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.