Via Francigena

The Inevitable First Try

The Via Francigena is an ancient route that pilgrims walked during medieval times to get from Canterbury to Rome.  We heard it talked about here and there, and in February, when Daniel's brother visited, Daniel wanted to find it.  We drove to Vetralla, about 17 kilometers from Viterbo, parked the car, and walked up to the town to find the route.  On the way we ate our Pane Pizza Dolce pizza, played catch with the nerf football, took photos by a pilgrim sign.  But once we were in the town, we didn't know which way to go.  We walked down the main road one way, walked back, decided to walk out of the town in the other direction, spent likely two hours hanging out on the side of the road while waiting for Daniel to come with the car, playing soccer, chatting, enjoying the sun.

By about five o'clock, a few missteps later, we had walked and driven a bit more, and Daniel had found the trail.  We parked in a lot and walked the Via Francigena, a wooded trail in green.  We walked about half an hour out and then back to make sure we made it back in the sunlight.  Tom and the Sebastian and Hannah kicked a soccer ball, the kids having created some game.  Connor and Mary battled ninja-style with sticks.  Daniel and I walked and talked.

It was not the hike we'd imagined, but we were glad that we had at least found the trail, and the little red and white striped signs that indicated that we were indeed on the Via Francigena.

Try Two: Italian Style

One Saturday I saw my colleague Santo out on his bike.  He told me that he was taking the train to Montefiascone and then biking back to Viterbo.  I went home and told Daniel and the kids.

A few weeks later, Hannah was asking to go biking, so we planned our second Via Francigena outing: Montefiascone to Viterbo.  We told the kids that it would be a few hour outing, and then we could return and they could relax (we value relaxing quite a bit in our house).  We walked to Passione e Pedale on Saturday morning to rent bikes; Daniele, the owner, had moved his shop, so we walked across town to find his shop.  I think it might be easier to bullet point the next three hours.

10:30am  Arrive to P e P; Daniele's not there.  Bummer.  His colleague (a real estate agent who is also renting some of this modest office) says, He's not here this morning, but you can call him.
10:40am  Call Daniele, who says, Sure!  I can meet you at noon.  I'll bring the bikes to you.  Send me sizes.  We're bummed that we need to wait til noon, but it's okay.
10:40-11:45  We sit on the grass at Piazza della Rocca, eat our pizza (from PPD), read, chat, play games.  Alessio's nonna walks by and says hello.
11:45am  Daniele calls to say it's going to be 12:30 rather than noon.  Dang it.
11:50am  We go get gelato.
12:20pm  Daniele calls to say that it's one of those days: he got to his van and he's got a flat tire.  He says that we can still rent the bikes, but we'd have to get ourselves to him, about a mile away.
12:30pm  We can't turn back now.  I call him back and say we're on our way.
12:30-1:15  We find Daniele and his colleague/girlfriend Martina and bikes to try.  We ride around parking lots testing out our bikes.  Happy happy.  He says he'll charge us for only half a day for our rentals (even though, really, he doesn't have a half-day rate).  I adore him and Martina -- they're kind and helpful and funny, too.
2pm maybe?  We catch a train to Montefiascone.

My times might be off, but they're pretty close.  It was a typical Italy experience, and we could do nothing but go with it.  In Montefiascone we stopped at a bar to use the bathroom, buy a snack, and ask how to get to the trail (exactly what we should have done in Vetralla weeks before!!).

Ten minutes into the trail I felt like I was in the movies -- this is the Italy that they show in films and describe in books.  The fields.  I know there's a better way to describe this beauty, but I don't have it.  When my friend from home calls, I pick up my phone, and she lets me blather on about how we are out in the country and it is gorgeous and I love it and this looks like every Tuscany postcard and painting I've seen.  It's sunny and beautiful, and I can imagine nothing better.

Three kids go ahead; Mary stays with me and Daniel.  We eventually catch up to the other three, speedsters and adventurers and kids that are certain that they are going the right way and haven't made a mistake and convinced that we would have found each other eventually.  Daniel disagrees; he points out that they're actually headed back in the direction of Montefiascone.  We spend another hour debating the route, revisiting the scene of the turn, determining that Daniel is right.  I sit down and take a photo of what looks to me like a card from our VanGogh memory game.

(This is how we learned VanGogh's painting: my dad and Jacqueline some years ago brought us back this memory game from the VanGogh Museum in Amsterdam.  I want games like this for every artist I like and I want the kids to know.  No luck thus far.  Years later when we went to the museum ourselves, the kids were excited to spot the paintings they knew.  Familiarity helps us all, makes us feel more connected and excited to see in real life what we've learned or seen or heard about.

Daniel's birthday was last week.  Sebastian wanted to get him a puzzle since they've worked on two this year -- one from the Vatican of a map that has Viterbo on it and one from the museum we went to in Siena.....or was it Florence?.....Sebastian gets him a puzzle of the Allhambra in Spain, which Daniel learned about when he was in high school and which he wants to see when we go to Spain in June.  I'm thinking we'll all get more excited for the site with the buildup of the puzzle.)

We bike at various speeds, and I'm usually last.  I love this ride.  And the kids like it, too, even if our intended few hour excursion ended up going til 8pm.  Hannah can't wait to do it again.

Take 3: Just a Sunday morning walk

Daniel and I go for a walk some weekend mornings, not generally around the walls, because it's the weekend, and I like to switch it up from weekdays.  We walk out Porta Romana, and we decide that we'll see where the Via Francigena route goes, following the red and white pilgrim sign.  I'm somewhat amazed that we haven't followed this before.  Now that we know of the Via Francigena, we look for it everywhere.  The Vetralla debacle with Daniel's brother now feels so long ago, so long ago that we were so ignorant of this town-to-town path.  We follow it for half an hour, staying on roads, though quiet roads, uphill, through Viterbo.  We turn around to get back in time for church.

Take 4: Playing Hooky and Capstone

SYA students have to do a final project, named Capstone.  It needs to be a project that is place-based, with research, hands-on experience, and doing.  They keep a work journal, write a research paper, write a reflection, give a presentation.

One student is doing one hundred miles of the Via Francigena.  She was going to write a book since she thought that that would look good for colleges, but some teachers helped her come up with something more place-based and out and about.  She started in Bolsena, I think, and will finish at the Vatican today.  Since she can't be out there alone, she recruits classmates and teachers to do parts with her.  She'll do one leg one day, and a few days another leg with another person.  I agreed to do one day, happy to be outside rather than at my desk and to explore more of the Via Francigena.

It's a Tuesday.  I tell the kids they can come if they want.  Connor doesn't want to wait around for the student to find where to get her stamp to make official that she's walked, so he says no.  Sebastian has a test that he doesn't think he should miss, so he heads to school, too.  Hannah and Mary -- who, I later learn, just postponed their homework -- are happy to play hooky and join me and Katie on the 17 kilometer walk from Viterbo to Vetralla.

This is Katie's Capstone project so she's done all the research.  We show up with pizza and water, and we get to follow.  It's sunny and warm.  The girls are troopers -- they walk and talk with Katie and each other and me.  We stop to look at wild poppies and a trench being dug for a pipe.  Mary's takes videos of Katie for Katie's project.  Hannah's legs get tired; I get tired.  The other two forge ahead.  We're on a schedule so our breaks are short.  Katie wants to be on a bus back to Viterbo at 12:40, so we keep moving.

As we near Vetralla, Hannah says, "I know where we are!  Do you remember this?  I remember this!"  I have no idea what she's talking about, but Mary does.  They exchange more remembered moments, and as we keep walking and looking around, I get it: this is where we parked the Fiat that Saturday months ago with the gang and Daniel's brother.  This is the hill we walked up.  This is where we sat and ate our PPD pizza.  This is where we took photos.  This is where we should have asked directions but didn't.

Katie gets her stamp, I get a coffee and bus tickets, the girls sit and eat the rest of the pizza and drink Esta The.  The bus arrives at 12:40, and we head back to Viterbo.

So this is what it's like to go on a planned, perfectly orchestrated excursion.

Possible 5 or 6 or 7: Where next?

I'm not sure when our next Via Francigena outing will be.  But I have feeling that we're not done with it yet.  Maybe next month or maybe many years down the road...

Overheard conversations

on the way to school...not the usual Via Saffi route, but the route through Porta Verita because there's a shop there that sells quaderni (notebooks) and is open early, and both C and H need some for the day....

Connor to Hannah:
"I like Italy almost as much as I like America.  I just want to go home because I love our house and yard and neighborhood and my friends."

Hannah in reply:
"I like Italy and America the same.  If we could have our friends here, then I'd stay here."

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in the rental car, riding back from Syracuse to Catania (Sicily)...Sebastian and Mary.

kid 1:  Italian something....blah blah blah
kid 2: Corrects an italian word or phrase or verb ending
kid 1: No...wait..yeah, yeah, justo.

Counting the Days

8 days til SYA students depart

14 days til I finish the school year

21 days til kids and Daniel finish school

31 days remaining in Italy (we're taking two week trip to Spain and France in June)

44 days til we fly to Boston

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How have all these months passed?  All these days?  Almost an entire school year.  I wonder what our kids will remember and what they won't.  I remember what Daniel and I will remember.  Right now I want to hold so tight to so many things.  I'd like to take pieces of our life here in Viterbo home.  There are no photos for the feeling of the feet on the ground or for the sound of the easy "Buongiorno" or even "Ciao"  as we walk down the street or for the Italian I hear our kids speak or for the coffee I just met Daniel for before returning to school to proctor the AP Latin exam.

With school both winding down (no classes) and winding up (grading returns in days with students' Capstone reflections and final grades and comments), I am reading for next year (TA sophomore English reading) and trying to write all those unfinished blog entries that I started, some with only a title, because there must have been some thoughts one day that made me want to write whatever that title indicated, e.g. a Palermo entries from March that I just hadn't finished yet.  If I cannot hold on to things here, I guess I want to give them words. 

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Two nights ago friends from home emailed to say that they were in Rome visiting their daughter and her family (who have lived in Rome for years), and on their way north, they could stop in Viterbo to visit for a short bit.  We were wonderfully surprised, and yet, when I saw Joe and Ailene walking towards a bar across the street from the Porta Romana train station, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that they were here.  We went into this bar that I'd never been inside, sat down, and talked.  And when the server came to take our order, everyone (they also had one of their daughters, her husband, and their daughter with them) just ordered cappuccino and caffe as if this were the most usual thing in the world, sitting in a bar in Viterbo having coffee together.

Ailene and Joe aren't just friends: they're neighbors.  I realize that that sentence might seem backwards, but it's not.  The thing that our kids miss most (I think) from home is our home and our neighborhood.  And while Ailene is 79 and Joe is 89, they are home, even to our kids.  Some days before we left, Mary and I stopped in to say hello -- and perhaps goodbye? -- to Ailene and Joe.  Joe was working on his Italian (they had visited same daughter and traced his family back when they had come the year before) and shared some Italian-learning apps and websites with us, and Ailene and Mary and I sat in the living room and talked.  I imagine that we talked about Italy and the upcoming year, but I don't remember specifics.  I remember Ailene's and Joe's both interacting easily with Mary, Mary's enjoying the visit with them, my being relaxed and grateful and delighted for our evening stroll by their house and our visit.

Days later, Daniel tells me, Ailene stopped by our house to say goodbye, and he and she sat and had a cup of tea together.

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This fall when we went to Rome to meet friends (also neighbors!) from home, we met up with Joe and Ailene's daughter, the one who lives in Rome with her family.

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I asked Joe and Ailene about their coming back to Italy -- they'd never suggested that they might repeat what seemed like a once in a lifetime trip two years ago.  They said that Joe said at Christmas that he'd like to come to Italy, so their oldest daughter planned it, and they came.  He said that he doesn't really care what they see.  He just wanted to be here.

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Our hour together yesterday feels like an almost-bookend, starting to close out our time here in Viterbo as we started to close out our time last summer before leaving Waltham.  An Italian bar instead of a living room on Clark Lane, but the same: some Italian, some talking, some laughter. 

San Giovanni Eremiti, Palermo, Italy

The photos online drew me in because there were these reddish domes that were pretty.  The architecture, which seemed to me concrete with these domes, was so appealing, so simple, so not mosaic or Baroque or Renaissance.  So Mary and I added it to the our list, taken in by the pictures on the web's Top Fifteen Things to See in Sicily.

When I went to Athens a few years ago on a Thayer trip, I went into a church near our hotel one afternoon just to sit down for a moment, curious.  People were milling about some.  Sitting some.  I sat.  It was peaceful.  I remember thinking, People forever have believed in something and have created places to honor this something.  There is ground set aside for spiritual practice, and there always has been.  The Parthenon was packed when we got there, and I stood amazed there, too.  Greek gods, Roman gods, G-d, God -- humans have always revered some being beyond the reality of life.

There's the grandeur of St. Peter's and the duomos all over Italy with columns and paintings and altars and candles.  But San Giovanni was mostly garden and a couple empty old buildings.  It was one of the calmest places we'd been.  Peaceful.  Open.  Beautiful.  A perfect combination of nature and meditation or prayer space.  I just googled San Giovanni dei Eremiti and saw cloisters, and thought, Oh, right, there were all those small decorative columns around the gardens.  How did I forget that?  But really, I guess what I remember is the feeling of being there and of being surrounded by green outside and empty space inside. 

Yesterday I listened to a podcast interview with a woman (Barbara Brown Taylor -- I didn't know of her, but I found the interview on the Fresh Air podcast) who teaches the world's religions.  She talked about God envy and practice over belief (this may have been my favorite part) and learning one's own religion more by learning other religions.  It's probably too much to share with our kids, but as we force them to come to Sunday mass and say prayers and send them to Catholic school here, I might like to put this on in the background as they play their games and do their puzzles and build their forts or as we drive around.  I want to sign up for this woman's class or another like it.

When I was a kid, I asked my mom one day after school (Catholic), "What if we're doing the wrong religion?"  I was concerned because at school I kept hearing that to get to heaven you had to be Catholic and follow the Commandments and do Catholic right, e.g. go to mass every Sunday, go to Confession sometimes, memorize the Our Father and the Hail Mary.  Or at least that's how I heard it at the time.  My mom said, "As long as you do your best with whatever religion you are, then you'll be fine."

San Giovanni Eremiti felt like it would work for anyone in any religion or for anyone with no religion.  Or more simply, for anyone.

The Streets of Palermo

The first night in Palermo (Sicily), my colleagues send us a WhatsApp message to see if we want to join them for street food.  I'm not sure what this means, but I've heard that Sicilian food is delicious, and street food is cheap.  I want to go, but I'm tired, troppo stanca.  Daniel, Mary and Sebastian go.

Mary is proud of herself: she's eaten sausage which looked undercooked, so she didn't look at it as she ate it.  Sebastian loved the sausage, the grill, the eating outside.  The director tells Mary, "If you bring this guy fish you buy at the market, he'll cook it for you one night for dinner."

All week Mary tells me, "I want to get the fish."

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Friday morning, our last day in Palermo, the director calls me, "I'm going to get my fish.  Mary there?"

Mary's out playing freeze tag in Piazza Garibaldi with her siblings while Daniel finds a laundromat and I read student blogs.  I go with the director.  Twenty minutes later we repeat the ritual with Mary and Hannah.

The Sicilian man selling the fish talks to Mary, and the director tells her the various kinds of fish.  Mary winces as the man holds up the fish for her inspection.  I can see her cringe but not look away.  She gets one whole fish and one deboned, and the fish seller (fisherman?) throws in another (for free?).  He weighs them, and I pay.

Next stop: the cook.  We walk fifty feet, see the cook who grilled food two nights ago, and deliver our package of fish to him.  Now he has so many fish from SYA students that he needs to label each new bag of fish.  He labels Mary, "Famiglia."

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That evening we sit outside in the sort of piazza -- three faculty, Daniel and the kids, seven students -- at white plastic tables set up by the man who is grilling the students' chicken, Sebastian's sausage, the three fish Mary's selected, and the fish for other SYA folks.  Cars blare music, though not as loud as they do hours later when I'm trying to go to sleep (director: "I wondered about calling the polizia so they'd stop at midnight."  Italian colleague: "I was thinking that the only way to get that music off was going to be cultural: we needed some nonna to come out from her apartment and yell at them.  That's how it has to be done.")

Mary, Sebastian, and Hannah don't like fish.  But they've come for the Palermo experience (Connor is up in our hotel room and has texted us requesting pizza; last night we bought pizzas for 2.50 a pie.).  I've done the same.  Food and talking with people seem the biggest activities in Palermo.  Palermo has litter everywhere, overflowing trash, tall apartment buildings, a run-down feel.  There's food being sold in bars, but also in outdoor markets.  (When I read the student blogs, I am thrilled to hear that they love the lack of polish in Palermo and the in-your-faceness of life and people.  They could have gone to Turin, which, I've gathered from the blogs of the students who are there, is shiny and clean and modern and had an outstanding coffee museum, Lavazza Museum.

Two Italian boys come by with some SYA girls and get introduced to the director.  The day before, when students were heading to Solanto to see an archaeological site, they got on the train to Solunto by mistake, had to walk to Solanto, found the site closed, and instead spent the afternoon fishing with some Italian teenagers they met.  These boys are back to visit and hang out, and no matter how much the director insists, these boys, with poise and ease and politeness, do not sit down.

We pull out Mary's chedro to share with everyone.  It looks like a huge lemon -- think size of mini watermelon.  It's cut into slices, and we put Sicilian salt on it (from the salt museum in Trapani!), and share it with everyone.  We all eat the fish, even Mary and Sebastian.  It's delicious.

"C'mon, Ms. Keleher, you gotta eat a fish eye!  Try it!"

I don't usually give in to such dares.  But I'm in Palermo, eating fish and drinking wine on a busy street corner.

The eye goes down easily.

Siena

As we drove to Siena, or rather, of course, as Daniel drove and I looked out the window, I realized that, even though I'd been to Italy four times before, I'd never seen the Tuscan countryside.  I lived in Rome and took trains to see other cities, but the quintessential Tuscan countryside I knew only from movies and photos and paintings and books.  I just kept looking out the window, in awe of the rolling hills and thinking that we must need more rain for these fields to look so green.

We sat in the main piazza, the campo, a huge sloping piazza, and ate pizza.  The police officer walked around telling people not to leave trash and pointing out trash cans.

We let Sebastian make our itinerary: the Campo, Museo Civico, Torre de Mangia, a park, the duomo.

Museo Civico...Sebastian and Connor sat with me in a room here, a room with a parable of good government.  The Council of Nine in Siena (1285-1355) had paintings in this room commissioned to show good government and bad government.  The three of us talked about the meaning of a parable; the wall depicting bad government with violence and unhappiness and mayhem; the wall depicting good government with people lining up to get a judgement, a scale, serene countenances.  We talked about a Council of Nine like a City Council, this making sense since Daniel ran for Waltham City Council a year and a half ago.  Our kids don't usually want to go to museums, so I loved sitting with the boys as they looked at these paintings, commenting on the good and the not-good of the paintings and of government.

We found a field and played freeze tag.

We climbed the Torre de Mangia (tower) that made me love Siena more because the views were that Tuscan countryside and the roofs were that orange-y color all over Siena.  This is what I was looking for on this spring break trip -- not sightseeing so much as hanging about,...the kids looked out from each lookout onto the piazza, searching for the police officer who had the job of telling people not to litter.

Bagni San Filippo

Daniel is often on the hunt for bodies of water.  At home, it's rivers and lakes and ponds and swimming holes.  In Italy, it's hot springs.

I was in charge of planning spring break, so I made up a little loop on google maps that would give us some seeing new places and some hanging out.  Tarochi Garden (huge mosaic sculptures all made by one woman); Lucca; Florence (strike 3); Siena; maybe Arezzo (didn't happen); Orvieto.  Daniel added hot spring, though he hadn't determined where yet.

Bagni San Filippo.  Siena to Bagni San Filippo.  This might have been one of my favorite car rides.  Daniel gave the kids math problems for part of it, I looked out the window, and we all seemed somehow part of the same conversation -- all of us, even the kids who usually bury themselves in reading or in finding music.  I wish I could remember what else we talked about beside math problems (my contribution was a word problem about the big Esta The I bought versus the six mini Esta Thes I almost bought...how much did I save?), but I don't.  I just remember that it was the rare ride with no fighting and with everyone in sync and in one conversation.

We walked up to the springs, disappointed to find that the water was not actually hot.  It was tepid at best, even cool in spots.  While the kids and I put our feet in and sat and chatted, Daniel kept searching for a better spot.  No longer disappointed, Connor was throwing rocks to see them splash over a mini-waterfall, and then started making a dam; the others joined in, and everyone was wonderfully, beautifully occupied.  Watching them I thought, Now this is what we needed.  Playing outside.  I was reminded of one of the entrances to Prospect Hill, two blocks from us at home.  Connor and Sebastian and Hannah and their neighborhood buddies Gus and Orly can spend an hour here making a dam, building it, reinforcing it, adding new elements.  (Or at the beach in Scituate, they make a wall of sand and mud to hold up against the oncoming waves.  As the tide comes in, they try to fight it, adding dry sand and height and heft to their wall, maybe even a boogie board for support.)

Daniel returned with news that we had to come see what he'd found.  We resisted: we had just settled in and were happy.  The kids were busy with their dam, I was happy in the sun watching them, nothing could be better.  Simplicity.  I thought, It doesn't matter if we see the next better or best thing.

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After we got lunch, the kids and I went to find Daniel.  Two hundreds yards down from where we had been was a huge mountain covered in what looked like snow, but was really calcium.  Connor ran ahead to climb on the calcium-covered rock, Hannah ran to find Daniel, Mary tested out the hot spring, and Sebastian and I sat to eat our sandwiches.

It looked like a glacier, that rock, and like a set for photo shoots.  We watched and laughed as women posed in their bikinis, their heads back, their hair catching the hot spring water falling down the rock, their poses suggestive.  I lost track of Connor and Hannah.  Daniel said that they went to the top of the rock and were playing there.

Scared, I tried walking on the calcium.  I'd seen some people easily running on it, others slipping as they went down.  I had to try.  I passed the posers, got my footing, felt pretty great and brave.  Mary took Daniel's old spot, lying down on the rock where the spring dumped hot water right under her, hot hot.  She told me, You would have loved it.

Connor and Hannah returned with huge balls of calcium that would have been great in a snowball fight.

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Dams.  Calcium balls.  Snowballs.  Waltham.  Italy.  Okay, maybe we don't get hot springs and calcium-covered rocks in Waltham, but the playing feels the same.

Small Talk

Tuesday

I sat down at my desk this morning and went to fill up the green glass that I snagged yesterday from the SYA kitchen with water from my water bottle.  (I've lost the water bottle I got for Christmas, so really, this one is from the previous tenants of our apartment.  They left a number of water bottles.  We've lost all but this one.  We're the same way at home: no matter how cheap or expensive, flimsy or sturdy, common or unique, most water bottles we acquire go missing.  My aunt years ago made fun of that saying, Go missing.  She'd say, "What's that?  Someone went missing.  It sounds weird.  How did that become a thing?"  In this case, I wanted to use it to avoid the passive voice since I'd gotten myself that far into the sentence.)  I like drinking from the glass rather than from the water bottle.  It's easier.  But this morning the glass wasn't here on my desk.

Sometimes I make myself a cup of hot water or tea at work.  I think I leave my mug on my desk, but the next day I don't see the mug.  Daniel asks me sometimes at home, "Do you know what your hands did?"  And the truth is that I often don't.  When Daniel first met my parents, Thanksgiving 2001, he learned not to leave anything out.  He went into the kitchen to find a tennis ball that he had left on the counter to play four square.  It was gone.  He was flummoxed.  My mom had put it away.  She didn't like for things to be left out for no reason (she likely didn't know he had a reason, but even if she did she might not have wanted it out in her kitchen amidst the Thanksgiving cooking).  Sometimes after Christmas morning, my mom would say, "I have another present for you, but I can't remember where I put it.  I just can't find it!"  This has happened to me numerous times, and our kids sometimes get a present a day late, buried under clothing or hiding in a bag on a hook because I don't remember what my hands did with it.

So when I don't see my mug, I think that perhaps I brought it to the kitchen and washed it.  It's crossed my mind that Rosaria or Anna, who clean the school every afternoon, could have picked it up, but that seems far-fetched.  They would have picked it up from my desk, taken it to the kitchen, washed it.  They have much more to do than collect a mug or glass from my desk.

The green glass wasn't here this morning, and I'm sure I left it on my desk.  When I went to make my hot water between AP proctoring sessions, I found it washed and on a shelf in the kitchen.  I'm thinking that likely Rosaria or Anna have cleared those mugs from my desk this year.

Rosaria I met early on.  She works here at SYA cleaning after school, and then some evenings and weekends she works at the baths.  These are not the free baths that we frequent, but the Terme dei Papi, the Pope's Baths as they're called, where you pay to sit in the huge piscina of thermal water or you can get a massage or other treatments.  (I've been to these baths on a school excursion.  I don't think our kids would like them so much because they're so placid, so filled with people enjoying the quiet.  I found them luxurious and wonderful.)  Last week I saw Rosaria outside the walls on my walk.  She had two dogs.  The next day we talked about her dogs and her work schedule.  Another day I saw her at a tabacchi when I went in to recharge my phone.

Anna I met later and it took me weeks to remember her name.  We speak a little less, but we laugh, too.  As with Rosaria, our conversations are choppy attempts at connecting, and we connect enough, but not as much as I'd like because of my Italian.  I'm reminded of the women in the dining hall at Thayer.  They're funny and kind, and they have a good edge.  They're tough with that kindness, and the humor can be affectionate or sharp.  I know more about their lives than I do about Rosaria and Anna, but still a limited amount.  They help me out when I need snacks for the National Latin Exam or food stored for Fr. Bill's, or they find me a bag of chips, and they tease me when I don't go over to lunch.  Mary likes science fiction movies I would never watch, and Darlene has two dozen chickens.

Often people make fun of small talk, and I can be one of these people.  I like real conversations that connect me to folks.  But sometimes small talk is a fine start and good enough.  Small talk can turn into something else, conversations about what someone does in free time or about family or work or daily routines.  I imagine that my early conversations with LeeAnn, our mail carrier at home, started small.  Or with the women who work in the TA dining hall.

Wednesday

Lots of AP exams this week and I'm proctoring.  During one of my breaks, I headed down to Bar 103 on the corner for a decaf cappuccino, not for any reason other than it sounded good on this rainy day.  I go to Bar 103 if I'm with SYA colleagues mostly.  Occasionally I go with one of the kids, but I think of it more as an SYA break place.  Nadia and her daughter Olga work there six days a week, long hours.  They are both tall, blond hair, smiley, chatty with customers they know.  With me, they're kind, but we don't speak much.  One December evening after a Paradiso performance, when I was there with the kids, Olga made them beautiful hot chocolates and gave them each a piece of candy when we left.

This afternoon I brought TA sophomore summer reading, The Universe Versus Alex Woods, which I didn't care for during the first ten pages, but now want to read every moment I can.  (I love the narrator, a teenage boy with both a lack of awareness and total awareness at the same time.)  Maybe that's why I don't go to Bar 103 much.  They know me a bit, as in with SYA people, and sometimes I just want to read the news on my phone or my book, and it might feel awkward to do so at Bar 103.

As I walked in, a man was walking out.  Nadia said her farewells and said, "Di mi."  I ordered, stood at the bar with my book, not reading it quite yet.  Then she started talking with me.  She asked when we were headed back to the U.S., whether we were coming back for another year, how we liked it here in Italy.  I told her about the family vote and the decision to go home.  She was baffled that we were going home when the vote was 5-1, when only one kid voted to go home.

She told me how Olga, who was ten when they moved here, didn't want to come, cried and cried, wanted to go back to Ukraine.  Nadia imitated her with her fists up to her eyes as she said, "Piangere, piangere, piangere!" She missed her home and friends and grandparents.  Nadia told her, "You can go back when you're eighteen.  For now, I'm here in Italy, so you are, too."  We talked about language a bit, how Italian sounds like a song and I love the sound of it, how she used to know German and Ukranian and some Russian, how now she's been here for twenty years and she speaks mostly Italian now.  At this point she has spent half her life in Ukraine and half her life in Italy.  As I walked out, she called loudly out the door, "Ciao, bella!" with a laugh.

I couldn't pass the AP Italian Language and Culture exam I'm proctoring today, but that's okay.  I'll take the ability to have a conversation with Nadia or Anna or Rosaria.  Nadia said, "If you stayed another year, your language would be perfect."  I'm paraphrasing because she speaks Italian, and it's good enough for me that I got the jist of it.

Eventually small talk can become something else.  Even if we don't speak the same language.

What to See

We had friends in town on Good Friday.  When Daniel met up with them in Rome upon their arrival, they had all gone out for gelato which cost, they realized afterwards, seven euro per gelato.  (We pay two euro per gelato in Viterbo, and generally slightly more in other towns/cities, including Rome.)  Now they were coming to Viterbo for an afternoon, and I wanted to have good meals ready for them.  Viterbo is not on a typical tourist guide, and I wanted to make parts of the afternoon good and easy for them.  They have two daughters, one a friend of Sebastian's from Plympton and one in grade four still at Plympton.  Daniel and I were thinking about what we could show them to make this one day of their eight day Italy trip, worthwhile: the terme (hot spring baths) or Pope's Palace or the medieval quarter or the UNESCO plaques for the Santa Rosa procession.

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The feast of Santa Rosa was such a novelty for all of us.  Since then there's been the day after Santa Rosa festival and the befana procession for Epiphany (the one with the women and the Fiats and candy -- where we temporarily lost Connor) and some feast late March when the streets were lined with stalls selling treats and bags and kitchen utensils.  There have been days that I've heard drumming and not rushed outside to find it.  For the Flower Festival two weeks ago all the piazzas in the medieval quarter were decked out with flowers and knitted creations of flowers and cactuses and wagons; on the side of the road folks were selling flowers and plants and baskets (Hannah stopped to watch a man shaving down a stick before adding it to the basket he was making).

In the past two days I've seen banners and signs for Santissimo Salvatore, and Thursday as I opened the shutters in my office and waved across the street to Renzo, who works or owns the edicola across the street -- every morning I see him and two other men standing outside his shop as I open my shutters -- he yelled something up to me that I partly understood.  He invited me for a caffe as he's done before, and I know that I should follow up on this one though I feel too awkward to walk across the street one of these mornings and say something like, "Buongiorno, Renzo!  Caffe adesso?"  He's asked me twice now from across the street, and I'd like to follow up, but this will take some courage on my part, courage that's not quite there yet.  He is wonderfully friendly with me and with the kids and complimentary of our Italian, even mine.  But still, there will be not awkward silences, but rather moments when he speaks and I need many moments to parse which words make up his sentence and which words I need to respond.  The quick Italian coffee may not be quick enough.

After the window caffe invitation, Renzo yelled up something about a procession that was going to go down Via Cavour, that I'd be able to see from this window.  A day later, noticing the window banners like the ones that hung down from windows during Santa Rosa -- those had pictures of the facinni (men who carried the macchina of the Santa Rosa back in September) on them -- I realized that this Saturday -- today! -- is the feast of San Salvatore, and one sign says that the procession is at 6pm.  The kids are procession-ed out; the drums and marching and dancing on the streets of Viterbo are no longer quite as exciting, and they are happy to stay home and relax even though they would need to walk about two blocks to see it.

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Before our friends -- the family of four from Waltham -- arrived early afternoon, I went for a short run, showered, and cleaned the bathrooms with Hannah.  Daniel cooked and cooked (caponata -- a Sicilian dish he learned to make after our Sicily trip; chicken with peppers and onion).  I ran out to do a few errands in the remaining hour.  I invited Mary, knowing that her Italian makes my life easier and my Italian less awkward since she loves to do the talking and does so effectively, but she declined.

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First: Bancomat for money.  Renzo's shop is a door or two down from the ATM.  He saw me and gave me his usual enthusiastic greeting, introducing me to his friends, pointing across the street at SYA, bragging on my behalf that I can speak Italian and I've been here since only August.  I protested (then later realized in talking with Daniel that really, not protesting is more appropriate -- Renzo is kind and effusive, yes, and he knows exactly how good and bad my Italian is at this point as Daniel pointed out), thanked him, moved on to my next errand.

Taverna Etrusca.  I love their pizza.  This would be good lunch for today.  Without Mary I walk in and ask about ordering pizzas.  The man recognizes me and takes my order.  I'm thinking five pizzas for ten of us.  But I hesitate.  I ask him how many pizzas he would get for ten people.  He says, Whatever you wish.  I say, Yes, but what do you think?  He says, Italians get one pizza per person.  I realize he's right, but I don't want to over-order.  So I order eight pizzas.  (Ultimately, this is ridiculous because we'll be ten people for lunch at 1pm, yes, and then we're having an early dinner around 5pm, and Daniel's cooked for hours, and I can't have us not hungry.)  I walk out of Taverna Etrusca laughing at myself, but also delighted that I've ordered the pizzas successfully and had a lovely conversation in Italian with this man.  I need to keep moving.

Pane Pizza Dolce at Fontana Grande.  Daniel's requested a loaf of bread for dinner.  Pane Pizza Dolce is our favorite bread and pizza slices spot (whereas we order whole pizzas and usually eat at Taverna Etrusca which is an actual restaurant).  Mary comes here each morning before school to get her pizza (bianca or croccante -- I'm not sure which) for morning snack; the school sells pizza -- 1 euro for 2 pieces -- and the others all bring money to school each day.  Mary prefers this PPD pizza, so she stops every morning, likely adding a few minutes extra to her daily tardiness.  One Saturday in the fall Daniel and I stopped at a bakery by Piazza del Erbe to pick up bread to go with lunch.  Before we walked in, Daniel said, "Would you order?  I never know how to get bread."  At first I thought he was faking it, encouraging me to practice my Italian and get out there.  We walked in, and I looked at the options, loaves of bread whose differences I could not discern, and I thought, I have no idea what to order.  Or how to order.  Do any of these have salt?  I don't remember exactly, but likely I turned to Daniel and we pieced together a request for a loaf with salt, she didn't have any left with salt, and we left with a loaf of bread that we all finished off at lunch salt or no salt.

Saturdays we often end up at Pane Pizza Dolce at Fontana Grande to grab slices for lunch.  It's delicious and inexpensive.  Mary orders, and we bring it home or on a hike or bike ride for everyone.  But Mary's still not with me.  I walk in, wait in line, and when I get up to the front, I make my request for a loaf of bread with salt.  Again, I don't remember whether there was any with salt or not at that point, but I know that I walked out happily with a loaf of bread, thrilled that the woman recognized me, granted my request in some way, and I was returning home with a loaf of bread.

Final stop: I really wanted a coffee post-run.  Break Bar is downstairs.  I walk in and the barista recognizes me.  I come here maybe once every few weeks and get a cappuccino to get energy for afternoon classes or endurance for a Saturday out when I've not slept well.  She knows my order, says, "Cappuccino?" before I speak.  This is the place where an older woman once treated me, a woman I didn't know, whose offer I accepted because she said, "Offro io," as she paid.  I stand at the bar and sip my cappuccino.  A woman I recognize walks in; she's a host mom for an SYA student.  Dorianna -- I'm inwardly thrilled that I remember her name and which student is living in her house.  She says hello, orders her caffe, and we talk for a few minutes.  She's Italian: her caffe is gone in two minutes.  From the moment I saw her come in and order I knew that I wanted to treat her to her coffee, an easy offro io to accomplish.  But Dorianna is done before I am; quick and smooth, she walks around me and goes to the register to start to pay for my coffee and hers.  I cannot have another offro io moment here at Break Bar.  I need a turn.  I insist.  Dorianna relents.  The barista smiles.

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I return home nearly ecstatic: these errands brought me so much joy.  Or rather, the people at all my stops made me feel connected, seen, accepted.  I'm not Italian, and I'll never really belong, I know that.  But for that forty minutes I felt like part of this neighborhood, able to communicate in the smallest ways, able to know where to go for what.

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Mary and I put out only five of the eight pizzas (the other three do come in handy for breakfast and lunch the next day); we take our friends to the park by The Awakening sculpture, walking some through the medieval quarter on the way; Daniel takes five kids to the terme for an outing, and I give the most miniature tour of Viterbo possible to the adults -- piazza San Lorenzo and Pope's Palace; Piazza Commune with a gorgeous view; a Santa Rosa plaque in the street; the Stumbling Stones by Porta Verita. 

What I wish I could have shared with them though was those errands.  They would have held no meaning for them -- a spot for money, for pizza, for bread, for coffee.  But they are the stuff of life for me.

Saturday Run

Saturday morning Hannah came with me for a run around the walls.  I've been feeling pathetic with running, and I've blamed my sneakers.  Every summer I buy new sneakers -- or rather, my dad does, as he gives me money for my birthday in July, and then I head to Marathon Sports and buy myself a brand new pair of sneakers that I plan to make last for one year.  Really I want new sneakers at about the ten or eleven month mark since the soles are worn down, my feet are a little sore, the sides are coming apart from the base.  But I want to make those sneakers last for a year, and I want to start the school year with new sneakers.  As kids, we went every August with my mom to the Hanover mall to get our school shoes for Our Lady's, our elementary school...we had uniforms, of course, and we couldn't wear sneakers to school, so I think this idea of new shoes for the school year has stuck with me.  Alas, last August, after three days on the Viterbo cobblestones and sore feet, I unpacked my new Brooks and stored the current ones away -- only 11 months old -- for rainy days or days next summer to walk the path at low tide out to Bar Rock in Scituate.  So this time I'm not even at the ten month mark, and my feet are tired and my lethargy in trying to run has increased to such a degree that I think it must be my current Brooks that are ripping on the sides and worn down two or three levels on the bottom.  Likely I need less gelato and pizza and more short runs to get in shape to run more than one minute.  Last week I stopped after forty-three seconds -- just stopped, put on a podcast and walked instead...my sister Christine says I just need to train.  I just want to run when it feels good.

So this morning Hannah said she'd come with me.  Sebastian made her a playlist and gave her his phone, and we headed to Porta Romana to start some sort of loop around the city walls with the goal to run twenty minutes.

Hannah's headphones fell out because her ears are small, and sometimes she couldn't hear the music, she later told me, because two trucks went by blaring music to advertise a local circus next week.  But Hannah didn't seem to care.  Her legs kept pumping, keeping pace with me though her steps looked much more energetic.  Per her request, when we got to Porta Fiorentina, we crossed over to the park so she could take a five minute break while I did a loop there.  Then we got started again.

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Hannah said, "I've never been on this road," the part of the loop where there's no sidewalk and sometimes up high on the wall dogs bark down at me when I run or walk by.  But then we got to more familiar spots passing portas on our left, McDonald's on the right.  She said, "Oh, yeah, now I see where we are.  We're gonna go down and then up."  Hannah knows this McDonald's she's been to a few birthday parties there.  This might be what has amazed me most about the kids this year.  They get invited to something -- a birthday party, a playdate, a soccer dinner, a class dinner -- and they go.  They even went way back in September when they didn't know anyone.  I've walked Sebastian to a restaurant for a soccer dinner, waved hello, and then gone on my way.  He doesn't mind being the only kid at the dinner without a parent.  He's happy for the walk there together.  And I'm thrilled that he wants to go.  I offer to walk him there on the condition that Daniel pick him up afterwards.  With an 11pm pickup, Sebastian is often the first one picked up, even on a school night.  Daniel sets an alarm, sleeps a bit, wakes to the 10:45pm alarm, picks up Sebastian.  Sebastian is wired when he gets home and could talk for another hour.

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We get up the hill, seeing our church -- Sacra Familia -- on the right.  I haven't felt this good running for at least a month.  Maybe it's that I slept in or didn't run first thing.  Or maybe the playlist that is part mine and part Christine's.  Or maybe it's Hannah's company and determination and easy gait.  She's just happy to be out there on a Saturday morning.

Hannah stops before I do, and we walk the final bit, through the parking lot where the orange Fiat is parked.  We walk by Porta Romana, find some shade, stretch a bit.  We walk back to the apartment, and I promise Hannah a gelato later on when I have money on me.

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It's Monday.  Hannah's asked me when we're going to run again.  The energy of a seven-year-old.

Writing

What I haven't been writing: blog entries about whatever comes to mind -- days at school, in Viterbo, with the kids, hikes, bike rides, spring break, the Via Francigena, interesting Capstone projects, my favorite students -- I mean, students.

What I have been writing: letters of recommendation for juniors who will be back in the states next year applying to colleges; an article on leadership for gcli; journal entries on best moments of the day (these often help me remember in the following days which moments matter most -- I may say no to a game of Briscola one moment, only to realize a minute later that really, at the end of the day, that will be the most valuable thing I did in that day...and so then I can change my mind)...

What I'd like to be writing: stories and ideas and thoughts about life here or not necessarily about life here but just whatever comes to mind.

My friend Justin once told me that he got this advice about public speaking: there's the talk you plan to give; the talk you give; the talk you wished you had given.

I'm not sure how that fits in, but it comes to mind...the life we plan to live, the life we live, the life we wished we had lived?  That sounds dark.  But not meaning to...so maybe operate from the last one, reverse the order so we know how to live?...

Ah, well.  There's that Ecclesiastes reading about there's being a time for everything.

Back to recommendation letters.  Last spring a colleague at Thayer told me, "You'll be buried with recommendation letters when you get back!"  Based on some students' being annoyed every time they earned less than an A on an essay, I thought I was home free.  But no, by the end of the year, somehow I'm writing college recommendation letters for eighteen juniors out of twenty-six.

And do these letters matter at all to the colleges when they are reading thousands of applications...

No more complaining: usually I'm trying to write college recs while teaching.  I finished teaching a week ago.  So life now is writing recommendations, faculty meetings, proctoring AP exams, helping students with their Capstone projects.  No prepping or teaching.  This is a gift.

Santo (Latin and Greek teacher here) told me that he's in vacation mode.  He has grading and such to do, but he's sleeping and reading for fun and exercising.

The goal: get into vacation mode soon.

Lucca

• We went because someone at work had told me how you could bike on the medieval walls.  We went to Easter mass at the cathedral, the kids having eaten too much Easter basket candy (including Oreos, which, yes, you can find in Viterbo) for breakfast, but at least enough sugar to numb them a bit as we sat in the cold stone cathedral of Lucca, we adults determined to get to Easter mass.  It was so crowded that I sat on the floor, in truth, waiting for it to be over.  I don't like when I feel this way about church, waiting for it to be over.  And I imagine our kids don't either.  But we got there, and though I don't want our kids to have this feeling of enduring mass and getting through it, I'm still glad that we went.  And maybe the masses at big cathedrals make them appreciate more Sacra Famiglia and Brandeis chapel.  Well, not really maybe: they tell us that they prefer the smaller churches.
• Pan di Strada.  Our favorite sandwich shop.  Some of us got three meals in two days from here.
• The bike ride on the walls.  Fun, beautiful, bright.  A lucky Easter ride.  
• A small yard at the air b and b we rented.  Touch football with a nerf football from Tiger.  The kids' excitement over having a yard...
• Pasquetta is the holiday the day after Easter (Pasqua).  Italians go out and have picnics.  (Also, they have a saying about Christmas and Easter: Christmas with your family/relatives; Easter with whomever you want.)  We walked an hour along an aqueduct from our place to Lucca.  We got our Pan di Strada sandwiches and pizza and sat on the grass beyond the walls.  Afterwards, Daniel and the big kids got on a train for an afternoon excursion to nearby villages.  The little kids and I walked back along the aqueduct.  Both Con and Han had been a bit grumpy, not wanting to go on another excursion but wanting everyone to come back to our house to play for the rest of the day.  However, they weren't getting what they wanted since the big kids were heading out with Daniel.  But then the most interesting thing happened: Con and Han and I left, walked through the train station with them gloomy and down, walked about one hundred yards, and then they both began to talk and talk and talk.  No gloom, no regret, no grouchy.  They talked the entire hour walk back to our house.  And when we got back, we lay on the couch and read, played Boggle, picked up the rooms while listening to music, snacked on Pringles and cheese and chocolate and peanuts for dinner, had a dance party, which was actually Connor lying on the couch and Hannah and I dancing in the small living room, dancing dancing, making me think of our kitchen in Waltham and how we dance in the kitchen, usually after dinner, during clean-up, the radio going on the counter.  
• When I think of Lucca, I think of green.  Green is the prevalent image -- from the walls, from the road outside the walls, along the aqueduct, in the yard, on the drive.