2019: First Day of Classes

We are starting the year with a ten minute freewrite of sorts on something that made you feel that you were home again after the holiday break.  Students can write on anything they want -- a person, a street, a coffee spot, a room, a moment -- in any medium they like -- poem, letter, story, etc.

So then, for me, what's made me feel that I am back home, in our home for this year here in Viterbo?

For the first week of break we stayed here for Christmas.  It was delightful -- relaxed, quiet, restful.  Daniel and I swam and walked and had cappuccino together; Sebastian and Connor and Hannah built legos; Connor and Hannah raced their remote cars; we all read; Mary made brownies with Russian-tip-decorated frosting, and we all ate a bunch of sugar.  And then, cabin fever hit in our apartment and it was time to take our planned trip north.

We returned a week later, a Saturday night, running to catch the end of the Befana Parade: the longest stocking ever carried by women dressed up as witches and giving out candy to bambini through Viterbo, then placed on the top of Fiat 500s and driven to a church beyond the walls.  I lost the girls, we lost Connor, we all found each other by Via Carletti (our street).

Home.

Back in the apartment, no heat and no hot water.

Home.

We unpacked and then the kids sprawled over the couches and read their new books, and we ate Mary's leftover brownies, that somehow, after eight days on the kitchen table uncovered, tasted not stale but fudgy; caramel popcorn from a student; eventually pizza from Sale e Pepe.

Home.

Sunday morning the kids begged not to go to mass at Sacra Famiglia: they had homework and wanted to relax.

Home.

It's the last day of vacation! they said.  I deferred to Daniel: we went to Sacra Famiglia.  The first song was not a usual song that I knew.  The Holy, Holy, Holy was not a song that I knew.  Even the Alleluia before the gospel was not the usual Alleluia.  Was the change in songs because it was the Epiphany, a huge deal here, or were they changing things up for 2019?  I could appreciate the songs and the choir: the director opened her mouth wide to enunciate the words (not that I could understand them), and the choir was exuberant in their singing.  The songs seemed longer than usual.  But there were no familiar arm movements, no easy joy watching Hannah sing along and do every clap.  At communion I looked around.  I missed Brandeis -- Mary Lou and Karen and Gretchen and Allison and Daphne and Donna and Ralph and all these people at church at Brandeis that make us feel hugged all the time.  We don't see these folks much if at all outside Sunday mornings, but they are a spiritual and religious home for us.  We see them on Sundays.  They are church and community for us.  I look forward to seeing them, to being next to them, to talking with them during coffee hour after mass.  I stood in line for communion getting a little teary, thinking  of how people are happy here because they have community, friends, a big network of family.  And I laugh at the hundreds of WhatsApp messages that come through not just for homework but for Christmas and New Year's and Epiphany, but really, isn't what these Italians are doing with all these messages and emojis all about connecting?  I have mocked.  I have scoffed.  I have laughed.  But they, they just keep reaching out and connecting.  (And this now makes me think of Whitman's "A Noiseless, Patient Spider," in which that soul, like the spider, keeps throwing out filament, filament, filament, to try to connect to whatever or whoever will be a true and fulfilling other.)  I missed home, real home -- our neighborhood and the folks I see whenever I'm out for a walk, our mail carrier, our friends at church.  That feeling of being surrounded, embraced -- hugged --  so much of the time.

I couldn't find the last song in the book I had snagged from the floor under a pew.  As a woman walked by, I asked her which number the song was.  She stopped, looked and looked until she found it, looking in the index, back to the songs, back to the index, back to the songs.  It took more than a minute, and she kept going.  She pointed to the song, then waited a moment, then pointed to the exact words the choir was singing.  I thanked her.  She smiled graciously, patiently, then turned to her friends who had come to greet her.

Sebastian beside me, I sang until the choir stopped entirely.  I love a good song to end a mass.  I sat down to grab my jacket.

Two women appeared in front of me.

"Buongiorno," we greeted each other.

Emanuela and Marilena, they told me.  Marilena said in clear English, "Hello.  We see you here at mass each week, and we wanted to say hello and welcome you to our family here."

I almost cried again, but this time not out of missing but out of gratitude.  You see us!  You welcome us to your family, to your church!

We went over names and jobs (ours) and schools (Santa Maria dell' Paradiso, SYA, St. Thomas') to give them some context for our coming to Sacra Famiglia week after week.  I spoke mostly in Italian; Marilena spoke mostly in English; Emanuela sat between us and smiled encouragingly.  Then Marilena told me (in Italian) about a lunch after mass on February 3 here at Sacra Famiglia.

"Volete venire?" she said.
"Si!  Que cosa portiamo?" I asked.
"Niente."

She and Emanuela explained how there is a big cucina at the church, the kids jocano, the adulti preparano pranzo e parlano.  She asked again, "Volete venire?"

Sacra Famiglia is not Brandeis.  But someone said hi to us and invited us to the church lunch.

That's a feeling of home anywhere.