Who Am I?

Felt the two sides of me -- the American and the Italian -- so keenly last night.
Who am I? Who is anybody?
Went out to a movie and dinner with my old American friend, my new American friend, and an Italian friend of my old American friend.
The movie was an Italian film set in the late 1950s, the time my parents left this country to move to the United States, just three years after I was born.
I kept thinking of that, of them, as I watched the film. This was the Italy they left. This was the Italy I was born into. And such an Italian Italy it was then. Not diluted by anything yet.
And again, just how hard it must've been for them to leave everything here, turn their back on this glorious country with its deeply ingrained traditions, values, and ways, and move to the States, such a different country in every way.
After the movie, we went to dinner.
After a bit of wine, we three American ladies, got, well, a bit American. Loud, boisterous, cracking jokes, making fun, reveling in our shared histories, in the ties that bind us.
"You can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take Jersey out of the girl," my old friend joked.
We all laughed, all East Coast girls sharing an old American joke.
The Italian friend and I ordered the same food, a pasta dish with clams and zucchini.
He and I were both hungry, like Italians get. We told each other that. We both understood.
After we ordered, he looked at me and asked if we should order something to start. We agreed immediately on what.
After we ate, he said to me, "it was okay, but not as good as it should have been."
I knew exactly what he meant.
And why.
Without him even saying it.
I mean, mostly, it was excellent, certainly would've been considered excellent in either the U.S. or England.
But there was one thing slightly wrong.
And in Italy, it needs to be perfectly right.
Or Italians comment to each other.
Like he was doing.
To me.
I told him what was wrong.
Precisely, he said, nodding.
Who am I? Who is anybody?

A Year Later

To: President Barack Obama
From: An American expat living in London and the side of a hill in Italy

I hear things are bad over there in Washington.
A friend who works on Capitol Hill told me yesterday that there's an exodus of Democrats, that Democratic lawmakers are so demoralized over the loss of Ted Kennedy's seat -- and another fight over healthcare -- that some are retiring, or making plans to leave Washington already.
She's leaving too, moving home to Colorado.
That made me so sad.
Even way over here on the side of my Italian hill.
So far from you in every way.
Last night, I couldn't stop thinking of your Inauguration last year.
I got up at 6 a.m. and walked several miles in the freezing cold down to the National Mall to cheer you on.
It was a special day.
So many people were there, from all over the States.
Everyone was just so happy, so hopeful.
"Yes, we can," we all shouted in unison. "Yes, we did!"
Just the most wonderful feeling.
I feel sorry for you, Barack.
I really felt that day that you could become one of the greatest presidents America had ever had.
And I still feel you could.
But they're not going to let you, are they?
Things seem to have changed so much there just in the one year I've been gone.
Where'd all that hope go?
That just makes me so sad.
Even way over here.

Illegal Living Room Part II

Had coffee with my new American friend here on my Italian side of the hill, a lovely woman from Brooklyn.
Love her strong New York accent.
How cool is that?
Anyway, got the living room story wrong, folks.
SHE WON HER CASE.
Six years ago.
But she still can't use her living room.
I barely understand it. And she was explaining it to me in good 'ol American.
Which I usually understand pretty well.
The judge, who is no longer practising, made a mistake of some sort.
And her lawyer is trying to find another judge to rule on it now.
Or something.
She's waiting.
Could take a year. Or 10, she said.
Doesn't know.
In the meantime, her living room is the patrimony of our little town here.
Whatever the hell that means.
So it will get resolved, I asked her. You will get the use of your living room at some point, right?
Six years, she replied.
We've been waiting six years already.
And I have no idea how much longer.
Um, would you like to come hang out in my living room for awhile?
It's got a couple of illegal windows.
But we should be alright.

The Illegal Living Room

I thought I had seen it all in Italian building.
But nope. No way.
Met a new American woman here in my town on the side of the hill.
Thought I had met all of them too.
Meeting her was a very pleasant surprise.
But it's her living room I can't stop thinking about.
It's illegal.
It's been sequestered and returned to the patrimony of this little town. So she can't use it. Even though it's right there in the middle of her house, where she's living.
Huh?
I mean, all of us have illegal bits in our houses here. Part of my house is illegal too, as are parts of all the houses around me. And probably all of the newish houses in this town, I would bet.
By illegal I mean outside the boundary of the approved plan.
Everyone stretches the super-strict building plans here a bit -- it's a national pastime -- an extra room or window here or there.
That's really mostly all it is.
But I've gotten away with it, as has everyone around me.
My closest friend here has a few illegal rooms. (And an illegal wall, but that's another story).
But it's not really a problem for her until -- and if -- she wants to sell the house. She bought it like that, with the back of the house all illegal, because she got a good price for it.
But being American and all, she's trying to legalize it, because well, I guess it just makes her more comfortable, even if she doesn't sell it.
This new one though is different.
She CANNOT USE her living room. And it's got a big official Italian sticker on it saying so.
Her builder told on her.
What?
That's the last person who tells on you. He built it, for chrissakes.
My builder actually suggested what illegal stuff I could do.
But this builder wanted more money than agreed for the house at the end, and when they balked at coughing up, he went to the town council to tell them that the living room he had built her was illegal.
She appealed, went to court. (I mean, you have to, when you're talking about your own living room, right?).
She lost.
A local judge ruled that her living room should be returned to the patrimony of the town.
Please explain to me what that means.
As a resident of this town, can I go and hang out in her living room then? (Which by the way is not that big and does nobody any harm at all as far as I can see).
When she showed me her empty, forlorn living room, with its big sticker on the outside wall, I suggested she just use the damn thing anyway.
I mean really. It is part of her house. And this is Italy after all, where nobody ever does anything they're supposed to.
She can't though. Her builder lives just behind her. He can see the illegal living room he built her.
If she used it, he would tell.

Letting Go

Sorry I haven't written. I've been busy letting go.
For all of you who may have doubted my ability to let go of my first-born son, you'd be proud.
I am doing it.
He's off.
I'm here on the side of the hill. Letting go.
After one day on the internship, the company sent him off with a team for four days to a town north of Rome on a project.
This company believes in working their interns hard for the financial betterment of the company. No sitting around making photocopies for this group.
My son? In a hotel paid for by someone other than his parents?
You gotta be kidding.
Feels good, folks.
I like this letting go stuff. No matter what you think.
Went to some hot baths in Tuscany with an old girlfriend yesterday.
Mmmm.
There are so many hot baths not that far from here. I had no idea.
My girlfriend, who's lived here a long time, knows them all.
Bless her.
A lot of them are closed now, for the month of January, but still, she found a gorgeous one nestled in the hills and cypresses of Tuscany that she had been to with her mother not long before her mother passed away.
I knew her mother.
So that felt significant.
Everything feels significant these days.
Momentous even.
My friend has a 23-year-old daughter who is now becoming friends with my son. She's invited him out a few times already with her group of friends.
Bless her.
They're going to the movies on Saturday night. So my old girlfriend and I may go to the movies too.
Simple. But also momentous somehow.
My son's coming back to our side of the hill tonight for the weekend.
Haven't seen him all week.
He's liking his new job. He's working hard.
I'm working hard too. At letting go.
I think I can do it.

Renting a Room

I lost 200 pounds this weekend.
Straight off the top of my shoulders.
In relief.
Last night, I was as light as a floating feather.
We have found what may be the perfect solution to my son's upcoming life here. At least for awhile.
Just like that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, whomever, whatever force guides this life as we know it.
I am in humble gratitude.
We found a room for my son in a single Italian woman's flat a five-minute walk away from his job.
Literally, five minutes. In a very salt-of-the-earth, real, busy Roman neighborhood. Nowhere a tourist goes. Across from the neighborhood's outdoor market.
A divorced woman's home, I would think, or perhaps a young widow -- she didn't tell us -- with two children.
I know that doesn't sound that good immediately. Which is what I thought when we talked to her on the phone and she said she lived alone with her two children.
But it is better than good. I'll tell you why.
Turns out her two children, as she described them, are two teenage guys. One 17 years old and the other 13.
Card fanatics, she said. Computer fanatics, poker lovers, game lovers.
Excuse me?
Are you talking about my son? Or your sons?
Two cute, shyish Italian boys came out of their room to meet us. They smiled. My son smiled back and immediately started chatting to them in Italian. Their eyes lit up in what looked a lot like adoration.
First thing they wanted to know was exactly how tall he was in meters (he's really tall. And he needs to find out very quickly what 6'5" is in meters).
The woman and I walked around the apartment. Italian apartments tend to be large. Italians raise their families in apartments. This one was no exception. The playstation was attached to the TV in the big living room. A basketball hoop hung at one end of the large square entry foyer.
Don't need to tell you my really tall son can shoot baskets the whole day long.
The room wasn't fancy, by any means. The bed is a pull-out single sofa. Small closet. But, a small ensuite bathroom.
He doesn't have much, my son. He's a minimalist.
Room looked great to him. Perfect, in fact, he said.
As we walked around, (the boys stayed chatting), the woman -- cute and hip in that Italian way -- told me her sons had become quite attached to one of her previous young male Danish lodgers and had keenly felt his absence.
My son's really good with younger boys, having grown up the older brother. Fits into that role like into an old comfortable slipper.
She showed me the washing machine in the apartment. I said she could show my son how to use it.
"Oh god, no, I'll just do it," she said, in Italian (nothing but Italian here). "I'm doing it anyway."
Okay.
Later, before we left, I asked her what the hours of the family were, what their day was like.
She went through the morning routine before school and her job and then for the evening, she said, "we eat dinner late, about 8:30 or even 9." (like most Italians).
Italian families always eat together. There's no everybody-eating-their-own thing at their own time here.
Thank God.
My son's probably late hours flashed before me. And his five minute walk home at the end of a long day. And his internship, all in Italian, all complicated stuff, at a place he'd like to actually get hired.
I saw him coming home to this family. To this nice Italian family with no apparent dad, but I bet a very competent single "mamma" and two sweet-looking teenage boys. Who probably like nothing better than a night of cards.
Which is what my son is partial to as well.
Instead of an hour-and-a-half drive on Italy's lunatic roads to our side of the hill.
To an empty, cold house. To make himself dinner. And then get up at the crack of dawn to do it all over again.
"He's welcome to eat with us every night," she said immediately, with no prompting of any kind on our part. "Or if he doesn't want to, (I think he actually might want to, but let's not tell her yet) he can make what he wants, of course."
200 pounds.
Lost.
Dissolved like some sort of magic diet concoction.
Right there in the big square foyer.
Under the basketball hoop.
"I like it a lot," my son said, giving her his most charming smile. "I'll take it."

The Looong Commute

My son and I are getting on each other's nerves now.
Which isn't surprising really when you think we've spent the last three months together almost non-stop.
Which is hard for a mother and her 24-year-old son who's been away at college for the past five years, no matter how much you love each other. Which we do. A lot.
Neither of us have had enough of a life on our own, or space, to get away to. We worked together. We commuted together.
And you quickly revert into old parent-child roles, which both people want desperately to break free of. But can't.
Throw Italy on top of that now, and watch out.
Italy can get you down. As all real Italians (and even this fake one) know very well.
As soon as you have to do anything beyond having dinner. (Thank you Tania, my Roman reader, for your comment yesterday about Italia Telecom. It feels so good to be understood.)
Yesterday, we drove to the place where his internship is in Rome.
It took forever. We took a wrong exit, we think. The traffic pattern made it almost impossible to turn around anywhere. We couldn't find the place for ages.
Then we had an argument. As you do when you get frustrated and don't know how to get out of it. Took it out on each other.
Made me feel so bad. Made him feel so bad.
Because we're both trying as hard as we can -- and we both know that.
I honestly don't see how he's going to live here and drive in there every day.
It took us about an hour and a half to get home. Without any wrong turns. And minimal traffic.
And it's going to cost him almost half of what he'll make to pay for the commute. Which seems stupid.
And then after the hour and a half drive home, he'll be here on the side of the hill in a little Italian town by himself.
With no Internet?
Don't see it.
Don't think he sees it either, but is afraid to say.
An old American friend of mine who lives around here told me last night that her similarly-aged daughter is looking to move to Rome with friends now. It's just too far to come all the time. And her mother is worried about her doing the long drive several times a week, often late at night.
Italian drivers are insane. You all know that, right?
Anyway, my son and I will push on today.
We'll both dust ourselves off and start over.
Apologize. Hug.
Because we love each other.
And we both know the other one is trying.
And that it's a hard thing we're doing.
We've got to do some administrative stuff to get him ready for the job, which involves Italian offices (god help us).
But first, I gotta get this house in some sort of working order again.
Get the TV fixed.
Do something about our Internet connection.
Get a new toaster.
Since the one I bought this summer has already crapped out.

No Italian

I take back every time I told you I was Italian.
I am not Italian. I am American.
That is now settled.
No Italian would’ve/could’ve forgotten what day it was yesterday, the end of the friggin’ New Year’s holidays, which the Italians have managed to stretch out until January 6.
January 6 is “la Befana,” here, a national holiday where parents give their kids symbolic lumps of coal (or big hunks of chocolate) that marks the end of the Christmas-New Year’s period. Today schools go back and everyone else goes back to work finally.
Yesterday, everything was closed.
I knew that. If someone had asked me, I could’ve told them that in an authoritative heartbeat.
But did I think about it once when I was booking our flights or planning to come?
Not a passing thought.
Not like any Italian.
As soon as I got near any Italians, of course, I found out.
Which was on the plane from London, which got stuck at Stansted airport for four hours on the runway when heavy snow closed the airport.
After we had waited about half an hour of our four hours on the plane, an Italian (passengers and crew of Ryanair flight overwhelmingly Italian) came up to the front of the plane where we were sitting and asked the captain, who was hanging out outside the cockpit (bad sign), if we were actually going to get to Italy that day.
“We certainly are,” the captain replied. “I don’t know when, mind you, but we are. Because I’m not missing the game at 3.
“I am going home today and I’m going to take all of you with me.”
Ha ha. Laughter from all the Italians nearby.
A Roma game? On a Wednesday afternoon?
“Ma certo, of course. La Befana.”
I paid for my Americanness, of course. You always do in Italy. Take my word for it.
The drive to the house cost twice as much as normal (no small sum) because well, it’s a holiday, and the poor guy did have to wait four hours for our flight.
When Roma was playing. (Missing lunch with your family and a soccer game on television on “la Befana” may simply be incalculable here.)
But arriving on a holiday took a mental toll too.
We couldn’t buy anything, so the cupboard was bare. Almost everywhere was closed.
When we finally arrived at the house, which my son has never been to in the winter, it was pouring with rain, and we were tired, hungry, and the house was freezing.
First thing we did was take some chairs that were crowded in the living room back out to the terrace, which bore no resemblance to the place where we’ve spent many happy hours in the summer.
“It’s different out here in the winter, isn’t it?” my son said, shivering.
Yep, it is.
Cranked up the heat. Turned on the television for a bit of background noise.
TV no longer works. Don’t know why.
Arriving here often means assessing what is now not working.
My son grabbed a blanket and proceeded to curl up on the sofa for the next hour or so, not speaking.
I called to get a phone line and Internet service installed (we had it once upon a time, already have the lines, but it got turned off after a snafu. Tried to do it from England. Couldn’t. Long, really boring Italian bureaucratic story).
The woman told me we can no longer get Internet service here because our area is now “saturated.” We have to wait for someone to give up their Internet service.
What? But more and more people are getting Internet service these days, not giving it up, I said. She repeated. I repeated. She repeated. I lost it.
“There’s nothing I can do, so I’m going to have to say arrivederci now, signora,” the woman from Italia Telecom said before hanging up on me.
While my son lay on the sofa, uncommunicative, I muttered about my own stupidity, about the Internet, about the TV, about Italia Telecom, as I scurried around turning on lights, heating, fiddling with the radio, anything to make it feel like anyplace you might want to move.
“I can’t believe all this shit,” I said to my son.
“You’re leaving, mom,” he replied in a flat voice. “I actually live here now.
"And you know what else, mom. I don’t know anybody here.”

The female conundrum

What is it about women?
Why do we spend our lives taking care of people?
But then also resenting it.
Is it genetic? Is it learned?
Help me understand this.
I woke up in a panic this morning. Worried about my son.
We're leaving tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn for Italy.
I'm only staying 10 days. And then he's staying on.
For a few months? For a few years? Forever?
I want to stay there with him, to take care of him, to make life easier for him.
My heart aches that he'll be there alone. I'm going to be a basket case when I leave.
But I need to come back too.
If I've got any chance of making a life here. I can't lose my freelance gig. I owe it to my husband to keep trying here.
He also needs tending.
He's been working hard. Like always.
Oh God.
I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, "Committed," the author of "Eat, Pray, Love," fame. (And when I say fame, I mean FAME.) You've all read it, I'm sure. Every woman I know has.
Anyway, this second one, is all about marriage.
It's nowhere near as engaging as "Eat, Pray, Love," which was written from a perpsective of pain (pain makes much better reading than happiness).
Here, she's happy, contemplating marriage to her new Brazilian lover, which is nowhere near as gripping as post-nasty divorce angst.
But. She's done an interesting reporting job on marriage, which for someone who's been married as long as me, makes for good reading.
So for all you long-married women out there, I recommend it.
After I woke up early freaking out with my need/desire to take care of my son forever (which I'm pretty sure he does not want), I read her chapter on women and marriage, which talks about this very problem.
She interweaves that with passages on her personality -- and what she needs -- versus her new lover's -- and what he needs.
It all struck a chord.
I looked at my husband sleeping next to me. Thought of how hard he's worked this year.
I wanted to desperately take care of him.
But if I don't make some progress with my own goals and life soon, satisfy some of my own personal hungers, I may go stark raving mad.
Nobody forces nurturing on me.
I force it on myself.
But we all want to be nurtured after all. So this female urge is convenient for everyone. Which is what Liz Gilbert says.
I like her as a narrator. But she also seems incredibly selfish at times.
Because she really doesn't have anybody to take care of actually.
My kids are growing up. I've buried my parents. My husband's not sick anymore.
Everyone's going to be okay.
I gotta let go.
I gotta realize some of my own goals.
I'm thinking Liz Gilbert would want me to.
If she cared, that is.
Which I'm pretty sure she doesn't.

New Year's Resolutions

You got any New Year's resolutions?
Hope not.
I've dispensed with mine this year.
Don't think they lead to anything good.
Read a good story in a British paper over the holiday weekend about this very same topic. British press is always full of interesting stories actually, one of the best things about living here, I'm finding.
No matter what kind of day I'm having, I can always retreat to a coffee shop on the high street and a good paper. Even if I've already read a paper that day, there's always another one.
That may not last. I bet at least one will close this year.
Back to New Year's resolutions.
The story basically said that resolutions just lead to more stress -- so it's much better for your mental health to just do away with them all together.
I mean, how much are you going to change from Friday to Saturday of last week, really?
So why even put yourself through it?
I asked a Polish woman at a hair salon I go to today if she had made any New Year's resolutions.
She laughed and said no. Didn't do that anymore, she said.
Used to. For years. But gave it up.
And didn't even think about it once this year, until I just asked, she realized.
For a few years, my husband and I used to decide what our goal would be for the year and make a half-hearted joint resolution to work towards it.
That was fun. It was usually pretty obvious, something we had already decided.
Didn't touch that this year.
Neither of us have much of an idea what this year is going to bring.

Empty Nest

It feels so normal today.
Even though it's so far from normal.
My older son is on his lap-top in the living room. My younger son is splayed out on the sofa, chatting with his older brother. The radio's on.
I'm in the kitchen. My husband's at work, but he'll be back later.
This is what life was like for years. Some variation of this.
Although in another locale. In another house.
The four of us.
That's why it's comforting. I know it. I'm used to it, even with its struggles. I like it. Everyone's close by, to be protected.
But it's all coming to an end tomorrow.
My younger son is flying back to the States. When I suggested he could actually stay another couple days, since school doesn't start for almost two weeks, he replied, "I gotta go home, mom."
We looked at each other.
"D.C. still's home for me, mom," he said.
Neither of us knew what to say after that. He'll stay with a friend for a couple days before heading back to his college town in South Carolina for his last semester of college.
My older son is moving to Italy in five days. He's thinking it's going to be for awhile. He's hoping anyway.
He lived here with us for three months. I was worried about what he would do here, but the truth is, he did just great.
He had fun at his internship; he jumped in with both feet.
The other day he likened his sojourn here with us to a semester abroad. It was about the same length, I guess.
College is over, honey, I reminded him.
You know what I mean, he said.
Yeah, I do actually.
Kids are only loaned to you.
I know that.
I've told friends that.
But letting go hurts.
And every time you get them back -- even for just awhile -- you get to go through it all again.