Life in a small country town in Italy follows a few of the Oxford Dictionary's definitons of simple.
--easily understood or done; presenting no difficulty
--plain, basic or uncomplicated in form, nature or design
--composed of a single element
--of very low intelligence
--basic or plain without anything extra or unnecessary
Although some are true (I won't tell you which ones), life is far from easily done and presenting no difficulty. A simple life is a little bit like most people that have never lived one think it is...the quaint, sweet, charming part. But one thing it isn't is simple.
I heat my country house with a wood-burning stove. In early summer a big truck comes and drops a huge pile of wood in my yard. Three days, 72 mosquito bites and 13 slivers later it's systematically stacked. When winter comes you have to go out every day rain or shine to systematically restack it in the house. You light a fire every morning and you stoke it all day. If you're not home all day, you re-enter a cold house and rebuild the fire. Turning up the heat seems a little simpler.
I also heat my beach house with wood. There's no big truck to deliver it because the house is on an island. There's never a huge pile because the wood gets collected on the beach a little bit at a time every winter weekend. Then it gets rolled back to the house in a metal shopping cart I found in my attic. Quaint, sweet, and charming yes. Simple? Not so.
And here's the dirty laundry on laundry in Italy. It starts with a weather check. If I wash a load now is it going to be sunny long enough for the clothes to dry outside? Clothes are washed in a regular old American-style washer. Simple. Then each piece is taken out of the washer, flung a couple of times to get some of the wrinkles out, and hung on a drying rack in perfect order. The t-shirts go here, the underpants go there and the pairs of socks get paired and hung next to each other. Next you add the clothespins for fear of the colpo d'aria (hit of air http://10leaves.blogspot.it/2013/10/living-with-bunch-of-old-wives.html) and the rack full of heavy, wet clothes is awkwardly carried outside. When it's dry it's carried back inside and the clothespins are removed. Then the wrinkled clothes are removed, folded and organized in a pile in the corner until ironing day (which usually comes after you've accumulated a few loads). Italian women iron more than just pants and shirts. I suppose some American women do, too, but I'm not one of them. T-shirts, sheets, hankies, dish towels and tablecloths are all as smooth as silk (which is really the only thing worth handwashing and putting on the drying rack). Passing a load from the washer to the dryer, taking it out and flinging it a few times to get the final wrinkles out seems a little simpler.
Washing lettuce isn't on my list of favorite things to do. And washing it a thousand times? When my farmer friends offer me fresh lettuce from their fields I refuse. It takes at least 15 minutes to really clean it. I know.....you have to wash lettuce from the supermarket, too, but somehow the fact that it's already been in a store makes it seem like it has a cleaner start. The farmers' stuff is filled with the same dirt I clean from the treads of my shoes after a run through the fields. But how green, how bio (Italian for organic) how wonderful to grow your own food. Not for this Chicagoan. It only takes two seconds to cut off the top of a bag.
And the prep for that head of lettuce? I'm friends with the early morning and early evening bus driver that becomes a farmer at midday. Last summer I found him in a big field picking weeds. Not in a little garden in his backyard. That's doable. (Not for me, but for many.) Antonio was in a real field-sized field picking weeds by hand. I stopped in shock. "Stai scherzando?" I asked. (Are you kidding?) He said that instead of powders and sprays, he's the weed killer. When I asked him if he was really going to walk up and down every row of what seemed like four football fields, he asked me if I was really going to run 10 more kilometers to get home.
That got me thinking about all of the things I do instead of SIMPLY going to IKEA. (And I can speak with authority now because I've been to one in Italy. Once. It's even got guys directing traffic in the parking lot just like I imagine they do in Schaumburg.) IKEA sells dishrags and they're only a buck. So why do I knit my own? Good question. And making new candles from the remnants of old ones? I know they don't always burn that well, but there's some strange satisfaction in watching something that I created glow. Just like the farmers that find satisfaction in watching something that they planted grow, I suppose. (And I must admit. I've received IKEA candles as gifts and they make great gifts.)
Once again I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. I've gotten over the fact that there's no Campbell's around here and I've learned how to make my own. It's pretty simple. And a real grilled cheese with bakery-bread instead of plastic bag-bread and three different kinds of cheese instead of the stuff you peel from the little plastic sheet is pretty good. But I still miss pumpkin pie. I know it can't be that hard to make a pie crust (Ritz is in the same cemetery as Campbell's) but I've been avoiding it. Fortunately I don't have to buy a pumpkin and learn how to turn it into Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin because a friend sent me a can last year. The most difficult part of my Thanksgiving prep will be grating my nutmeg.
Instead of finding a little jar of ground nutmeg at my local market I found a small cellophane envelope with two nuts and a tiny little grater. It reminded me of the prize in a box of cereal. Grating my nutmeg will probably take as long as cooking your turkey.
And I guess now is when I'm supposed to say that I'm thankful for the simple life, which is defined by the MacMillan Dictionary as a way of living without all the possessions and worries of modern life. I must say, the coagulated reddish-orange mass that plops out of the Campbell's can never worried me all that much. Speaking of which, enjoy your cranberry sauce.
