No Diapers. No Deadlines.

If I were actually a writer I'd call what I'm having writer's block. It's a real thing, sounds like a valid excuse and is known to pass.

"Why haven't you written anything lately?" my imaginery fans would ask.  
"Don't worry, it's just a little writer's block," I'd coolly reply.

But since I'm not a real writer and I don't have real fans, I can't really call it writer's block. So I'll try to tell you in three hundred words or less what's actually happening. Let's consider it a warmup exercise.

Everything appears to be in my favor.  There's no lack of motivation, ideas or time. I really want to write, I have a lot of dumb things to say and I have more time than anyone I know. But after months of being blocked, I've realized there are two things missing: diapers and deadlines.

There's plenty of advice online about balancing diapers and deadlines; living between diapers and deadlines; and diapers, date nights and deadlines. The general idea is that life without them is a walk in the park (or in my case a run in the vineyard), but I think it's refutable.

The lack of diapers in my life means there are also no play dates, homework, car pools, birthday parties, family meals, oversized washing machines, Little League games or dance recitals. I know most of you think that with excess time you'd read and play your piano and sew and organize and paint and write. (I know you wouldn't really do what I think I should be doing, but you think you'd do what you've always wanted to do.) Don't be so sure. According to Nietzsche "the mother of excess is not joy, but joylessness."

As for deadlines, I'm on par with Santa Claus. We both have a lot to do in December. The difference is that Santa has to be ready by the 25th, but over time I've extended the deadline. Sending Happy New Year wishes instead of Merry Christmases gives me an extra week. And living in Italy means the holidays include the Epiphany, which brings me to January 6. When you throw in the Italian postal service I'm officially covered til April.

But what does Santa Claus do in his downtime? Does he paint the sleigh in May? Does he train the reindeer to fly in July? If he's anything like me he finds it hard to get motivated when the next big day is so far off. With no deadlines there's always tomorrow, next week or next month (as long as you live forever).

But unlike immortal Santa I have the deadline of death, the unpleasant reminder that the best time to paint the sleigh, train the reindeer and write is now. And as I remind myself, might I also remind the members of the Diapers and Deadlines Club that the deadline of death  
deserves more attention than anything else in your inbox.



 

Smart Working or Smart Living?

In a world of smart phones, smart watches and Smart cars, I'm dumbfounded at how often my students don't know what smart means. I used to ask if they were kidding. It's not a very nice thing for the English teacher to say, but I thought it beat telling them that smart was something they weren't. 

Most Italian students have studied British English and have learned that a British lift is an American elevator, a British garden is an American yard and a British queue (great Scrabble word) is an American line. But for some reason they've taken a fancy to Webster's third definition of smart, 'stylish or elegant in dress or appearance' (British) and haven't learned the first definition, 'intelligent' (American). Maybe it's because they're Italian, where being stylish or elegant in dress or appearance is what really matters. If I taught English in another country they might understand that smart phones were intelligent and not stylish.

Now that Covid and smart working have become universal (or so I thought) I'm hopeful that the word smart will take on a new meaning.  (Not a new meaning, but rather definition number one). All of my students use the word differently. For example....when I have smartworking, when I'm in smart working and when I'm on smart working. I correct them and say it doesn't need a preposition, but the truth is I'm not sure how to use the word. So, I turned to my fellow Americans. These are the responses from a Sales Representative, a Portfolio Manager and an ex-Office Manager of a premier news magazine (in other words, they ain' t dumb).

"Need more info on smart working, not sure what you're asking."
"Smart working? Doesn't ring a bell."
"Haven't heard that before."

Those answers came from people that have been working from home throughout the pandemic and they call what they're doing 'Working From Home.' So much for my fellow Americans, I returned to my friend Google. I searched 'Chicago smart working' and the words never appeared together. 'Smart working LA' produced an article about Italy. It was 'smart working London' where I found the connection.

It seems the British, who once waited in a queue for the lift are now at home in their gardens smart working (and hopefully playing Scrabble). But where does that leave me...an American in Italy that won't accept students if they don't agree to anti-Covid, open-air lessons in the YARDen? If I say I'm working from home, my Italian friends think it means I'm doing housework. And if I tell my American friends I'm smart working they don't get it.  So I decided I needed a word of my own and I picked smart living.

How do you describe outside English lessons that may include frost and fog at dawn, sunshine at noon or ski coats and candles in the evening?  It feels more like smart playing than smart working. I considered calling it Lessons in Wonderland, but that sounds like I only teach kids. And as much as the kids love coming once a week, it's the adults that have pleasantly surprised me. In a land where 40 degrees fahrenheit is cold and people protect themselves from all old wives' tales regarding health, it's hard to believe students are unobligatorily drawn to my cast iron stove for English lessons.

6:30 a.m. the day before Halloween

Italians are famous for LA BELLA VITA, as long as it involves good food and wine, smart clothes and all other things sensible. I'm trying to show them LA really BELLA VITA which includes lying on the ground with no blanket, walking in the moonlight with no flashlight and feeling a cool breeze with no scarf.

I'm not a Portfolio Manager (I'm not even sure what that is). I'm a Smart Living Manager. My services are included in English lessons at no extra cost. Sign up soon. When the pandemic has passed I'm expecting a queue.   

Come......High Water

A boat on the wrong side of the wall.

I'd looked at photos of floods, watched movies with floods and seen floods on the news. Then one night a flood knocked at the door of my tiny yellow house with turquoise shutters and this time the photos, videos and news were about people and a place that I knew.

My house is on a long, thin island between the Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea.  At its narrowest it's 16 feet and at its widest, about a quarter of a mile. There are only two roads on the island, one by the sea and one by the lagoon. Colorful houses line the lagoon and face the sea, but most (like mine) are tucked in the tiny calli (lanes) between the two.

Storms on the island are always spectacular.  The residents congregate in the lagoon to watch the clouds roll in and the whitecaps grow.  As it gets colder and windier, most head back inside, but some of us don't give in until the first cold raindrops fall.

On November 12, 2019 I wasn't on the island for the storm. That night I received a video with waves sloshing over the low wall on the lagoon side, 30 steps from my front door.  The message said that everyone was on alert for acqua alta (high water). There were voices in the background on the video, but they didn't sound much different from what I usually hear at the beginning of a storm...oohs and aahs like spectators at  a good American fireworks display and a few ciaos from people pedaling past on their bikes to beat the rain. 

Acqua alta wasn't new on the island, but it hadn't been around for nearly two decades after pumps were installed to protect the island from seasonal high water. It took several years before the residents found the courage to store their emergency acqua alta panels in the attic.  That's where I found mine when I bought the house and for history's sake decided to use them as kitchen shelves.

The beginning of the eerie clean-up.

Shortly after receiving the first video, I got a message saying that no one had seen anything like it (which was alarming since many of the islanders are old enough to remember the flood of 1966).  Then came the video with waves pouring (instead of sloshing) over the wall and heading straight down my calle.

The videographer was my neighbor.  She's of the group that usually runs for cover before the first raindrops fall, so her videos were shot from her second floor window. Twenty-eight minutes after her first message she wrote that the water in our calle was one meter high (3 feet, 3 inches) and there was no electricity. Next came a photo with water as high as the bottom of my first floor window. There was nothing to do but wait in my safe, dry kitchen (a 90-minute drive and 20-minute boat ride away) while my friends on the island waited in their second floor bedrooms (because they no longer had safe, dry kitchens). 

The island skyline.

Some families spent the night bailing water out their windows while others tired and went upstairs to bed. Everyone knew the water would eventually recede but many worried about when it would rise again.  Acqua alta had always been a part of life on the island. This group was just out of practice.

For a few hours that night the island and lagoon had become one. Those that slept woke to bikes and upturned dumpsters floating past their doors and found boats where cars were once parked.  I was told to wait a day before making the trip because parts of the island were still under water.

Two days after the flood I shared  the ferryboat with a lot of new stoves, fridges and washing machines. When I arrived on the island I was greeted with somber yet resilient hellos from a population insistent on staying afloat instead of bailing out.

Several years ago I found a sunken boat washed up in the lagoon. I made it into a sofa. This time it didn't sink. It floated around my livingroom until the flood receded.

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.

Great Expectations

I imagine I'm not the only one with "Covid friends." I don't mean new friends that I made in the hospital as Covid patients.  I mean people that I reconnected with at the beginning of the pandemic, when Covid 19 was still called the Coronavirus. People from grade school, middle school and high school. Relatives, university friends, old work friends and friends of my mom. These folks may have been lost forever if not for Covid.

It's no doubt that living in Italy spurred the connections. There's nothing like a lot of really sick, scared and dying people to get your attention. Then put them all in a country known for La Dolce Vita (the sweet life) and it becomes a mini-series worth watching. And if you happen to know one of the characters it'd be hard not to tune in.

I happily accepted calls and emails from around the world and shared my limited view of the suddenly not so sweet life. Then, just as suddenly, the calls of concern about life in Italy became calls for advice about how to live with Covid in the rest of the world. There was a need to reconnect. People wanted to share and they were willing to listen.  And it seemed like almost everyone had more time.  Lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and quarantines meant people were available. But even those smartworking and managing kids' online lessons from their bedrooms seemed to find time for things they couldn't find time for before.

Then as weeks of living with Covid became months of living with Covid we were encouraged to get back to normal life (albeit with masks and alcohol). And unfortunately, it seems that for many, normal life often lacks the things you like and the things you consider important.

Collins Dictionary says "something that is normal is usual and ordinary and what people expect." That means returning to normal life comes with the expectation that we'll have no time to connect and share. If you start out with that expectation there's certainly less room for disappointment, but Dickens would be far from proud. According to Sparknotes, the moral theme of his Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth and class.

I'd like to think that what we didn't learn from Dickens we might have learned from the first few weeks of Covid. Making connections should be more about affection than social advancement. 

I'd rather live a life with great expectations than live a normal life.  

Sex, Religion, Politics and ........

In February (and March and April and.....) my fear of Covid was a fear of infection and death. While I can't say that I've officially erased that fear, I can say that it's taken a backseat. I don't hold my breath anymore when I pass people in fields and I don't always wear my glasses in public. My groceries are no longer rubbed down with alcohol and my mail doesn't spend an extra day in the mailbox before it gets opened.  I still worry about touching things (in public, but no longer at home) and I try to be downwind for conversations on the beach. I've added to my already obssessive behaviours in public bathrooms, but I don't hold it anymore.

We were told we'd have to learn to live with the virus and I'm trying.  My current fear has gone from losing a battle with Covid to losing friends over a battle about Covid.  I'm taking small steps to adjust to the new way of life, but unlike many friends, I think it's real, I think it could be dangerous and I think it's better to be safe than sorry.    

Walking through the piazza last week I was surprised by a friend.  In 2019 had she come from behind with a hug I would have been startled, then laughed.   In 2020 I was still startled, then shocked. I shook her arm off and told her it made me uncomfortable.  Fortunately, the tension lasted as long as the hug and we continued walking and talking (at a safe distance) and it seemed like 2019 again. Thirty minutes later I got a message.

She wrote that she really can't understand me. She said that for her it was nice to see me in the piazza, but for me it wasn't. She said I made her feel like she had infested me with the Plague and that Covid had taken over my brain. She said that a lot of people are living really badly because of huge misinformation from the media and that I'm living as though I'm already sick.

I'm not sure what happened after our friendly chat in the piazza about her cute outfit and her son's new girlfriend, but it seems all she could remember was the hug I'd refused (a decision based on guidelines from the CDC, not the local anchorman). 

I wanted to say that social distancing saves lives, but I didn't.  I wish I would've said that if she thinks I'm living the way someone sick is living, then the sick people are really quite lucky because they still go running everyday and spend their weekends on the beach, but I didn't.  Instead I wrote that, in fact, I was happy to see her and I wasn't living badly. Period.

I'm tired of feeling guilty for shunning a hug.  And I've stopped feeling embarrassed about taking one step back (again and again) while people continue taking two steps forward.  My behaviors aren't excessive. I haven't worn gloves for months, I haven't locked myself in my house and I haven't stopped going out for pizza and ice cream. Life goes on with masks and social distancing.  

One of my students is a chemist.  He agrees with my behavior and he disagrees with huggers and handshakers.  In addition to suggesting lessons in the park on sunny winter days, he's also stocked me with some special masks.  He says they're better than the cute ones I've made from old buttondowns and one in particular is to use when I'm only concerned about protecting myself. I hope I'm wearing that one the next time someone comes up from behind with a surprise hug. 

As an American I learned to avoid three taboo subjects.....sex, religion and politics. (Quite the contrary in Italy). I think the time has come to add a fourth....Covid. Losing a friend to Covid would be devastating.  Losing a friend over Covid would be stupid.  
    






 

Big Girls Do Cry

A few weeks ago Italy's lockdown lightened a little.  News spread to the States that people were out and life was beginning again.  But for many Italians, these new rules hadn't changed life at all. 

Bars (cafes) could open for take-away coffee, but that had never been part of an Italian's daily life and the fear of no customers kept many bars closed. Those that did open had to buy paper cups because although a cappuccino grande sounds Italian, walking down the street with one is a whole new thing. And there was still confusion on who could grab a coffee to-go because we were still required to carry the auto-certification and going out for a cup of coffee wasn't on the list.

The lightened lockdown included a lot more things that we couldn't do, than things we could do. You still couldn't take a walk with a friend.  You couldn't talk to more than one person at a time in the street.  And you couldn't buy more than two packs of yeast at the grocery store--- the only one of the three 'couldn'ts' that wasn't fineable. (Some joked that on lockdown Michiganders take to the streets with guns while Italians just bake more bread. I was happy to confirm that there was a yeast shortage in the States, too.) 

On the new could-do-list you could visit family, but having no Italian roots, that didn't affect me. You could also drive somewhere, take a walk, and then drive home.  But since I'm used to walking 10 miles a day it seemed silly to drive (alone) to another town that I could just as easily have walked to. You could go to gelaterie (ice cream shops) but were obligated to get your ice cream (one at a time), leave immediately and enjoy it in your car or walking. There was no licking in front of the gelateria or on a nearby bench in the piazza because that came with a fine. I decided gelato could wait for the next phase.

Six days ago (71 days into the lockdown, three days before phase 2 ) I stopped on the street to talk to a neighbor.  She was in her yard and I stayed on the other side of her gate because visiting friends was still prohibited. A few minutes later another neighbor came out for a walk and stopped for a 6-foot visit.  That was prohibited, too, because it's considered an assembly in a public place, but we decided to risk it. 

I asked the newcomer about her bar.  She was one of the few that had tried to open with paper cups. She didn't answer, but started to cry a little.  I responded with a few tears of my own only to be followed by the crying woman on the other side of the fence.   There we stood, barely friends before the coronavirus, yet nearly three months later able to understand each other's silence and unable to offer a pat on the shoulder or hug.  Whoever said Big Girls Don't Cry had no idea of life with the coronavirus.