Grazie mille

To whoever you are who read this blog -- any part of it -- this year, thank you.  Thank you for having an interest in our life and our year and for reading what I write, for being part of our Italy adventure for this year.  Sometimes I haven't known whether anyone was reading, and that was okay.  Sometimes a friend would send a message that she or he had read an entry or many entries, and I would feel so happy and connected and appreciative.  Writing has been a really wonderful part of this year for me.  So thank you for the encouragement and support and interest and really really wonderful and generous gesture of reading.

The End

venerdi

It's nearly time.  More packing and cleaning and recycling to do, but the end is nearly here.  Final sleepovers and playdates.  Some goodbyes.  Beautiful farewell letters for each of us from Cristina and Marco.  Cristina's tiramisu at Lago di Vico today.  A final birthday party for a classmate of Hannah's on Sunday.  A sleepover for Connor tonight.  Laundry laundry.  We are here and we are home.  We are eager to go, and I miss here already.

It's 98 degrees today in Viterbo.


sabato

Hair cuts.  Final errands -- washing of duvet covers, more suitcases, a few gifts.  Lago di Bolsena with kids plus two friends.  The heat and my lack of sleep have caught up with me.  I feel sick, a few times today on the verge of passing out.  I lie in bed some, but I can't fall asleep as easily as Connor can; he can sleep anywhere when he's wiped out.  Sebastian stays home to watch the World Cup games (Italy lost to Netherlands -- che triste!), and I stay home to rest, but I putter because it turns out that it is a lot of work to move us across the ocean.


domenica

Coffee at Red Rose Cafe with Pat and Linda and their girls.  Mass at Sacra Famiglia.  The last trip to Emme Piu before they close at 2pm on a Sunday, walking out with Esta The and Nutella, of course.  We play Memory and Old Maid, and I'm reminded of playing Old Maid with Mary, my aunt Margo, and Hannah when Hannah was about 2.  Hannah put the Old Maid above all her other cards before Margo picked from her to make it stick out.  Margo and I laughed for minutes straight.  But it's years later now, and we don't stick the Old Maid up high, and when I'm the first one out, the kids tell me that I'm not actually the winner; I'm just not the loser.  We clean and pack and pack and clean.  We take recycling down to SYA, and I fret a little because yesterday when I went I forgot to call the Vigilanza first and apparently I didn't set the alarm when I left (though I swear I did, and Hannah backs me up), so the alarm company called the director at 2am Sunday morning (though I'd been there at 10:30am).

Alessio's mom Sonia picks up Hannah for a birthday party.  Sebastian goes to play basketball at 7pm for a couple hours at the campetto with Simone.   Daniel buys more suitcases.  We say more farewells when we pick up pizza at Sale Pepe and get gelato at Sacco Buono.

When anyone asks, "When will you return?"  I tell them, "Dieci o dodici anni."  On the one hand, I believe this; on the other hand, I can't imagine that we won't get back here before that.

World Cup Fever

When I was a kid I went once a year to a Bruins game with my dad.  He had season tickets, and one Saturday afternoon a year each of us five kids got to go watch a game with him, get a chipwich (vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate chips and held together by two chocolate chip cookies -- I've found a gelato treat that is similar at Antica Latteria) or a sports bar (vanilla ice cream covered in milk chocolate.  I knew the players (Rick Middleton was my favorite), I had a Bruins hat, and the one year outing was something I looked forward to as I imagine my siblings did, too.

When we were planning our trip to France, Daniel wanted to plan our going to a Women's World Cup game.  I don't know whether there is a better way to call this World Cup.  I think we call the Men's World Cup just the World Cup, so I want to specify.  Since one kid didn't want to go, we got four tickets -- one adult and three kids.  The day

In Spain Sebastian tracked the games, the brackets, the teams, the players.  In our air b and b, the tv was on in the living room for every game.  Sebastian watched every one, and the rest of us dipped in and out and then heard the highlights each night afterwards from Sebastian.  It felt like summer in Scituate from years ago, when my Gram would be watching golf on a weekend afternoon when we came up from the beach or an evening when my dad would have on a Red Sox game.

The day of the game in Paris Daniel and I debated which of us would go.  Generally neither of us gets excited by professional sports events, and we both know that Sebastian likes to stay until the very end.  Daniel preferred not to go, so I went with Sebastian, Mary, and Hannah.

We arrived around 5:40 for a 6pm game.  I've never in my life done this.  But Sebastian was clear on this one: we had to get there early to see the players, watch them walk in, be in our seats well before the starting kick-off.  We sat in the second to last row (reminding me of Mary's birthday gift years ago: I took her to a Taylor Swift concert at Gillette, and our seats were in the penultimate row) at the center of the field.

"These seats are great!"  Sebastian said.  "We can see the whole field."

The U. S. star Alex Morgan didn't play, nor did another star player, their captain, I think.  Chile played hard, and I felt excited for their team -- after the U. S. decimation of Thailand (13-0), I wanted the Chilean women to come closer to the U. S., to feel pride at the World Cup.  The crowd did the wave, cheered, waved Chilean and American flags.  It was festive and positive and exuberant.  I hadn't enjoyed a professional (do we call this professional?) sporting event this much in a long time (I did enjoy taking the boys to a Red Sox game some years ago; I sat beside Sebastian that night, and he taught me how to solve the Rubik's Cube while he watched the game).  After the game, a 3-0 win for the U. S., the Chileans celebrated outside the stadium just like the Americans -- happy happy.

Italy just lost to Netherlands today.  Sebastian tells me that the final game is on my birthday.

Moments in the leaving: some early repeats but with a new feel

Lago di Bolsena.  Emanuele comes with us.  The kids play on a boat with a slide for an hour and a half laughing laughing.

Lago di Vico.  Don't swim there! American colleagues tell us.  You'll get blisters!  Italian colleagues tell us we'll be fine.  Sebastian and I play frisbee in the lake.  Connor has a water gun fight with friends.  Mary sits in the water for hours talking with her friend Benedetta.  Daniel swims out a bit.  (Hannah's at a sleepover at Alessio's house.  His mom sends a photo of the two of them sprawled out on the couch surviving the 98 degree day, likely just watching tv.) 

A walk around the walls.  This week I've gotten back to my wall walks, and there's something wonderfully calming and ritualistic for me.  Yesterday I invited Sebastian to join me, and I was surprised when he said yes.  I thought the 98 degrees would deter him.  Mary agreed to come, too.  Hot hot.  The three of us talked , did the loop around the park at Porta Fiorentina, and then sat at a bar by the Porta, one that always looks quite happening and one that I've never frequented.  We had Fanta and Coke, and the rarity was the ice in our glasses.  (So rare to get ice in Italy.)  We sat outside under cover, talking some more.  I told them, I don't usually stop halfway through my walk for a drink.  Our hour walk and bar stop changed the day for all of us.  Packing remains.  Cleaning remains.  But the outing made the three of us happy, relaxed, content.

Big Day

Daniel theorizes that I'm a six on the enneagram, and so my weakness is fear and my strength is courage.

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When I got home I called the hair salon where I've gone a handful of times this year.  An Italian couple who lived in London for many years owns the salon.  They're both friendly, fluent in English, professional, kind.  Roberta cut my hair the first time I went, and I loved that it was short and easy and grew in well.  When I returned in the winter, her husband Alessio cut my hair.  He said it was best to do it all one length, and he gave me what he said was one of his favorite haircuts, a bob.  It was neat and perfectly dried and styled.  But it had no shape after two days and it grew in quite blah and I had many bad hair days.  It wasn't Alessio's fault that I wanted to do a default ponytail every day; my hair just needs more lift or life or layers or something so it doesn't just hand down.  The next time I went I was scheduled with Alessio again.  He's lovely, and we talked and talked.  When I requested layers, he told me that that wouldn't work because then my hair would stick up everywhere, poof!

Many bad hair days.  Why's your hair so straight?  Daniel asked.  It's a good haircut, just not for me.

I schedule my appointment for the last week of June.  But I know that I need to change it to have Roberta cut it.  I call to cancel.  Roberta picks up and says, "Sure.  I'll schedule for the next day."

"Super," I say.

"I'll put you with Alessio."

Courage must prevail.  "Roberta, could you actually put me with you?"  I ask.  I tell her, "Alessio is great, and he gives a good haircut, but the cut you gave me in the fall worked well for me, and so I'd love it if you could do it."

I'm a forty-six year old woman afraid of hurting the hair stylist's feelings.  It's true.  It's embarrassing to be so concerned, so non-assertive, but there it is.

Roberta is lovely.  She tells me, "Oh, sure.  No problem.  Don't worry about it.  Some people prefer Alessio, and some prefer me.  It's no big deal.  Really.  Don't think about it.  It's great.  See you soon."

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As I began to purge and clean a month ago, I could feel residual frustration from last August (it would be good and healthier to let things go, I know, and I work on this again and again, but it can be hard for me) from all the cleaning and purging of the belongings of the previous tenants.  At the time I communicated the situation and my frustration with the director; a friend told me that I should request that SYA hire someone to clean.  I thought, Well, I've done all the work now, so I'll ask them next spring when we're supposed to hire someone ourselves.

When I saw the director late May I felt awkward: I had something to ask him and I wasn't sure how to do it.  It's hard to ask for things.  After the phone call with the hair salon, I headed over to school to print up World Cup tickets.  I saw the director and asked him for a few minutes as he headed out.   I said something like, "I have a question for you, and it's hard for me to ask, but I'll regret it if I don't, and even if you say no, I'll feel better that I asked."  He waited, and then I requested SYA's covering the cost of the final cleaning since I had to do the final cleaning from the last tenants last summer.

He said, "Sure."

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This asking for things is hard for me no matter where I am -- Waltham, Braintree, Viterbo.  My heart beats hard in my chest, and I try to speak clearly, honestly.  I want to offend no one, want never to be presumptuous, want to feel grateful for what I have and how things are rather than asking for more.  And I know that speaking up is important, too, even when -- or especially when? -- it's hard. But my gracious it's work for me.  I bragged to at least three people (Daniel, Mary, my oldest friend) about my double-assertion day that Friday.

Le Lacrime nelle Tasce

I do hold in most of my tears on the last day of school at Santa Maria del Paradiso.  Two days later we're in Spain, and a few days after that we're on a bus to Grenada to see the Alhambra.  Hannah's packed the book Clementine, and she asks me to read it to her.  I have read to Hannah so little this year.  She plays games more than reads, and when she reads, my heart fills with happy.  This winter she lay on the couch in the living room, laughing and saying, "Mom, listen to this," and then she read some funny lines from Ramona the Pest when Ramona is waiting for a present from her teacher because the teacher says, "Stay here for the present."  Poor Ramona is waiting for days for that present, and Hannah finds this hilarious.  She reads me a couple sentences every fifteen minutes or so until her siblings ask her to stop interrupting their own reading.  I never want her to stop.

Clementine is similar to Ramona and to Dory Fantasmagory.  We adore her.  She gets into trouble but is well-intentioned and sensitive.  We sit together on the bus, and Connor sits across from us or behind us, listening because he forgot his kindle charger, so he is desperate for stories and/or for us to finish Clementine so he can read it.  Clementine hears someone say that she is the "hard one" in her family, and her brother is the "easy one."  She overhears and misinterprets a conversation between her parents that makes her think that her parents are planning to get rid of her.  (Really, they are planning a party for her and planning to get a new cat for her.)  I am feeling sensitive (overtired, too?).  My voice catches.  My eyes fill.  Mary turns around from the seat in front of us, "Mom, are you crying at Clementine?!?"  I can't help it.  I am.  The kids think that this is hilarious: how could someone cry reading Clementine?  The truth is that it's remarkably easy.  Sweet kid, thoughtful parents, feeling misunderstood, death of a pet, wanting friendship and love.  What's not to be touched by, I ask?

I tell the kids, Sometimes I cry and sometimes I don't.  So if I don't cry about one thing -- feeling sad about leaving friends and places and experiences here or about life going by -- I'll cry about something else that seems so not worthy of tears to most people, or even to me at a given moment.

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At some point I talked with our friend Cristina about tears.  She told us that there's an Italian saying that Italian moms carry their tears in their tasce, i.e. in their pockets.  So eventually, no matter when you put them in there or how deep they are in those pockets, they come out.  My pockets are full these days.  They empty out easily when our children feel sad about leaving or feeling eager to go home; when I need to say goodbye to someone here; when I see our year coming to a close; when someone here is kind to me or to any one of us.

I tell Mary that I don't like to cry in front of people.  Mary says, "Why not?  That doesn't matter.  I don't mind crying.  I mind feeling sad."

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Yesterday we went to Lago di Vico with Cristina and Marco and Emanuele and his cousin Gabriele (who is staying with them for a month).  Cristina made Connor a four part photo album and a t-shirt.  The t-shirt she designed and had made looks like this: the United States and Italy with Connor biking to Italy and Emanuele biking to the U. S.  Underneath are images of many of the favorite things they share -- Frutella candies (similar to Starbursts), spaghetti, pizza, gelato, minecraft, bikes, skateboards.  It is a t-shirt of love.

Cristina has also written each child a letter and then one to Daniel and me, too.  We try to read her cursive and understand her Italian and we ask a good number of questions to clarify.  It's hot hot, about 96 degrees, and I'm sweating, and my sweat is mixing with my tears.  I try not to cry (no one else is), but I do, and it's okay.  Hannah comes up and pats my back.  "They're coming out of your pockets," she says as she taps my pockets.

Connor stays there for the night, and I determine that I will not cry this morning when Cristina drops him off at our apartment.  She walks in looking exhausted and weary, puffy eyes, and not her usual smiling bubbly self.  She looked like she had been crying for hours.  I ran down to Break Bar to grab coffee.  When I came back up, she was sitting with the kids and Daniel, and she told me that her pockets were full, and the tears just kept coming.

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I have tears for Cristina and Marco and Emanuele.  This does not surprise me.  But I also find that I have tears for the man who runs Buffetti, the cartoleria that we've frequented since September for quaderni (notebooks) and pens (erasable, Hannah says!) and pencils and backpacks and tissue paper for gifts and any other CVS or Staples type item.  We never learned each other's names, but it doesn't matter.  I get Viterbo snow globes for the kids to surprise them when we get home, and he smiles and we talk.  And when I leave he comes out from behind the counter and gives me the double cheek kiss, and smile through my embarrassing tears and we wish each other "Auguri!"

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Tears of joy.  Of sadness.  Of gratitude.

Tears in my pockets.  Tears in Cristina's.

Such deep pockets.

the beginning of endings

It's the last day of Santa Maria del Paradiso.  No smocks today and no ridiculously laden-with-books backpacks.  Still the navy pants and white shirts for everyone.  Still the mad rush of the morning and the walk to school (though Sebastian went in the car with Daniel, who was bringing a gelato cake for Hannah's class, and Connor arrived with Emanuele and Cristina).

When Sebastian was an infant, I asked a friend, "How can I make it so he's never not happy?"  She told me that I couldn't do it, and it wouldn't be good if I could do it anyway.  But gracious, the hardest part of parenting, I think, is seeing the kids struggle or be unhappy.  I know that they need to get through such feelings, learn, get up again, thrive, but my goodness, I find it tough.

One thing I have so wanted from this year is for our kids to love it here, to want to return to Italy in their lives, to feel attached to Italian life and culture and maybe even a friend or two.  I hadn't thought of what that would look like when it happened.  There are tears about leaving the life they've made and the friends they've made and the school that feels like a community now.  They tell me, "It's a whole year, and I've made a life here, and now we're leaving it."  One said through tears yesterday, "I'll be eager to get on the plane to go home, but I'm sad to leave.  This is my life now, and I have to leave it.  I don't want to go to Spain and France.  I just want to stay here and finish it out here."

I remember thinking, when we made the Spain and France plans, that it would be a good time to go this year, with everything over, and not having the kids sitting here in Viterbo with school and all activities over and just waiting to go home.

Alas.

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When we had the final SYA dinner a few days before the students left, I didn't well up even a little through the "Evviva Santa Rosa!" reflections and videos and farewells.  I mostly just felt happy.  In the end, English classes were good, and I connected with many of the kids.  I found it easy to jot them a note in their yearbooks.  The one-on-one relationships felt valuable and rich.  And while I gave myself a hard time for every class that was not super, every discussion that I should have led better, every detail I should have known, I also knew, in the end, that the students learned a lot -- about reading and writing, yes,  but more that mattered: many told me that they found their voices in discussions and in writing.  So those less-than-stellar classes became more shadowy and more forgivable when Quinn said to me through her tears, "I always felt supported when I came into your classroom."  Funny, I felt the same when she walked in to the room, and she was the student.  So I didn't feel sad seeing them end their time, but thrilled for their voices and growth and getting through a whole year in Italian households and a new school.  I was surprised by my lack of tears since I am a great crier.  (Preferably in private, of course.)  At the end of the evening though, as I said final farewells to a few stragglers -- Quinn (whom I adored near immediately when I read her first piece in which described Italian teenagers as "cooler than [she] would ever be" and having mellifluous names and knowing she'd never smoke, but my goodness, it made those Italian boys look sexy; who asked questions all the time even though she knew more and thought so much more than most kids her age; who loved to talk literature and books and ideas and Classics; who told me how she wasn't good at Latin grammar even though I couldn't imagine it; who just loved loved loved learning; who told me in October that she had a plan to go to Georgetown for undergrad and then Harvard Law, but by the end of the year had decided that she'd like to go to college abroad, preferably Oxford, and I thought, Oh, Oxford, take this wonderful girl; who came to me one day conflicted about what to do about a student who had cheated...she told me, "I could tell him, 'Either you turn yourself in or I will,'" and then did exactly that, so he could turn himself in with less grave consequences; whose moral compass and kindness ran so so deep; who cried at that last dinner; whose parents I kept wondering about because I imagined that they must be wonderful listeners and people; who read The Universe Versus Alex Woods in days late May for fun because I'd just read it and recommended it, and then told me about her uncle who had chosen to die when he was sick; who I so hope does keep in touch) and Genesis (who wanted to leave in December because she was so homesick; who stuck it out all the way until May 25 and was so glad that she did; who came out in a personal essay to me and then to the class when she read the piece out loud; who one day asked me if Mary could tell her how she made such good brownies from scratch because the ones Mary made that I shared with the students were so good and the ones Genesis made for her host family were a flop, so one Tuesday afternoon Genesis and Mary made parallel batches of brownies in our apartment kitchen, and from the living room I could hear them chatting and laughing, and our apartment felt so homey, so like home.) and Vanessa (who wrote her first personal essay on being taken out of her mom's house when she was in the fourth grade; who wrote brave stories about domestic abuse; who did her Capstone on domestic abuse services in Italy, eventually meeting a woman in this field, a woman who had been a guest lecturer one day at SYA, whose presentation Vanessa had to leave because it was too difficult to listen, and so she and I sat by ourselves in the director's office and just talked and talked; who blossomed and thrived and was funny and creative and positive and the first one to say, after someone else read a piece of personal writing, "Wow, that was amazing.") and Nicole (at whose host dad, director, advisor, advisee meeting I shed a tear...another professional moment that I berated myself for...for not being more professional, adept, detached...at the end of that meeting, as she walked out, she said, "Ms. Keleher, You cried!  That made me cry."  And all I could do was say, "I know.  I'm so sorry."  There had been such kindness and compassion from the host dad in that meeting, and I adore this kid and felt so proud of her, too.)  and Dylan (who missed his friends all year; who wrote so brilliantly that I had to gear up to understand what he was writing; who was miserable for months until he changed host families and then got to garden and cook and run run run; who made kombucha that I bought from him; who came to every class with his smarts; who turned down Harvard for Pomona; who found his niche in the end as he helped peers in their cannoli, pasta, chocolate making for Capstone projects) -- I was surprised to feel that bittersweet pang, the pain of leaving something or someone so good.

At the faculty luncheon days later, as I walked out of the restaurant Il Gargolo, saying goodbye to the director in a simple way, exchanging simple thanks, I welled up.  Him I knew I'd see again.  In fact, he stopped by half an hour ago to help me figure out how to lower our blinds.  (Actually, I helped while he figured it out and got the blinds lowered for the 80 degree plus day.)  But it was an ending of the year as a SYA teacher, of being part of this teaching group, and of working for him, whom I admired as both director and boss.

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So today I am underslept because yesterday I had a cappuccino and then ran on that energy to purge and pack and organize give-away and get treats for Hannah's class for today and make cookies for the kids' teachers.  And then I stayed up for the extra hour to do nothing and watch a predictable romantic comedy on neflix.  (When I was a kid, I watched any John Hughes movie I could.  I still love that kind of movie now.  I could still be at my parents' house, watching Pretty in Pink or Sixteen Candles, on the actual television with the VCR going.)

Lack of sleep, sensitive children, final day of school -- I will be so lucky if I make it past Paradiso pick-up without tears.  I am not attached to many people there, only Emanuele's parents really, but I still feel some connection with the people and the place, and perhaps especially the courtyard where the littles play each day from 1:30 - 2pm while they wait for the big kids to be dismissed from middle school.  At times they'd complain about waiting, Daniel would tell me, so very occasionally I'd get over there to pick them up and walk them home.  When I went over this week, trying to help them out so they didn't have to wait, they wouldn't leave.  They just kept playing and playing with Emanuele and Federico and Gabriele and Alessio.  And I thought, One thing -- waiting -- can so often turn into something else -- making friends.

We're not leaving yet.  But the process has begun.

If there were no tears, I imagine that I'd find that even more difficult.

Bar Recollections

Shaker Cafe
Open even on Sunday afternoons.
Kind about filling up measuring cup of caffe for us to make tiramisu.
Always seem happy to see us.
Owner stands outside in doorway smoking and looking at his phone a lot.  If we walk by, he looks up and says, "Ciao," or gives us a nod.

Break Bar
We used to consider using their internet when ours went out.  But we never did.  They know us now.  Me, because I occasionally go in for coffee; the kids, because they occasionally go in to get a gelato from the freezer or a bag of chips; Daniel, because he goes in to buy a parking ticket for the Fiat.  When Cristina and Marco came over for dinner last week, I asked Mary to ask them whether they'd like coffee after dinner.  If they did, I told her, sneak out quietly, go down to Break Bar and get the coffee.  Mary got it.  I heard her offer Cristina coffee.  Cristina said yes, and then said that she wanted to see Mary make it (since Marco taught us months ago).  Mary and I laughed and laughed, then fessed up our plan.  Graciously, Cristina still accepted the offer if I got one, too.  I got decaffeinated as it was 10pm.  When Cristina tells us that coffee keeps her awake, we ask her, "Deca?"  She says, "No!  Caffe or no caffe.  No deca per Italiani."

Cris. Bros.
I like this place.  It's on Piazza Fontana Grande, but off the main road if I don't want to run into SYA folks.  In the winter, I step inside for a few moments for a quick coffee before afternoon classes.  In warm weather, I've sat outside at a table a few times with Daniel.


Bar 103
"Cappuccino deca?" Nadia or Olga says when I go in.  Preferred bar for SYA faculty.


Happiness Cafe
The owner is often opening when we walk by to go to school.  "Ciao, Anna!" she calls.  She's been nice to us since early on in the fall, always welcoming.  My sister went there, my dad and Jacqueline, Daniel's parents.  We can sit outside.  She told Dad and Jacqueline after a few days to get a caffe americana, thinking that they would like that better than a cappuccino.  One Saturday morning as we were leaving, Hannah asked me to buy her a pack of Bubba gum.  I said no.  The owner asked, Che cosa vuole?  Anna, che cosa?  I shook my head, then told her.  She picked up the pack of gum, handed it to Hannah and said, "Non fare complimenti."  Hannah looked at me.  I let her accept the pack of gum.  The Italians love small kids.

Red Rose
They give me a shot glass of water with my coffee even though I'm not Italian and they know it.  I love this gesture.  It makes me feel that I belong here, or, even if I don't, they are welcoming me.  If I speak Italian, they speak it with me, too.  You can sit outside here under a tent-like-structure if you don't mind the smoke.

San Sisto
My friend Julie and I had cappuccino here.  Daniel bumped his head here when we sat upstairs on the comfy couches: the ceiling is low low.  I love looking in, spying a bit through the glass, when I walk down Via Garibaldi from Porta Romana.

Napoleon Bar
Sebastian and Mary's favorite spot after soccer and swim (respectively).  The best hot chocolate, they tell me.  I like the woman who works there because she's friendly.

Geko Bar
My favorite spot between swim and soccer practices.  It's bright and a little closer to the field for picking up Hannah afterwards.  And I like sitting there by myself or with them -- Mary going through her day; Sebastian telling me his highs and lows from soccer practice.  (One week Mary asks him, "Did you score again?"  He says, "No."  She says, "But you said you got two goals last week at practice."  Sebastian says, "That was a fluke.")

The 30 Day Sketch Challenge

Aric, technically the curriculum director for SYA, but really I think of him as the boss of the SYA directors, shared an article on slack about sketching for thirty days.  During a faculty meeting I read the article.  Santo, beside me, finished the article and started sketching.  "Boh," is a common expression from Santo.  "Boh" for Italians means I don't know or who knows or who cares or maybe even whatever at times.  Santo teaches Greek and Latin and Excavating here.  We see Santo around town coming back from the gym or biking -- a recent bike outing of ours was inspired by such a Santo sighting (see Via Francigena) -- or at the Botanical Gardens.  Sometimes I see Santo sitting quietly at his desk, his headphones on, his eyes closed.  I saw him like this when I hiked up to the temple of Jupiter at Terracina, sitting cross-legged, meditating there at the top.

To my left in the director's office, I saw Santo drawing a house, like a house that little kids draw, or at least that I drew when I was a kid, with a triangle roof, square body, square windows.  He made hearts for windows and decorated the house.  The next day he was making another sketch during our meeting.  He told me, "Well, I'll see what it does."  Santo both resists and engages in the changing pedagogy of SYA.  He grew up in the Italian educational system, which was and still is about gaining information, knowledge, and mastery of such.  Experiential learning and Harkness discussions have no place in Italian education.  It's tests and public interragazione in the classroom.  Mary and Sebastian were spared interragazione in the fall; now they don't mind when they get a turn.  The teacher asks the student questions on the subject and the student answers there in front of everyone; you don't know which day your turn will be.  When Sebastian was bored in class in December, he worked out the odds of each kid's getting chosen for interragazione.

So Santo is doing the thirty day challenge, thinking that he's got to adjust with the times and the agenda of the boss of our boss.  If the school is changing, he needs to, too.  I think, Well, this could be fun.  So Hannah and I go to Tiger and buy ourselves sketchbooks for three euro each.

day 1: Hannah's sneaker is out, so I draw it.  I'm reminded of drawing a sneaker in grade school.  We had art once a week, and an art fair once a year.  It was my favorite day.  My kids love the sneaker.  It lacks perspective and dimension and all such, but they are effusive with their praise.

I go on in this vein, drawing whatever is near me at the end of the day, when I finally sit down and remember to draw.   I do the clothesline in our bedroom, a swiss army knife, an empty cup on Daniel's nightstand.

Leaves have so many details that I don't know how anyone ever draws a flower.
I like drawing trees.
I pay attention more.  It takes time to really look at things.

One night Connor was sleeping on his mattress in our room, and so I drew him.  I like this one.

I remember how, in elementary school, we had art once a week, in the afternoon after lunch, and it was always my favorite time of day.  One year I made a Jack of Hearts; one year a sneaker; one year half of a model's face to match the other half in the magazine ad.  One year we were instructed to draw the snowstorm outside.  I looked out the window of our fifth grade classroom and drew what I saw: varying shades of green, branches, black, white.  Other students had pictures of perfect trees with snow on top and snow on the ground.  My picture wasn't quite Jackson Pollock, but it was not a clear snowstorm either.  Mrs. Ryan, our teacher who could be quite harsh, told me it was great.  She told me, "I'll bet you a coke it wins in the art fair."  She owed me a coke.  I think now how wonderful she was to praise that picture that was just, well, what it was.

I draw a tree in Vetralla the first time we're there looking for the Via Francigena.  Then a street light, which, it turns out, is intricate and quite pretty.

In sketching a palm tree in Palermo, I notice what must be the dead leaves that become the bark.  I think.  Or maybe not.

What I liked about sketching was making time for it and noticing more about what's around me.  I also noticed how I don't notice sometimes.  There would be a way to learn leaves and trees and maybe even faces if I stopped and checked out the details more.  I may return to sketching this summer, see how things look back at home.

They say that it's in the leaving that we appreciate what we have.  I feel like I've/we've appreciated what we have here in the being here, and in leaving, we may appreciate it more, but really, we've been cognizant of the beauty of our life here -- the closeness of things, the later getting up in the morning (I often got out of bed at the hour I would have been leaving Waltham for TA), the bars, the gelaterias, the ability to travel, the walking everywhere, the time.

In the almost leaving, perhaps, there's a nothing-to-lose-at-this-point feeling.  Yesterday we went to watch Connor at mountain biking -- he goes Mondays and Fridays with his friend (Emanuele), and I'd not yet seen him (Emanuele's parents pick the boys up from school, feed them, bring them, lend Connor the bike and helmet, etc.) in action.  Daniel, Sebastian, and I found Cristina (Emanuele's mom), chatted, sat in the sun watching.  Another mom was there, the mom of Lorenzo, who is in Mary's class.  I see Lorenzo around town a good bit, and he always says, "Ciao!" with a knowing look, and I'm aware that he knows who I am even though I don't know who he is.

In fact, many folks here in Viterbo know who we are even when we don't know who they are: we're the Americans.  The most common comment I get when I meet someone or think I'm meeting them, but actually I've met them before is, "Cammina sempre."  Yep, that's me: I always walk.  I'm thinking there must be a way to learn better face recognition, and I should learn it soon.  Fisionomia, Cristina tells me.  But then, I'm also thinking, as we again purge and pack and clean out our apartment (weren't we doing this a year ago?), that maybe I'll start using the Italian workbooks that we purchased from SYA in anticipation of learning Italian.  I want to keep learning, fill in the gaps, and I think, Maybe I'll keep learning when we get home.  But really, will I make the time to do that?  I have every intention of making my Italian stronger, but I'm not sure that that is in the near future.  It may need to wait until before our next trip over here.  I've done the math: when Hannah graduates high school, I'll be fifty-seven, so perhaps I can come back and teach at SYA that year.  Perhaps that will be the year I learn both Italian and fisionomia better, too.

In my tough-on-myself moments, I think, Maureen, you have got to look at people more so you remember who's who!  In my generous-with-self moments, I think, You know, virtually every place, face, and word here in Viterbo has been new to me this year, so I am going to cut myself some slack.

Back to mountain biking.  Connor lit up when he saw us.  Emanuele sped around.  The coach spoke with us in English.  I explained to Cristina how during the school year both here and at home I have a hard time feeling awake and aware enough to even think of doing things at times.  Only once before had it crossed my mind that it would be nice to see Connor at mountain biking: it was something he did with Emanuele and Cristina or Marco.  With my days more open, I felt that I had to see Connor mountain bike.

Lorenzo's mom was watching, too.  She asked after Mary, a reminder that Lorenzo is in Mary's class.  She offered us cigarettes and talked with me.  And instead of hiding, buoyed by Cristina on my right, who speaks only Italian with me always with patience and kindness and an of-course-you'll-understand-if-I-explain-well-enough attitude, I spoke with this mom.  In Italian.  Because of Cristina and Marco, I feel confident speaking sometimes.  They remind me that I am fine in Italian.  Months ago I was telling my oldest friend about my struggles with Italian.  She listened and then said that basically she didn't buy it; she thought that I likely did just fine.  Her confidence buoyed me at the time as Cristina's does now.  I don't talk about my language struggles with Cristina.  We just talk, and I stumble and we keep going.  When I learn more Italian, I will likely be mortified at how I have spoken, which errors I have made, but I also know that it's okay.

As I spoke with Lorenzo's mom, she complimented all of us on learning Italian so well.  Of course she didn't realize yet my limited vocabulary, nor had we spoken long enough for her to have Sebastian translate for me.  She told me that she didn't want to speak English with me because she was afraid that she'd make a mistake.  I told her that that's me all the time with Italian.  But I felt comfortable enough to keep talking anyway.  In Italian.  And I feel like that's the risk, the nothing to lose feeling.  I'll mess up, sure, but I'll just have to keep going.

I'm not sure which other nothing-to-lose situations or moments will arrive this month.  Cristina's invited Connor to stay over, having him for almost two days, and rather than feel like we're imposing even more on her, I said yes.  Hannah wants to have Alessio over tomorrow, maybe even for a sleepover, and we said yes.  Mary wanted a birthday party last weekend, and as much as it caused me angst to host a bunch of Italian girls and greet their parents in Italian, I said yes.  Classic Mary: she gave us all assignments, and we just had to follow her directions, i.e. Daniel and Sebastian: make a playlist; Daniel: lead musical chairs and guess that song; me: make brownies; adults: order pizza and get chips and soda and strawberries; me: send message to parents on whatsapp.  When the parents arrived to drop off their daughters and I hid in the kitchen working on batch #2 of brownies (since I'd botched batch #1 -- though actually, Daniel and I ultimately preferred batch #1 which were super fudgy), I said to Sebastian something like, "Oh, golly.  I hate this: what do I say?"

Sebastian said, "You look nice.  That's great.  Don't worry about what to say.  Just be happy."

Really, that's all I had to do?  Easy.  I walked out and greeted the moms and we discussed dying pants green for the final school show a few nights later.

Sebastian's advice reminded me of something my mom would have said: simple, succinct, wise.

And this reminds me of a comment of Hannah's earlier in the day.  I told Hannah, "I miss my friends.  They're all together at our 25th reunion."  Hannah said, "Oh, mom, you've got us.  And you're in Italy.  You're fine."

Be fine.  Be happy.  Go out and greet the world even when they think you're the nutty American who walks everywhere.