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.