New Normal

It's Sunday night, my night to cook dinner.  I like Sunday dinner, and I don't like doing the dishes afterwards when I've gone with the Italian time for dinner, 8:15pm, so I'm still doing dishes at 10pm.  As the water goes cold, I'm reminded of the things that have become so common to us this year, like cold water.  No matter how many times the "technician" comes to check the boiler, we end up needing to increase the pressure in the boiler at least weekly to get hot water and heat.  (This means going out to our boiler on our mini-balcony, reaching under, turning a blue nob a little, waiting for it to get into the green triangle on the dial, and then turning that blue nob closed tight.)  Or often, even if the pressure is up, we turn on the water in the front bathroom or kitchen and realize, Oh, we need to turn on a spigot in the other bathroom to get hot water in the front of the apartment!  It's okay.  It's become normal.  A new normal.  Well, at this point, perhaps an old normal.

So this makes me think, What else has become normal?

The kids' wearing uniforms -- too strong a word, but navy pants and white polos -- to school.

Getting lunch from the Mensa every day.  The Mensa is the dining hall for SYA kids and faculty, other students and faculty from universities nearby, etc.  The truth is that I go rarely because I like to come to our quiet kitchen when no one's home and enjoy a few minutes to myself, heating up Mensa leftovers from the day before.  Daniel goes nearly daily, eating often with my colleagues, and then gets food to go for the gang.  We don't need to buy lunch food because we've got the mensa.
Hanging out our laundry.  We did this in August, then stopped because I liked the soft feel from the dryer.  Then Daniel got us going again for a bit with hanging stuff out.  Then the kids started using the dryer again (it's easier than hanging the clothes out for the runner), so we went with that.  After our northern Italy trip, seeing clothing and sheets on clothelines everywhere, I thought, Okay, we're living in Italy.  Italians hang out their laundry.  We have got to return to that.  Daniel put up new clotheslines this week.  We're back at it.  Italians, we can do this, too.

Words.  So we don't get all the Italian we hear.  We get a fraction of it.  But we're getting better.  While I did dishes tonight, I put on Andrea Bocelli.  The kids had just gone to bed, so I put in my headphones and listened to "Vivo per lei."  And I actually understood a number of the words.  This is not to say that I understood what the lines/sentences/lyrics meant, but I heard actual Italian words.  Last week there were two times -- once at school and once somewhere else -- that I heard more Italian words, I mean, actually deciphered them.  I wondered, Are these people talking more slowly for my benefit?  Their sentences did not sound like an endless stream of syllables that were a song I would never get.  (Or as Sebastian said when I explained this phenomenon to him, "Yeah, right: it's becoming not just noises strung together.")  They actually seemed to be speaking words.  Tonight, through my headphones, Andrea Bocelli was singing actual Italian words.  I had this moment of imagining life in a year, a Sunday night, doing dishes in our kitchen in Waltham, listening to this very cd.  And thinking then, Remember when we listened to this voice when we were in Italy?  It's strange to know that you will miss the very thing that you're doing.

Not running around to athletic contests at all.  Sebastian tells us that he has a basketball game next weekend.  We're heading to Rome to see my Dad and Jacqueline.  He might have to skip his game.  We rarely, if ever, skip athletic contests at home.

Sitting with the kids while they do their homework.

The kids are all at the same school for the second time in their lives.  (They had one year together at Plympton.)

I teach three classes, and they are all the same prep.  (Usually I teach four classes that are four different preps.  So we would think that I would have so much less work this year.  HA.)

I walk two blocks to work.

I sometimes see Daniel during the day.

The orange Fiat, the six of us squeezed in.

Daniel's cooking dinner six nights a week.  (Let's keep this norm.)

Having our own parent bathroom.  (luxury)

Temperate weather.  I'm not sure it's gone below thirty degrees yet here in Viterbo.

Bars/cafes with real cups and saucers.

A faculty and staff of 12 people.

No teaching on Wednesdays.  Planning meetings, grading, student meetings, excursions/activities.  There's work to do, but no actual teaching.

Its feeling strange if I don't have time to write at least once a week.

Parking the Fiat in a parking lot that's a six minute walk from our house.  Daniel's driving up to our apartment building, dropping off groceries, and then going to park the car.

Stopping to get a coffee or tea or hot chocolate by myself, with Daniel, or with the kids.  Why at home does there never seem to be time for such a thing?  When I see students and colleagues at home walking into school with their DD cups, I always think, "How do they make the time for that every morning?"  Last year Sebastian and I went to a wake one day after school.  After the wake (his first), we went to Starbucks and sat.  He had an egg sandwich and hot chocolate, and I had a tea.  We sat for about twenty minutes, then we headed back to Waltham.  I remember that afternoon vividly, and I know he does, too.  It was outside our norm, to pick up a snack like that, and then to actually sit and have it at a place together, not rushing off to the next place.  And why do euros feel less important than dollars?  ...because it's a year here and we can't recover this time?  Perhaps.  But really, can we recover any time?

Daily walks around the medieval walls of Viterbo.

Getting up at 6:45am.  (In Waltham I leave the house by 7am at the latest.)

Blowing a fuse not quite daily, but often.  ("Unplug the kettle!"  "Turn off the washer machine!"  "Who turned on the oven?")