San Martino al Cimino x 4

San Martino 1.  

August.  Biking to Lago di Vico on a bike rented from Pasione e Pedale, I stopped at San Martino al Cimino.  Though the owner, Daniele, hadn't been at P e P, his girlfriend Martina had been there and had told me, "Sure, you can go to Lago di Vico.  Stop at San Martino for a coffee on the way."  I'd been here two weeks, and I did exactly as she suggested, parking my bike at the porta at the bottom of the city, walking up to the church, walking back down, having a caffe, hopping back on my bike to brave the steep hills to Lago di Vico.

San Martino 2.

October.  On a Saturday afternoon we need a little outing, so we head to the lake and stop at San Martino on the way for a snack -- cannoli and pastries.  We race up the same hill to the same church, Daniel catching and surpassing the kids, me walking behind.  Daniel wins (I think).

San Martino 3.

January.  We take a hike on a Sunday morning instead of going to church.  The longest, most tedious part of the journey is not the hike, not the drive (15-20 minutes), not even the arguing, but the finding of a trailhead.  This is the way it often is when we hike or look for a specific spot: it's the finding that's tricky.  This year is so much about the journey.  If the destination were always the goal, we would be losing so much precious time, so much.

On the way back from our hike, Connor points out his friend Emanuele's house by showing me a door on the road.  We contemplate stopping, but we don't, even though Daniel tells me that they're really nice folks.  This fall, all the kids have at least two activities except for Connor; he is doing pottery, and often pottery doesn't happen even weekly.  The other kids say, "His other activity is Emanuele," because he and Emanuele play at least once a week, and sometimes more often.

San Martino 4.

The last day of March.

Emanuele's parents, Christina and Marco, have invited us over for pranzo today, domenica. I adore Christina: when she drops off Connor from a playdate, she is funny and open and kind.  She loves Connor, and he loves her.  He loves Marco, too.

The first time I meet Christina, maybe two months ago, she sits on the couch with me when she drops off Connor, and we gesture and talk and laugh.  Mary helps with some words.  We sip tea.  We talk in Italian, my broken, halting, wrong word, messed-up tense Italian, and her patient, enduring, musical Italian with some English words thrown in to help me out.  Sometimes she is dressed up, hair of various hues and curls, smelling fresh and gorgeous; other times she has on sweats like me, her hair in a ponytail, trying not to lose patience as Emanuele wants to stay playing with Connor.  Marco has come by once to pick up Emanuele with Christina, and he is equally lovely.  He drives a bus thirty-six hours a week, so he sees me walking around town a lot, he tells me.  When Connor makes Emanuele, Christina, and Marco each a rainbow loom, Christina stops by Marco's work to deliver his special before bringing Connor and Emanuele back to their house to play.  She takes the boys to the house, feeds them a good Italian lunch, takes them Lago di Vico to play with sticks and run around.  Connor tells me that they now have two skateboards and two bikes at their house -- one for Emanuele and one for Connor.

We show up at their house in San Martino after mass, about 1pm, tripling the number of people in their house.  On the patio, they've set up what looks like a fancy camping stove with two skillets, and when I ask what's in them, they tell me, "Olio."  I'm thinking, But it's almost two inches of it. 

A huge bowl of dough and a rolling pin sit nearby.  I watch Christina roll out some dough, make a little hole in the middle, put it into the oil.  I pick up a handful of dough, and il profumo stops me: I know this smell.  I haven't thought of it in over thirty years.

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When we discovered bagels as kids it was as exciting as getting a VCR.  For successive Saturdays, we had Lender's bagels for breakfast, toasted with butter or cream cheese.  We ate plain and onion and egg, getting them golden brown in the toaster and letting the butter or cream cheese melt in.  I thought that bagels had just been invented, just like the VCR.

Another year we discovered (and by "we discovered," I mean that my mom started buying or making, and to us, this meant a new discovery) fried dough.  Christina's dough is this smell.  This afternoon I remembered it all so quickly, a memory lodged I don't know where, forgotten but then so present, so quickly present -- it was in the old house in the kitchen on Temple Road where we lived til I was in tenth grade, a tiny kitchen for seven people, with a wrap around bench and two chairs, and a dark wood table that is likely at one of my brother's houses now.  Small shapes, random, somewhat like circles, fried, a little flat (it didn't cross anyone's mind to put that hole in the middle so that they'd rise more), dark brown marks on one side, then covered in Aunt Jemima syrup and/or powdered sugar.  Oh, the smell of that dough.  Saturday breakfasts for a time.  Excitement for Saturday breakfast -- how old were we?  would I have thought of it ever again if not for today and that big plastic bowl of Christina's dough?

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My students are writing a reflection or description piece for Friday.  Some are writing about life at home or before here.  I can't bring myself to say, No, you must write a reflection or scene from life here in Italy from the last eight months even though I want to do so because you can't force reflection and because, yet again, I am aware that such remembering and reflecting often come later, so much later, sometimes even thirty-five years later when it's not assigned and you don't know it's coming.

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We take turns rolling dough, poking holes, and eating.  Hannah drops one ball of dough into the oil, and the oil jumps out and burns Sebastian on the hand.  When Mary drops hers in, the oil gets on her special green t-shirt (a green long sleeve benetton shirt -- special because I have at home a threadbare yellow benetton t-shirt that my parents gave me when I was fifteen, holey and loved and nearly transparent.  They got it for me when they were away on vacation once, and it was a brand name, a rarity, and I treasured it, wore it all the next summer and many summers thereafter.  The kids have asked about benetton since it's written in lower case letters across the front, and I will not throw it away even though I give away or throw away their holey clothing.  It's just special, I tell them.  I've had it for so long.  There is a benetton beside Emme Piu here in Viterbo.  Now they each have one t-shirt -- theirs won't last thirty years, but at least one.  They cherish them, too.).  I love how the hole makes the dough rise.  Connor asks me, "Is this how they make donuts?"

And again, I'm a kid, remembering driving up to Dunkin' Donuts on a Sunday morning after mass, seeing through the window the man making the donuts, lining them up on a rod in the kitchen, going in with dad, standing on the threshold between the sales part and the kitchen, watching the man in his Dunkin' Donuts hat work on the honey-dipped donuts, and his walking over to that rack of freshly made donuts, taking a few off, and bringing them over to us, warm and soft.  Back in the car, we eat them and sing to America's Top 40 with Casey Kasem, waiting to hear number one for the week.

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Wine, sausage, cheese, pizze fritte.  The kids play, we adults talk, we all eat.  Out there on the patio it's hot, sixty degrees and sunny.  Marco lends Daniel a Las Vegas hat and tells me about their vacanza to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite and San Francisco.

Too hot outside, Daniel and Marco join Christina as she finishes making lunch, and we all follow.  First a pasta whose name Sebastian learned but I don't yet know.  Then fried artichokes, pollo, lamb, bread.  Finocchio, brussel sprouts.  The kids eat, leave, return, eat some more, leave, play, return.  We adults sit and talk and laugh.

The four of us speak in Italian.  This is difficult, but my goodness, it is so much fun.  Marco and Christina are patient and easy.  They actually appreciate our Italian with all our errors and pauses and help from the kids.  And somehow we have a real conversation. 

I enjoy speaking Italian, but it has been difficult to build connection in Italian, hard for me to ask the questions I usually would ask people to get to know them.  Small talk remains small, and I don't know where to go with it.  But because Christina and Marco have this magical presence, this ease, this calm, this inviting way, I find myself speaking words, phrases, questions, even complete sentences.  I actually learn real things about them.

They are both the middle children in families with three children.  Marco's dad died in the last year.  Christina wanted four children, and she had a miscarriage at three months after Emanuele.  They had their wedding pranzo at Lago di Vico.  This is Christina's first time making lamb.  They usually have Sunday lunch with Marco's mom, who calls them on Sunday mornings to invite them for dinner.  Emanuele has not ever slept very much; he has so much energy.  Marco bikes once a week, Sunday mornings.  We tell them about our lives, too, and I almost get teary telling them how nice it has been this year to be around our kids more this year.  I am surprised by my teariness, embarrassed some, but it's okay.  Perhaps it was the little wine I drank, I think.

Daniel offers that we speak in English, but Marco and Christina laugh.  Daniel is trying, I think, to be helpful: by listening and talking with them, he and I are practicing more Italian than perhaps, we ever have.  We should offer to speak English if they want to speak English.  People tell us all the time, The Italians love to practice English.

"Oh, no!"  Christina and Marco laugh.  "Non parliamo l'inglese!"

We go back to Italian, Daniel's explaining to them what work he does in the U.S. and what work he wants to do.  This can be a challenge to explain in English, but he's explaining in Italian, and we're getting there: they're understanding.  He wants to get people to participate in local government and community, if I understand correctly.

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It might be five o'clock now.  As ever, I'm thinking, I hope we haven't overstayed our welcome.  What if they had other things that they had wanted to do today?  I ask if their lunches with Marco's mom usually last this long.  They laugh, "No!"

It's time for dessert.  Mary's made brownies, and Christina's made tiramisu -- for the first time ever, she tells me (just like the lamb).  I explain how we've made tiramisu three times, and we have gone to Shaker Cafe to buy the caffe since I don't know how to make it.  They are aghast.  Marco tells me, "Oggi fai il caffe."

We eat the tiramisu, and Christina promises to write out her nonna's recipe for me.  Mary's brownies are perfect, fudgy with a little salt on top.

Marco directs me to the counter, where he gives me some hands-on learning: clean the bottom part of the moka (this is what they call the pot they make their coffee in...not espresso, Marco says, caffe.  He also tells me that he could not find good caffe in America, not even the American espresso came close to Italian caffe.  Except, he says, for one bar near Hollywood.  In that one bar, there was great Italian caffe.  But why do they make the coffee so hot in America?); fill it with water; put in the next piece; fill it with coffee, piu, piu, cosi piramide; screw on the top.  Turn the burner on low and place the moka there.

"Per quanti minuti?"  I ask.
"Cinque," he tells me.

Christina tells me that we'll hear the gurgle, gurgle.

We sit again. 

Christina points to her ear.  Gurgle gurgle.

We drink the caffe.  Surely I can do this at home.

We sit some more.  We compare "O mio dio!" and "Madonna!" to "Oh my God!" and "Oh my gosh!"

Christina brings out a digestivo, pours four cups.

We continue sitting, talking, laughing, advising the kids on who gets the skateboards for how many minutes.

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Un pranzo per sei hore.  (A lunch for six hours.)

Finally, I tell Daniel, Devo andare.  (I need to go.)

It's 7:30pm, and I've made a reservation for 8:30pm at a restaurant 70 meters from our apartment because a colleague's band is playing there tonight.  (Anyone who knows me well knows that two social commitments in one day is a lot for me, never mind one that is six plus hours and in Italian.)  I cannot eat another thing, but with the performance so close, I'm determined to go this time.  I often want to go see this colleague perform, but his band goes on too late and too far from the apartment.

Christina packs up food for us, Marco loads the dishwasher, we clear the table and collect the kids.

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As soon as I get home, I eat the remaining two pieces of tiramisu that Christina has packed up for us.

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San Martino al Cimino.  That caffe in August that solo Saturday seems so long ago now, so far away.  I knew no one.  I was anonymous.  I barely spoke Italian.  The kids and Daniel weren't here yet.  This town was a big hill up to a church on my bike ride to Lago di Vico.  A nice stop.

Italy is a new place to me this year. 

Waltham is a new place to me as an adult. 

I am humbled by what I don't know and can't imagine, by how time and people shape minutes and hours and days and places.