Juliet's Balcony

On our way up to Venice over break, we saw that Verona was on our way.  The kids said, "No thanks."  But Daniel and I couldn't let it go.

"You'll read Romeo and Juliet some day, and then you'll be excited that you saw the balcony of Juliet!"

"We'll go to see just the amphitheatre and Juliet's house."

They weren't convinced, but we went anyway.

I played them two songs:
Taylor's Swift's "Love Story": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E.  Mary used to be a huge Taylor Swift fan.  I liked her early stuff -- just fun and positive and catchy.  I remember reading or hearing her talk about this song, how she read Romeo and Juliet in high school and didn't like that it had a sad ending, so she wrote this song as an alternate ending.  We listened to it twice on the way.

Indigo Girls' "Romeo and Juliette": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fiXkvsKpdk.  I think I got introduced to the Indigo Girls when I was a junior in college, the semester I lived in Rome.  My friend Nicole played them, and I got hooked.  A friend at Belmont Hill lent me cd's of their older stuff; a friend took me to their concert at Brandeis; my roommates in San Francisco had all their cd's; my friend Jenny put "A Hammer and a Nail" and "Get Out the Map" on a mix or two when people still made mixes on tapes (those were the days!...which reminds me of a Ten Thousand Maniac song called, "These Are Days," which is a fairly beautiful song and reminiscent of other times...).  Music is pretty wonderful that way, reminding us of times and places and people.  Last week as I prepared my classroom for class, I found myself humming a tune and I wasn't sure what it was for a minute, and then realized that I was humming Anne Murray, music my parents listened to all the time when I was a kid.  And now, a week later, other songs come to mind but not that Anne Murray one.

So we played these songs, got to Verona, walked around the amphitheatre -- literally around, we didn't want to pay for tickets.  Then we headed to Juliet's house.

A mob crowded the archway in front of the house.  So we packed in, Italian-style, i.e. no line, no trying to let people go who may have been in front of us, no attempt at order or fairness, instead just staying close to each other and pushing along with everyone else.  But then, once we were under the arch, in a mini-tunnel of sorts, I stopped: there were notes posted all over the inside of the arch.

Love notes.

People were holding hands, kissing, reading the notes.  Taking selfies inside the arch of love notes.  Love letters surrounding them, surrounding us, taped up and pasted up all around.  (Isn't there a song "Tunnel of Love"?)  If Verona is romantic, then my goodness, people were making Verona romantic.  (I think I end up feeling romantic not in places like this, but in ordinary places that no one would consider romantic.  Alas.)  But a letter or a note, well, that's something.  The notes were to people, or even to a yet not met person...optimistic and fun.  Odes to Juliet.  Homage to the bard.  But more often, simple expressions of love from one person to another in all different languages.

The legend goes that you rub the statue of Juliet on the breast for good luck in love.  I touched her arm, feeling too weird to put my hand on her breast (even though everyone else was), thinking, If I want to show this to teenagers in an English class in years to come, I'd rather avoid the snickers and awkwardness of that one.

Apparently Shakespeare loved Verona, so he set his story there (based on families from another town).  What he did was inspire expressions of love in writing, an acceptable graffiti of sorts.  Miniature love letters.

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We have our mail forwarded to my sister Christine and then she mails it to us.  This week we got some Christmas cards in her big envelope.  One was from a friend who used to work at Thayer.  Claire worked in the bookstore until TA did online book ordering.  Claire also sorted the mail.  She got to know Daniel because he would occasionally send me postcards to school, just hi and how are you and things like that.  He knew that postcards are fair game, i.e. anyone can read them, and he was fine with that.  Claire got a kick out of the postcards.  So sometimes he'd add a note to her, too.

Romantic: A little archway to Juliet's house in Verona or a mailbox in the basement of the Glover building at Thayer?

Or maybe what really matters is just the reminder.