The Woman Room

In 1988, before having travelled outside of the United States, I interviewed with a foreign exchange student organization to handle their public relations.  Part of the job included going to Chicago area high schools and giving presentations to the students on the benefits of being an exchange student.  The company asked why they should hire me since I'd never had this kind of experience.  I said that's what made me the best candidate.

I told them I was sure that the school gymnasiums where I'd be doing my presentations would have very few students that knew they wanted to be exchange students and that would sign up without a lot of convincing.  Instead, the gyms would be filled with students just like me that liked the idea of living in another country with a new family, learning a different language and making new friends.  And probably, just like me, they'd be afraid to leave their old  friends, lose a year on the cheerleading squad and miss out on Prom and Homecoming. These students needed to hear that I'd had all of the same fears and that in the end I'd never found the courage to leave.  I wanted to keep them from making the same mistake.

It worked.  I got the job.

I remember that I started my presentation talking about foreign bathrooms.   I talked about the different ways to flush a toilet.  Sometimes you have to pull a dirty string.  Other times it's a chain....just as dirty, you just can't see the dirt.  There might be a small button on the wall to push or a lever on the floor to press with your foot (my favorite).  Having never been outside the U.S., I don't know where this idea came from, but I talked about the fact that in another country something as simple as flushing a toilet had to be learned.

26 years later, living in Italy, I think about this job every time I use a public bathroom.  I'm still never quite sure how I'll have to flush the toilet, but I always figure it out.  What stumps me these days is which bathroom I have to use.  The signs on the doors are seldom just stick people with two straight legs for the men's room and a triangle skirt for the women's.  One place has an image of  a person standing on one door and a person sitting on the other, but I know several Italian men that always sit.  I've seen two different hats, but there's a group of men called Alpinis here and they wear hats with big feathers.  There are artistic line drawings, but if I'm not wearing my glasses it's not always easy to distinguish the man from the woman.  I've come to appreciate the simplicity of the stick people.

One of my favorite bars is called the Punky Reggae Pub in Liedolo (see blog You've Gotta Try Sometimes).  To keep the cold out in the winter you're welcomed by a heavy, red velvet curtain at the door.  It's the perfect way to enter this strange, funky place (much more funky than punky).  One might imagine that a bar with a name like this (in Italy, which makes it even funnier) would have some clever signage. Painted on the bathroom doors are the official male and female symbols.  Can I be the only one that doesn't remember the difference between the little circle with the arrow or the one with the cross?

The first time I used this bathroom I'd had to walk through the whole bar to get there.  It wasn't very crowded because old people usually go on the early side.  Therefore, there were just enough other old people to notice me heading for the bathroom, which meant I couldn't immediately turn around and go back to my table when I found myself in gender difficulty.  All I could think of when I reached the doors was the the old kids' program, the Teletubbies, where the characters have different symbols over their heads.  I was sure they had these male/female symbols, so I stood outside the doors for a minute trying to imagine which teletubby was which color and with which symbol.   The only one I could really remember was the purple one with the triangle that got all the publicity for being gay so that didn't help.  I don't remember which bathroom I ended up using that night and I still can't remember which symbol is which.  The only thing I remember is not to use the bathroom at the Punky Reggae Pub.

My other favorite place is a family-run pizzeria in Cassoni, just like almost every other pizzeria in northern Italy.  In the summer at Pizzeria Tramontina you're welcomed by a red, plastic, beaded curtain to keep the mosquitos out.  The 59-year old mom makes the pizzas.  The 32-year old daughter is the waitress and her 8-year old daughter is the waitress' assistant.  The pizziola's (pizza maker's) mom has died, but her old aunt is there every night so it still has a four generation feel.

There's one table in the dining room that always has a special cotton tablecloth with stripes or polka dots or flowers.  It's totally different than the tissue paper tablecloths on the other tables and it never matches the rest of the decor.  This is the family table.  They usually eat around 20:30 (8:30 p.m).  If I want something else at their dinner time or if I'm ready to leave and pay my bill, I always wait until they've finished.  I feel guilty interrupting them.  (Imagine that?  Feeling guilty about bothering the waitress.)      

At Tramontina there's no question as to which bathroom I have to use.  Gioia (Joy), the waitress' assistant, drew a couple of great pictures with magic markers and taped them to the doors.  On the women's room there's a lovely lady that I call Donna dressed in a polka dot dress and polka dot stockings (sometimes she matches the family tablecloth).  I'm not sure where Gioia got the idea to dress her like this.  I think I'm the only one in these conservative little towns that mixes polka dots with polka dots.  In fact, there's a 12-year old boy here that calls me Pippi Calze Lunghe (Pippi Longstocking) because sometimes I even mix in a few stripes.

I call the woman on the door Donna because that's what it says on the sign.  Donna  means woman in Italian.  Gioia should've written Donne (plural for donna), but I didn't correct her because she knows me as the English teacher not the Italian teacher.  Anyway, I like how it translates.  The Woman Room.  And the best part of all is that behind the door of the Woman Room you find a Turkish toilet, also known as an Arabic, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Iranian, Indian, natural position or squat toilet.  So in the end, does it really matter which bathroom I use?

Some Things I Should've Been More Thankful For

I always hated that moment at the Thanksgiving table when I was forced into saying what I was thankful for.  I can't remember anything that I might have said at the time.  I usually tried to make a joke thinking it would take the uncomfortable attention away from me, but it really made things worse.  One thing I never did was recite the usual list of items that everyone else was thankful for like family, friends and health.  At the time it seemed too predictable.  Too recitable. 


But as the years have passed and the miles from home have increased I've been thinking.  And now, without the force of someone else at the Thanksgiving table (because there is no Thanksgiving table in Italy), I've made a different kind of list.  It goes like this:


I should have been more thankful for....
...my name.  I don't mind being called L'Americana, but I miss being called Tenley.
...voicemail.  I don't know one Italian that uses voicemail.  I don't even know how to set it up.
...free refills.  Ahhhhh......
...fluffy towels.  They don't get fluffy without a dryer.
...parties where you stand up (all night).  I asked a few people here what they thought about the idea of coming to a party like the ones they see in American movies.  They said they wouldn't come.
...rugs and carpeting.
...salted butter.  American recipes use salted butter.  Will I ever learn how much to add? 
...ice cubes.  Most of my friends order water or Coke in a bar at room temperature.  If I ask for ice, they give me two cubes which usually have that "old ice cube" taste.
...eating a salad at the beginning of a meal instead of at the end.
...sending and receiving cards in the mail.  Nonexistent.
...warm houses.
...warm theaters.
...warm churches (for classical music concerts, not mass).
...warm coffee shops.
...warm pizzerias.
...warm buses.
...warm stores.
...Starbucks, where you can ask for a hot chocolate at 180 degrees and they write it on the cup (sometimes even with your name).
...a mother-in-law that has friends she doesn't even know.
...sandy floors.
...people that know who Marcia Marcia Marcia Brady is.
...normal sized spooons. 
...old friends that knew a lot about me and liked me anyway.
...skim milk at coffee shops.
...an aisle at the grocery store dedicated to salad dressing.
...refugees (that need to learn English to survive in their new country instead of Italians that need to learn English to get out of theirs).
...Walgreen's.
...my niece and nephew. 
...Lake Michigan and it's many moods.
...Double Stuff Oreos.  Italy has Oreos, but they're not Double Stuff and they're packaged in one sleeve in a box instead of three rows in a cellophane bag that rips and forces you to eat just a few more.
...a thermostat.
...bike lanes (even if they're filled with double parkers).
...bookstores with a few shelves of books in foreign languages instead of a few shelves of books in English.
...Lake Shore Drive in my convertible.
...houses without gates (see blog Lions and Tigers and Bears)
...cake with frosting.
...real Christmas trees with collections of personal ornaments.
...post offices without a 30-minute wait at 10a.m. on a Tuesday in July.
...running mates (for the rare times that I don't want to run alone).
...sour cream, not Greek yogurt.
...fast food.
...fast internet.
...shoveling snow.
...my best friend.
...marshmallows that actually toast and get a golden brown coat that you can touch and pop in your mouth in one bite instead of a dark brown, burned, sugary coat that burns and sticks to the tips of your fingers when you touch it.
...stores that are open between 12:30p.m. and 3:30p.m.
...elegant dinner parties.
...cans of Diet Coke (Coca Cola Light) in a restuarant that haven't expired because I'm the only one who ever orders it (see blog You've Gotta Try Sometimes).
...one dollar bills.
...Libby's Pumpkin Pie Filling.
...and I guess here's where I have to add friends, family and health which seems like the best thing to be thankful for after all.


Did I forget to mention Cool Whip?

It Gives Me Fever

Just thinking about some stereotypical Italian things is enough to make some of us woozy.  A handsome, well-dressed man zipping by on a Vespa, an extra large piece of tiramisu, a moonlit walk on a canal in Venice or a pair of handmade, shiny blue shoes might make even a non-sentimental American's temperature rise.  But can these quotidian events really be the cause of so many Italian fevers?

In the two years that I've been living in Italy a week has seldom passed that I haven't heard about someone's fever.  Friends can't have dinner because of fevers.  Students can't come to lessons because of fevers.  Walks on trails, after-dinner coffees and ice cream dates have all been cancelled due to fever.  In addition, exact temperatures are reported, including hours and increments. What people don't know is that degrees mean nothing to me.  If I still haven't learned how to quickly translate the temperature of a beautiful day from celcius to fahrenheit, you can bet I'm not going to waste time translating one's body temp.  Until today, that is.  Most research seems to agree that a normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees fahrenheit or 37 degrees celcius, "give or take a degree depending on individual differences."  And experience indicates that a normal cancellation body temperature (i.e. fever) in Italy is anything above 37.5 (which if you agree with the "give or take a degree" might actually be normal).

Strangely, when someone cancels plans with me because of a fever I spend a lot more time infuriated by this fever phenomenon than sulking about my solitude.  I don't think about lost wages or missed outings.  Instead, I contemplate why Italians are so concerned about their temperatures.  A while back I started wondering if it was just me.  Was I really the only one that didn't have a thermometer in the house when I grew up?  Was it only my mom who felt my face with the back of her hand to tell me if I got to go to school or not?  But then I remembered that my neighbor's mom used to gently put her cheek on Lisa Jean's forehead to see if she had a fever. Albeit a cheek instead of the back of a hand, it wasn't a thermometer.

I needed some reassurance.  It's hard to go on my "you Italians and your temperatures are crazy" spiel without something good to back it up.  So I called an American friend and asked her how many times she'd checked her temperature in the past year.  She replied, "Do you mean in the past twenty years?  None."  My Italian friends are incredulous.

Last week I asked a student about her long weekend in Rome.  She said that they'd had to come home early because she'd had a fever.  I asked how she knew she'd had a fever and quickly added, "Please don't tell me you took a thermometer to Rome for the weekend."  She just smiled.

I'm sure that if I had to cut a weekend short I'd simply say that I came home early because I was sick.  But how would I know without a thermometer?  Easy.  I wouldn't feel good and I'd want to stay in the hotel room.  And choosing a hotel room instead of the "piazze e pallazzi" of Rome would be a pretty good indication that I was sick even if I didn't know my temperature.  If I'm sick, I'm sick.  I lie around a couple of days until I start to feel better.  Then I try to eat some chicken noodle soup and crackers with grape jelly.  If I feel okay, I probably don't have the fever anymore and I can get on with my life.  If I'm not myself for four or five days maybe (just maybe) I go to the doctor. Then he checks my temperature and confirms that I'm sick.  I go back to bed and wait until I get the urge for the chicken noodle soup.  And then maybe (just maybe) it will all happen again in another 5 years or so.

I don't think I'll ever get to the bottom of this Italian fever frenzy.  (Or any of their other ailments.  See blog, Living with a Bunch of Old Wives).  I'm still trying to learn that I don't really have to.  As with most of these cultural differences that are beginning to drive me mad, I have to accept that that's just the way it is here.

I asked a friend what he thought about his culture's overuse of the thermometer.  He said, "It's interesting that you Americans are still alive even though you never check your temperatures.  On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have harmed us for checking."  What a calm and uncritical response.  Will the day ever come that I can say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" even on issues that make my blood boil?  Which in turn, I know, may cause a fever.
 

This is Some Good Weed and the Mushrooms aren't Bad Either

Taking a walk with Gemma takes a while.  She has a bad back, she can't walk and talk at the same time and she uses a cane.  Sometimes she even uses two.  We move along slowly and accomplish three quarters of a mile in about 45 minutes.  We could get it done a little more quickly if she didn't stop to teach me about every edible thing along the way.  Everything has its season, and its seasoning.  I've heard lengthy descriptions on how to cook a variety of green leafy stuff that grows in the ditch on the edge of the road.

The only thing I can offer on these walks is how to suck the sweet stuff out of the ends of little purple flowers.  I learned it when I was growing up in Michigan.  I don't know what the plant is called but I call it "Cowyflower".  It grows in fields with other weeds and wildflowers.  I thought the fields were just waiting to be replanted with corn or potatoes.  Then I noticed that a few times a year they're cut and the flowers are rolled into giant balls of hay.  It's awfully pretty cow food.

Anyway, cowyflower is a weed with small purple flowers.  Each flower is a ball made of a bunch of little tubes, like petals I suppose.  You can pull them out one by one (and do the he loves-me-he-loves-me-not thing if you have the courage) and then softly bite the white ends and a little bit of sweetness comes out.  I taught Gemma how to do it, but she didn't seem very interested.  Now I only do it when I'm out alone and in need of a little something sweet.

When Gemma's feeling good and it's the right time of year we take a little spade and a plastic bag on our walks. We veer off course into fields looking for what seem to be the leaves of dandelions.  I bend down and say, "Is this it?" and she says it's not, so I keep looking.  Then she pokes her canes around a bit in another little patch of something that looks identical to what I'd discovered and tells me to bring the spade and dig it up.  I never argue that it's the same stuff I'd found.  I just follow orders.   She says we have to find a lot because it shrinks when you boil it and then there's nothing left to eat.  Fortunately, so far I've been able to avoid these weed dinners.

The good news is I haven't avoided everything.  I don't know why I ever decided to try fiori di zucca fritti, but I'm glad I did.   Maybe the fact that fritti means deep fried was enough to convince me.  After all, I used to order onion rings (Mmmmm...I wonder if I can order those in Italy)  and I don't like onions.  I liked to break the ring and try to pull the onion out in one long piece.  If the batter on the outside was thick, the onion would slide right out.  The ones that weren't breaded enough got stuck along the way and I'd have to break the onion again.  Then I'd fill my dinner mate's plate with the onion guts and I'd enjoy the deep fried shell.

Back to the fiori di zucca fritti, fried pumpkin flowers.  For some reason I'd thought I'd heard that they were zucchini flowers, so I asked Gemma.  She said they're the same plant.  I've never considered a long, thin green vegetable to be the same as a big, round orange one but I'm learning to trust Gemma when it comes to the kitchen. 

The first time I tried the flowers, I thought I might be able to use my onion ring technique and just eat the batter off the outside.  Then I realized the flowers aren't really slide-outable.  I was forced to take a bite.  And guess what?  Flowers taste better than onions.  But I guess already knew that.

Gemma's been trying to teach me a bit about mushrooms, too.  I live in an area filled with what seems like a lot more mushroom hunters than mushrooms.  Yesterday on my run in the woods I came upon a tiny little man wearing a hand-knit vest, rubber boots and a straw hat.  He was carrying a basket like Little Red Riding Hood's and it had two mushrooms in it.  Who knows how long he'd been searching.  In my opinion it's not a very gratifying hobby, but maybe that's because I don't like mushrooms.  Last month on my mushroom hunting expedition in the mountains three of us found six mushrooms in four hours.  I had better luck finding 5-millimeter crinoids buried in the sand on the shore of Lake Michigan than 5-inch mushrooms in a rainy Italian forest.   

But one thing is for sure, the thrill of finding a real red mushroom with white spots was worth the trip! The only place I'd ever seen them was on the pages of fairytale books or ceramic versions alongside the giant wooden butts bending down to pick flowers in the yards of American country folks.  I'd always thought all mushrooms were brown, like the ones in my backyard that the ballerinas danced on (see blog, Believing in Ballerinas and Butterflies). I didn't know pretty red mushrooms with white polka dots were real, but they are.  And the best part of all?  They're poisonous, so they don't get picked.  They're left to be discovered and enjoyed by a silly American girl learning a lot about life in Italy.  I'm sure it won't be long until I meet the seven dwarfs.

August in Italy is not April in Paris

I don't like crowds. I can't say that I've never liked crowds or I wouldn't have gotten so mad at my dad for refusing to take us to the fireworks when I was a kid.  But at some point between the 1976 Fourth of July parade in Ada, Michigan, overflowing with bikes decorated with red, white and blue crepe paper, ribbons and flags and 2014 Ferragosto in Italy, overflowing with traffic, crowded beaches and red, white and green flags, I've changed. 

Ferragosto is a national holiday in Italy.  It's the fifteenth of August and it used to be the official kickoff of summer vacations.  Now the first of August seems to be the official kickoff and the thirty-first, the end.  It's the month Italians go on vacation.

August in Italy is a far cry from April in Paris unless you're on the seaside or in the mountains.  As for the rest of Italy, it's empty.  And like I said, I don't like crowds, so I stick to the empty part.  For most people it doesn't matter that everything is closed, because they're all at the sea where  everything is open.  It's those of us left behind that notice. You have to prepare yourself that in August, wherever you go to buy your running shoes, eat your pizza, get your haircut or pick up your flowers might be closed.

I spent the month saying to myself, "I wonder if it'll be open," and upon discovery of its closure, "c'est la vie."  I know that's French, but I said it anyway.  You don't know a place is closed until you get there and find the cute little sign taped to the door that says, "Chiuso per Ferie", closed for vacation.  They always include the dates so at least you know how long you'll have to go without their services, which is a little more polite than the Dairy Queen ice cream shop in Indiana.  They used to change the giant sign by the road so you could see it driving by.  But they simply wrote, "Closed for 6 weeks."  You didn't know when they'd closed, so you didn't know when they'd reopen.  You just had to wait it out.   If the plastic letters started falling from their slots and the sign said, "lose for 6" or "Close for eeks" you knew your next vanilla cone dipped in chocolate wasn't too far off. 

Then comes September.  The most popular question in Italy the first week?  "How were your holidays?"  It's assumed that everyone had some kind of vacation in August.  Saying that you didn't go anywhere and continued working is worse than saying that you stayed home alone on Thanksgiving and ate peanut butter and jelly.  Poverina, poor girl. (I was going to say macaroni and cheese but that made things sound a little too good.)

By the second week things start to get back to normal.  Tans have started to fade and coffee-vending-machine-talk (water cooler talk) goes back to politics instead of fabulous beach resorts and how this year they were in row 2 instead of row 17.  I had to ask what that meant, too.  Most beaches are run by restaurants and bars and campgrounds.  There are rows and rows and rows of chairs and umbrellas.  You have to rent your place.  The closer you are to the water, the more you pay. Fortunately, you can book it well in advance.  Imagine reserving your place at the beach!  I talked to a 72-year old woman in February that was complaining that she couldn't go to Paris for the weekend because she'd just paid 700 euro to rent her chair and umbrella for the coming summer. 

There's one thing I'm sure of.  I'm lucky I didn't grow up in Italy.  I would've missed out on the whole month of August instead of just the Fourth of July.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My. Gates and Shutters and Curtains, Mamma Mia.

14 kilometers, 4 gateless houses.  It's a miracle around here, so I've decided to tell you about it. 

Until today, I would've written "every house in northern Italy has a gate" but now I have to say "almost every house in northern Italy has a gate."  It's one after another after another.  There are gates in the countryside.  There are gates in the suburbs.   There are gates in the mountains.  And when the door of a house isn't right on the edge of the cobblestone street in a medieval city, there are also gates in the cities.  

I'd started thinking of northern Italy as one giant gated-community.  And then I realized it's actually worse.  A gated-community still has a sense of community.  It's a small group of people with the same fears locked in one place together.  At least they're still together.   But around here, everyone locks everyone else out.  Togetherness doesn't exist.  Seeing a lady with her bike basket filled with vegetables and fresh flowers that has stopped to talk to her neighbor over the gate isn't as charming as it used to be.  Now I only see the gate.

And it doesn't stop with gates.  Houses are also equipped with shutters which are closed and locked every time you leave the house and often at a certain hour every evening even when you're in the house. (A student shared the story of her mother returning home on a beautiful spring day complaining that she'd wished she could have stayed out in the piazza just a bit longer.  When asked why she hadn't stayed out, the mom replied, "Because it's 5:00 and that's when I have to close the shutters.")  There's no reason that the shutters MUST be closed at 5:00pm.  That's just the time this mom likes to get the house closed up.  No need to enjoy a lovely spring evening when there are shutters to be closed. 

And inside the locked shutters, of course, are the locked windows.  Fortunately Italians aren't completely mad, and in the summer the windows are often left open.  But are they wide open to let in light and catch a glimpse of the great outdoors?  Heavens no.  After the gates and shutters and windows come the curtains.  If I'm lucky enough to pass the first three levels of security and make it inside a house (after asking for "permesso" even with my host at the door inviting me in......the strangest custom of all, really.  It needs explaining.  You don't enter without permission.  It makes sense if someone's in the backyard or deep in the house and doesn't know you're there. You shout out a little, "Hello???  Can I come in?"  But here, the host is standing on the stoop greeting me as I get off my bike.  We've exchanged "hellos" and "che bellos" and while standing on the threshold I still have to say, "Can I come in?")

Anyway, once I make it in, I'm usually ready to leave again as soon as possible.  A most fabulous, sunny, breezy, blue I'm-happy-to-be-alive-kind of day turns into a dark, gloomy I-have-the-flu-and-I-have-to-stay-inside-kind of day.  The curtains are closed. 

Why?  I ask.  To keep people from seeing inside.  I agree. I don't really want people to see me curling my eyelashes in the bathroom or changing my clothes a thousand times in the bedroom.  But I have no problem if they see me eating dinner or washing the dishes or reading a book.   Those aren't the types of activites that I feel the need to hide. 

One friend said that his elderly neighbors sit outside and just watch the world go by.  He thinks it looks like they have nothing better to do.  They probably don't.  So why not sit outside, breathe the fresh country air and watch the world go by?  Instead, this guy stays inside and closes his curtains because he doesn't want them to see him on his sofa watching TV.  What's worse?  Old people on the sidewalk living a little and saying hi to the neighbors, or a 40-year-old guy in a dark house making friends with his TV?  And when I asked his wife if she cared if they saw her doing the dishes, she said that wasn't the problem.  She thinks that if they see her at the window they won't know she's washing dishes but will just think she's looking out at them like a nosy neighbor.

Another response to the question of closed curtains?  A 45-year-old woman said, "I don't know.  I've never really thought about it.  My grandma always had the curtains closed.  My mom always had the curtains closed.  So now I always have the curtains closed."  She was at least intrigued by the idea that she'd never really thought about it.   Whether or not she's since opened her curtains, I may never know.  In an effort to gather information on these unusual Italian behaviors from a broader pool, I'm expanding my research beyond my  students and small circle of friends.  This woman was the friend of a student's mom.  I feel a little embarrassed asking this student if her mom's friend has opened her curtains yet.

Back to the 4 gateless houses.  They were all in the same little area.  An area where there's nothing but a light brown  dusty road underfoot and ahead, 9-foot-high-by-the-4th-of-July deep green cornstalks on each side, a blue sky above and a few Italian farmhouses with no gates.  It seems to me these folks might have good reason to fear lions and tigers and bears out there in the middle of nowhere, yet their houses are gateless. 

My first thought was that the people in these houses were just the kind of Italians I'd been looking for.  Open Italians.   Italians that are willing to answer the real door instead of respond to the buzzer at the gate at the end of the driveway.  Italians that are unafraid of Jehovah's Witnesses and Moroccan guys on bikes selling brooms and mops.  I thought I'd found a new gateless community that might be willing to share ideas and feelings instead of just vegetables.  Then I told a friend about my discovery and she laughed and replied, "They're probably not Italian."

Wouldn't you like to be a dreamer, too?

 "At the tone please record your message.  When you've finished recording you may hang up or press one for more options."
 
I cried when I heard it.
 
There's no melody.  There's no jingle.  There's nothing.  But I still teared up.  It's normal to be moved by music.  There are prom songs, first-boyfriend songs, convertible songs, ski lodge songs, cheerleading songs, physical therapy songs, diving resort songs and first year of M-TV songs.  There's nothing strange about hearing an old tune that stirs up a memory.  That's what music is all about.  And sometimes it makes you cry. 

But crying at the sound of the computer voice lady on the voicemail of so many American cell phones didn't really seem normal.  For me it was like the voice of an old friend that I hadn't heard since I moved to Italy.  It really felt like home.  Then I started thinking of all of the other things that might have the same effect on me and since I was feeling a bit melancholy I decided to spend the morning with You Tube and a box of Kleenex.

First I checked on the Culligan Man, but he was busy with the carpet guys at 588-2300.  Then I decided to look for Mr. Whipple, and as usual he was busy telling the ladies not to squeeze the Charmin.  The only person I found available was Barbara.  She was still up.  She was cleaning her oven. 

Even though I was taking this walk down memory lane early on a Monday morning instead of at 7:00pm Sunday night, I decided to search for Walt Disney.  Hearing the theme song wasn't quite the same without a toasted tuna fish sandwich on a TV tray and a head full of wet ringlets.  At that time my hair was curly enough to curl itself with a little help from my mom.  She'd take a wet chunk and brush out all the snarls.  Then she'd wrap the strand around her finger like thread around a spool.  When she pulled her finger out, the hair stayed in a tight little ball.  I had to sit kind of still until the balls started to dry and fell on their own, forming thirteen perfect ringlets. 

Anyway, even without the tuna fish sandwich and ringlets, I was moved by the magic of Disney.   I closed my eyes and listened to the music.  I could see the little fairy with her wand making the fireworks go off behind the castle.  If she wasn't a fairy and she didn't actually create the fireworks, don't tell me.  That's the way I want to remember it.    I think the only words to that song that I ever really knew were "When you wish upon a star"  and then I just hummed the rest.  But the whole song goes like this:

When you wish upon a star
makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
will come to you
Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true

The thought of believing these lyrics made me smile and I giggled like the Pillsbury Doughboy when he gets poked in the stomach. Woo Hoo :-) So, all I have to do is wish upon a star and my dreams will come true!  I'd started to think dreaming was a bunch of b-o-l-o-g-n-a.  Maybe it's because I've surrounded myself with a group of Italians that aren't dreamers.  Did they stop dreaming because they've decided they just have to settle for mediocrity?  Or is what I continue to call "mediocrity" really such a nice place to be that there's no need to dream of the next best thing?  I still don't have the answer to that one.  At the moment I've got to try my hardest to be more like Mikey.  He's the only one that had the courage to taste LIFE and as soon as he dug in....he liked it, hey Mikey! 

I'll probably be out looking for stars tonight anyway.  As Sarah Ban Breathnach says, "the world needs dreamers and the world needs doers.  But above all the world needs dreamers who do."  Wouldn't you like to be a dreamer, too?





(Sorry.  If you're not at least a 40-year old American, this post will make no sense.  I hope you'll stayed tuned for the next one.  Tell 'em Charlie sent you.  Doors closing.....)
 

Can I kiss you?

I thought the season of asking for kisses in Italy had passed, but apparently it hasn't.  During the holidays the question is disguised, making it a bit easier to get away with.   

The first time I heard, "Posso darti auguri?" (can I give you my best wishes?)  I was confused.  It was in the beginning of December when I was asked by a friend of a friend and I said, "Why couldn't you?"  It seemed strange that he thought he needed permission to say Merry Christmas.  The next thing I knew he was getting up from his desk and coming towards me.  Then he said "Auguri" and gave me the double kiss (which I've finally learned starts on the left, referring to an earlier post, A Kiss is Not Just a Kiss).  And that was that.  I'd learned what "Posso darti auguri?" meant.  It's not asking for permission to give best wishes.  It's asking for permission to give kisses.   From then on I was prepared for the holiday season. 

But what I've never been prepared for is off-season. (As in, not during the holidays and not masked with, "Can I give you auguri?")  In off-season, I can count on two hands the number of times I've been asked for a kiss by a stranger.  I know the 'count on hands' expression is usually used to indicate how seldom something happens.  And we usually only refer to one hand.  As in, "I can count on one hand how many times you've offered to wash the dishes."  But in this case, I'm astounded that the number of times I've been asked to be given a kiss by a stranger is actually high enough to count on TWO hands.   

Why would a person that I don't know think I'd want a kiss from them and why would they want to kiss me?  In all of my travels over the past twenty years, which I think it's safe to say covers a lot of territory,  the only place I've been asked for a kiss by a complete stranger is in Italy.  What makes a chubby, more-than-middle-aged man in the park think that after interrupting my attempt at a little acquarello I would to want to kiss him?

And why would an encroaching-on-elderly man on the running path that has taken a walk every day since his open-heart surgery think he could kiss me?  I'd actually talked to him long enough the previous day (45 seconds) to hear about the surgery.  I suppose that justifies his asking for the sweaty kiss the next day.  We were already good friends.  Or maybe he had to reset his pacemaker and he thought a kiss would do the trick.

Then there was the attempt at dusk last week on my way home from a run in the rain. I was on the regular road instead of the trail and I saw a man checking his mailbox.  Actually, I was kind of surprised to see such an almost-ancient man out in the rain.  As I was passing, he asked if I was afraid to be out in the dark.  I stopped and said, "No, should I be?"  I thought there might be something about the neighborhood that I still had to learn.  But the only thing I learned is that there's yet another hopeful heartbreaker living down the street.  It went like this. 

Instead of responding to my "No, should I be?" he simply said, "You have such a pretty face.  Can I give you a kiss?"  And even though he was probably 85-years old, I gave him a gentle shove on his shoulder  (which luckily didn't make him topple) and sweetly said, "Are you out of your mind?" which I suppose at his age he actually could have been. 

I won't continue with the examples.  That's pretty much how it goes.  And don't forget, there are enough of these love affairs to count on two hands.  I've decided that the next time it happens instead of just accepting the fact that I'm in Italy and saying, "That's aMORe!" I'm going to pretend I'm in Canada and say, "That's ENOUGH, eh?"




A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out all the years.  --Rupert Brooke
Ok.  That explains everything.
   

Don't Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I take a walk around my neighborhood every night between 1:30 and 3:00a.m.  I do it so I can hear the dogs bark.  And bark and bark and bark and bark.  It's not that I love the sound of barking dogs.  In fact, during the day, I hate it.  But at night, I find a little peace in it.  I guess you might call it peaceful revenge. 

I live in a neighborhood filled with dogs.  I can't ride my bike or run anywhere without being gruffly interrupted by a mad dog.  In the second house on the left there are four.  The next house has two. Then the next three houses each have one.  And that's when I head out towards the trail.  In the direction of the mountains the first house on the left has six.  Then it's quiet for three minutes until I'm greeted by four more.  This is just in the first 600 yards (as in unit of measure, not dog confines).  It only gets worse as I get more miles into my rhythm and reverie.   If I have to look on the bright side, at least I'm usually being barked at and chased on the other side of a hedge or fence, but it's still a bit alarming.

I've been asking myself day after day if the barking bothers the dog owners or if they even hear it.  I wonder if they're embarrassed that their pets are such a nuisance.  I'm pretty sure the answers to these questions are no or I would have seen at least one shy smile as if to say they understood that it happened everyday and they were sorry for the disturbance.  It's when I continued looking for these shy smiles and not finding any that I finally decided to make their dogs bark at night.  And thus began my much-later-than-evening strolls.

In the still hours of the night when I'm sure the farmers are deep asleep, their barking dogs make me (not so shyly) smile.   I stop to enjoy them.  If I keep walking, the pleasure is fleeting because the barking stops as soon as I've passed.  So I've found a couple of good places to rest, lean on a tree and pretend I'm that black cut-out silhouette guy smoking a pipe.  I bend my leg just like he does and I  listen to them bark.  And listen and listen and listen and listen. 

I like to imagine what's going on inside.  By that hour I'm hoping that the house is really cold
because the fire lit before bed has probably gone out.  Farmers go to bed early.  There's nothing to do around here when it's dark.  So, I picture them lying there for a bit, listening to the dogs and assuming that there's no danger and the barking will stop.  But as long as I keep my pose, the dogs keep barking.  So then I imagine them rolling over and putting their handmade quilts over their heads so they don't hear it anymore.  But the barking continues.  Eventually, they have no choice.  They don their icy slippers that have been chilling on the cold tile floor for the past several hours and go to the window.  This is the part I really like.  I don't have to take cover until they're totally out of bed.  My warning comes from the clank of the inside window.  They have to open that before they can get to the outside shutters.  This means that for a few seconds at 2 a.m. or so, they're getting a nice blast of cold air up their pajama sleeves.   That's when I smile, think "just what the doctor ordered!" and move on to the next patient.  

As hard as I've searched I haven't found anything that says, "Revenge is the best medicine."  In fact,  I'm sure it's no surprise that most of what I've found is a bit more like, "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind," by Gandhi . Or  "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves," by Confucius.
 
But I did run across this, by Anne Frank. "I won't bore you anymore on the subject...all my plans of revenge...must be abandoned in order to keep the peace.  Oh I'm becoming so sensible."  And then I smiled because SENSIBILE in Italian and SENSIBLE in French and Spanish are all defined as 'sensitive' in English, which means 'having or displaying a quick and delicate appreciation of others' feelings.'  

Thanks to Anne (not Gandhi or Confucius) I've given up on this whole revenge thing.  It was just one of those daydreams I have when I'm running anyway.  It's not that I like the idea of becoming sensible (in English) because it seems a bit boring and lacks a certain.......je ne sais quoi.  Sensible people don't take walks in the rain without their umbrellas.  They don't buy knee-high boots with 37 eyelets and hooks that have to be re-laced every time they wear them when the same boots are available with a hidden zipper.  And they probably don't put sugar on their low-fat, diet cottage cheese.

So, rather than worrying that I'm becoming sensible in English, I tell myself that I'm becoming SENSIBILE or SENSIBLE in one of the other languages and console myself with my kindness.


 
"Revenge is like biting a dog because the dog bit you."  --Austin O'Malley
I thought I'd include that one just for laughs because it's really laughter that's the best medicine.

Look on the Bright Side

I lost five euros a couple of weeks ago.  That's looking on the bright side, which is something I don't always do. I actually lost half of a ten euro banknote, which means I really lost ten euros, I know. But I felt a little better thinking that I'd only lost five.  In fact, if I'd lost the whole thing, I might not have even noticed.  It was the discovery of the perfectly torn half that is trying to teach me a lesson.

I'd spent the morning with students in Bassano del Grappa.  I'd met one in the cafe by the train station.  After the lesson we walked through the Saturday morning market to my favorite florist to buy flowers.  This was the meeting point for the next student.  We shopped a bit and then ended up in another cafe.  And when I'd finished with her I went to a beautiful old office just off the piazza in the center of town for the final lesson of the day.  It's hard to believe this is my job.

It wasn't until later that afternoon that I discovered the half banknote. Quite certain that I was the one at fault, I texted my students anyway to see if one of them was still holding the other half.  As I expected, the missing piece was missing.  I was reminded once again that my method of money collecting really isn't such a good one.  It happens every time the students pay me. I always feel a little embarrassed and I want to get the exchange over quickly.  Instead of opening my bag and getting out my wallet and neatly folding the money and placing it in the proper section (all of which takes time), I just shove it my pocket and keep talking as though they haven't just paid me.  But, cramming crumpled bills into the depths of my skinny jeans' pockets only means pulling them out again in the same disheveled manner which leads to dropped money, torn money and occasionally even laundered money.

 

The following week I went to Bassano for my usual Saturday morning routine.  First the coffee and lesson at the train station and then the little walk to the florist.   I'd actually (almost) forgotten about having lost ten euros, but was pleasantly reminded by the florist.  He saw me coming, winked, and presented me with the missing half.  Fortunately, I hadn't thrown away my five euros because suddenly, I had ten again.

Deciding to tuck the torn bill in a little pocket in my wallet as a reminder of how not to handle my money in the future had paid off.  And I'm sure deciding to look on the bright side a little more often would pay off, too.

No one has ever injured his eyesight by looking on the bright side of things.  --unknown