Che bello!

Is half of the reason so many of us think Italy is so beautiful because the Italians are constantly reminding us just how beautiful it is?  Che bello this and che bello that!  At the market, on the playground, at the secondhand store and in the car next to you at a stoplight.  Wherever you are, something seems to merit a che bello.  Are things really that beautiful (wonderful, great, nice, handsome, cool.....all translations of bello)?  Or is it just the way the Italians have of looking at things?

The other day during an English lesson in the piazza I heard a little girl begging her grandpa to go in the opposite direction.  She was pulling his arm and whining, "Dai, Nonno.  Da qua e' piu bella!  Da qua e' molto piu bella!!!!!"  If a 4-year old American girl was having a hard time getting her way she would have been saying, "No.  I want to go this way," with emphasis on I and this.  Or simply, "No.  You come here," with equal emphasis on all four words and a foot stomp.  Or maybe even just a long, drawn-out, "Nooooooooo.....!"  But the little Italian girl was insisting in a little Italian girl way, "Come on, Grandpa.  It's more beautiful this way.  It's much more beautiful this way," with the emphasis on much.

After the lesson I hopped on my bike to go home.  I started to leave the piazza in the same direction I always leave.  Then I remembered the little girl and decided to go her way to see what it was that made it more beautiful, MUCH more beautiful.  The cobblestone street didn't seem to be any more beautiful her way than mine.  The centuries-old marble sidewalk with random shell fossils was beautiful here, just like on the other street.  The clock tower was visible from both streets and you could hear the church bells from both.  The lampposts cast the same curlicue shadows.  Old ladies chatted from their windows and old men chatted in the piazza no matter which street you took.  There was no shortage of rusty bikes with baskets resting under peely-painted windows and there were plenty of petunias hanging from baskets on balconies.  Small candles in oversized lanterns invited shoppers into boutiques and mountains of billowing gelato in spotless glass cases invited the rest of us into gelaterias.

At the end of my detour I wasn't convinced that the little girl's way was any more beautiful than her grandpa's, but I was convinced (having taken the time to look) that they both deserved a thousand che bellos.  Maybe it's not that Italians look at things in a different way, but just that they look at things.  They're seldom in a hurry, but IF they are, for most it's okay to be late.   I, on the other hand, am always in a hurry and refuse to be late.  This means less time to smell the roses.  Less time to "che bello."  

We're often reminded to look at things as half full instead of half empty.  But first, some of us need a reminder to just look.   You don't have to be on your bike in a medieval town in Italy to find something bello under your nose.  The sun sets everywhere.  Pigtailed, well-pressed  kindergartners walk to their first day of school in every small town.  Burning candles give off the same glow no matter where they're burning.  (Unburned ones don't deserve a che bello.)  Koolaid stands might not be selling Koolaid all over the world, but they're often selling something like toys made from tin cans in Mali, butterflies made from film in Burma and bracelets made from rings of plastic bottles, melted a bit to soften the edges then striped and polka-dotted with fingernail polish in Barcelona.  Che belli, che belle and che belli.  

Don't forget.  Water reflects, bells toll and fat ladies sing all over the world, not just in Bella Italia.