Runnin' in the Rain

My grandma had a mudroom. When you went in the house through the garage, it was on the left. There were probably a couple of hooks on the wall and there was definitely a stool where my grandpa sat to put on his boots.      

We had the same kind of room at my childhood house. It was also on the left when you went in from the garage, but we called it the back bathroom instead of the mudroom. It didn't have a stool because my house didn't have a grandpa. But you could sit on the toilet if you had to tie your boots .

Our back bathroom was long and narrow. One wall was lined with waist-high hooks overhung with clothes we never wore. The hooks were meant to be used for dirty football uniforms and wet winter clothes. As a family of skiers, snowman builders and tobaggoners, winter was our wonderland. I was never told not to get wet....not until moving to Italy, anyway. Here I'm often warned of the dangers of dampness and looked at in disbelief when I walk through the piazza without an umbrella on big snowflake days.

In Chicago I was a year-round runner. Traction cleats on my running shoes solved the problem of slippery sidewalks, I didn't care how fat I looked in two pairs of running pants and I liked the sound of the icicles clicking in my hair. Even though my Chicago house didn't have a back bathroom, life went on in any kind of weather.    

Due to the great care (many) Italians take to avoid draughts and siutations that involve sweating when there's no hot shower close at hand, it's not surprising that rain can ruin more than just a good Italian parade. It can also (almost) ruin a good run.  Dark clouds out my back window are commonplace.  Behind the olive grove are the mountains and behind the mountains the sky is either convertible blue or 50 shades of grey.  

I was pleasantly surprised the day my 40 year-old neighbor wanted to run on one of those grey days.  And she was unpleasantly surprised when it started to rain. She thought we should turn around until I reminded her we were exactly halfway from home. When she started running faster I told her that we'd be drenched when we got home no matter how fast we ran. She was nervous and cold and uncertain and said she'd definitely have to wash her running shoes as soon as she got home and that her mom was going to kill her. I can't remember if she really said that part about her murdering mom, but all of the scolding kids get for walking in the grass in their socks and sitting on the dirty floor and keeping their coats zipped up leads me to believe a 40-year old might still be afraid of her mom if she came home with wet shoes.

Believe it or not (for my Italian readers), we made it home safely from the rainy run. And, believe it or not (again for my Italian readers), my nervous, cold and uncertain friend finished the run quite giddy and proud to send her husband (but not her mom) a photo of her smudged mascara and huge smile.

I'm not sure what she did with her running shoes when she got home because Italian houses don't have mudrooms.  Collin's Dictionary defines a mudroom as "a room in a house used for the removal and storage of wet or muddy footwear and outerwear." American houses are designed with the idea that we might find ourselves wet and muddy. But the words for mudroom in Italian are atrio/ingresso and those words translate as lobby and entrance, with no mention of mud. It seems Roman architects were too worried about the Colosseum to consider just how much a good mudroom can change your life.