Lake versus Sea

Italians have a real thing about lakes.
I mean, they like them and all. Kinda.
Not for vacation really.
Because they're just so inferior to the sea.
The main thing for Italians is that you get a better tan at the sea. Lake tans just aren't as deep. And that's really important.
I've had at least half a dozen Italians tell me that just in the past week. It is the first week of September, after all, when Italians show off the deep tans they got on their August holidays, tans that would rival any mahogany furniture showroom on this planet.
A couple women asked me if I had gotten my tan at the lake.
Yeah.
But you can't get as good a tan at the lake.
Really? If I go to the sea near Rome, like 45 minutes from here, I'll get a better tan?
Yeah, you will.
I'll just have to suffer then.
Because the lake here is just so nice.
The water's so much cleaner than the sea around here.
It's flat as a pancake in the morning; waves come up in the afternoon.
For me, it's beautiful swimming. Among the windsurfers and catamarans.
And ducks.
No motorboats allowed.
But hell, what do I know?
George Clooney agrees with me, for chrissakes. He's got a house on Lake Como, up north. And Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got married at a lakeside castle in central Italy.
Yeah, but, what do they know either?
Italians value the beach more than almost anything else.
You must go to the sea in August.
Or you are really in a bad way.
You only go to the lake for lunch, preferably in the spring and fall. And early summer. There are rules to be followed.
My cousin and his family came out to the lake for dinner a few weeks ago. My cousin's wife looked at me sadly at one point and asked, "but do you just go to the lake to swim?"
Yeah, actually.
I thought she might cry.

Il Dolce Far Niente (or Necking at the Beach for Hours)

They say the Italians are masters at doing nothing.
That that's where their true genius lies -- their ability to have fun, to feel good, to live a good life, without doing anything at all.
Without accomplishing anything.
Unless you count necking for several hours.
Which, I guess you do. That's precisely the point.
Went to the lake yesterday afternoon with my husband and son.
There was a couple there -- not that young -- laying on side-by-side longues who spent the entire afternoon kissing.
Hours.
It was hot to watch, of course.
Or at least catch fleeting glimpses of.
They just laid there all afternoon in their bathing suits, kissing, hugging and chatting.
He would cup her face now and again or smooth down her hair or run his hand over her hip and then pull her closer.
And all the while, they just kissed. And kissed. And kissed.
Without going any further than that.
With no rush about it at all.
With no end goal in sight.
Now everyone knows that Italy is the land of Public Displays of Affection.
You see couples making out all over the place (many don't have anywhere else to go).
But this was different.
For me, what was really striking about this couple, was the feeling these two gave off of having NOTHING ELSE THEY'D RATHER DO.
ALL AFTERNOON.
ALL EVENING.
ALL SUMMER.
Beyond just kiss.
It was the languor of it all, the take-all-the-time-in-the-world feeling about it, the this-could-go-on-forever-just-like-this mood they gave off.
Excuse me, but how cool is that?
What could possibly be better than spending a hot summer afternoon lying in a chaise longue with your lover beside you, just gently kissing you?
I mean, what could you have to do that could possibly compete with that?
Play frisbee? Work on your to-do list?
And while you're at it, why not make it last all afternoon?
Or all evening.
Or all summer.
I mean, really, what the hell else you gotta do?

Al Fresco

One of nicest things about Italy -- the thing that makes the country a king among countries -- is the whole alfresconess of it.
In the summer.
Light's beautiful; sun shines a lot. There can be a slight breeze.
It's so often the perfect temperature for sitting outside.
For eating outside. For having a drink at a bar. For going swimmming. For drying your laundry, gardening, puttering around.
Anything really.
Eating outside especially.
Just so pleasant.
Alfresco dining. At every meal.
Why not?
In Washington, you cannot eat outside really. It's too muggy. Too many mosquitos.
You just do not do it.
In other places I've lived too. Not so much.
Not that pleasant.
Here, just so pleasant.
Perfect temperature.
No bugs really.
We sit outside at every meal here.
It's just evolved that way. Because we have a big wooden table outside.
A big IKEA thing we bought 10 years ago now -- in a rush -- that seats 12, I think. Massive old crappy thing now that I've thrown a beautiful yellow Provencal tablecloth over I found at a market near here last year.
Looks so much better than it deserves to.
That's where we sit.
To eat, play cards, whatever.
We have an astounding view of this lake in central Italy.
The lake changes every day -- several times a day -- the way it flows, waves and shimmers.
You can stare at it for hours.
It's amazing when it rains too.
The other night, I was here alone, and I lay outside on a chaise longue on the terrace and watched a huge lightning storm pass through.
Big black clouds. Shafts of evening sun. Beautiful rainbow.
More punishing rain.
Just sat out there and watched. Almost three hours, I think.
Can you build a life around a view?

Blogging

I've got nothing to say about Italy today (I do, but I'm gonna skip it), or England, or searching for a home, or working, or not working, or identity, or any of my usual themes.
What I'd like to write to you about today -- briefly, I promise -- is blogging.
Yeah, it's fun.
I enjoy the hell out of it (I hope it shows).
And I bet so do the hundreds of thousands of other people doing it these days too. Or is it actually millions now?
What a blast.
Just write whatever comes to mind. Use stuff from your life. From what happened to you that day.
Really liberating.
And fascinating. Addicting, even.
Fun to read (hopefully).
Not journalism though, folks.
Absolutely nothing like it.
Do I have a right to make this distinction since I do both? Or will the bloggers among you get mad at me? Or are all of you too busy blogging to be reading any blogs?
Take for example what I wrote to you about Italian driving the other day.
Didn't have a fucking fact in it.
Just me blowing off my mouth. And plumbing my emotions.
Now, let's pretend for a minute that I was writing a story -- for a newspaper, magazine, wire service, web site, anything you want really -- about driving in Italy.
It would need what you call in the game, research.
Like: Accident figures. Accident trends. Driving statistics. Comparative driving statistics. People who have been in crashes. People who have been affected by crashes. People who know stuff about Italian driving. People who know stuff about Italian crashes. People who know stuff about Italians. People who know stuff about driving, period.
ALL KINDS OF STUFF.
ALL KINDS OF INTERVIEWS.
A powerful opening anecdote. A nut graph. A spine. A kicker. An editor who says things like a spine and a kicker.
Work, in other words.
You would actually learn something if you read it.
I would've learned something writing it. (A lot actually).
Maybe not as much fun. For either of us.
Dunno.
You tell me.
A whole different thing, though.

Being Italian?

There's nothing to make me feel less Italian than having my family with me here on my side of the hill.
I mean, I can't even begin to fake it when I'm with them.
Which I am now.
My husband and two boys.
My British husband and my two American boys. (grown men now really, 24 and almost 23, but for me always boys.)
Anyway, when the four of us are out together, boy do we NOT look Italian.
Or sound Italian.
Or anything remotely having to do with anything Italian.
I mean, all by myself, I still look Italian, I guess, (not in a bathing suit), even though I'm tall for an Italian woman.
I mean, I've got to, right? Since genetically speaking, I am 100 percent Italian. And born here.
Back to all of us together.
My husband is tall too.
So you can imagine our boys.
The other day, the two of them went into a local grocery store together and a woman announced (to anyone within earshot): "Guarda questi!" (Look at these two!).
"Specialmente quello!" (Especially that one, pointing straight at my one, really tall son).
"Amazza o! (Sanitized Roman version of the British: Fucking hell!)
My boys just laughed. She laughed. Everyone within earshot in the grocery store looked at them, and laughed too.
I told you, Italians are very direct.
There's not a Politically Correct bone in any Italian's body I know.
Which is very liberating. Everyone tells the truth, pretty much, about insignificant shit like that anyway. And they love stating the obvious.
It just cracks them all up.
It's really all in good fun, precisely because it is the obvious.
Italians are masters at having fun while doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, an American psychologist who has practised here for decades told me once. (Very astute observation.)
Back to us.
Besides the stature factor, there's the fact we speak English together, of course.
Although we're damn good at ordering at Italian restaurants (lots of experience).
Three of us have American accents. One of us has a British accent. One of us at times also has some weird hybrid American-British accent going (not me and not my husband).
We all speak Italian though, to varying degrees.
When we're all together sitting at a restaurant, I guess most Italians would think we were American.
Or British.
Or even German (all tall, and in my husband's case, blonde. In my boys' cases, dirty blonde. My husband's been mistaken for a German here forever).
The other night the four of us went to this little trattoria on a curve of a road near the lake a couple miles from our side of the hill.
It's actually just a handful of tables outside this cute old stone farmhouse -- with farm attached -- where they grow a lot of the produce they serve in their dishes.
There was a guy there who had drank too much, which is really rare in Italy.
I mean really drank too much. Like something you'd see in Britain on a Friday night (sorry to my British readers. You know it's true.)
It looked like he had peed in his pants, a big wet spot under his fly. And his pants were unzipped.
Staggering to his car, the owner running after him telling him he couldn't drive.
Just completely un-Italian, the whole scene.
The sheer sloppy drunkenness of it mostly.
Just doesn't happen in Italy.
But there it was happening.
A guy at the table next to us was embarrassed.
For us. The foreigners visiting Italy (actually live up the road, buddy, but there you go.)
"I wouldn't want you to think these kinds of things happen in Italy," he said to us, in Italian, just immediately assuming we'd understand (we did, but they always do that). "But this never happens."
Thanks for that, mate.
I actually know.
I was born in Naples.
Not that you'd ever guess that.
In a million years.

Behind the Wheel

I wanted to write to you about something really serious today. For a change.
Driving.
In Italy. A country where drivers become maniacs the minute they put their hands on the wheel.
I include myself in that.
Some things are just genetic, I guess.
Although being American has reformed me somewhat.
Not completely though.
This isn't even funny. At all.
I've known several people who have died on Italy's roads.
A beautiful young Italian woman I knew in my twenties.
And then.
The most horrific.
A beloved cousin of mine, Bianca, and her father, Gigi's cousin Mario.
Mario also immigrated to Washington, D.C. with his family from Naples, like we did, following Gigi, I think. Certainly leaning on him.
Every Saturday when I was growing up, Gigi and I would go to Mario's house in D.C. for lunch -- and I mean EVERY Saturday (the comforting rigid rhythms of Italian life), where Mario's wife, Bebe, would make us all a lovely three-course Italian lunch.
After lunch, I would play with Bianca, just a bit younger than me, and her little sister Sofia, while Gigi and Mario would lie around in their white undershirts talking about Italian soccer. Bebe would clean up and then make coffee.
Bianca and Mario died in a horrific car crash in Vicenza just a few years ago. Bianca was in her 40s and left behind her husband and two young children, one of whom was in the car at the time.
I don't even need to describe to you, I don't think, how life-altering that crash was, for so many people.
The other day, I was driving along Rome's ring road, heading toward my son's place in Rome to pick him up.
Pretty sure I was driving too fast, although turtle-like compared to the dozens of drivers who whizzed past me, often flashing their lights, on the left.
Or the right.
Or whatever lane was free at that moment.
Everyone just zooming along, happily, until suddenly, STOP.
Completely.
Everybody.
Even those of you clocking 150.
It was a wonder a bunch of us didn't crash right then.
Something up ahead in the tunnel was creating the gridlock.
Took awhile to get up there, but then finally, passed two cars slightly bashed in on respective sides, obviously one of them trying to pass the other without seeing. A side-swipe thing.
Bad, but not horrific.
A few Italians standing around the two cars talking.
But then on the right side of the tunnel.
Two cars that had been moved out of the way. Kinda leaning up on their mangled sides.
A bit of smoke coming out of them still.
Two twisted heaps.
Blood around them. Blood going to them.
The emergency vehicles had already come, obviously, to take the people away who were in those cars.
But the cars were still there.
And these other two had just crashed in the past few minutes, it seemed.
Why do Italians drive like complete and utter maniacs?
I offer some tentative reasons.
If you have others, feel free to add to my list.
1) They never believe anything is going to happen to them.
No matter how many times it does happen. To people they love.
Because they are immortal.
Because their culture has survived so long? And remains so pure?
Dunno.
2) They must get there before you, even if it is only a few inches ahead of you. It's a game. They gotta win. This is why they never let you in. Because if they did, you would get there before them. Which cannot be.
3) They've all had too much coffee. An Italian has several cups of strong coffee every day.
4) They like driving fast. It's fun. Italians like having fun. They can make any situation, no matter how dull, fun.
5) They love fast cars. A Ferrari is not an Italian car for nothing.
6) They don't like wearing seatbelts. Seatbelts are confining. Italians do not like to be confined.
Am I forgetting anything?

The Swimsuit Conundrum

Italian women wear bikinis.
Doesn't matter if they're over 80, as wrinkly as prunes, as roly-poly as sausages, or as saggy as old sacks.
If you are an Italian woman, YOU MUST WEAR A BIKINI.
End of story.
How else can your stomach go the color of chocolate?
I mean, really.
This, unfortunately, poses a problem for me.
Not that I don't want to go the color of Nutella.
I do.
And do.
With the best of them.
Anyone who knows me -- even slightly -- knows this.
Colleagues in Washington used to be horrified at my tan in the summer. My doctor would scold me.
I tried to explain there's an entire country of people obsessed with the sun like me. Even more than me.
Back to the swimsuit.
Thing is, I know I look better in a one-piece bathing suit.
No, it's more than that: I don't look good in a bikini.
Are you kidding?
I mean, c'mon. I've had two children. They're in their 20s. I'm over 50, soon to be over 55 (oh god).
And there's plenty of me, although my one saving grace is that I am quite tall.
"Bona," as they say in Italian.
I can just about get by in a one-piece.
And looking decent in a bathing suit -- as sexy as I can muster with what Gigi and Luciana gave me -- is important to me.
If you're an Italian woman, YOU MUST MAKE THE MOST OF WHAT YOU'VE GOT.
That's the rule.
I am not Luciana's daughter for nothing. (You shoulda seen her in a swimsuit.)
Oprah magazine says any woman over about 25 looks better in a one-piece. Not to mention any mothers. We won't even go there.
Which, of course, is right.
They're more flattering.
I defy anyone to disagree.
Not that anybody reads Oprah here.
Or gives a shit.
I'm starting to stick out though.
I am the only woman in a fucking one-piece bathing suit anywhere in sight.
What am I, a nun? An aging nun, at that?
This is now getting to me.
My stomach, though, is the color of Carrara marble (hasn't seen the sun in years) and my legs, chest and arms more akin to mahogany furniture.
Cannot imagine reconciling those two. Or wanting to.
I ran into a lovely, elderly English woman I know here yesterday. Not sure her age, but right around 80, I know.
She was off to buy a swimsuit.
A bikini, of course. What else? She's lived here forever.
I was actually in my bathing suit when I saw her, just back from a swim in the lake.
A decent, turqoise-and-red, halter-neck one-piece I bought in the States.
She commented that she liked my suit. Asked where I got it.
I asked her if she will ever, uh, even consider a one-piece. (Like maybe when she turns 90?)
No, she replied. I like my stomach to go brown. Even though I wish they had more choice beyond just the string bikinis. (Excuse me? Did you just say you're about to go buy a string bikini?)
And then, with no prompting, out of the blue, she laughed, and said: "You're so American."
What?
No, I am not so American.
I am Italian. You are English.
I am just wearing the wrong fucking bathing suit.

Italian Food: Serious Business

Went to watch the World Cup final last night at my friend's house near here.
She's got a massive HD TV (that always seems to work) and the comfiest sectional I have ever parked my ass in.
I could live on that sofa if she would let me.
Her house is just so homey.
Not to denigrate mine.
Mine is beautiful too. With a view to die for.
But hers is actually her home, full-time, which makes a huge difference.
She's got everything. Everything works. She knows where everything is.
A big beautiful dog lying at the front door. You know, a home.
You want to just go there, lie ALL OVER that damn sofa, say yes to her offer of another glass of chilled white Vermentino, turn on that big 'ol TV with all its English-language channels, and just never leave.
So when she said come on over for the game, yep, I'm there.
I had made an Amatriciana pasta sauce over the weekend, and had bought the bucatini pasta to go with it, so I offered to bring it for dinner.
She said sure, great.
Right before I left to drive over there, though, we talked, and she warned me that an Italian friend of hers, who was also coming to watch the game, when she told him I was bringing the pasta for dinner, had remarked: "What does she know about Amatriciana? She's American." (I told you: Italians are very direct. They don't bullshit around, especially about food. I like that).
A bit of background here.
I've met this man a few times and spoken to him in Italian always (you have to with Italians, even if they speak some English, which not many do. There's really no choice).
And I'm sure I must've bored him with 'my born in Naples, brought up in the US story.'
But at the same time, he's heard my friend and I just get all US East Coast too, talking loud, laughing loud, and being, well, the Americans we are. (Love that. She's from New Jersey. Love the Jersey vibe.)
Huh. Okay.
Now, for those of you who know, Bucatini all'amatriciana, a classic Roman pasta dish, is just not that hard to make.
That's the thing about Italian food. It's pretty simple. That's the beauty of it.
Foreigners tend to fuck it up when they try too hard, change it, add too much to a recipe, like that. Just not accepting its simplicity. And comforting repetitiveness.
I like simple. And because of my mother, Luciana, I know how it's supposed to taste.
Even though their food is deliciously simple though -- and they'll be the first to tell you that -- Italians truly believe nobody can do it but them.
Michelin-starred chef? Doesn't matter.
Not Italian? Can't do it.
Trust me on this.
So, I make the pasta. And hold my breath.
He decides when the pasta is ready (That's fine, better actually. That's what Gigi used to do too. Italian men all over the country are tasting bits of pasta every night telling their wives when is the perfect time to drain it.)
I'm stirring the sauce.
He peers at it. Seems to approve. Looks right, anyway.
Gives me a little squeeze on my arm.
"I keep forgetting you're a Neapolitan," he says.
Massive vote of confidence.
But the real proof comes later.
He eats two bowls. And then polishes off what's at the bottom of the serving dish.
Just like an Italian, a Roman even, eating bucatini all'amatriciana.
Success.
Whew.

A Gigi Sighting

Saw my father Gigi yesterday.
Or at least someone who looked remarkably like him.
Right after I wrote to you about him.
I am not making this shit up, I swear.
I know I could. Easily. But I'm not. Trust me.
I don't need to make it up.
Went to the lake near here in the late afternoon, early evening time.
That was Gigi's favorite tanning time of day.
Yes, my Neapolitan father loved sitting in the sun, going brown as a chocolate bar.
I have yet to meet an Italian who doesn't.
So, I drove around the lake a bit, picked up a two-day-old English-language newspaper (more like reading history, but it's a hard habit to break) and looked for a new place to park myself.
Found a spot of sand drenched in early evening sun.
Spread out my towel, took out my history book -- uh, I mean newspaper -- laid down -- and then saw him.
He was sitting right in my line of vision.
Elderly, distinguished Italian man, sitting on a towel, face to the sun, approaching the color of Nutella.
Tall, thin man -- like Gigi -- with long angular legs bent in front of him.
Wearing a light blue bathing suit that looked more like shorts that reminded me of a pair of denim shorts Gigi wore all the time -- for years maybe. (Gigi was frugal -- an immigrant, after all).
Same length as Gigi's shorts -- quite short -- that exposed the same amount of long, lean brown leg.
The man's tiny little brown stomach rolls folded just like Gigi's used to.
Didn't have an ounce of fat on him. Like my dad.
He wore his hair like Gigi too -- salt-and-pepper hair -- quite unruly if left to its own devices -- combed hard down.
It was uncanny.
I couldn't stop looking at him.
Thank god I was wearing sunglasses.
Even though he did notice.
And gave me a suggestive little smile.
That's when I had to look away.
You're my father, buddy.
You're not understanding my interest at all.
When I couldn't look at him any longer -- or risk having him come talk to me and shatter all illusions -- I turned my head to the lake and just thought about Gigi.
God I miss him.
God I loved him.
Is he the reason I'm here, the reason we bought this slice of Italian hill 15 years ago, the reason I keep struggling -- in vain, I'm thinking -- to make Italy my home?
Almost definitely.
Even though he wasn't happy when I told him we had bought this land. Which happened not that long before he died.
Not happy at all actually.
Not what I was expecting.
Well, maybe a little.
When I told Gigi my British husband and I had plunked down our life's savings for a slice of hill overlooking a lake in central Italy, where we were then going to build a house, my father looked at me, frowned, and asked:
"Ma, chi te l'ha fatto fare?" (the hand moving in that Italian questioning gesture).
Which means, literally, But, Who Made You Do It? (Meaning: Why the hell would you do a stupid thing like that?).
I couldn't say it, I didn't say it, but the answer was certainly: Why you, Dad. Who else?

Italian? American? Italian-American?

I had just decided to settle into my foreigner status after the coffee bar incident -- I mean who cares what the hell you call yourself? -- when I was reminded that no, actually, I am Italian.
100 percent. And stop pretending otherwise, please.
I mean, what, you think you're better?
No. Not even a little bit. I just don't know what to say anymore.
Met this very interesting Italian woman the other night at a friend's house, an extroverted actress about my age who runs her own little theatre outside of Rome.
Full of opinions and stories. Great to watch -- and listen to.
Fascinating woman.
Also named Daniela.
A rose by any other name.
We chatted for awhile and then she asked me where I was from, that loaded question.
I said I was Italian-American, born in Italy, brought up in the US.
That's my new answer here.
Took me years to make peace with that label. And probably some therapy.
No wonder really.
My father spent my entire childhood repeating to me that I was in no way an Italian-American, for him some weird loathsome hybrid creature that couldn't speak Italian properly, that didn't know pappardelle from pasta con fagioli.
That's not us, Gigi would say over and over, while being rude to every Italian-American he met. We're real Italians.
Okay, Gigi, whatever you say.
So I used to just say I was Italian when Italians asked.
But boy, could that feel bogus.
They would look at me quizically, trying to pinpoint my accent.
Or what it was that made me somehow just not Italian.
If I talked to them very long, the explanation would then come out.
So I've decided to dispense with all that now. And just say it right up front.
I mean, Italian-American, that is what I am, no?
I went to the States when I was three years old, was educated there, went to university, spent my entire career working for American media companies.
If you met me, and we spoke in English, you'd just think, American, yep. Check.
Unless you meet me here. Then there's more.
Gigi put his money where his mouth was. Tried really hard to keep me Italian -- while I was growing up American.
My parents spoke to me only in Italian my entire childhood. Sent me back here every other summer so I would never forget where I came from, so I would know my Italian family (who I love).
Thank you, Gigi.
Daniela looked at me quizically when I said I was Italian-American.
Didn't like that answer much, it was obvious. (Nobody ever likes my answer to that question no matter what I say. And I've tried every variation.)
"Italo-Americana?" she asked, just dubious as hell.
Si.
"Is your mother Italian?" she pressed.
Si.
"Is your father Italian?"
Si.
"And you were born in Naples?"
Right again.
"Well, then you're Italian, for chrissakes, not Italian-American."
Whatever you say, girl.
Whatever you want.
I know one thing: Gigi would've liked you.

Who the Hell Are You?

Had a bit of a setback on my efforts to build on last year here on my side of the hill in Italy yesterday.
A little reality check, shall we say.
Went to the coffee bar I decided last year would be MY coffee bar.
I told you that Italians always have their coffee bar, the bar they go to everyday, sometimes several times a day for their jolt of java.
Always standing up at the bar, cappuccino in the morning, caffe macchiato, mid-morning and then just plain caffe later in the day.
Like clockwork. Their place.
The comforting rigid rhythms of Italian life.
So, last summer -- and then the month I was here in the winter too -- I set about making this bar my own. It's the closest coffee bar to us, just down the hill.
A big hang-out for locals. Not a tourist in sight.
So, I chatted amiably to the baristas every time I went in, who were either the forty-something son or daughter of the owner, who by now is an elderly woman. She works the bar too, but much less than she used to.
This past winter, I chatted lots to her son, who had just had his second baby, another boy. Two sons like me, something we had in common.
He would always greet me with a smile and a comment or two, as his sister was starting to too.
It all takes awhile in Italy.
Like years.
I mean, you're a foreigner, always, if you're not from this town.
Doesn't matter if you speak Italian.
If technically, you are Italian.
But I was breaking through.
Stopped at the bar yesterday for the first time. A little later than usual, more into the lunch break time.
The elderly owner was working the bar.
She served me my coffee and I asked her how her new grandson was, who I knew was now about six months old.
Since it's been six months since I was here.
Since her son told me about his new baby.
I've seen this woman dozens of times over the 15 years we've owned our little slice of an Italian hill. And she greeted me with a warm buongiorno when I walked in.
They're nice, this family, part of the reason I've decided to favor this bar above most others. Not all Italian shopkeepers are nice. Trust me on that.
But when I asked her about her grandson, she looked at me quizically and asked plainly: "Who are You?".
Italians can be very direct.
Deep breath. Big warm smile.
"I live up the hill. You remember me, signora!"
Long stare. No real recognition.
Still aways to go, folks.

Dividing your Time

I'm back to my side of the hill in Italy.
It's wonderful to be back -- in a way.
I was just starting to feel at home in our new place in London. Which we had only lived in about a month. Third move in 18 months.
It felt so good to start feeling at home somewhere I liked. So comforting. Hadn't had that. Even made a friend. First new London friend since leaving the US.
Now I'm here. For months.
Bye-bye, new friend.
Bye-bye, new home.
Bye-bye, tentative new life in London.
See you later.
Happy to be here.
So grateful to have this side of the hill, don't get me wrong.
But just so fucking disoriented.
Haven't been here in six months.
What's in this drawer? Where's my stuff? How do I use this crappy Italian cellphone I've got here again? Why doesn't that light work anymore?
Is that water coming out of the bottom of the washing machine?
No newspapers. No landline. Problems with Internet always. Shitty TV reception.
Cut off.
Great pasta, though. Fabulous lemons.
And my son's here now.
Which is amazing. And weird at the same time.
He works 12 hours a day, though. And lives in Rome.
Remind me what my life was here.
Oh yeah. I hardly had one.
Was just starting to build one, when I left.
I am living my dream.
Or at least the dream I thought I had.
I am dividing my time.
Which is what I always said I wanted.
Like authors you read about on book jackets.
What a joke.
It's not that easy, I'm finding.
Nothing ever is, is it?
I feel like I don't live anywhere.
Have no life anywhere.
No routine. No schedule.
Which is what every book on cognitive behavior therapy will tell you is what you need.
My husband's back at his job in London.
He's got a life in London. Centered on his job.
When you have a job, you have a life.
Deep breath.
Need to build on what I managed to accomplish last summer.
Which wasn't much, I admit.
It is Italy after all.
You never accomplish much.
You gotta do everything three or four times before it's done.
Made huge progress this morning, though.
Put out my recycling on the right day in the right bag in the right place for the first time ever.
And they took it away.
This may sound small.
It isn't, trust me.
It involved several trips to the local council last year. Get the right bags you need (don't sell them anywhere.)
The schedule. (as complicated a schedule as you can imagine.)
Sign up.
The office is hardly ever open.
That's all done now though.
They've picked up my trash.
For the first time.
I've taped the schedule to the inside of my kitchen cabinet.
I have the right bags.
Now I can live my dream.

London on two wheels

London is best appreciated -- slowly, I'll give you that -- on two wheels.
It's a joy to go cycling here: flat as a pancake, lots of big, green parks, plenty of cute little side streets with tidy rowhouses, dedicated bike lanes, and drivers, although not perfect, about as polite as you'll get anywhere on the planet.
Flat as a pancake is the big thing.
You're just not scared to go anywhere here, because basically, you know you're not going to be confronted with any big hills along the way.
So off you go.
It was really hilly where we used to live on the outskirts of Washington. Even though at the bottom of the big big hill where we lived, there was a beautiful long flat bike path that went on for miles and miles.
Because of that big steep hill, though, we only biked along that glorious bike path there a couple of times.
Which sounds immensely pathetic, I know.
We did go walking there a lot, up the hills, through the paths, along the Potomac River. With our beloved dog, Lucy.
I could miss that a lot if I thought about it.
Not much cycling, though.
Here, cycling is becoming our best leisure activity.
We don't have Lucy to walk anymore.
And on these long British summer evenings, where it doesn't get dark until past 10 p.m. here, there's nothing nicer than a long bike ride, we're finding.
Over and around the 18th century historic house and magnificent gardens I was telling you about. That they just restored.
What a place. It's huge.
It's not only us, I see.
As I was coming back with my morning newspaper this morning, my retired elderly neighbor whizzed past, on quite a flash mountain bike, the wind coursing through his white hair.
And I met a young mother at my favorite hang-out place the other day that runs a website selling chic cycle accessories. Doing well, she said.
Our new two-wheeled obsession has meant my husband has again turned to one of his pet London subjects: Getting me onto a Vespa.
He thinks it would be a great way for me to get around London.
Vespas can go in the bus lanes here. They don't have to pay the central congestion charge to go downtown. You can park them almost anywhere. They're fuel-efficient. It would be much easier to commute. They'll teach you everything here in a two-day course. After I learn here with all the sane British drivers, maybe we could get one for our little Italian town, which would be convenient. I need transportation here sometimes and I don't feel like buying a car. I would look cute on one. I'd have fun. So Italian, for chrissakes!
He's got lots of reasons.
I like the idea.
But I'm scared too.

The Grocery Store

Are you home when you know your way around your grocery store?
Or when you know which grocery store to go to?
It helps.
I remember when I first got here, I had no idea where to shop -- for even the most basic things.
Not to mention what doctor to go to (still working on all that), where to get my hair done (also still a work in progress), where to get a coffee (nailed that), the drugstore, anything actually.
I was so disoriented.
There are four grocery stores within walking distance of me, not to mention smaller specialty stores, like butchers, a fishmonger, bakeries (including the new Gail's), a dozen or more hairdressers (very lucrative business here), etc.
You get the idea.
I figured out quickly that the biggest grocery store was where I wanted to do most of my shopping. All the smaller ones have things I pop in for now and again.
I remember one day at the big supermarket early on being confronted by dozens of new brands of laundry soap in new configurations I had never seen (they're big on gel cap-like-thingies here that you put in with your wash).
I felt like crying. I did cry, I think.
Had spent 10 minutes looking for laundry soap in the big store.
Then had no idea what the hell to buy once I got there.
No to mention no dryer to finish off the wash.
Missed my old grocery store like hell that day.
Getting used to a lot now.
Know which laundry gel cap I like (they're actually pretty convenient).
Have learned to live without a dryer.
And a car.
And a big house.
Welcome Home!

Where are you on the foxes?

The fox attack has brought everybody out, for and against.
The papers have been full of London's fox problem, or lack thereof, depending on what side you're on. Editorials, letters to the editor, news stories.
First, there was the mother, who said the attack on her twin daughters had been life-altering, especially for one.
God. What a thought.
To be bitten in the face by a fox, in a life-altering way, while you're lying in your cot.
There was speculation the fox was attracted to the smell of shit in the diaper. Or the sound babies make when they're sleeping.
Some people wrote saying the fox were vermin that needed to be culled. And this attack showed this.
Then there was the discussion about whether previous culls have worked (seems not).
Others wrote saying this is the first serious fox attack -- ever. And do people threaten to cull dogs when there's a dog attack? (of which, I guess there are thousands compared to this one fox attack.)
That living with the foxes was one of the special things about London.
Which is what I had thought.
Before all this.
I still like them. But I'm scared of them too.

Fox Reality

Bad news on the foxes, folks.
Not just cute and nostalgia-inducing.
Big story here about a fox that mauled two twin babies in their cots in their upstairs bedroom while they slept. Very rare for a fox.
It came in -- one story said attracted to the noise babies make while sleeping -- through an open window.
It's been warm here, so everyone's had their windows and back doors open.
We have too.
We always have our bedroom window open.
There are 10,000-20,000 foxes in London, I've read; 27 per square mile, I heard on the radio.
The last attack by a fox was years ago though. They usually just run away from bigger humans.
But they're becoming bolder, the stories say.
The distraught mother of the twins (can you imagine?) says she confronted the fox -- she and her husband were watching TV downstairs while the babies slept upstairs with a window open -- when she ran upstairs when her twin girls started crying.
Fox just stared her down, she said, not moving.
Not scared at all.
That's scary.
Stories quoted neighbors saying they run across foxes in their gardens a lot and that the foxes are everywhere.
A bit like here.
We did surprise a fox in our garden one night.
It ran away right away.
We thought it was kinda cute at the time.
Now not so sure.
I love having my kitchen door open, though, opening on to our cute little south-facing garden. Especially when the sun is shining.
But the trash is in the kitchen, so that must be a draw.
If any foxes are around.
Which they are.
I can see one now on the roof of the big wood shed in the old lumberyard directly in front of us.
Oh well.
It's drizzling and grey now though.
And they say it's staying that way for the week.
So the door's shut.
I wish the cute foxes hadn't done that.

When the Sun Comes Out

When the sun is shining, and it's warm, this country could be one of the best on earth. At least this city.
The sun was out all last week.
It's gone now. It's gonna rain all week.
So before I forget, I gotta tell you about it.
Went for two long afternoon bike rides around the neighborhood when the sun was out. Down by the River Thames and cruising around all our nearby parks.
We've got this rambling historical property near here -- an 18th century Royal house and gardens -- that is simply astounding.
They've just completed a multi-million-pound renovation of the house and gardens too.
It's all just pristine now.
Like only the English can do.
The lawns a carpet of green, the hedges perfectly trimmed, the flowers in harmonious symphony.
And everyone's in a great mood when the sun's out, everyone outside in every combination, doing everything you can think of. Most people live in small places here, so they gather on the greens when the sun comes out.
Which are all beautifully maintained.
And there's lots of them in London.
Women strip down to their underwear to get a bit of sun; guys throw frisbees; families play football. Dogs run without leashes. Kids romp around.
It is so chill.
Nothing like this in Italy.
The councils wouldn't keep up the greens, the Italians wouldn't pick up after their dogs, so many reasons this can't exist there.
And in the States, everyone lives far from each other, and goes everywhere by car. People don't gather together like here.
And they're so many rules there.
Chill, it's not.
London is an urban planner's dream.
Live, shop, play, all nearby.
If only the sun would come out more.

Southern Graduation

And then there's my younger son, who's still in the States.
He just graduated from college. That's why we were in the States.
College is over. No more kids in college. End of an era.
So many end of eras lately.
Too many for one heart.
It was a lovely graduation. The guys wore white tuxes with red roses; the girls white dresses with red rose corsages. They all looked so fresh, so young, so full of potential.
It was held outside, surrounded by the long mosses and weeping willows of Charleston. Hot as hell; we all had paper fans.
The Deep South. No mistaking that.
It was held outside the college's old cistern -- a ceremony taking advantage of the school's historic setting in one of the U.S.'s oldest and most beautiful towns.
Nice.
My son's happy there. He skipped around all over the place. He's had a good four years there. Knows everybody.
We're so proud of him.
So happy he's happy.
He's staying for awhile, another year at this point, he says. Living with buddies. Working his two jobs, one an entry-level job in the field he studied.
He's excited to try and make it on his own, pay for everything himself, be a grown-up.
And Charleston's a good place to be for what he studied. It's a great little place, Charleston. No denying that.
Of course, we all wish he'd come somewhere near here though. Although we try not to say it.
London? Rome? Me, my husband, and my older son.
Just to have him close.
To make things feel whole again.
That's just selfish, though. He's happy there. Doesn't know anybody here.
And as he has said, so rightly: YOU'RE THE ONES WHO MOVED.
No denying that.
I'm glad he's not going back to where we used to live. I think I'd miss him more then, knowing I could've been there too.
He's coming to Europe for a long time this summer.
First with some buddies -- like my older son did last year. The 'ol end-of-college, go-round-Europe, try-not-to-get-robbed-in-Barcelona trip.
And then some time with his family on our side of the hill in Italy.
So we'll all be together again soon.
Like when they were little.
Which will feel good.

Napoli via London

The best thing, hands down, about our move back to Europe has been that my eldest son has come too.
When I look back after the past 15 months, I'm not sure I would've made it without him.
In fact, I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have.
The fact that he's here too makes a massive difference.
He came last fall, twenty-three years old, left everything in the States -- friends, car, jobs, roots -- a few months after graduating from college, and moved into our spare room in London.
Which made sense, since he was our kid.
But he had no life here, knew no one.
So I fretted.
Got an internship here, had the time of his life.
Even made some buddies. Loves to come back.
Then he got another internship in Rome in the new year.
We moved him there.
When I look back on the day he and I arrived at our side of the hill in Italy -- January 6, a national holiday there -- it feels like light years ago.
Our place was way too far for him to live in, we realized suddenly. But where would he live? His internship was starting in a week and a half. Our usually sunny, warm house felt like a meat locker.
January in central Italy. Instead of July.
Reality.
Four months have gone by since then. Only? Feels like four years.
Don't want to tempt fate, but his internship looks like it's going to turn into a job.
Most importantly, though, my son likes his new life. Christ, he's got a new life to like.
He's made friends.
Yesterday, he was in Naples, where I was born.
At a company overlooking the port. Sounds like he was working right near the hospital where I was born.
I was born, 56 years ago this summer, on a bright hot day, in a hospital room overlooking the Mediterranean off Naples, an amazingly beautiful seaside city. No wonder I love the sea.
I was born a couple of weeks early, on a day my parents were supposed to go to Capri on the ferry with my grandparents for a day in the sun. No wonder I'm a sun-worshipper.
Fast-forward 56 years to yesterday afternoon and my son.
Who's in Naples overlooking the port. On his computer.
He sends me an email saying it may be the most beautiful place he's ever seen. Took some pictures on his cellphone for me to see, but they don't do it justice, he wrote.
He's seen this amazing place -- where I was born, where my father's family is from, where my mother's family ended up, where my own family lived before we moved to the States, through his own adult eyes, at work, unfiltered by me.
And he's realized how amazing it is.
My son has moved to Italy at the same age I moved to Italy after growing up in the United States.
Is that a coincidence?
My Italian parents moved to Washington from Italy when I was three years old. At twenty-four, soon after I finished college, I moved back to Italy too. To discover who I was.
My parents weren't there, but friends of theirs were. I stayed with them when I first arrived.
My son came because we were here.
Why were we here?
Soon after I arrived in Italy when I was 24, I met my British husband, who was also there, working, from England.
Where we are now.
Last night, my son went out with his new Italian buddy on the back of the guy's Vespa, riding around Rome by night.
God I loved that when I was his age.
We worried. That's dangerous.
"But we did it," I said to my husband.

Retail Therapy

I know this is one of my favorite subjects about London, so please excuse me if I'm boring you, but it is truly astounding.
My God, the Brits are a nation of shopkeepers.
Especially compared to the US, where nobody even gives it a second thought. (Too risky, not enough money, way way too much competition from big-box stores.) Cities not conducive to shopping is the no. 1 reason though.
Here, at least three new shops have opened up on the High Road and surrounding streets around us (within a couple miles, let's say. Like I told you, the High Road goes on as long as a piece of string here).
It's the new upmarket artisan bakery that really stands out for me though. And the bistro. But let's do the bakery.
Gail's.
Took a big, prime, corner position on the High Road.
Can't even remember what was there before now.
Gorgeous store. Completely done already. Looks like it's been there for years.
Big deep baskets full of freshly-baked bread loaves of all shapes and sizes in the tall gleaming front windows, which are painted red. Gail's has a red theme.
Cute wood tables and chairs with red gingham cushions and cloths.
Full of people already. Families with strollers. Friends chatting over lattes and pastries.
When did Gail's come into being?
In the two weeks, okay maybe three weeks tops, that I haven't been to that corner?
Were lots of industrious people scurrying around planning Gail's while I was at my son's graduation and then in Florida on the beach?
But I hardly got a tan.
Wow.
It's the speed with which they can put together an established-looking store here that astounds me. The sheer optimism of their shop-keeping.
I worry for the new butcher's, though.
Remember last time I was away, a gleaming new butcher opened up right next to the bus stop, which is right across the street from Gail's. (Busy location). We all know butchers are suffering because of supermarkets.
But there it was. Like Gail's, looked like it had been there a decade or so.
For a few weeks, the butcher was full of people too. And four guys in big white butcher hats smiling behind the counter.
Today, there was nobody there.
And only one guy with the hat on. Barely smiling.
Uh oh. Could close soon.
But not for long, I'm thinking.

Memorial Day

Doesn't feel like Memorial Day here. At all.
Even though it is a holiday. Beginning-of-summer holiday. Bank holiday. Three-day weekend.
It's all more secular here.
In the States, holidays are often about remembering dead people -- Martin Luther King, all the dead presidents, the veterans -- somebody.
Here's it can just be about having a day off.
Bank holiday. Banks closed.
A lot more honest, when you think about it.
Anyway, Memorial Day -- today -- was a big thing the last dozen years I was in Washington. First, there's all the big-deal barbecues, and then in Washington, hundreds of thousands of guys descend on the city on their Harley-Davidsons in a yearly go-to-Washington motorcycle march the capital hosts. Lots of rednecks with bandanas riding real slow on their massive bikes all over the city for three days.
When I was growing up there, there was no motorcycle march. It was mostly about going to the beach then, kicking the summer off with a day-trip to the shore. A sunburn, usually. Fries on the boardwalk. Strip pictures in the little photo booths.
Do holidays happen even if you're not there?
I think so.
My son in Rome and I talked about Memorial Day yesterday.
He was missing it. Remembering the guys on their motorbikes.
Probably wishing he could be home -- for the day anyway. But working.
Lucky to have a good job.
Here's to Memorial Day 2010.
Throw a burger on the barbecue for me. And pass me a Bud.
I can just hear the bikes slowing down on the curve outside.

The Fox Family

I said last year that England didn't really have a night noise, like Italy does. That here, even in busy London, it was the noise of quiet.
Wrong.
It's the sound of foxes. At least around here.
I've been jet-lagged, and my husband's been away, so I've been going to sleep close to three every morning.
I told you about the family of foxes that live in the seemingly abandoned, empty stand of houses across the street from me, right?
I hadn't seen them the first day after I returned from the States. And I was worried.
I like the foxes. A lot. Even if yes, they can be mangy.
They're little. And red. Cute. They lie in the sun scratching themselves.
And where do you get to live among foxes? Seriously? In a city?
They remind me of my dog of a dozen years back in the States. They're the same color. And shape. Just a bit smaller.
The dog we had to put down before we came.
My beloved Lucy. My best friend.
Named after Lucille Ball, that great American red-head.
Back to the foxes.
Hadn't seen them yet. Really wanted to.
Had noticed a big new demolition sign on the front of the houses, though, which used to be a local lumberyard.
The big, once important lumberyard -- maybe 10 houses all together -- is right on the High Road.
We live around the corner from the High Road now, which just goes on and on for miles through one London neighborhood after another.
Never really ends, this continuous London High Road, as far as I can tell.
Whatever you call it.
I'm worried now they're going to take the whole stand of houses down though. That somebody bought it. They would, wouldn't they? The market's good.
The noise we'll have to endure.
And the foxes. Above all, the foxes.
I was still up, magazines and newspapers strewn around me on the bed, when I heard them. I glanced at the clock radio. 2:30 a.m.
A high-pitched wailing. Followed by some more.
A fox fight. Or something.
I looked out.
Two of them were sitting outside about twenty feet apart on our little private road (we live in a weird little gated community in the middle of everything).
They were staring at each other.
Looking kinda chill, though.
Like Lucy could look, all curled up, but still hyper-alert.
What's going on out there, guys?
My next door neighbor, a retired British gentleman who lives here part-time with his wife, told me the foxes run the place at night.
They run along the high back walls.
In the dead of night.
Or along our private road.
When most people are asleep.
This morning -- okay, afternoon -- a fox sat on the roof of the lumberyard's big old shed (please do not take that glorious old wood shed down), scratching himself, hoping the sun comes out later. Like everyone else in the neighborhood.
Hello there! You're still here.
So good to see you.
Please don't go yet.

Immigration UK-style

I'm back. In London. At my new little house. Which I love.
It's sunny, and quite warm for London. Amazing.
So much has happened since I last wrote. I'll tell you about it slowly.
Or risk losing you altogether.
We got back yesterday from two weeks in the States. Went home for awhile.
Although the longer you're away from home, the less like home it feels.
Funny that.
And didn't really go home. Didn't go to Washington. Went to South Carolina and Florida. Not sure Florida counts as anybody's home.
Anyway. Want to tell you about the amazing differences between landing in the US and landing in the UK.
Going home now -- to the US -- has become fraught. Landing has anyway.
With my British husband. Who was completely cool as long as we lived in the US.
Now, we're hanging onto his green card for life.
Who knows when we might need it again -- like soon, even?
Immigration officers quiz him mercilessly on arrival now -- how long has he been out of the country (less than a year, sir), have we filed our taxes (seriously. And the answer is YES.) -- especially in a big southern airport like Atlanta, where there are some SERIOUS immigration officers.
My husband has been held in a little room at Atlanta airport for up to an hour.
We get in eventually, but it's getting scarier.
At least for me.
No, please, I beg you. Can we keep his green card, please?
It took us forever to get it, those dozen years ago now, even though we've been married as long as a moss strand in Charleston.
Don't make us give it back. Please.
We don't know what the fuck we're doing.
Arrived back home (as in here) at Heathrow at the crack of dawn yesterday.
Was nervous at London arrivals for a few reasons.
Lack of sleep.
The experience we go through now every time we land in the US.
And then: I've got this stupid Yemeni visa now, which takes up an entire page of my new Italian passport, a visa I never used, because I didn't end up even going to Yemen. If you don't know, Yemen's been in the news a lot lately as the new Al-Qaeda hotbed.
So, might get some questions from the nice British immigration officer as to why I had an unused Yemeni visa, I thought.
Paranoid? Dunno.
Truthfully, I've always felt like a bit of a fraud, although I'm not, speeding through the EU line at Heathrow on my Italian passport.
Since I am American.
But here, I'm definitely Italian.
Born in Italy.
Love that.
Love being Italian here.
Daniela Iacono.
Back to Heathrow.
Got a Muslim immigration officer, a young woman whose head and body was covered in black. Like in Yemen.
Although not like in Yemen, because the woman's face wasn't covered, only her head, and she spoke in a crisp British accent and had a friendly, open face.
She smiled at me. Checked that my passport photo matched my face.
Didn't open the passport beyond the photo page.
Handed it back.
Another smile.
Ten seconds tops.
How did it suddenly become easier to get in here?

The Foxes

I've told you about the foxes all over the place here in London, haven't I?
How at my old apartment, the elderly lady downstairs (who actually drove me nuts, but then we probably drove her nuts first), warned me to keep the lid on my rubbish bin (or top on the trash can) so the foxes wouldn't get to it?
How I laughed to myself and said right, yeah, that's a nice understated British way to say RATS.
How right after that, I saw my first fox, followed by my second and my third, and then I stopped counting?
Well, we've moved to fox city, folks.
They're all over the place here.
It's kind of eerie, actually, but original too.
There's a stand of unoccupied houses in front of us.
And a fox family has moved in there.
I kid you not.
They roam in and out of the broken windows there, sunning themselves on the roof, cleaning their paws in the daylight, a whole bunch of them. There's always one out there.
It's like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story.
The Foxes. By Edgar Allen Poe.
What do they get up to in the dead of night?
Our bedroom window looks out over the unoccupied houses. Which I know sounds trashy. But is actually kinda cool.
When I get up, first thing I do is look out the window and check what the foxes are up to.
This morning, one was out there, scratching his/her butt, when I opened the curtains.
He/she looked up at me, and stopped scratching.
Some of them look pretty unhealthy -- scrawny and mangy.
Yeah, some of them have mange, my neighbor told me.
Okay.
One of them walked into our garden last night.
But then ran away.
They're more scared of you than you are of them, my neighbor said.
Okay.
My husband says there are so many because they stopped hunting them here, the land of the fox hunt.
Okay.
The Foxes. By Edgar Allen Poe.
Every day.
Every night.
Right outside our bedroom window.

Screw British Telecom

Damn British Telecom. Damn Italia Telecom. And damn all the Telecoms of this world. It's such a stitch-up, as they say here.
I haven't written for a lot of reasons.
But the main reason recently is that I don't have reliable Internet access -- and won't have for ages. Weeks, even.
You'd think I was in Yemen or something.
Where I was going to go. But then didn't, largely because I lost reliable Internet access at home. And a landline with which to call Yemen to set it up.
And then my nerve.
And then the volcanic ash covered Britain.
Long story.
Back to British Telecom.
Who I hate.
Almost as much as I hate Italia Telecom.
We've moved to our new place in London. Which I love.
Even though it's tiny. It's like a doll-sized version of a house, especially for a spoiled American like me.
But still it's a house.
And I love it.
But no phone yet. Or Internet.
Been almost three weeks now.
You can't order a new phone line until you give up your old line.
So the day we moved, we called to order a new line.
Two-week wait for a phone, even though there's already a phone line here. And we had a phone. And a phone number, just a few blocks away.
We made the appointment. Then we made the mistake of calling to see if we could change it since my husband went to the election debate here in Bristol and I wanted to go with him.
After calling, we decided we shouldn't change it. Too risky. Really need a phone and Internet access. (Internet access two weeks after the phone. Don't even ask me why).
So I came back from Bristol after only one day.
They didn't show up for the appointment.
I cried.
Why does this shit have to be so hard?
Why do I have to keep moving?
Why aren't I just home now, wherever that might be?
Is it so hard to just be home?
I used to have a home. I used to have friends. I used to have a job. Why the hell did I leave everything?
Back to the Internet.
In the old apartment (which god, in hindsight, I really did not like and now thank god, I can just say it) you could crib onto other people's Internet access.
Here for some reason you can't.
So we're using a key, like at our side of the hill in Italy.
Which sometimes works.
And other times doesn't.
The line keeps falling. Which drives me crazy.
Which is why I haven't written.
Among other reasons.
Bigger reasons.
Don't-know-what-I'm-doing kinda reasons.

London's daffodils

The daffodils are out in London. Finally.
They're more than a month late.
But now, they're everywhere. Every park, every green, thousands of them.
Hello, hello, hello! You sunny little harbingers of spring, you.
What a winter.
Everywhere had a bad winter, it seems.
Not just here.
I've worn one of two big black coats I own every day for months here. With a big scarf.
I am so sick of it. My scarf is fraying.
What the hell. I want to chuck it in the bin, as they say here.
This morning was beautiful, warm, balmy almost.
Everyone immediately dressed down.
I walked to the Tube on the sunny side of the high road, letting that sun just shine on me.
It felt so good.
When I got in, someone at work suggested we go sit in a nearby park at lunch and eat outside. Yes.
Within an hour, it had clouded up. Gotten windy.
We got busy. Scrapped lunch.
By the time I got home, it was raining.
Didn't have the umbrella, of course.
My hair got wet. Looks like complete shit when it gets wet like that. Just as frizzy as all get out.
Gotta take what you can get here.
When it's sunny, you go out then. Right Then. Not two hours later.
That's the trick.
Been thinking about Italy.
Been talking to my son there a lot.
At least we're in the same time zone.
Italy feels like another planet, though.
Always does when you're here.
It's close, yeah.
One cheap(ish) flight away.
But really far too.

Cream tea

Another thing that makes this country great: cream tea.
Anything to do with tea really, the Brits excel at.
But cream tea -- tea served with scones, cream and jam -- is special.
Even at Sainsbury's, the local grocery store, cafe.
Even when it's the last one they've got there, all wrapped tight in clear plastic.
Which is kinda gross.
But it's still good.
Certainly preferable to anything they make with coffee here. Which they're not very good at. (Wrong temperature, too much milk, coffee too weak. I could go on.)
Back to tea.
I've told you about its healing powers here, how it's trotted out as a remedy to everything that ails you.
How where I work, people make it for each other by the mugful, every day, several times a day.
I'm really starting to feel guilty about that.
But I never want it myself. So I always pass.
It's a genetic thing.
You either want tea or coffee.
I want coffee.
Like an Italian.
Little powerful shots of it.
Throughout the day.
They just do not know how to do that here.
Anyway, do like the odd cream tea, though, must say.
So many cute little places, grand hotels, or everywhere in between, do it here.
And it always feels like an occasion. Even at Sainsbury's cafe, surrounded by a pack of suburban housewives.
Scones, sliced in half, with raspberry jam spread on top and a big dollop of cream as punctuation.
What could be wrong with that?
With a nice cup of tea.
With a friend.
A chat.
Of an English afternoon.
Lovely.

The Place to Get Sick

Still really liking Britain's National Health Service. Although I am ready for the time I won't.
I mean, compared to the States, where we've just got nothing.
C'mon, you old tired, lazy Washington politicians. You can do something! Redeem yourselves, please, if you can.
My husband got sick as a dog this past weekend at a friend's house on the south coast of England -- the land of hedges I was telling you about.
Just vomitted and vomitted and vomitted for 12 hours straight basically.
Now, my husband is a bull.
He doesn't get sick.
Unless he gets REALLY sick -- as in life-threatening disease, or emergency operation to remove a body part.
He doesn't just get kinda sick, like you and me.
So, after all that non-stop vomitting, I thought, okay, time to figure out if this is bad.
So my friend and I called the NHS hot line.
We talked to a nurse pretty quickly and explained to her the problem.
No problem whatsoever that we don't live anywhere near there, have no doctor there, or any connection to that part of the world at all really. And there's no mistaking that I'm American.
The nurse didn't like that my husband couldn't stop vomitting. Said that if he didn't stop soon, they'd have to send a doctor over to make sure he did stop, via an injection or something.
Send a doctor over? Boy, did that sound good.
Said the doctor would call in an hour or so.
After just about an hour, a doctor called.
Asked to talk to my husband directly.
That was smart.
Much better to talk to the patient than to the hysterical wife or the concerned friend, right?
Wife and friend always want the doctor to come.
At that point, my husband hadn't vomitted in about an hour and a half.
Doctor zeroed in on that right away.
Talked to him for about five minutes. Asked him exactly what was happening, down to the color of what was happening.
Told him a violent stomach bug was going around, how to wait it out for awhile, what to watch for, when and if to call back.
All turned out to be right.
Pretty impressive show actually.

The Country of Hedges

I have never seen hedges like here in this country.
No country does hedges like England.
They're a work of art.
Every great country has something that just sets it apart.
And hedges may be what sets this little, once-mighty island in the rain and mist apart.
That's right. The hedges.
We drove down through the South Downs this weekend -- just a beautiful part of England. Rolling green hills, tidy little brown brick villages, winding roads, old country pubs.
But it's the hedges that get me every time.
Seven-foot high, perfectly curved or ramrod straight, not a branch out of place, just going on and on all over the place.
Amazing.
Maybe I should take this further, though, and say gardens are what set this country apart.
Spent some time with two amazing gardeners this weekend.
Both men.
Both really proud of what they can make come out of this great ground of ours.
One showing me his seedlings, what he's planning for this spring, what's coming up soon in his lovingly-tended garden.
The other, pictures on his cellphone of the big garden he creates and maintains each year. One of those big formal English gardens. That go with a big stately house.
I was humbled by both of them.
By their love -- and tending -- of mother Earth.
It's not surprising, I guess.
They're both from the land of hedges.

Work, Part 5,468

If we could sort out work, I figure we'd have a lot of life worked out.
Work is a big one.
When we don't have it, we want it. When we do have it, we want to get away from it.
Now that I have just a bit of it, you'd think that might be right.
Wrong.
Shall I try to get more?
There?
Elsewhere?
Working somewhere just a couple days a week means not having to care.
It's actually hard not to care.
Part of me cares.
Another part doesn't.
If you care, you're really part of it.
If you don't, you're not.
Do I want to be more a part of this new place?
Part of me says yes, of course.
You're lucky there is this new place.
Another part of me screeches 'no way.'
Do other things! Fulfill those dreams, girl, damn!
I read a study recently that said older people are much happier than younger people.
And one of the main reasons cited is that they don't have to care about work anymore.
Their careers.
Or lack thereof.
If they've fulfilled their ambitions.
Or haven't.
Or any of that.
What freedom.

Home

I want to go home.
Or rather, I want to be home.
As in feel at home where I am. Wake up in the morning, knowing where I am and why, and where I'm headed in life. Near things I love, both people and objects.
Settled.
Is this a function of my age?
Or, failing that, I want to just jet off and live somewhere exotic and new that I've never been. That I can discover. That's hot.
Either nest.
Or cut and run.
Am I crazy?
I'm sick of this flat now. And I'm certainly sick of winter, like everyone is, all over the northern hemisphere, I think.
I just hang out in my bedroom all the time because it's the only room that welcomes me.
My knees hurt now too, like they never used to. Is that from the two sets of steep stairs here?
Can't wait to move now. A month still to go though. And plenty of packing.
It's not like I want to go home to Washington, if Washington even is home. What would I go home to now there? House long sold, jobs long gone.
Neither of my kids live there either.
And the longer you're away from somewhere, the less tied you feel.
Not that I ever felt hugely tied to Washington.
Even though I grew up there, after my Italian parents emigrated to D.C. when I was three years old.
And I just spent a dozen years there, raising my boys.
So quite a few years there, all added up.
Then there's Italy, the other half of my new home here. Not half at all though. Maybe a quarter, if I'm lucky.
As soon as you come back here, Italy feels like another universe.
Another planet.
And now, I need to stay away, leave my son to get on with making a life there for himself, without his mother around.
And I need to work.
To support our life here.
Work here.
And keep working on making a life here.

Habla German?

Amazing how many languages are spoken where I work here in London.
Even by the same person.
There's this one woman who sits near me, who you wouldn't think was anything but British.
Beautiful posh upper-class British accent.
Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. The whole package.
Other day, she gets on the phone, and out spews, uh, perfect German.
Even though I don't speak a word of German, I could tell it was just, well, fluent. Joking, laughing, talking fast, breaking in, like that.
I asked around and someone told me she's actually German, from Berlin. Not British at all.
Okay, that explains that.
Then yesterday, I hear her blabbing away in quick Spanish on the phone.
Spanish I understand, although there is no way in hell I could have carried on the conversation she was having.
She spoke really good Spanish too.
Geez. Spanish and German just aren't that similar.
In the States, I was special. Because I had another fluent language.
Italian.
I could always impress people with that, if I needed to. Break out the old Italian when needed.
Not that many Americans speak any other language.
Unless they're Latinos. In which case, they speak Spanish. Or they're Vietnamese. And then they speak Vietnamese. Like that.
I guess that's me too. I'm Italian-born, so I speak Italian (thank you, mamma e papa.)
They say Brits aren't good at languages either.
But in my office they sure are, this office full of hybrid creatures.
I feel like a slouch now.
Only one other fluent language?
What a disgrace, girl! Try to keep that to yourself.

Shopamania

The speed -- and optimism -- with which Brits open up new shops is nothing short of astonishing.
I mean, I know it's a nation of shopkeepers and all that, but cor blimey!
At least two dozen new shops and restaurants have opened on and around our high street (an almost endless stretch, that just joins on to the next high street) in the year since we've been here, many of them just recently.
Replacing stores that closed down.
That doesn't seem to stop them though.
They just keep trying.
How long they'll do that is anyone's guess.
My husband and I were talking the other day about how supermarkets have done in the local butcher and fishmonger, once staples of the British high street. We've got a quaint butcher -- and a fishmonger -- near our Tube stop here, but have I ever shopped in either of them?
No. I'm sorry, I haven't. Even though I buy a lot of fish. Because there are also four great supermarkets near us. Which is precisely the problem.
But do I like that butcher and fishmonger?
Absolutely.
And do I want them to close down?
Absolutely not.
Last night, we we were out on the high street for something, when we noticed a sign that said a new butcher's is opening right by the bus stop, in a storefront that's changed over three times in the past year.
A highly-trafficked spot, but obviously hard for retail.
A new butcher?
You gotta be kidding.
Today, the butcher is there. I kid you not. And I swear, it looks like it's been there for years.
Three guys with big white butcher hats standing behind gleaming counters, stacked full of fresh, appetizing meat ready to purchase.
New polished wood storefront.
Last week, it was an Italian gelateria.
There's a new shop next door too.
A new tanning salon.
And a bunch of new estate agents, since the real estate market in London is buzzing.
At least for now.
All feels a bit shaky to me.
Wonder how long the new butcher will last.

British convenience

The U.S. is supposed to be the land of convenient, of convenience foods, of packaged stuff, of everything-to-make-your-life-easier, no?
I've actually found, that for my taste, it's all more convenient here.
Especially the food thing.
I know that sounds absurd. Let me give you a couple examples.
I like to do a homemade minestrone. My mother's recipe, natch. And other soups. Especially in the winter.
But frankly, I never liked all the chopping involved beforehand to make a good one. The onion, the garlic, the carrot, the celery, all the veg you want to put in, all chopped up small. Use just one, or two, of what you buy, rest you gotta use for something else before it goes bad in the fridge.
Not here.
Here, in my local grocery store (I've got four nearby), they sell something called "soffrito" in a packet, (very Italian, yes) which is a chopped up onion, a carrot, a celery stick and some garlic. All fresh, and ready to just throw in the pot with a bit of olive oil to get the minestrone started.
Yep. I'll have that.
Then, they sell a medley of interesting vegetables in a bag together, again in small bits. Hmmm. Saves me buying two zucchini, a head of broccoli, some French beans, or whatever other vegetables I want to put in my minestrone, all separately, and then maybe not use them all.
Yep. Throw that in the shopping cart.
Oh dear. What do we have here? Three potatoes already peeled and cut up in a bag. Ready to throw in with all the rest.
Wow. That was easy.
Three bags -- which, although it's produce cut up for me, cost less than what I would have spent if I had bought all the ingredients individually.
One virtually effortless homemade minestrone.
If you're not in the homemade mood, there's also just so much more prepared food here. Or semi-prepared.
Just a ton more selection than in the States.
I mean, yeah, they have Whole Foods here too, but a whole lot more than that too.
Marks & Spencer's, the department store every Brit loves and where they all get their underwear and socks, also has a separate food chain, called aptly, Marks & Spencer's Food.
There's one near us, thank God.
They do a nice Indian take-away dinner for two, sometimes for under £10, if you're in the mood for Indian. If you go to M & S Food late, things you can make that day can be heavily discounted. Love that.
They also do very nice prepared soups, salads, pasta dishes, pasta sauces -- all kinds of things really.
My husband likes their breaded cod fillets that you bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
That sounds easy.
May pick that up for dinner tonight.

London 2012

Went to see the new Olympic Park under construction here the other day. Drove over there on the weekend to see what was happening in the east end of London where the Summer Olympics are going to be held in 2012. In just under two-and-a-half years from now.
The Olympics. That was our intended stay-through date.
I can't believe a year has gone by already. I'm hardly settled yet.
Gotta move still. Have hardly enjoyed myself yet.
Back to the Olympics.
Watching the Vancouver Olympics -- and reading how they're coping there -- has brought the London games into focus for us.
You really do wonder why cities put themselves through it.
So we decided to go have a look.
Boy, is there a lot of money swishing around down there in east London, a depressed, immigrant-filled part of the city. We saw all that money pretty clearly, pretty quickly.
Just a massive amount of building. A couple of big stadiums. More than a dozen huge cranes in the sky. A big new mall by the same company that opened one over here in the west side of London a year ago, just after we arrived.
Signs everywhere to Olympic Park already.
Looked pretty advanced to us.
I'm dying to see how this all works out.
If that part of the city will really benefit in the long-term. If the mall will be successful, like the one near us certainly has been, even in this recession. What the Olympic legacy will be for London, as they like to debate here.
We drove round and round awhile, taking it all in, and then ended up on a road that took us to a big entrance -- two of whose gates were already manned -- directing us to different sections of the new Olympic broadcast center.
Hmm. Looked pretty official. Just for one place.
Vancouver is taking a lot of heat for its Olympic perfomance. But when you actually read the stories, they mostly just repeat old news about the luger that got killed before the Games started.
The transportation needs scare me though.
I read somewhere that Vancouver's mayor warned London's mayor to be very careful about that.
They've had trouble with buses from the Olympic venues in Vancouver.
And London's public transport system, while efficient, seems clogged to me already.
It certainly did tonight. When I was reading my Evening Standard (free, thank you, kindly) pushed up against the back door of a carriage. I'm getting better at that.
The Olympics.
Coming soon, really.
In a heartbeat.
Or an eternity.
Depending on the day.

Moving On

It's official now.
We're moving.
And someone is moving in here.
All sorted. As they say here.
At the beginning of April.
They're good at the property game here. They do it all quickly and efficiently.
And despite the recession, both the for-sale market and the for-rent market is brisk.
When I first started looking for somewhere else to rent, the first agent I met told me that if you see somewhere you like, you gotta jump on it quick.
I thought that might just be agent talk. Because last year, when we rented this place, it wasn't like that at all.
But he was right. Good places go quickly. I can see them going.
The place we're moving to had only been on the market a week when we got it. As soon as I saw it, we put our offer in. It was the only place I saw that was worth the move, for us.
Our place here went just as quick, a week, maybe less.
They called today and said they had rented it, and they only started showing it last Thursday.
The for-sale market is even tighter, here in London, anyway. Lots of buyers; not enough houses. Who would've thunk it.
We went to our new place over the weekend to take another look at it.
I think we're going to like it much better.
It's a house, albeit a small one.
Feels like a house.
With a front door, a hall closet, and hell, a hall.
No neighbors downstairs, which will be a relief.
No steep stairs to get to the living area.
And then more to get to bed.
A patio to eat outside on, on those long summer evenings when the sun can actually come out for an hour or so.
Only two floors instead of three.
It's in a grittier area though, but only slightly. Near a building that's been vacant for a long time.
Looking forward to moving.
Starting spring in our new place.
Turn the page on this hard year.
Best thing about looking for a new place to rent was that I saw where Colin Firth lives -- with his Italian wife. (what else?).
One of the agents showed me after I told him that I had seen Firth in my local sushi place, getting take-away sushi.
Ever since that night, I wondered where Firth lived. I read he lived somewhere in my neighborhood.
I would look at the rows of identical houses though, and wonder, does he really just live in one of these?
The agent showed me his house.
It's a big detached house, not like the thousands of others around here at all.
With a big garden around it.
Worth several million, the agent said.
I should hope so.
He is Colin Firth. He won a BAFTA last night.
I mean, gimme a break.

The Olympics -- and the Marking of Time

Been watching the Vancouver Winter Olympics on television. Which has brought me back to the Turin Winter Olympics in Italy four years ago.
Nothing like a big event like the Olympic games to mark time for you.
It feels like so much longer than four years ago, which is not usual, is it? Time usually races by.
I was just at the end of my raising-kids phase then. Just on the cusp of empty nesterhood, with all its changes -- both inherent and, in my case, self-imposed. So much has changed since then. It feels longer than four years ago.
My older son was at college already, but my younger son was still at home, a senior in high school four Februarys ago. He was on the high school football team -- going to the games on Friday nights was one of our funnest outings -- but had recently injured himself in a game.
He had torn the ACL in his knee -- the anterior cruciate ligament -- which is quite a big thing for a knee (not that I knew much before then). He was scheduled for complicated knee surgery, that would use some of his hamstring and make it into this ligament he had torn in his knee.
I was going off to Turin for my newspaper to blog about the area surrounding the Olympic games. I was writing for the web site of my paper then, and had proposed going to northern Italy to write a personal-travel blog with one of the website's videographers. My Italian mother was from that wine-and-truffle-rich Piedmont area of Italy and I didn't know it at all. I was thrilled they said yes. It was one of the best assignments I had at the paper.
We had scheduled the surgery right after I returned from Italy, so I could take a bit of time off to be with my son after his surgery.
That's why I remember it all so well. And it all came flooding back to me now, watching the double-luge this morning from Vancouver.
I went to Turin for my newspaper. I was still working full-time there then and not thinking about leaving. If anything, thinking about doing more there, energized by this latest assignment. Newspapers hadn't started their free-fall yet. At least management hadn't acknowledged it yet.
My son was still at home, a senior in high school. So our nest wasn't empty yet.
We were still in our family home, living the life we had led for the past decade, so it was like a comfortable old slipper.
But then it all changed.
Nobody's fault.
Just life evolving.
My son grew up and went to college. Both my sons grew up.
My newspaper started going down the drain hole. Even though, it's still there.
For how long, and in what form, is anyone's guess.
But people I worked with, even my age, are still there, although in much fewer numbers. So I could've stayed for awhile after all, I guess.
I couldn't have stopped my kids' growing up, of course.
Not that I would've wanted to. I'm not saying that.
But it's the end of an era. Hastened to its conclusion by moving here.
Which seemed like a good idea at the time.
But the jury's still out.
We've been here a year now.
What an upheaval it's been.
And it doesn't feel that permanent.
Does that matter though?
What will the rest of our life bring? What to do now?

Following your dreams

More about working.
Let's face it, it's a huge thing in all our lives. Most our waking hours are spent there. Or not.
When I didn't have to work yesterday after all, but I was in the West End of London, and not a shopper, I ended up catching an early matinee of "Up in the Air," with George Clooney. You've probably all seen it. I hadn't yet.
What really stayed with me about that film was not Clooney, who's gotten an Academy Award nomination for his role, but all the people he fired.
The 57-year-old guy with the big pot-belly who just cried and cried at the loss of his long-held job.
The woman who asked what she would do with herself every morning from there on.
The man who pulled out the pictures of his young children and asked how he would tell them.
The woman who jumped off the bridge -- and changed the story of the movie.
Work.
Ohmigod.
What a powerful force in our lives.
I understood exactly what those people felt.
But wait. I didn't get laid off.
I took a paid buy-out.
To start a new life. In Europe.
And I've gotten some work here, although not full-time.
But still. I related to all those characters.
Because I too, left that cocoon, that all-encompassing, no-time-for-anything-else life that is working full-time.
You don't have to think about your life when you're working. Because that is your life. With just a bit of time squeezed in for other things.
Mind you, you resent that robbing of your time terribly. You yearn like hell for more time.
But still.
It stops you from having to fill your time with anything else. To find, maybe, that your dreams are too hard -- or silly in some way -- to follow.
In the film, Clooney and his young colleague tell the people they're firing that great people have been precisely where they are now, at the bottom the implication is, but have done amazing things from there.
You can finally follow your dreams, they tell the devastated employee. Remember what your dreams were when you were in your early twenties? Time to go follow them.
Sounds great. The kind of thing life coaches, self-help books, shrinks -- and people who are firing you -- tell you.
And the kind of thing we all tell ourselves. All the time.
I'm gonna stick my neck out here.
Working's easier.

The purple hula skirt

Getting the London clothes thing down.
You can wear your summer clothes.
Even when it's positively freezing outside. Everyone does.
You gotta just layer the thing up.
As in, summer skirt, yes, fine, but then tights underneath (and even woolen cable-stitch, knee or thigh-high socks over the tights) and boots -- short, tall, over-the-knee, ankle, whatever.
There's no such thing as summer and winter clothes here.
It's just layer it up. Or peel it off.
Makes you feel better to wear a bright skirt in the middle of a dreary winter, I find.
And you never know if the weather will ever really warrant the bright skirt -- with bare legs -- by itself here anyway.
So what the hell? Wear it with tights.
And your down coat.
At least you're wearing it.
Wore a cotton purple hula-like skirt today. Never wore that in the States except in the throes of summer. When it was really hot outside (like it never gets here).
With sandals. And painted toenails.
Today, wore it with black tights. Tall black boots. And a black cardigan. Over a pink t-shirt.
Made me feel summery somehow.
Mediterranean even.
Got to work.
They had changed my days. I wasn't supposed to be there.
My bad. They had told me.
I had gotten the days mixed up.
So no work this week at all.
Not great.
Oh well.
Should work on other things anyway.
Leaving the office soon. Before midday.
Gonna take my purple skirt to a movie matinee in the West End.
And then start on all the other things I should do in my life.
Tomorrow.

Been Here, Done That

It's odd that our eldest son has been -- and gone -- already. That he called this flat here in London home for awhile.
But then moved on.
You can still feel him here. See him in our little office on the Mac, editing his videos. Or lying on his bed, watching a show on his lap-top. Opening the fridge, looking for something to eat.
Where did those months go when he lived here? And those weeks that he went to work with me as an intern?
The Christmas party we were all at.
I'm going to work tomorrow. But he won't be coming.
They've got a whole new batch of interns there now. Don't know any of them. Don't talk to them any more.
We still call our spare room here, his room. And he left stuff here, like he always does wherever he goes these days.
A movie poster from the show he worked on, the basketball we bought him when he arrived, the one he went to shoot hoops with a few times at a park down the road.
It feels like his room still.
But he's gone now.
He's done a month at his internship-job in Rome now, just started his second month today.
He's enjoying it. He's doing well. We're proud of him. I bet he'll stay awhile.
He's onto his new life.
Which wouldn't have happened if we hadn't moved here.
Back to Europe.
But we're here, in London.
And he's there, in Rome.
Which sounds close. But really isn't.
A world away.
We'll see him this summer again.
He's onto his new life.
Which is how it should be.
But still. It hurts.
Because after all those years of caretaking, what is your life?