back a lot that first summer we finished our house, since our boys were traumatized to be staying in an cavernous empty villa with no furniture, overhead lights, closets, toys, or anything at all really, rather than there. We were too.) 

    Back to water aerobics. 

    At a certain point during the class, the teacher, a sleek, young, tanned, toned Italian woman with a ready smile and thick brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, was calling out encouragement to her students, pushing us all to keep going, to keep breathing. 

    "Forza, Dani," she said to me, smiling, using the common diminuitive of my name. 

     Nobody besides my family has called me that in decades. And it sounded just like my mother used to say it. I could barely keep my legs moving under the water for her.

     I was Dani all of my childhood, until I went to college, far from home. That was my Italian nickname. And it was the name I adopted for my American friends too.

    Daniela was just too hard for most Americans then. Three syllables. Especially when you had to say it with my last name, which started and ended with a vowel and had two other vowels in between. 

    Daniela Angiolamaria Iacono. Try carrying that around in 1950s Virginia. 

    And so I was Dani, even though my American friends pronounced it in a different way than my Italian family. I always liked the Italian Dani better. She felt cuter, sunnier, full of lemons.

     When I went to college, though, feeling all grown up and itching to start my life, I wanted to be Daniela, the name I was given, the name I loved. But I knew the problems well. So I started off in college, for the first few months, telling people I met that my name was Danielle. (Only two syllables instead of three, so easier to say, I found.).

     "Danielle?" my mother exclaimed when she first heard someone call me that. "Who is that?"

     I explained the dilemma, how I was sick of being Dani, wanted to be Daniela now, like I was in Italy and at home, but nobody could pronounce it, especially with Iacono, so I had given Danielle a try instead.  

    "That's ridicolo," my mother huffed. "That's French. You have a lovely name."

    "Dio mio. You're Italian. You can't be Danielle."

        

         

Going to the Dogs

   

      Didn't sleep much last night. The dogs of my neighborhood went crazy at 4:30 a.m., a crescendo of barking, one dog sparking another, for about 10 minutes.

      Since one of the biggest, loudest barkers -- a sleek German shepherd -- is kept not far from my bedroom window, there's really no hope of sleeping through that.

     Dog ownership here is just so different from the States -- and England.  

     Most of the dogs here on my side of the hill are guard dogs. They're kept outside. And they're supposed to bark like crazy to protect their owners' properties. One dog, at a house going down the hill into town, lunges so viciously at the fence when someone walks by that you pray nothing ever happens to that fence between you and him.

     Like good dogs everywhere, they're doing precisely what their owners want. And Italians do have a point about guarding their properties -- there are a lot of robberies here.

     But the differences don't stop there. 

     Italian television is full of public service announcements now in August -- when every Italian goes on vacation (you MUST take your vacation in August) -- not to abandon your dogs when you leave for the beach.  

     It reminds me of a few years back, before we moved to the States, when we lived in an attic apartment in an apartment building on the northern edge of Rome. In the ground floor, garden flat below us, the wealthy owners had a large German shepherd, who lived in the garden (where else?). Every August they would go away, but the dog would stay there outside. 

    We never saw anyone go in to feed the dog, but obviously someone must have or it would've died. Regardless, this dog would go insane for the entire month his owners were away -- just barking wildly at all times of the day and night at everything. 

    And then, you could barely walk on our posh street there for the piles of dog shit everywhere. Italians know nothing about scooping.

    Not that you ever see an Italian walking a dog, that is. There, for apartment dwellers without gardens, it was just take the dog across the street for a second, have him shit, leave the steaming pile right there, and take the dog directly back. For dogs who had gardens, there wasn't even that.    

    Here in my little town, I think the only person I've actually seen walking their dog is a German woman who lives here. I see her almost every day, like I used to see people in my neighborhood in the States.  

    There was a dog park near our house in the States where dog owners would take their dogs to romp and play together, everyone always meticulously, obsessively, scooping. You couldn't not scoop in the States. People would report you.  

    And then there's the status thing. Gotta have a pure-bred dog here. 

    Like Ray-Ban sunglasses.

     Almost everyone I know who has a dog here has a pure-bred. There are some beautiful dogs here, to be sure, shining, powerful examples of their breed.

    And of course in the States dog owners splash out on pure-breds too, spending hundreds of dollars for a dog as well. 

    But there was almost as much status -- if not even a bit more -- in having a rescue dog, a dog you saved from the pound.

    Out of my three (potential) homes these days -- Italy, the States and London -- Britain wins the dog stakes hands down, light years ahead of Italy and so much chiller than in the States. 

    People walk their dogs there, they scoop, they own a variety of dogs, who don't just bark madly alone in their gardens, and dogs are allowed to run free in a lot of public places. 

    London's many parks are full of dogs off their leashes, happily romping and sniffing. In the States, you're only allowed to have your dog off leash deep in the woods somewhere (not even there, really, but since you often don't see anyone, it doesn't matter) or in designated dog parks. 

   And I've never seen one steaming pile of dog shit on my London street yet.

   Almost makes you want to hop the next plane back to London, find a rescue dog, and take him to the park to run. 

   At least you know you'll get some sleep.

  

   

Nothing at all

    A wise observer of Italian society said to me once that Italians have a tremendous capacity to have fun without doing anything -- without drinking, taking drugs, watching anything, listening to anything, going anywhere, just hanging out with the people they like, talking, often all at once, often disagreeing. 

    I had never thought of it like that before, but that's just so true.

    The only exception to that is food, of course, but not even much of that needs to be involved. And only if it's the right time of day. And the food is right for that time.      

    Last night, one of my Italian cousins and his girlfriend (what do you call a partner when you're in your 50s?) came to my little town so we could go out to dinner by the lake.

    They were stopping here first so she could see my house. 

    About a half-hour before they arrived, I noticed I didn't have any nibbly kind of food to offer them with a drink -- no nuts, potato chips, olives, nothing snack-like.  I had a wide selection of drinks, but no food that was right.

    I panicked and thought I'll apologize immediately when they get here and they'll forgive me. Then that observation flashed across my mind and I thought, I won't apologize right away. (that's a stupid habit of mine anyway). It's only a few minutes before dinner. I do have some cheese (even though that's not right AT ALL). Let's just see how it goes.

    They arrived and immediately went out to the terrace to admire my view and the setting sun behind it.

    After a minute or two (you don't wait much longer than that in the States or in England), I asked what I could offer them -- something to drink, something?

    "Nothing," my cousin replied. "Nothing," his partner said.

    Nothing? Not even a cool glass of mineral water? It's hot as hell still and they had just driven out from Rome.  

    Nope. 

    We sat on the terrace for quite awhile, chatting about some family plans we're making for September, trying to call another one of our cousins in Naples who we haven't talked to in ages to get him to come along.

    After about an hour of light-hearted banter and gentle teasing (which occassionally got loud with all of us talking at once), my cousin suggests we go eat. His partner asks for a glass of water right before we go. I start filling up a small glass and she tells me to stop when it's about a quarter-full.

   At dinner, we decide together we'll each order an antipasto and another course -- he a pasta dish, she and I a fish dish. She tells him to check with the waiter whether there's vinegar in the appetizer he wants, because he's had a stomach ache recently and vinegar isn't good for it, she reminds him. He does that before deciding on the appetizer. 

   I suggest wine with dinner. They agree. She orders a bottle for us. And two bottles of water, one flat, one sparkling, since I like sparkling and they like flat. She actually likes kinda sparkling, she explains, so she wants to mix the two to create the perfect blend.   

   They each had precisely one small glass of wine each and one glass of water each over our three-course meal (we ordered dessert too).  

   I had three of each. 

   Gotta work on that if I'm staying. 

   

     

    

       

    

Italian Bureaucracy

    To: The Italian People

    From: An Italian-American (or a lemon-loving Neapolitan who just happened to get transplanted to America when she was little).

    

    How does this country function? Can anyone answer that?

    That's the question an American friend of mine who's lived here for decades asked last night. It wasn't a question, actually, more of a statement. As in, I do not understand how this country functions. 

    I sure as hell didn't have an answer for her. Do any of you?

    Yesterday, I waited half an hour at the post office to pay my electricity bill. That's the only place you can physically pay your utility bills here. Can't mail them anywhere.

    And then, because I also needed some stamps for a couple postcards one of my son's friends left for me to mail, I had to get another number and then wait in a separate line for a few minutes for stamps. Couldn't buy stamps anywhere else in town either. And couldn't buy them at the same window where you pay your bills. 

   You gotta be kidding. 

   Saw a program on Italian television yesterday afternoon about Italy's brain drain. A doctor from southern Italy was featured saying he had to move to the States recently because he couldn't get any funding for the research he wanted to do here, couldn't really make any progress at all in his field here.

   He said he made immediate progress when he moved to the States -- to Columbus, Ohio (from majestic southern Italy?) -- but that that saddened him immensely, because he didn't want to go. I thought I might cry.   

   You guys gotta watch that. You don't want to lose all your best and brightest because it's all such a struggle here.   

   The flip side of this bureaucracy bung-up, though, is that ironically, it's also helped keep this country so beautiful -- and unchanged -- too.

    The guy we bought the land off to build our side of the hill here had waited 10 years for building permission. 

    Building here takes a helluva lot of time -- and they're really strict about what can be done. (Even though people routinely bend the laws and then wait years for the amnesty that does eventually come, even if it is a quarter-century later).

    My Neapolitan father used to say that the main thing you had to understand about Italy is that it never changes.  

    I had no idea how right he was. And ultimately how wonderful -- but also completely infuriating -- that is.

    Is home the country you forgive the most?       

           

An Italian Lunch

     Went to our little grocery store this morning to pick up some lunch. Was planning on just getting a big juicy hunk of mozzarella di bufala to have with some ripe tomatoes from a friend's garden sprinkled with olive oil and a few leaves off my basil plant.

     But the prepared food really piques my interest these days. It's such a new thing here.

     Traditionally, there was never any prepared food in Italian grocery stores. But now, our little grocery has everything from suppli -- breaded rice balls with a clump of mozzarella inside -- you can fry yourself to eggplant alla parmigiana that you just heat up in the oven. All delicious, and home-made by the local family who owns the store.

    It was the tomatoes stuffed with rice that caught my attention. 

    I used to love my mother's rice-stuffed tomatoes. She did them in the summer, like her cold, rice salad with capers and olives, because well, that's when you're supposed to eat those things.

    I loved watching her make them, the way she would fill them just to the right level and then put the tops back on, the way she would arrange them just so on the serving dish so they would look as pretty as a picture when she served them.

    I had my regular jobs at dinner, of course, one grating the fresh parmesan and putting it in its silver and glass container with the little spoon in it for serving. And setting the table, which had to be done just like my mother liked it with either pretty placemats or a tablecloth and the napkins always folded neatly in a triangle under the pre-positioned silverware.  

   Italians take the whole business of eating very seriously.  

   You eat certain foods at certain times of the day, of the year, and only -- and always -- with certain other things. Day in, day out, season after season, year after year. And that is the only way.  

   It's pure. Rigid. And delicious.

   I bought a big rice-stuffed tomato instead of the mozzarella, memories of my striking Italian mother in a belted polka-dotted summer dress swirling through my mind. All my male friends in high school had crushes on her.

   And one of my girlfriends from back then told me once she was always amazed when she opened the fridge at my house. Nobody had capers in their refrigerator, she said, she wasn't even sure what they were. But we always had them.

   Is home where lunch is?       

     

              

        

The Power of Now

      Nothing like 36 hours with four young men to remind you just how much fun it is to live in the present. And how easy it is to forget that simple lesson. 

      And, just in case you weren't sure, their reality, their attitudes, the way they see the world, the things they do, that's the new world. Not ours. Or mine in any case. 

      My son's friends breezed through our side of the hill again after a wild weekend in Rome while my elder son left for 24 hours to go to Milan for a job interview.

      They needed to rest. Still suffering from jet-lag, and after several nights of partying, first thing they did was sleep about 12 hours.  

      My son, the ringleader of this merry little back-packing band, needed to rest too. But instead, he took the last overnight train to Milan after a mad late-night dash to Rome's train station, where we arrived just after the last train left. 

     There is some disagreement between us on this point. While my son was trying to buy a ticket for another train from a machine in the empty station, a driver approached us saying there were no more trains, the station was closing soon, and that the last train to Milan was leaving in about twenty minutes from another Rome station.

      My son insisted the train would pass through the central station and that the guy just wanted to rip us off for the ride. 

      He was probably right, of course, (this is Italy, after all), but I couldn't see any Milan train listed in the departures table, I couldn't see any trains listed there at all in fact, he had twenty minutes to catch the last train, and I just didn't want to take the chance he wouldn't make it.

     So I handed the guy 25 Euros for a 10-minute ride (I was afraid I wouldn't find my way there quick enough) and my son sped off in the car in the night. 

     I headed back to the house, with only a passing thought that I had perhaps put him into a car with a mass murderer. Italy's not a country of murderers though. Swindlers, maybe. But murderers no. 

    When I arrived back home at about 1:45 a.m., one of the guys had just put in another load of laundry. 

     He did several loads over the day and a half he was here. I think he might have done all their laundry actually, dividing it up by whites and colors and since we have no dryer, hanging it up outside all around so it would dry in time.

    The others had crashed already. He too then took to his bed until the following afternoon.

     Soon after they woke up, they headed down to the town, and spent the day, and evening, and night, trying to have as much fun as they could. And succeeding, as far as I can tell. 

    My son, meanwhile, slept little on the slow train to Milan, but got there in time for his day-long set of interviews.  

    All in Italian. All about finance. 

    We don't know whether it'll come to anything yet. Italy's suffering a slowdown like every other part of the world, so it could easily not. I'm too scared to even hope for it.  

    But whatever happens, I'm simply awe-struck that he even tried. That he could pull something like that off.  

    And his friends were a joy to hang out with. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile. 

    They all left early this morning, laden down with their back-packs full of clean clothes, walking down the hill to the bus stop, onto their next destination -- the Cinque Terre and then to Barcelona for the weekend. 

     I just know they're going to have fun.

              

      

      

         

           

      

Do People Make Home?

     Is home made up of people? So if you're with your family, your loved ones, or your close friends, you're home? Is that what it takes to make a home?  

     If so, I'm not home. And won't be for awhile. 

    Or am I home after all?  

    I am in the country where I was born, the country of my parents, my extended family and the biggest beloved lemons the world has ever seen. 

    Just not the country where the family I've created is. 

    I'm back on the side of our hill in Italy now and my husband left for London last night to go back to work. 

     I'm technically alone here now, although for a fluke of events, I've actually got three boys here with me today. My son's backpacking friends. I guess they're not really boys anymore, all three of them long past the age where they could get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan to have their legs blown off.  

     Although my elder son's not here. He's in Milan. (long story, which I'll tell you about if and when there's anything to tell). He's coming tonight and they're all leaving for more backpacking adventures tomorrow.

     And then, well, I guess then it'll be the first day of the rest of my life.

     Although I'm scared to be alone here for a long time, scared to be lonely, I guess, I'm also looking forward to it. Does that make sense?  

     I need to contemplate where my home is. And what I'm going to do when I get home.  

     I've bought no return ticket to London. I have no timetable. I'm just here. For as long as I want to be here.

     My husband doesn't know when he'll be back, when he can take more vacation.

    So he's there. And we're playing it by ear.

    Can you play home by ear?