Cappucin Catacombs

The skeletons hung from strings, and Hannah wondered aloud whether they were smiling when they died since their mouths looked like they were.  And where were their noses?  Why did they disintegrate but the rest of the body did not?  We walked the corridor of skeletons, pausing to look at one in a coat, another with one shoe still on, an anomalous one with a nose intact.  One area was for dead children, even two babies in cradles, skeletons, tiny.

Top fifteen things to do in Palermo listed these catacombs, and I thought the kids would be interested (though maybe not Mary).  Hannah and I didn't feel freaked out being surrounded by these skeletons (likely not the right term), but fascinated.  We wondered how they died, who buried them, whether they had been covered like mummies at one point.

But mostly, mostly we talked about death and what we thought.  I tell the kids, You can cremate me, spread my ashes in Scituate, and then go there for a walk on the beach and an ice cream at Wilbur's when you feel like it.  But then, I tell them, if you want to do something else, like a cemetery stone, do that.  Do whatever you like.  Hannah brought this up.  I told her it was going to be a long time before she was dealing with my remains.

She wondered how the children had died, and we speculated that they were sick and didn't have the medicine and care we have now.  She wanted to know what happens to the body after it dies, who takes care of it, if it's gross to clean a dead body.  I imagined it an honor, seeing the dead out of this world, onto the next space, whatever space that is.

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I was remembering a book I read last summer (Claire of the Sea Light) in which one character's job was at a funeral home, preparing the bodies for services and burials, and this character showed compassion and care for these people she cleaned and prepared, and so I like to think of people with this job in real life having this same reverence for the dead.  (On my better days, I have reverence for each teenager I teach...so perhaps these folks have such reverence on their better days...)

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Joyce Funeral Home is in Waltham.  I've been to countless wakes there.  For at least the last two decades one man is a presence there; I imagine he's is of the Joyce family himself.  It took me a while to get the courage to talk to him.  His is a confident, reserved, comforting presence.  I'm not sure how he holds the confidence, reserve, and comfort all at the same time, but he does.  I see him stalwart for those mourning, a man in charge with a lovely affect, quiet and unobtrusive while still in charge and reliable.  He's the man you want in an emergency or in a time of grieving: he will take care of all the details without bothering you and figure out what you need.  When I've seen him outside the funeral home, I've tried to observe him on the sly, watching to see whether he's that same presence or whether he might laugh.  I see him smile, laugh, relax his shoulders.  I don't know him, but I admire him.

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Sebastian joined us: the others were already finished walking through while Hannah and I were about a third of the way through.  He added information about preserving the bodies -- the guy with the nose likely had been wrapped up -- and some scientific terms.  I asked him how he knew this stuff, and he said, "I don't know.  Books."

Hannah and I increased our pace and energy with Sebastian there, not rushing but preparing more to join the crew, the outside world (where they were waiting), the living.  The dead will always outnumber the living, I thought, and I thought of Ishtar when she threatens her dad that she will release all the zombies if her dad doesn't punish Gilgamesh for insulting her.  Her dad gives in.

I was so afraid of death when I was a kid.  Maybe all kids are.  Hannah didn't sound scared; mostly she was curious.  It was perhaps a strange place to have some quality time with a seven-year-old. 

But I liked it.

This is Sicily

The website said that the salt museum closed at 7pm, but when I called from thirty minutes away at 5:50pm, the woman who picked up the phone said they closed at 6pm.  I hung up, defeated.

Daniel asked me to call back, saying, "I feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff making phone calls in Italian."  I knew the feeling only too well.  The previous morning, as I read student blogs in our hotel room, my phone rang and a woman started speaking to me in Italian once I picked up.  I finally interrupted with, "Chi e?"  (Who is it?")  She started speaking to someone else whose voice I recognized: the dentist.  When he got on, we spoke in some Italian and some English, and then Debra came back on the line to make the appointment for Mary's ortho check-up for April.  Even picking up the phone had been scary for me.

But I said no.  I couldn't call this woman again to ask her anything else, even if just where else we might go.

I heard Daniel say things like, "Veinte minuti...grazie."  He had gotten the same woman on the phone, and she said that she'd wait for us.

At 6:20pm, we parked the car, spied the open door to the museum, and rushed in.  She gave us a tour of the museum herself, showing us photos and parts of the old windmill; telling us that her grandfather had worked at these flats and run this organization; answering the kids' questions; explaining the process of the salt's being harvested with pride.

Sebastian said, "She seemed really happy to tell us all about the flats and salt and the place.  Like she had pride in it and was happy to share it all."

This is Sicily.

Kids with our tour guide who stayed open for us at the Salt Museum in Trapani, Sicily

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In Erice, Daniel spoke with two American women who told him about the pasticerria of Maria Grammatico, apparently a world famous baker.  Up and down the little streets of Erice we went until we found the pasticerria.

Cannoli, pastries, coffee -- we sat with our treats with our new friends, the Canadian family we had met hours before.  (They were traveling for the year.)  Daniel went back to the counter to ask whether Mary might meet Maria Grammatico.

For the next fifteen minutes Mary remained in the back room, sitting with Maria Grammatico, who was decorating treats and even let Mary decorate one.  Maria Grammatico and the other women at the table smiled affectionately at Mary when I came in and we asked to take a photo.

Before we left, Maria Grammatico gave Mary one of her cookbooks -- recipes made with almonds.

This is Sicily.

Mary with Maria Grammatico in the kitchen of her pasticceria in Erice

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On a walk back to the hotel, we saw bouncy house type structures behind a theatre.  Popcorn, candy, imitations of junk food that we'd get back in the states on the Waltham Common at this type of festival.  The kids asked for popcorn and candy.  I couldn't do it.  I told them, "Let's go to Capo Market instead, and I will get each of you whatever you want from there."

"Anything?"

"Yes.  Any food you want."

I had been curious about the outdoor food markets and didn't want to leave Palermo without getting to one.  Student blogs revealed that Capo was better than Ballaro.

Five minutes and we were at a street lined on both sides with vendors: fish, fruit, vegetables, chocolate, arincini, cheese, bread, olives.  Vendor after vendor.  

Family treat: a chedro.  A chedro is a huge lemon.  I think this one cost 7.50.  Mary carried it in a plastic bag while we sampled Modica chocolate -- the plain, the orange, the lemon, the chili pepper, the pistacchio (which reminds me of a tip we read to test the quality of a gelateria: check the color of the pistacchio gelato.  If it's bright green, move on.  If it's a darkish green, almost brown, you're in a good spot.).  We buy Modica chocolate bars for all of us (how we can eat any more sugar is beyond me after gelato, morning croissants with nutella or cream, crostata, gelato...but we're in Sicily, and this is not the time to cut back on sugar or treats).

We discuss bringing the chedro to fish dinner that night.  But we don't have a knife.  The way to eat a chedro is in slices sprinkled with either sugar or salt.  Mary returns to the vendor and asks if he will cut up the chedro for us.  We watch, mesmerized by his speed and skill with the sharp knife.  He packs it up in a bag for Mary.

She asks him, "Quanta costa?"

He says, "Niente."

When I ask whether we should give him some sort of tip anyway, Sebastian insists that we not.  He imitates the gesture the man made that means, "Are you kidding?  Dai!  Come on!"  It would be an insult to give him a tip: he was happy to cut the chedro up for us.

This is Sicily.

Sicilian at Capo Market cutting up chedro for Mary

Careful, Mary!  That knife looks sharp!

And the final touch...into slices for pre-dinner snack...

Friday English class: Reaction to Rebecca Solnit's "Art of Not Knowing Where You Are", especially this paragraph:

"A labyrinth is an ancient device that compresses a journey into a small space, winds up a path like thread on a spool. It contains beginning, confusion, perseverance, arrival, and return. There at last the metaphysical journey of your life and your actual movements are one and the same. You may wander, may learn that in order to get to your destination you must turn away from it, become lost, spin about, and then only after the way has become overwhelming and absorbing, arrive, having gone the great journey without having gone far on the ground."

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This sounds like Joseph Campbell's monomyth to me or the story of so many epics or novels.  

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Solnit talks about how dark is just as necessary as light, how being in a labyrinth is being lost, and how this being lost is necessary for us.  As one of the kids just said, It's like the article from earlier in the week, the one that says that traveling is not necessarily for finding yourself but for losing yourself, or losing the parts of you that you don't need.  One student says she's emerging now; another says that she's feeling like she's in the labyrinth now, in the dark.

I did a labyrinth once, in Colorado, at a conference.  It was outlined in rocks, and we did it in silence, and I remember the darkness for me.  I was with a bunch of people I didn't know, I couldn't hit the right path to move back out of the labyrinth, so I just kept going and going, walking in circles, until almost everyone was gone.  A colleague from home and our team leader were waiting (making me more self-conscious and impatient with myself), and eventually our team leader showed me that what looked like a stop in the labyrinth was actually a mound built by ants, but I could actually walk through that way; in fact, I was supposed to walk through that way if I ever wanted to emerge from the labyrinth.

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Solnit says we need the dark for creation and love and discovering ourselves.  I wonder most how our kids are discovering themselves, whether they are discovering themselves.  We'd all -- students, our kids, Daniel and I -- be learning if we stayed at home this year, too, maybe learning different, sure, but still learning.  It feels too much, my asking the students to reflect on what they're going through right now when really, it's likely much later that they'll find out later what they learned about themselves here.  Ah, well, I'm still asking.  Life here makes them reflective of life back in the States a good bit, so maybe it's okay to have some forced reflection on life here now, some recognizing of places or feelings or daily life here.

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I need breaks from regular life, chances to stretch and be lost and be uncomfortable.  I get antsy even though I consider myself a homebody, and I need to go for a bit.  The darkness can be welcoming.

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After two years at Belmont Hill I thought, I could teach here forever.  This is fun and interesting and rewarding.  And I'm twenty-four-years-old.  I can't stay here forever.  So I moved to San Francisco and had a really tough fall of a temp job (answering switchboard in basement of a hotel in 9 hour blocks) and then a commute and job I thought I would like, but found immensely difficult and depressing for me: life coach for developmentally disabled adults in low-income housing.  It was hard to go into people's homes and check on whether they were making meals, eating right, budgeting well, treating a child well.  After two weeks, I dreaded going and thought about quitting every day as I drove from apartment in San Francisco to Belmont, CA (strange irony that I was again working in a town of Belmont, by choice, now at a job I really, really didn't like).  In January, I started a new job as a job coach for developmentally disabled adults in San Francisco (this job was much better for me), and in my second week of that job, I drove to Marin to sign a contract to start teaching at another private school for the following year.

One might wonder why I bothered moving and trying these other jobs just to end up teaching at another private school.  I needed the change, the struggles, the dreaded jobs in some way.  I needed to figure out and feel for myself that the path I had planned for myself -- move to CA, establish residency, go to CA school for masters in social work, be social worker -- would work, or wouldn't work, as it turned out.  I had a plan, a good, solid plan.  But it didn't end up working for me.  I missed teaching and being around kids and teaching folks.

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When I spent junior fall in Italy, I discovered that my lifelong dream of doing the Peace Corps in Africa was actually not going to happen: four months away from home was just enough for me at the time, and any more than that was too much.  Peace Corps is a two year commitment: too long for me to be away from my family and home.  I let the dream go.  Sometimes I regret not having pursued it and feel envious of those who can do it, but I had to be honest with myself that I didn't think I could do it.

That I realized by November of that junior fall in Italy.

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It was only later that I realized that the four months in Italy would stay in me and make me want to see more places later.  It was my first time out of the country and away from my family (how do these high school juniors/seniors do this entire SYA year?).

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Almost time to check the student blogs for the week.  Yeah, it's hard to do reflecting on the current moment for myself.  I could reflect on my kids and on my students, but on my own experience -- that's a little tougher.  

Solnit connects the necessity of darkness to the term labyrinth as a part of the ear to hearing to listening to others.  She even gets all the way to empathy, and how empathy means "that you travel out of yourself a little or expand."  She says, "Recognizing the reality of another's existence is the imaginative leap that is the birth of empathy."  She says that "in the dark we find ourselves and each other, if we reach out, if we keep going, if we listen, if we go deeper."

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How does she do that?

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11am: time to check all students' blogs from this week.

I read one of a student's entries this morning and noticed how she imitated de Botton's style so much better than I did this week in describing her Where's and Why's.  This student has learning challenges, works hard, wants to do well, sticks with the struggles and gets through them.  This entry of hers was excellent, moving, lovely.

Imitation of / Reflection on "Alain de Botton on why we travel"

Blog writing assignment for today: Consider three places in and around Viterbo that fill a need for you and write a paragraph on each in the style of de Botton, i.e. a where and a why.

Where: the bars around Viterbo -- Chris Bros.; Shaker Cafe; Red Rose; Break Bar; Napoleon Bar; Happiness Cafe
Why: to breathe

My first two weeks in Italy I went to one bar, and it wasn't in Viterbo.  It was in San Martino, I think, and I found it easy to go there because I would feel less awkward, and people wouldn't recognize me; if I looked super awkward or ordered the wrong way/thing, or spoke really bad Italian, it would be okay because I wouldn't know anyone and likely wouldn't see these people again.  On my bike ride to Lago di Vico, I stopped and got a caffe and piece of crostata.  I sat at a table, in the sun, lots of sugar in my espresso (learning that I didn't mean to order caffe but cappuccino), sitting.

When I want a break, just a little break, to do some work, to journal, to read, to be away from work or home, or to remind myself that I do not have too much to do to take a break, I take care of myself: I go to a bar, order a cappuccino or a cup of tea, and sit, or sometimes I even stand at the bar, the way many Italians do.  I feel like I am recovering myself and my time, no matter what I do in that time.  One Friday I sat and graded essays, then read and outlined an essay for Monday's class.  When students flocked in, I stayed put for a little bit (truth is that I knew that this was a haunt of theirs, but it was a couple hours before school let out for the weekend, and I'd been curious why they so liked this spot so much -- I discovered American music there, darkened room, couches, tables, a hideout of sorts; it was good enough, Caffeina, but I won't return there to work.  It was too dark for me and too much not Italy).  Then I left, done enough with my work for the weekend.

The baristas at the other bars recognize me sometimes and say, "Ciao," and then I'm left to myself, not feeling self-conscious, just comfortable, relaxed, settled.  The ten or fifteen minutes give me a little time on certain days -- whether with one of the kids or Daniel or a friend or just all by myself.  I stop, breathe, appreciate the break.


Where: the terme
Why: family time with no agenda

We drive (okay, Daniel drives) fifteen minutes, we change in the car, and we scurry out over the dirt parking lot, put our stuff on a bench or on the ground, and slide gently -- it's slippery -- into the hot hot water.  That's it.  Then we sit.  We chat.  We hang out.  The kids want to play ball and splash and just horse around, and they can't do this if there are other people there.  So they have to just be, too.  We stay maybe half an hour or an hour, not more.  It's a short outing, not overwhelming.  I feel like I am doing something healthy for myself in so many ways -- the terme water is healing, I'm taking a break, some of us or all of us are together hanging out.  We're not reading or cooking or doing work or researching something or doing finances on the computer.  We're just outside.  Sitting.  Together.


Where: Emme Piu
Why: to balance familiar and unfamiliar

I need ingredients for tiramisu.  I don't know what to buy for cheese.  I want my favorite iced tea.  Connor -- and I -- want our honey loops.  Music blares with swears and no lyrics clean, as the kids would say.  Hannah tells me we need detergent for the washer and more Vanish to brighten the clothes.  Mary wants cocoa powder to make her brownies.  I want lettuce and beets and carrots.  The kids need snacks for school for Carnevale/Fat Tuesday.  I need to pick up my credit card that I left there by mistake.

There's something comforting and challenging about the grocery store.  I'm getting more efficient, but not so efficient as I am at Trader Joe's or Hannaford.  I need to debate brands and types.  I've brought home swine instead of ground beef before; a cheese no one eats; a lettuce that's not sweet enough for Hannah.

Buying candy for Christmas stockings and for Valentine's Day is a new challenge -- no hearts of various chocolates at Emme, only Baci which not all the kids like (I don't get that); no mint and bubble gum flavor Trident for stockings, so Bubba it is instead; salsa Italian style for taco salad night.

Emme is different every time -- an aisle I know, an aisle I don't; a cashier who knows me and insists I get the discount card and the cashier who doesn't; a food I can't find, and a new food to try; a question someone asks me that I understand, and a question I don't.

A little challenge, and a little comfort, too.


Where: Sicily
Why:

ostensible: SYA is going and I have to go;

other: get out of comfort zone, learn some transportation, new roads, new sites; revisit old sites (I think I presented at Taormina when I was in college, and I recall the professor's comment being something like, "Good try connecting this theatre with a Roman play, but alas, it didn't really work.") and share with my own kids visions of Greece.

Yesterday's four hour faculty meeting was reviewing students' individual schedules for the spring trips next week (Sicily or Piemonte).  I've made a copy of the template for our family, too.  I asked Sebastian to find somewhere he wants to go.  He picked Erice, and he tells me that it will probably require its own day, and no, I shouldn't combine it with Trapani, where I want to go to see salt harvested, if that's what one says.  Connor wants Mount Etna, though my colleagues all say it's not a good use of time, driving two hours each way to see lava.  If the whole family agrees, we'll still do it.  Beach.  A hike the director suggests.  I remember very little from 1993.  I imagine it as a new experience.  Everything can become so familiar that I can forget to see; even here in Viterbo, there is so much I haven't seen -- churches, museums, monuments.

Tuesday Class Time Blog after reading Zat Rana's "What's the Point of Traveling?"

Two big points of the essay for me:

1.  Rana says that in traveling, one does not actually find oneself, but loses oneself, that one loses what he/she doesn't need.

2.  Rana also talks about not taking photographs, making a conscious decision to live and experience the moment without the interference of a camera, no longer trying to capture the moment in a photo, but in the memory, with his eyes as his "souvenirs."

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2.  I take photos, and I don't imagine that I will stop.  I want to capture moments more than places, but even places I want to capture, not so much for myself, but for the kids.  But then, likely for myself, too, to remind me of moments we had together, moments they were happy, feeling loved, content, excited.  When I was a kid and my mom got angry with us for not cleaning up our toys, and we ran up and down the stairs putting toys, clothing, everything we'd left out away, I used to sneak from the straight shot of the staircases (split-level house, so four sets of stairs), over to the other side of the living room.  There, on a side table, was a framed photo of my mom with one of my sisters.  She was dressed up (and it's surprising to me now that I can't remember which dress, though I think it was red and white), standing beside my sister, her arm on Cathy's shoulder, relaxed, smiling a huge smile.  I'd tell myself, She'll be happy again.  Her yelling won't last.

I've not consciously been making annual birthday photo books for the kids with this in mind.  Initially, it was a way to record their years in an organized, keepsake fashion.  Each birthday they get a shutterfly photobook of their year of being 6 or 9 or 10.  When Sebastian was maybe five, he said to me, "I don't want a birthday book every year, just some years so it's special."  When his sister's birthday arrived seven months later, he said to me, "I changed my mind.  I do want a photobook every year, okay?"

The photobooks have been a way for the kids to have memories since we largely don't get hard copies of photos.  And I think of the books as visiting memories and also as comfort food.  A few years ago I started putting in photos of me or of Daniel by ourselves or together, not even with the birthday kid.  One of the kids noticed and said, "Hey! But I'm not in that photo!  Why'd you put one of just yourself in?"  I told them, "Because you'll always be happy to have photos of us."

Videos I don't do so much.  Daniel and the kids record more.  When they ask me at performances or games to video them, they know now that I'll say no.  The phone gets in the way of my seeing them, enjoying them, just focusing on them.  I like watching the videos later and I'm thrilled to have them, but I rarely take them myself.

It's possible that the most memorable moments have no photos however.  The day I met Daniel, standing on the opposite side of the door of his grandmother's house in Albuquerque, hearing his piano on the other side.  Meeting each of our kids for the first time.  Sitting in a piazza at Bagnoregio Civita at lunch in August/September, having a cappuccino, no kids fighting, just sitting in the sun, grateful for the moment.

Two weeks ago, when Daniel had some kids skiing up north, and Mary and I were here in Viterbo, Sebastian called one night to say good night.  When he said, "Hi, mom," I could hear the tears in his voice.  I rushed to the living room, where the connection was better, to listen to him talk (why is it that all kids are most chatty when it's time to go to bed and I'm ready for sleeping?).  He talked about that morning, how Connor hadn't wanted to go back to the Sella Ronda, but everyone else did, so they went, and Connor was okay with it; how they had so much fun doing a black, doing some jumps (I know there's some ski term for this); how they were faster doing the Sella Ronda than they had been before; how Connor went to sleep and he and Hannah and Daniel ate dinner and had a really nice time, talking, doing trivia, hanging out.

The teariness was still there a little bit.  I asked him, "So, love, what's wrong?  You sound teary."

He said, "Nothing's wrong.  You know how sometimes you're so happy it makes you cry?"

I have seen Sebastian teary like this when he talks about Mrs. Mirabito, his third grade teacher, because he loved her so much that he once called her mom at the end of the day.

Or two nights ago, when I went into his room to say good night, and he was sitting there on his bed, a white paper in his hand, which I immediately recognized because of its folds: it was a Christmas note that I'd put in his stocking, a poem of sorts, with a list of images of him here in Italy.  He looked teary, and I thought, Oh, golly, what did I write that upset him?  What did I do?  So I sat down beside him on the bed, and we read the images together, and we laughed a little, and we appreciated him for a moment and his many ways of being.  And then I said goodnight and told him to go to sleep.

There's no photo of that moment or of Hannah's walking down the hill from soccer in her Zeus sweats and socks, telling me stories of Veronica and Vanessa and Alessio, and my realizing that Hannah is actually more socially aware than I realized; or of Connor running down Via Saffi most mornings to catch up with walking shuttle 1 (often Hannah and I), out of breath and proud that he caught up no matter how hard he is breathing; or of Mary when she had us all sit on the floor after dinner one night for five minutes turned thirty to tell us and show us the steps of making her skirt, and Sebastian and Connor even asked her questions.  These are mine to keep.  And I know that they are, in some ways, more special than any of the photos I take or the photobooks the kids keep on their bookshelf in the bedroom at home.

But still, I'll keep taking photos.

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1.  One loses what one does not need, Rana says.

Hmmm...I find this one tricky because it's hard to know, as we just discussed in B block, what's changing for one when one is in the middle of something.  Quinn said that when she was home at Christmas, people asked her, "What's your favorite place there?  How have you changed?"  And she thought, I'm just myself.  I haven't changed.  I didn't come here to change.  So she was thinking, I'm not losing myself here or finding myself.  I'm just me.

On the one hand, I agree with Quinn.  I'm me; the kids are the kids; Daniel's Daniel.  We are all pretty much ourselves here in Italy as we would be at home. 

But I also know that seeing or feeling or recognizing learning or change often happens later. 

So Quinn might realize years from now how her year here affected her. 

And we might, too.

30 Day Challenges

January to February: Yoga with Tim...I didn't do every day, but eventually I hit day 30...so good...he's become a household name.  "How's Tim today?" Daniel and the kids asked each morning.  My response, "I love Tim."

I read this article that came from a higher up at SYA.  I went to Tiger (Dutch store kids like a bunch), bought myself a sketch pad for 3 euro, waited til I was done with my 30 day yoga challenge with Tim, and started sketching most days.  I think I'm on day 15.  (I'm thinking of offering this as an option to my students for one of the two final writing projects for English class.  They could do the sketch a day for 30 days, and then write an essay on what they learned from doing this practice daily.)

Doing a 30 day pilates challenge to help with sore back.  Robin Long.  I'm on day six.  Hannah tells me which day I'm on because I forget.

I suggested a 30 day of gelato challenge.  One of the kids said to me, "But we already did that last summer."  Oh, right.  Gelaterias were all closed in Viterbo from mid-November until March.  Now they're at reduced hours and flavors, but we're getting lucky some days.  Saturday evening we ran to get to Antica Gelateria before it closed at 9pm (so the website said).  At 8:50pm, we arrived: dark and locked up.  We hustled to Gelart.  Closed.  There, at Piazza del Erbe, Mary called me over, "This is my history teacher," she said.  Her history teacher with two girlfriends, dressed up, friendly, gregarious.  "I'm so happy to meet you," she said.  I felt frumpy in my yoga pants and sweatshirt.  I told her we were striking out with gelato.  "Chiodo," she said.  "They have only three flavors, but they're really good."  Twenty yards down the road we found Chiodo, a bar cum gelateria with three flavors: chocolate, nocciolo, panna.  I said to the kids, "Your teacher is so young!  Is that the one who you say dresses well and her husband owns Subdued?"  Subdued is a clothing store right there at Piazza del Erbe.  Mary said, "She's your age."  Even I, who always think of myself as seven to ten years younger than I am, thought that this woman was younger than I was.  I mentioned feeling frumpy.  Sebastian said, "Oh no, you couldn't tell because you had on your jacket.  You looked fine."

Not sure which 30 day challenges are up next.  For now sketching and pilates (though thinking of slowing down on pilates -- getting stronger is good for me, but it's hard and I get sore).  Journaling? meditating? playing a game with the kids?  Or when we get back home, thirty days of ten minutes of yard work or gardening.  That sounds healthful and good.  Yard work and gardening are daunting for me, so this could be a good way in.

Preparation for Spring Trips (Sicily or Torino) = Reading essays/articles for homework; reflecting and discussing in class; blogging in class (I do with kids):

Monday

Reflection on "On Possessing Beauty" by Alain de Botton (a chapter from his book The Art of Travel).  Respond to the following prompt.

·       Make a word painting of a time here in Italy where you saw or experienced beauty.  Get as descriptive as you can.  Avoid words like beautiful, gorgeous, love.  Keep going and going.  Write bad sentences.  Get in all the details you can.  Remember: you get to define beauty and what is beautiful.

Saturday morning.  A walk while Daniel and Tom swam and the kids got some screen time.  On weekends I don't do my around the wall walk; that would feel like the work week when I'm careful about time and headed back to work afterwards.  I head out Porta Romana and head what feels north, but I don't know whether it's north.  Daniel and his family always give directions in terms of north, south, east, west, because they grew up with the mountains in New Mexico.  But in my family, we said, left, right, straight, rotary, and when you hit x, you've gone too far, so turn around.  So I think I walk north out of Porta Romana, but really, that's might be because it's uphill.

Once I'm out of the walls, out of Porta Romana, I can put on my headphones and listen to my music if I'm running or a podcast if I'm walking.  I put on “The Long Fuse” from This American Life; I began it last week, and I'm attached to the story of the origin of the MSG scare (turns out MSG is not bad for us at all).  But I switch to listen to a Modern Love episode, a woman talking about breaking up with her therapist who, she thought, wrote her a love poem.  I listen.  But as I get away from the traffic, up farther north -- okay, really just more uphill -- there are fewer cars, so I take off my headphones.  No cars, no exhaust, no traffic lights.

There are trees, green surrounding me.  I've been up this road before, one time -- a Saturday not-around-the-wall day, a Saturday I-need-to-find-some-green-day -- running up this hill until I came to what seemed a highway, getting all the way to the white rectangle sign that read VITERBO and had a slash through it, seeing the highway and the cars speeding, hearing their whooshing, and then turning around to jog down the hill slowly, trying to be gentle on my quads so I wouldn't be too sore on Sunday.

There's a small sign on the left side, by another road that directs -- advertises? -- a bed and breakfast up this other road.  I remember it from the fall.  Instead of getting all the way up to the leaving Viterbo sign and the speeding cars, I take the left.  Uphill.  With no headphones on, I hear birds.  On my right it's green and woods; on my left a few dirt driveways spaced out pretty far.  I want to get all the way to b and b, but I stop.  I just stand there, earphones over my shoulders, phone in my pocket.  The sun is warm on my face.  I'm surrounded by green.  The birds are doing their thing, and maybe some insects, too.  I close my eyes for a moment, trying to take in these sounds as I took in the minute of the ASMR sounds Ji sent for her poetry assignment.  But I open my eyes soon because I like the green.  

I don't know which trees are which, though I recognize the shape of a leaf that I tried to sketch the other day when I was waiting for Hannah at soccer.  Maybe I could learn the leaves, one a month, and thereby learn trees.  One summer at Bread Loaf in Alaska, a teacher had us read an essay that extolled the idea not just of seeing nature and enjoying it, but learning more about specific flowers, birds, trees, leaves.  I was annoyed by this: I wanted just to enjoy the overall sensation (not the "syntax of things" as e.e. cummings puts it).  But then someone pointed out Indian paint brush to me, a flower that a friend had mentioned in a letter.  I could handle one flower, and I thought of this friend when I saw the Indian paint brush.  In fact, once I could see the Indian paintbrush, I could see and remember the other flowers people showed me, like forget-me-nots and fireweed.  I did see more.

On the one hand, I think myself a visual learner: I like to see things in print, written out, or drawn so I can understand them.  I need to sit quietly by myself to read and make notes and process what I'm learning.  I do better with a map than just directions; I can read Italian better than I can hear/understand it spoken.  On the other hand, I do not remember faces as easily as I remember stories so then I think I'm not so much a visual learner as an aural learner (or perhaps it just depends on the subject?), so I find learning faces and leaves and trees and flowers especially challenging.

But maybe, maybe I can start seeing more.  

from March...

Getting Uncomfortable

Four years ago we were about to take a family trip to Ireland and Netherlands.  We got the kids passports, got our plane tickets, communicated with relatives in both countries.  At the lunch table at Thayer one afternoon, someone asked about break, and I said we were taking the gang to Europe.  The assistant to the headmaster, Marilyn, said, "Is your passport ready?"  I laughed, thinking, Of course it is.  We got the kids passports, and Daniel renewed his.

Then I went back to my office and wondered whether mine was actually up-to-date and whether we had even checked.  I called Daniel.  He checked the file.  Expired.  We had about ten days to get the passport renewed.

Days later I left school early afternoon to make it into Boston to apply for an expedited renewal.  We all go through different stages in life and repeat them, and I remind myself of this at times.  I can be easygoing and confident and not think about either for a bit.  Or I'll feel self-conscious and not comfortable or confident.  Or I'll feel so happy that I can't imagine not feeling happy or comfortable.  Or I'll feel just down, not for any apparent reason, just lackluster, tired, a little bummed out.  Or I'll feel easily teary.  Or adventurous.  Or completely homebody-ish (every winter, pretty much).  Mostly I remind myself in the not happy/easygoing/confident stages that, at some point, the not-so-good feeling wears off, so just let it be, keep doing whatever it is I need to do, and let the feeling be there, trying not to get too annoyed with myself for it.

Driving up 93 North into Boston (or it might have been South -- 93 still confuses me, but when I'm at home I know which one feels right...most of the time), I felt really nervous and even anxious: what if I got lost?  what if I didn't get there before they closed?  what if they wouldn't give me a renewed passport in time?  Looking back, I imagine that the core of my anxiety was my fear that I wouldn't be going to Ireland and the Netherlands with my family, that I wouldn't have my renewed passport in time.  I worried about getting lost, and felt concerned that I might hit a car as I drove along Boston streets, as if I'd never driven in Boston before.  I felt anxious as I parked in a garage (actually, I always feel uncomfortable in garages -- too many scary movies and tv shows -- Scandal, anyone?).  I felt uncomfortable as I walked the three blocks from the garage to the passport office.  I felt completely outside myself, not one bit of confidence or comfort or ease about me.  

The visit was painless: I got through security, got a snack at a small convenience store inside, went upstairs, waited my turn, requested my renewal, was assured that it would be ready in two days.

But for me, something else was going on, something that -- I think -- no one there would have noticed.  But I know that I felt like I didn't belong, that somehow I didn't fit in.  I mean, who fits in in the middle of a big city and who even notices?  who belongs at a passport office in the middle of Boston?  I'm a Bostonian -- there's no reason for me to feel the outsider, but I did.

Driving out of Boston that day, I felt almost entirely calm again, reassured that I would be taking the Europe trip.  But as important for me was reflecting on how I felt that afternoon, how I felt so out of my comfort zone, nervous, self-conscious.  It was temporary, an hour or two of my entire day, week, etc., but it was real.  It was strange that I was excited to go to the unfamiliar in heading to Europe but uncomfortable in my small excursion to Boston that day.  I thought, I need to get out of my set routine more, my routine of Waltham to Braintree, Braintree to Waltham.  I need to make sure I'm doing some things out of the routine alone, stretching some.

 I still don't know what was going on that day for me, but I know that it felt like some sort of wake-up call for me, some reminder that what's uncomfortable is good and necessary and a reminder to pay attention, that changing a day up, or just an afternoon up needs to happen for me no matter where I am.

Student Assignments: Poetry Homework

The last two weeks have been full at work, self-imposed and super interesting.  I don't regret the work, even if I'm not finished with the grading yet (a rarity -- I grade quickly; if I have essays or tests remaining, I sometimes don't sleep well, so I get up and do them).  I've been letting the kids hand in the essays late, trying instead to keep up with the homework they assign to the class.  And since I expect them to do my homework, I feel obligated to do the homework they assign.

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In my last Bread Loaf summer I took a poetry course and a drama course.  Bruce Smith was the poetry teacher, and rather than talk over our heads, he remained expert and listener both.  Oskar Eustis was the drama teacher, an understated guy who liked to remind us that he did not have a Ph. D., that all American drama was rooted in the topic of money (He told us that money is a taboo subject for people, that he would talk about sex with his friends, but not money.  People couldn't talk about how much money they had or made.), that we could come to a play at Providence Rep (where he was director -- or do you say dramaturge?  I don't remember the terminology.) any time.

I have merged these two men and classes in my mind, likely because both of these professors were so understated, kind, smart.  They really cared about what we thought.  I didn't always feel that way at Bread Loaf.  When I had begun the five year summer program, I felt like I was the weakest student there, the least knowledgeable, the one with the most to learn.  I took one English class in college, and I took that pass-fail, so here I was knowing less that everyone else.  My friend who convinced me to do the program with him got after me, annoyed with my everyone-knows-more-and-is-smarter-than-I-am attitude (of course, I felt annoyed with people who talked down to me because I hadn't read various writers -- so I was both accepting and fighting my own judgment of myself at the same time) that first summer.

Bruce and Oskar took me seriously, in all that I hadn't read and in all that I had read and taught.  When I told Oskar about the play J.B., he was interested, curious.  When I told him that I liked Arthur Miller's All My Sons after we read it in class and that I wanted to teach it to students, he had me make a lesson plan to bring to Thayer with me.  In my mind Bruce had us write lesson plans, too, though I don't know whether he really did.  I have it in my head that he had us write one analysis, one imitation, one lesson plan.  What I remember bringing back afterwards was an analysis of Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider" and teaching the poem to sophomores the next year because now I understood it (or at least in my mind and in my way) so thoroughly.

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Sitting in the lobby of a Rome hotel this fall -- waiting for students to check in for a dress code, passport, working Italian phone number check -- I asked the director, "What if I don't get to all the books I ordered?  I'm thinking that I want to do a poetry unit where the kids pick a poem, make a lesson plan, teach the poem, write an analysis, and write an imitation.  But I think I might run out of time to do everything."

He said, "Do it.  It's perfect.  Don't worry about the books."

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A week of in-class preparation and meetings.  Two weeks of poems taught by the students.  One day of reading imitations aloud.  Here are some of the most memorable, and the ones that made me think about poetry, life, love, nature.  The creativity and brilliance of kids.  It's been a privilege to listen.

"Love after Love" Derek Wolcott 

Helen' homework:

Write a letter to an old crush, ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, that will never reach them....why you liked them, why you broke up, stuff they did to annoy you, etc...This letter should act as a new beginning, a way of forgiving them, or even getting something off your chest that you always wanted to say but didn't.

Class: Helen invites everyone to read his/her letter.  Most kids do.  (I do.)  We reread the poem aloud.  Helen asks everyone to remove the letter he/she wrote.  She walks around with a wastebasket and says to us, "Now put in your letter.  Let these feelings go."




"If" Rudyard Kipling
Iza

homework: Think about a piece of advice you were given at some point in your life.  Write for five minutes about how this piece of advice does or does not relate to the advice in the poem.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and wanted me to delay my move to San Francisco, where I had no job and no place to live.  But I wanted to go.  One day on the front porch of the Scituate house, Dad said, "Go.  You need to go.  She wants you to get a job here since you're hanging around.  Go."  So I did.  This was advice that said, Do what you want and do it while you can.  Don't let anyone else stop you.  Don't worry about what other people think.  Just go.  Live your dreams.  Don't back down....I feel pretty sure that my mom thought that I was selfish at times.  She's likely right.  And I'm still glad that my dad told me to go.

in class:
What's advice your parents have given you?
One girl, Kate, says: My dad has said to me every day since I was in kindergarten, as he dropped me off, "No learning, no growth, no fun."

I want to start saying this to my own kids.

"A Sunset of the City" Gwendolyn Brooks
May
homework: Write down four words to go with each season.  Then write for five minutes: Was there a time when you were aware of your age or getting older?  How was it and how did it feel?

I sit at my kitchen table and write about varicose veins and an uncooperative back when I was thirty-eight/thirty-nine and pregnant with Hannah.  I've always had myself 7-10 years younger than I am.

In class, May asks, "What does it mean to be old?" The kids learn that Brooks wrote the poem when she was about 44 years old.  They agree: this is middle age.

I mean, I guess they're right, but I still find this shocking.  I'm 46.  If I'm halfway, that puts me at living til I'm 92.  This actually sounds pretty good.  It's not 100, but it's pretty close.  It's just that I had thought that I had years to go before middle age.


"I, Too, Sing America"
Langston Huges

Vanessa teaches this poem.  She has us watch a video on origin of the term African American and a video called I'm Not a Racist.  Vanessa posts the homework twice -- in the second posting she tells us to watch the video if we can, but warns that it can be disturbing.  She tells us in class that she had forgotten how tough the language was when she assigned it (I think she may have reposted/revised for me.)  Most kids in the class had see the I'm Not Racist video before, telling me, "Everyone has seen it before.  It was a big deal when it came out."  Where was I?

She writes an imitation called "Size None", with a line through the "one" of None.  She writes about her curves and ends with the line, "We are all beautiful."


"since feeling is first" e.e. cummings
Ji
Ji's homework.  Read the poem.  Then listen to this ASMR.  The first time I heard of ASMR was two weeks ago on a family hike.  On the way down, three kids were playing a game, and Mary was making an ASMR video, in which she whispered when she spoke and noted the sounds around her.  When I read Ji's assignment, I holler to Mary and she and Hannah come to the kitchen and listen to the ASMR with me.

Ji's assignment: Write down six words after you listen.  Think about individual sounds versus the feeling that you got listening to the ASMR.

Class ends up being a discussion about the word "syntax."

I tell the kids as they walk out later, "When I nag my husband about the last 10% of the kitchen he hasn't cleaned up, he says, 'Whoever pays attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you.' "



"i have found what you are like"
e.e. cummings
Quinn

Quinn and I look at the first e.e. cummings' poem she chooses.  It's got a lot of red in it.  We decide the passion and sex aspect might be a bit much.  So she chooses another with yellows and greens and love, too.

Her homework:
Read "i have found what you are like."  Mark it up in whatever way marking it up helps you understand it.  Then look at the list of lines from e.e. cummings' poems (she's compiled at least sixty lines), and make a six line poem using these lines only with no changes.

Using six lines from her compilation, I make a poem about the sun, and the final line is "the Queen of queens is dancing."


I am stealing this homework assignment from Quinn.


"The Best Cigarette" by Billy Collins
Harrison

I'm bummed that so many kids smoke while they're here...or I guess I'm hoping that it's only while they're here.  Harrison's homework for us: Read the poem.  Listen to Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee."  Write down an object that would serve as your cigarette, an object that has made certain moments in your life more memorable, special. Write about this object and such moments.

I choose tea -- it's a way to visit with anyone almost anywhere.  We share tea and stories and time.

Blackout poetry.  He tells us to cross out lines in the poem without altering anything else, to create blackout poetry, which I've never heard of.  I do the assignment, making the focus my first car, a red 1987 Plymouth Horizon, that my dad found for me, and for which I paid $800 the summer after college graduation.  It made it out to California and lasted a year until it wouldn't pass CA emissions standards (no surprise).  But before it was in the Salvation Army lot, it took me over the Golden Gate Bridge and made me feel that I could do anything if I could make it out to San Francisco and drive my Plymouth Horizon by myself over that red bridge.

In class, Harrison asks which two out of three activities people did for the homework.  Two out of three?  I didn't read carefully: I did all three.  Perhaps I would have even if I had known because I was curious and his homework assignments were better than mine often are.

Blackout poetry.  Who knew.


"O Captain, My Captain" Walt Whitman
Kurumi

We read the poem; we talk about Abraham Lincoln; we watch a clip from the movie Dead Poets' Society; we write two line rough imitations and stand up on our chairs (or the table for me -- chair wasn't feeling so steady) to recite our two lines.

Kurumi is usually quiet.  Today she commands the room.  She salutes her English teacher back in the states, a woman who is her cheerleader, confidante, and mentor.


"Sleeping in the Forest"
Mary Oliver
Savannah

The students are not surprised that Savannah chose this poem: it's nature and beauty and being refreshed by the outdoors.  Savannah is from New Mexico and loves the outdoors.  She is open-faced, sunny, kind, eager to learn.

Oliver's speaker becomes born again when falling asleep in the forest.  We all feel refreshed and born again just reading her poem and being near Savannah and her excitement over it.


"Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines"
Pablo Neruda
Nicole

Homework:
Listen to two songs -- one by Harry Styles and one by Five Seconds of Summer.  I'm dutiful: I listen.
Write about a heartbreak.  It doesn't have to be romantic.

In class the kids share their stories -- friends, lost grandparents, seeing siblings move away.

Her imitation is about her and a friend (romantic?  unclear) who used to take the subway together every day to and from school in New York.  She has written instructions to me above her imitation: "Play while reading poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2nUUrbmztQ."  I do.


"The Afterlife" Billy Collins
Sofia

Homework:
What does Collins say happens after death?

Write for five minutes on what you think happens after death.

"Singapore" Mary Oliver
Sophie
Poor Sophie -- She wanted to see a statement on women in Singapore, a human rights poem.  I didn't see it.  I told her, and I let her go.
Homework: Pay attention to the nature in the poem.  Why does Oliver bring in nature when she's talking about a women cleaning toilets?

Class: Sophie puts forth her human rights, plight of women in Singapore thesis.  Her classmates show her how the speaker says that she doesn't doubt that "this woman love[s] her life."  They see connection and understanding, but not a political statement though they all acknowledge that they at first looked for a comment on the environment when the read the poem at first since Sophie picked it.

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I've learned a lot in these three weeks.  Inspired by Quinn and Harrison, on Friday, after they share their imitations, I cut up a Shakespeare sonnet into its fourteen lines and give out the lines, a puzzle for the kids to put together, fitting rhyme scheme and meaning.  A retired colleague at Thayer taught me this one.  These kids haven't even begun, never mind retired, and they're giving me so many ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2nUUrbmztQ

On Being Sick: Take Two

Daniel took three kids skiing last week.  Mary wanted to stay home with me even if that meant that I was working, and she had to go to school.  Skiers had excellent time and skied the Sella Ronda twice (an unfinished goal for Daniel from December trip).

Mary wasn't feeling a hundred percent but went to school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we hung out in the afternoons and evenings, making simple dinners, looking up red carpet dresses post Oscars, going out for coffee and gelato, chatting and reading poetry homework at the kitchen table, getting ourselves to bed at decent hours.

By Wednesday afternoon Mary's coughing was becoming extreme.  I told her, "I think maybe you should stay home from school tomorrow.  Does anyone at school mention how much you cough?"

Mary said, "Do you think the teacher might think I'm tough because I keep coming to school anyways?  She asked me today if I was okay.  And Vincenza asked me at sewing what was wrong with me."

Tough: a word I have used to tout my mom's ability to run a household, never be sick (until she was beyond sick), get everything done, work through pain and discomfort.

Tough: a word I use to describe people I like a lot at times, e.g. a friend who got my car out of a snow bank while I stood on the side, afeared of doing it myself though twenty years younger.

Tough: the wrong message to send to my children as such an important quality at times.

"Oh, Mary, you do not need to be tough.  You should stay home.  And the Italians don't look at it that way at all.  It doesn't even cross their mind.  They think that you should just stay home if you're sick.  Don't try to be tough here.  If you need to stay home, stay home and rest.  Relax.  Sleep.  Take a bath."

Mary stayed home Thursday and Friday.

She told me, "This has been the best week of my life."

Rentals Compared

Claremont Street issues

Mold in washing machine.  Debating whether to have it cleaned out by professional or get a new one.  Tenant attempted the cleaning but with no success.  Had been going to laudromat for six weeks.  New washer installed in October.

Non-working oven.  We tried to hold onto the Viking for as long as we could, but the repairs are outrageously expensive and slow, and tenant didn't have a working oven for over six weeks (fortunately it was summer, so likely he wouldn't have cooked much anyways?).  New oven installed in October.

Branch from neighbor's (dying) tree falls on our tenant's car and damages his car.  We contact neighbor, who says, Too bad.  We consider helping the tenant pay his deductible, but then we consider the property management fee we're giving him ($200/month), the reductions for the non-working oven and washer machine in August and September ($1000), and we let him deal with his deductible.

Electrician visits for oven and washing machine reveal that we need to replace electrical panel.  I heard this some years ago, and we tabled that repair.  Tenant reports to us, tells us it's a fire hazard (as electricians had told me the previous year), and we agree to have him schedule replacement.  Replaced in November.

Leaves in yard.  Tenant reports that there are leaves in yard still though we have folks dealing with the lawn and leaves.  Said folks send us photos of yard: looks good to us.  Said folks return to do another final sweep.

There's a snowfall of a few inches in November.  Tenant wondering what to do about this: in the lease we've deducted $200/month for December, January, February, and March, since Massachusetts law requires that landlord deals with snow removal.  It's November, and there's snow.  Daniel tells him, The deduction is for all snow for the season.  It's still unclear who will come out ahead since we don't know how much snow there will be.  We're not deducting more for November.

Dishwasher leaking in December.  By now we're really good with the Home Depot website: yes, get a new one.

Tenant tells us that our piano needs a tuning, and he could arrange it.  Will bill us the cost.  I say, Not now, but thanks and we'll tell you if we change our mind.

Tenant checks are taking a long time to reach us, too long.  We're out January and February rent until we find a better way to get the checks to us.  Paypal and Venmo aren't working.  Tenant says he can't get zelle to work.  Tenant tells us he's stressed that he's behind in rent.  We're still paying our mortgage.  Not sure whose stress is higher.

Tenant offers to buy our house.

We confirm with tenant that we're returning July 1, 2019.



Via Tomasso Carletti quirks

Apartment looked lovely upon first view...a few days of living here revealed dog balls under couch and bed; sand toys and much sand in front hall closet; drawers and closets and containers of clothing, souvenirs, toys; completed elementary school workbooks and notebooks; expired food.  Result: six bags of recycling; ten bags of give-away; twelve bags of trash.

Internet goes out fairly often.

Cordless phone must be moved away from internet to avoid future outages.

If you run two appliances at same time, you blow a fuse...which is now easy to correct since we know where and how, but blowing a fuse causes the internet to go out again.

Shock from dishwasher -- kids love; adults concerned.  When I reported to colleague in charge of apartments, he said, "You've got to read the binder!" referring to the binder with notes from previous tenants.  There is a switch in the kitchen that you turn off to avoid such shock.  Turn switch on when you want to run dishwasher.

Kitchen light.  One day kids heard a pop, and the light went out.  Daniel replaced lightbulb, but light still didn't work.  Waiting for electrician on this one.

Often no hot water in front of apartment until you turn on hot water in another part of the apartment.

Until two weeks ago, often no hot water or heat.

Dishes and glasses.  Break easily on tiled kitchen floor.  Oh, wait, that's not an apartment issue.  That's just a family issue.

Broken mirror in kids' bathroom.  Oh, that was Mary's curiosity: she said that she wanted to see whether there was anything behind it, like a medicine cabinet, so she pulled it and it cracked and fell down a little.  Then Connor went into the bathroom later and turned on the light above the mirror; the heat from the light melted the crack so that the crack extended from a few inches to a foot.  ...Finally 'fessed up to SYA that we needed a replacement and we'd cover cost.  New mirror is great.  Now to get rid of the four pieces of mirror that sit on the kitchen floor before they cause an injury.

Broken light fixture in the hallway.  Oh, right: that was from Sebastian and Hannah playing catch with Nerf football.  Debating whether to tell SYA now or wait til June.

Six inches of peeling paint on ceiling of living room.  Oh, no, that's actually from the slime that Connor threw up really high and stuck to ceiling.  Paint came right down with slime.  Ditto on debating when to share with SYA.  We might be the highest maintenance tenants they've had in a while.

Four months to go: this list could likely continue.