On Being Sick

Roberta walked into my classroom on a Friday morning at 8:25am.

"Mary's sick," she said.  "She almost fainted.  The school called.  They might want to take her in an ambulance."

I didn't know what to say.  Daniel was teaching at St. Thomas' and hadn't picked up his phone when the school called him.  What to do.  I looked at the students giving a presentation on a Jhumpa Lahiri story.  This was the first one: I couldn't leave.

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I had a similar reaction twenty years ago when my family called me in California to tell me that my mom was in the ICU at Mass General because her spine collapsed, and they didn't know whether she'd be paralyzed.  "Go home," the women in the English department said.  "I can't," I told them.  "I have my classes."  These wiser women told me to go home; friends from the language department got me a plane ticket with their miles; I was gone by the next morning for over a week.  And when I saw my family in Boston, I thought, Why did I hesitate for even a minute?  I'm painting myself in a very poor light, I know.  This is the tricky part of growing up in a house where the more you work the more virtuous you are.  My dad had a plumbing business, so he worked and worked and worked.  When my brothers started working with him, they did the same thing.  I am conditioned to put work first and to think that working more is more virtuous than working less.  I've been trying to adjust this mindset for a while.  Embarrassing, absolutely.  But hard to break the habit.

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Roberta left to figure out what to do.  Yes, I kept teaching, and Roberta went to figure out what to do about my eleven-year-old who almost fainted.  I was thinking, I saw Mary this morning.  She ate breakfast with me.  She was fine.

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This fall the director came to my desk one day and said, "You know, if you ever need to stay with your kids because they're sick, just let me know.  Family comes first."

I replied, "Thanks.  But, really, I don't really deal with the kids when they're sick.  Daniel gets them and stays home with them."

It was true.  He works part-time at home and works two miles from their Waltham school.  I work thirty to forty minutes away, so when the school nurse has called me to say that Mary's uncomfortable because her shoes are too small, or Sebastian got a scratch in the playground, or Connor's lying down in her office, or Hannah has a fever, I say, "Okay, I'm pretty far away.  Did you call my husband?"

Once I'm home I kick in and am happy to sit with and cater to a sick child.  They love the attention and chance to eat saltines and sip soda and maybe even -- sometimes -- to watch tv.

My mom was never sick.  My dad was never sick.  We kids went to school unless we were throwing up or had the chicken pox.  In some ways, I think this approach served me well: I generally think that if I get up and get moving I will feel better, make it through the day, and eventually get over whatever is ailing me.  This has worked for the most part.  However, there have been occasions when a little feeling exhausted or off has resulted in more serious maladies, e.g. pneumonia (twice), strep in various parts of my body (not throat), the flu.  Some of these times I have missed work -- for the pneumonia, once no and once yes; for the strep, no; for the flu, no.

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When my dad and Jacqueline were visiting, Jacqueline said at one point, "It's irresponsible to go to to work when you're sick.  You spread germs and can make other people sick."

Jacqueline is a biologist.

I thought how I grew up with a different message: It's irresponsible to miss work.  And it's irresponsible to make a situation where someone else might have to do your work.

I don't disagree with Jacqueline.  I just don't know how to reconcile what has become my core being with what I know is practical and wise.

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The kids were writing notes about Lahiri's "A Temporary Matter" when the director came in.

"Come on.  We're going to get Mary," he said.

"But what about class?"  I said.

"Tell them what to do.  Let's go," he said.

I looked at my students.  They were adding to their lists on the whiteboard, completely engaged with the story, their observations, and each other.

I left.

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The director drove me in Ele's (another co-worker) car to Santa Maria dell Paradiso, and as I expressed my feeling bad for his taking time out of his morning ("I could have walked over and taken her home in a cab," I told him), he acted as if this  morning drive together was great timing: "I need to talk with you about one of your advisees anyway, so this is perfect," he said.

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Mary was sitting in the principal's office.  She looked pale, but she told me, "I'm fine.  I really am.  I felt like I was going to faint because we have to stand for a long time in chapel on Friday mornings, but I just needed some water.  I'm fine now.  I can stay here."

I told my director what Mary said.  And by now I realized that Mary seemed to be exhibiting signs of a condition that I've had off and on my whole life.  When I was younger and we went to a 7am mass for a holiday, I often felt woozy, as if I would faint.  I never did faint, likely because I got used to this phenomenon and sat down before I could fall.  I'd sit down, drink some water, rest a bit, and then be fine to go to Easter brunch after mass.  "You looked green," my parents would tell me.

Mary told me, "They made me lie down and put my feet up.  And they wanted to make sure that I had eaten some cookies for breakfast.  Really, I'm fine now.  They want me to go home, but I'm fine.  And it feels bogus going home because I'm okay.  And I have my first interragazione today, so I don't want to leave because that looks bogus."

I relayed to Pat again even though I was pretty sure that he wouldn't give in to Mary as I wanted to -- he'd been in Italy too long: he knew how things went when it came to illness or potential illness in Italian school.  I, on the other hand, totally understood where Mary was coming from.

"She's gotta go home.  They won't let her stay," he said.

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My next class started at 9am.

"Is Daniel home?" the director asked.

"No," I told him.  I told him that Mary could go to our apartment and I'd check in on her after my third class.

"Let's bring her to school," he said.  "I'll feel better about that.  She can lie on Dave's couch while you teach, and she'll be close enough for us to check on her."

I was back in time for my second class, Mary resting in Dave's office, Pat back at work as director.

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Within the hour, Mary felt back to herself, and two hours later she and I went to the apartment to get her settled.  We did some cleaning; I did some work; she got a headstart on her weekend homework.  She told me that she felt a bit guilty being home and having a free day, and I told her that she could just enjoy it, rest if she wanted.

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Now on Friday mornings I make Mary a cup of tea with milk and sugar before she heads out to school, convinced that this will help her endure standing for Luigi's longer prayers on Friday mornings.

I'm not sure the message I'm sending our kids about sickness and health and work.  I think I'm saying, Be kind.  Work hard.  Take care of yourself.  Take breaks -- walks, swims, movies, books.  Sometimes good enough is good enough.  Sleep matters more than most other things.  Chatting is the best.  Relaxing is necessary.  I love you a lot.

Last week I started listening to an On Being podcast, an interview of Richard Davidson ("a neuroscientist on love and learning").  One thing I remember is this or some version of this: your kids will not remember what you say; they will remember what you do.

I'm hoping Mary remembers that Pat and I came to pick her up and not that I didn't come immediately.

You know you've acclimated to life in Italy when...

• you follow Roberta's instructions to get the stay permit for the kids and her descriptions are not general, but entirely literal.  She says, "Go to the building I brought you to before, go in the building, then into the door on your right where there's a room.  Go into that room, and on the left you'll see a hole in the wall where you put your receipt.  Put your receipt through the hole, and then they'll bring you the stay permits."  You go step by step, pushing and crowding on a Thursday afternoon (because of course they're open for stay permit pickups on only Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-5pm) with four kids.  When you walk into the room, you follow the herd of nuns toward the wall where there is a hole.  An actual hole cut into the white plaster wall.  Everyone is putting papers into this hole, so you push your own papers through the hole and hope that someone will actual pick them up on the other side.  The system works: you walk out an hour later with permits for all the kids.
• you're not surprised that you got three snow days in two weeks but didn't spy snow once within the center of Viterbo.  In fairness, I did see photos of snow from outside the city.
• Hannah's soccer coach tells you that Hannah -- age 7 -- still cannot play in soccer games because of the bureaucracy of stay permits, but she can play in one tournament next Sunday.
• you show up for your 9:30am haircut at 9:29am, and the salon is locked and dark, but you feel pretty sure that you got the right day and time.  After all, you just made the appointment the day before.  At 9:31am, the owner shows up with his dog with apologies, grace, charm.  And you tell him, "No problem.  It's good.  Va bene."
• at the hair salon the mini-massage of three minutes relaxes you completely -- in just three minutes.  You say to the woman who let you select which oil you wanted and who gave you the three minute massage, "Troppo rilassato," meaning that you are super relaxed now, but what you say translates to "Too relaxed," and she says, "Mai troppo rilassato, sempre tanto," which means never too relaxed, always very relaxed.  And you agree wholeheartedly.
• your hair cut, a simple bob, takes two hours instead of the usual three and a half (though the longer time was for cut and color), and you don't mind at all; in fact, while you were there, you forgot about whatever else you were going to do before the kids got out of school (maybe it was the three minute massage).
• you learn that a few of your Italian colleagues, your age and older, get their hair and nails done every single week, and you're not that surprised, but relieved that they don't pull off their well-styled hair and nails on their own every day.
• you walk into the iphone repair shop to get a new battery, and the guy there tells you that it will take him five minutes and cost thirty euro.  And you think, "This was so easy!" forgetting that really, this is your fourth attempt to get a new battery for your phone: first time you took the metro and then a tram into the environs of Rome to get to a shop an hour later where a man told you that he couldn't get a battery for your SE because that model is too old; second time you found an iphone store in the middle of Rome but you weren't sure you wanted to pay 70 euro for a new battery and you didn't want to wait an entire day; third time you went to this same Viterbo store, and there was a sign saying that they weren't doing repairs on Monday or Tuesday, but someone would be able to help you on Wednesday.  Fourth time is this Viterbo shop, repair guy there, battery miraculously replaced.  Life feels easy.

Tiramisu: Venetian dessert that translates to "pick-me-up"

Walking up the hill Thursday morning to Santa Maria dell' Paradiso, I hear someone call out loudly, "Signora!  Signora!"

We all turn around and see a man and his son, the man coming towards me and telling me, "You left your credit card yesterday!"

In truth, I don't remember whether he spoke English or Italian to me, but I recognized him from Emme Piu, the grocery store I frequent because it's a seven minute walk from our apartment (Lidl is preferable because it's less expensive, but better to go with a car because it's farther away, and despite Daniel's offer again yesterday to teach me on a Sunday afternoon, I just don't want to and I'm good with walking to Emme Piu and his doing the Lidl runs).

This man is often at the register when I go to Emme Piu, and he asks especially after the girls, since Mary and Hannah go to Emme to get baking ingredients together.  I left my credit card at the check-out.  He tells me to go to information to recover it; it's in a box there.

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Friday night I go to Emme.  My new friend isn't there, but I stumble my way through two other Emme employees to recover my credit card.

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Saturday I go back to Emme to buy ingredients to make tiramisu.  (No, I'm not the most efficient shopper.)  Walking down the aisles, I google tiramisu recipes and find one with high reviews from The New York Times.  I search ingredient by ingredient, getting stymied when I come to heavy cream.  I find the fridge with milk, but no cream.  As I'd done to find the ladyfingers and the coffee, I ask another customer for help.  She shows me the mascarpone cheese, which is also on my list.  I already have this, but I still need heavy cream.

She says, "Mascarpone e uova per tiramisu."

I insist that I need crema pesante.

She finds a clerk and asks him for assistance.

He repeats her response, "Mascarpone e uova."

After the third time, I get it: Italians don't put heavy cream in their tiramisu.  The American recipe for tiramisu calls for cream.  An Italian recipe wouldn't.

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I've made one pot of coffee in my life.  When I lived in Berkeley, I made a pot of coffee for my friend Susan and another friend who were coming over for dinner.  It was so bad that Susan dumped the pot and made a fresh one.

I put the package of coffee back on the shelf: we will buy our espresso at a cafe for this Italian dessert.

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At the check-out, the man that I met on the way to Santa Maria dell Paradiso is there.  We smile and laugh when I hand him my now recovered credit card.  He tells us that he lives near Santa Maria.  I don't ask him where his son (who was with him) goes to school even though I'm curious.  He's got an easy, quick smile; a kindness in his eyes; a light humor that makes me want to go through his line.  

Sebastian says to me later, "Is he the one that waited that day that you thought you had your credit card but you didn't, and then we had to keep taking things off the order because you didn't have enough money?  The one who didn't seem annoyed even though you were holding the line up?"

Yep, that's the one.

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Shaker Cafe is less than a block from our house.  Mary tells me that she's embarrassed to go ask for one cup of espresso, knowing that this will be a few espressos; Italians would never bring their measuring cup to a bar: they just make the coffee themselves.  She goes anyway, measuring cup in hand to asks for one cup of espresso.   When I arrive for moral support, there's half a cup of espresso in the measuring cup, the barista is working on another espresso, and Mary is standing at the bar calmly, not looking embarrassed at all.  Mary tells me, "She's already made two, and we're barely at half a cup."

I stand with Mary.  We laugh over our approach to tiramisu.  I order coffees for us while we wait.

Four espressos and now we've got one cup for our recipe.

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We find a new recipe that doesn't call for heavy cream.  Ladyfingers dipped in espresso.  Half-pound of mascarpone cheese measured out.  Three tablespoons of sugar ready to go.

Mary separates the egg whites and yolks.  Beats the egg whites into such stiff peaks that she can hold the glass bowl nearly upside down and the whites stay put.  She mixes the egg yolks with the sugar, adds the mascarpone, mixes in the egg whites.  When the mixture is too liquidy, we add more mascarpone and two more stiff egg whites.  (I'm not the most scientific baker.)

Layer of espresso-dipped ladyfingers, layer of mascarpone and eggs, ladyfingers, mascarpone and eggs, dusting of chocolate powder.

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Pick-me-up in every way.

Pilates and Nineteen Resolutions

In the first week of January, a friend told me this idea of making 19 (for 2019) small resolutions/to-do's in lieu of a one big New Year's resolution.  (I'd already made my 2019 resolution, but I was up for this one, too.)

On my list of 19 things, I have things like take a bubble bath, play a game once a week with the kids, read a book in Italian, learn to make tiramisu, get a Viterbo library card, go to meditation with Daniel some, etc.  So they're doable items that make me excited or pleased or relaxed.

This week SYA students are doing sei giorni, six days in Italian school (Italians go to school Monday through Saturday 8-1pm).  We have faculty meetings for three half-days.  Complete sanity.  I've got a few things to catch up on, e.g. get new iphone battery, go to dentist, schedule hair cut, but mostly I'm taking it easy.  I've gotten each person in the family a bath bomb for Valentine's Day, in hopes that I will actually make the time to take a bath.  (Showers seem so much more efficient.  But that's the point of my real New Year's resolution: take more breaks.  I cannot remember the last time I took a bath.)

Monday: no meetings and no excuses.  I looked at the Larus (gym) schedule to find the yoga and pilates classes for the day.  These are on my 19 Things list: do a yoga class and a pilates class in Italy.  They don't have to be in Italian, but it's fine if they are.  I just need to get myself to a class: figure out the when and the where (there are many exercise rooms at Larus and on many floors -- scary), show up early to give wiggle room, stay and do it.

The schedule for Monday has three columns, with classes in the different columns.  I noticed that pilates was in all three columns at different days, and finally, for the first time -- I've had the schedule since December -- I noticed the headings above each column: strong, olistic, cardio.  Olistic was definitely the way to go: it sounded the most mellow and least difficult.  My twice a week pilates routine at the Waltham Y ended in July, and even with daily yoga and the occasional ten minute pilates video on youtube, I can't do a proper pushup.

Pilates has always intimidated me.  Until last year I'd never tried it, though I envied people who did, imagining that pilates would strengthen my core and cure all my back pains.  A little over a year ago a friend from the Y told me, "You should try the pilates class tomorrow."  She went every week, twice a week (at least) to Sandra's pilates class.  She told me, "It works the whole body."  I used to go to this friend's yoga classes (she teaches at the Y, too), so I trust her.

Scared to go and scared not to go -- I don't like wondering what if or having regrets: I went.

From last January until I left for Italy at the end of July, pilates Thursday mornings and Saturday mornings.  A gift.

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At the front desk at Larus, I asked, "Dove pilates?"
"La sala verde or rosa," one of the women said.
I pointed vaguely -- I'm not even sure where I was pointing.  It was my way of saying, And where are those? 
"Down two floors," she said.  "A sinistra."

I couldn't turn around now.

Julia was a tiny, curvy, forty-something Italian woman dressed in all black.  She handed me a black circle with cushions for my hands, asked me my name, and when I said that I spoke English and a little Italian, she said, "Guarda," telling me just to watch.  This was exactly my plan, to go in the back row (there was no back row, however) and copy whoever was in front of me.  Actually, this is my plan in Sandra's classes at the Waltham Y, too.  I don't want to draw the attention of Sandra to me and all my little cheating techniques to do full sit-ups and pseudo half push-ups.

The music blared from a speaker in the ceiling corner to my left.  Que sara que sara in some modern version.  While I was doing my breathing, I thought, Oh, that's the future tense!  "Giro cambio," Julia said, and after the third time, I knew to change the direction of my leg circles.  I thought of our kids at school, likely getting by a good bit by watching the other kids (though Hannah reports that her teacher shows some annoyance with the Italians when Hannah understands her questions better than they do...go, Hannah). 

Aside: Connor has a friend over this afternoon.  Sitting in the kitchen, I listened to them build a fort and have pillow fights.  I said to Sebastian, "They're like a cartoon -- not that many words."  "Yeah, and boof, bam, whap," he said. 

Julia's class was a balance of Jeannie's breathing and calming and stretching yoga and Sandra's pilates strengthening that felt good and, at some points, kicked my butt.  To my left was a woman who seemed about my age (though I have myself perpetually ten to fifteen years younger than I am), and to my right maybe four women and one man in their sixties or seventies.

At the end of class I was outrageously proud of myself: I came to a pilates class in Italy!  I stayed the whole hour and did the whole thing!

As I write, I'm reminded of a friend who visited this fall andwent to a yoga class in Rome her second day here.  She showed no pride, just pleasure that she had gone to the class.

So why are these little accomplishments so meaningful to me?  The truth is that the first time I went to Sandra's pilates class at the Y a year ago I was also totally excited and proud of myself.  I felt like I was overcoming a fear of pilates, getting myself into a new situation, meeting new people, trying something new.

To some people, such steps are not worthy of mention: you go or you don't.  I'm not sure why they are such big deals to me.  But I don't mind that they are.  My fear and excitement and ultimate patting self on back make so many small things, things likely often overlooked, a big deal to me.  Sometimes this means going to a new bar and ordering a cappuccino or caffe by myself.  Sometimes it means going to the community lunch at church.  Sometimes it means finding and staying for a pilates class.

I want to continue to revel in the ordinary.

No matter where I am.

Ostia Antica

With Dad and Jacqueline on their way to Rome, I asked the kids if there was anything they wanted to do or see in Rome if we headed down for the weekend.  Connor said, "Ostia Antica.  I just read a book about it."

A friend here told me about the Roman Mystery series, and Connor has been gifted some now from his grandparents, his parents, his aunt and uncle.  He loves them, and I love his learning a bit about the Romans and Greeks.  The kids have asked for a long time whether they will have to take Latin.  I've said no.

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My mom made me take Latin in high school, at least for freshman year.  At the end of freshman year, having taken one year of Spanish and Latin concurrently, I had to choose one: I chose Latin because I never put Spanish on a Latin test, but I occasionally put Latin on a Spanish test.  If Latin was winning out in my brain and on the spaces on my tests, I thought it was the one to do.  I loved Latin -- how there were so many endings and how everything would eventually fit together to make the sentences work; how what Sister Louise was teaching us in English class freshman year (a la her penmanship filled photocopies of grammar rules) I could see in parallel constructions and gerunds and participles later on when we were reading Vergil and Cicero (I liked grammar even back then).  And I made friends in those Latin classes.  Katie Hayes (of 13 kids in her family) and Alisa Intravaia (of 6 or 7 kids in her family) and I watched out the window one late morning as Sister Ruth walked up Medford Street and we sat in the classroom waiting for her for Latin class.  Rule-followers, we reported to the office and stayed put in the classroom without her.  The next day she laughed about forgetting to come to class.

A couple years later we sat in scary Mr. Murray's (he wasn't actually scary, but the rumors spread about his yelling at a girl or making fun of kids; he was harsh and blunt and actually quite funny) basement English/Latin classroom, looking out the window at the parking lot in the spring, while he mocked the spring seniors who came back and hung out in the parking lot: "They can't wait to get out of here, and then they come back and hang out in the parking lot!"  He wasn't wrong, and he's still not wrong: I see the same thing at Thayer every year, but we see the parking lot from our second story Latin classroom in the distance as the seniors take over the parking lot that the juniors think they've inherited, but haven't quite yet.  In Mr. Murray's basement classroom, I learned about Laocoon, that Trojan priest who told the Trojans, "Don't take in the horse!  It will ruin us!  Beware Greeks bearing gifts."  Okay, that's not a literal translation, but that was his message.  Minerva was pretty peeved since she loved the Greeks and wanted to see the Trojans go down, so she sent two slithery, fiery snakes across the water, all the way up to Laocoon and his two sons, and had those serpents kill all three of them.  I'm not doing justice to the Latin here -- there's the use of "salt" for the sea; the "s" alliteration to hear the slimy, scary, hissing of the snakes; the image of fire in the eyes of these dracones.  The Trojans think, Oh, golly -- gods are peeved with Laocoon; we better take that horse in, and we all know the rest.

Mr. Murray.  The basement classroom of Arlington Catholic.  Laocoon passage two years in a row.  I love to share this stuff with my own kids, showing them the Laocoon statue at the Vatican (a photo of which is in Latin books) or showing them a video about Pompeii or talking myths.  And have I wanted them to take Latin?  Yes, in some way I have.  Because I think it's so good for them in so many ways.  And it's been rewarding for me on so many levels.

But now they're learning Italian.  Reading and speaking and listening.  And I've thought, Maybe another language would be better for them.  A language spoke somewhere in the world.  What I want for them the most is the confidence to speak another language, a confidence I lack at times.  I'm fine messing up when I'm by myself and just trying, but I get self-conscious.

But Ostia Antica...

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Connor wanted to go.  I was motivated to make it happen.  Three kids and I staying at a vrbo spot near Piazza Navona motivate to figure out the bus and the train.  If the six of us are together, Daniel takes on this role.  I felt a little nervous taking it on and super excited, too.  If I messed up, so what?  The kids and I would still have a good time, likely no matter how long it took us to get there.  Some standing in the rain, a bus ride through Rome, a train ride, a pack of Italian-style Starbursts to count as breakfast and everything else til we arrived around 11:30am -- perfect.  Daniel and Sebastian drove from Viterbo to meet us (having stayed in Viterbo Friday night for basketball practice and meditation) and we raced to get our tickets.

Ostia Antica was a port for the ancient Romans.  It's like a mini-Pompeii less well-preserved, entirely less crowded, much closer to Rome (Pompeii is about four hours from Rome; Ostia Antica about 45 minutes).  From the gate we walked in we encountered first the necropolis -- the ancient cemetery --and a sarcophagus or two.  As we walked the main road, the large stones reminded us of our bike ride along the Via Appia Antica months ago.  We listened to the audio tour about a basilica, climbed up steps to look down onto a mosaic floor of the ancient baths (pretty sure Mary walked right on them as she traversed the ruins with her climbing until we told her that actually, you really can't do that, climb over and under where those ropes are -- in Pompeii she would have realized much more quickly, but out here in Ostia Antica, there was only a handful of people around on this Saturday morning, and no one even noticed...even her parents noticed after the fact); heard the audio tour guide go over all the rooms of the baths -- apodyterium, caldarium, frigidarium, tepidarium, palaestra, laconicum.  I thought, I wish Latin 2H could see and hear this!

I've visited Ostia Antica at least once before, if not two or three times before -- it's a Classics program field trip.  I vaguely remember going and I mostly remember that we brought bagged lunches from the Centro (where we lived in college).  I remember my friends, especially Libby and Nicole.  And eating hard-cooked eggs and bananas that year, things I'd rejected before then.  I remember carrying around a clipboard for our maps and notes and listening to lectures.

But this time I remember most the theatre before lunch and a stroll after lunch.  On the way to the cafeteria (that had better food than the Rome restaurant from the night before), we stopped at the theatre.  The current family competition was jumping up the steps, legs together, all the way up.  Hannah was speedy speedy.  I was slow slow and still impressed with myself.  Daniel videoed.  All the kids tried.  We laughed, the kids trying again and again and timing themselves until stomachs won out and we headed to lunch.

After lunch Sebastian needed to head out for his basketball game in Rome.  Everyone was ready to go except for Connor.  He wanted to explore Ostia Antica some more.  So he and I stayed.  We walked slowly, no particular apartment or temple or structure in mind.  I poked in to some spots and pressed the number on the audio guide to listen.  We climbed some stairs and lay in the sun on an ancient second floor for some minutes.

I asked Connor what else he wanted to see.

He said, "I just want to walk around, look around.  I don't want to figure out the structures.  I just want to be here and look at it."

While it had been raining in Rome, it was blue sky with sun out here in Ostia.  We walked on a road that took us outside the city, closer to what looked like a dock.  We imagined that we were heading to the beach.  I told Connor the story that one of my students had just written, a fictional account of the emperor Claudius and his stint as an engineer in the Roman army.  By one major entrance we passed a group of students listening to a lecture/tour.  I tried to eavesdrop before Connor urged me along.  Back at the ticket spot, I turned in our audio guide (with no passport to hand over as security, I had had to leave 70 euro instead: I was not going to forget to turn that guide in) and headed to the train station.

No clipboard.

No lecture.

Some jumping.

Some mosaics.

Some walking.

More than enough.

Vacation for Real

Every marriage has its strengths and weaknesses.  Daniel and I do pretty well with taking walks, drinking tea, watching movies, uprooting our family for a year.  We have work to do on planning, executing, and enjoying trips together.  Where I would relax, he would go explore; when I would want to be up and out to explore, he wants to slow down and enjoy the moment.  Where he would spend more money on a hotel, I want air b and b; when I find a more expensive spot to stay, he wants a cheaper option.  The contradictions become even bigger deals when we've got four kids in tow.  Some vacations go well, e.g. Cinque Terra, Naples, Rome with our friends; others leave us needing some serious recovery time, e.g. Barbados three years ago, Rome with SYA, northern Italy trip.  This is not new for us, but still, we've not figured it out entirely.  We're both responsible, and we know it.  Okay, I don't really like that any of it could be my failings, but I know that I could communicate more clearly, push ahead more forcefully, insist on my approach instead of holding back because I don't know that my way is any better than another way and then complaining later that I don't like the ways things are turning out and blaming Daniel (this reminds me of how I always preferred singles rather than doubles in tennis: if I double fault or make another error in singles, I pay the price and lose points; if I make these errors in doubles, then I've let down my partner.  I don't want to be the one to screw up.).

So this push-pull planning, or sometimes lack of planning, looked like walking around festively decorated Florence after dinner but not entirely enjoying it because we weren't sure where we were sleeping that night; finding the booking.com spot, but having no success with the key pad, so sitting with four children until midnight in a cold stairwell hoping the owner might come (he didn't); walking the streets of Florence til 1am to find a hotel for the six of us; sleeping three to a bed and cringing at all the sounds I could hear above, below, and beside us.

The next morning I make a reservation at an air b and b that we had rejected before because it looked too purple and was in Mestre, a city that the AAA guidebook advised tourists not to stay in since it was "an industrial sprawl" outside Venice.  A reservation for two nights in a too purple apartment in industrial Mestre was looking really good to me after the Florence fiasco.

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After two days in Venice, Daniel says something like, "We didn't plan these days well.  We lost two days because we didn't have a plan."  I'm thinking, These were two great days of just hanging out in Venice and people-canal-boat-gondola-bridge-building-architecture watching.  Kids and I are delighted with the two Venice days.

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When we finally get to Ortisei, the ultimate destination for our northern Italy trip, we get the kids outfitted with skis, boots, helmets, goggles.  I comfort and reassure the kids, urging Daniel not to take them beyond where they are comfortable.  "It will be easier when you're not with us," he says.  Ouch.  And yet I know it's true: One parent in charge really can be easier, even if it is with four kids skiing.

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In Rome, I'm antsy antsy in the morning.  I leave with Hannah and Mary to get to the Vatican on time for the SYA appointment, thinking that Daniel knows that I have both girls with me, but he doesn't know I have Hannah so he looks for her, gets on the wrong bus, and shows up late to the Vatican with the boys.  I'm thinking, How embarrassing!  He's thinking, You might have given more lead time on times and places and told me you were taking Hannah with you.

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A few summers ago Daniel and I sat in our dining room discussing a summer trip of three to five days.  Martha's Vineyard or a lake in New Hampshire.  Camping or a cabin.  Which would we all enjoy most?  Which would give us a good family experience, some good outside time, even some ease?

Daniel talked through his preference, camping on Martha's Vineyard.  He sat in the rocking chair by the window, narrating to me a possible, even likely Martha's Vineyard scenario.  His description went something like this:

So we plan to take the 11am ferry, but really, we leave Waltham late, so we get to the Cape a few minutes after 11, missing the ferry by minutes, find parking, and then wait for the next ferry an hour later.  But everyone's hungry now because it's almost lunch time, so we go to grab food, and we're not sure where to go, and child 1 needs to pee, so some of us go grab food, and the others head to find a restroom, and we lose track of each other, but then we find each other back on the dock, and we've all got food, but now we've missed the next ferry.  So we wait for the next one.  Child 2 and child 4 start fighting, and we holler at them to get out of the way of other passengers, hoping that we're not annoying anyone too much.  As the ferry arrives, child 2 realizes that she left her favorite book in the car, and child 3 realizes he left his stuffed animal in the car, so we send Daniel back since he's the least likely to stress about missing the ferry.  The rest of us run onto the ferry and cheer him on as he steps over at the last possible moment.  Child 2 is getting a sunburn on the ferry but sneaks away quickly every time one of us goes to apply sunscreen.  Finally, we are on the island, and we can't find the bus stop to get to the campground, but child 3 is in tears now because her bag is much too heavy to carry.  So we all sit on the side of the road, and one parent (likely Daniel) heads off to find the campground, or rather, to find someone who can either sell him a map or tell him how to get to the campground.  By now child 2 is hungry again because he wasn't really hungry when we got lunch, and the walking made him thirsty, but it's a hot day so we all drank all the water as soon as we got off the ferry.  Now we adults are debating whether to walk with all our stuff, someone carrying child 3's heavy bag, or to find a store to buy some food and water for child 2, or to give up on camping, hop on the next bus and use all our vacation funds for the year to stay in a hotel instead.

I laughed so hard I couldn't speak. 

(And I knew that our children would be devastated to hear our laughing at this potential version of family vacation, to know that we were finding so much amusement in their very real travails of travel.  Truly, it was possibly the same amount of difficulty/ease for them/us to travel from NM to Rome as it would be for them/us to travel from Waltham to Martha's Vineyard....not counting the purging, cleaning, and packing, of course...but who am I to say when I traveled solo from Boston to Rome...)

Now should I do this same thing for the New Hampshire lake option? he asks.  Because really, you know this can happen any place we go.

The romantic, ideal family vacation dismantled before we even decided where to go.

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Surely there's time for us to get this vacation thing right.

We can laugh.

Reading

Christa and I send books to each for birthdays -- San Francisco to Boston via amazon every year.  She finds books that are contemporary and quirky and much-talked-about.  I get the birthday books from Christa and suddenly can keep up with my friends Julie and Catherine, who know all the latest books, and my Thayer colleagues, who have heard of every new release as well.  Christa sends me the books in July, usually just before our Scituate week, and I take one with me, saving one for August and one for the school year.  I'm not this planned-out about the reading, but I know that one book usually feels ready to be read, while the others feel not quite ready, or rather, I feel not quite ready for them.

In the back of my journal I keep a list of books that I read for the year.  I don't have with me my journal from the first half of 2018.  I know that in the spring I read every work on my syllabus for this year (Flight, Othello, The Stranger, Interpreter of Maladies, Antigone, Never Let Me Go), and that in the summer I read one of Christa's picks while I sat on the beach in Scituate.  Here are a few short book review/previews...I do this now because I am thinking of putting aside reading in English for a bit, getting myself instead to work on reading in Italian.  So perhaps I'll start there, with my Italian attempts.  My goal is to read (some of) these books in Italian in 2019.  I skip words: I go between books; I often get the gist of a story rather than the real one.  But I enjoy the reading so much.  The Latin helps me a bunch, and while my ultimate goal is to understand others in conversation and to speak in Italian, this reading is feeling like a good and necessary step for me (paired with watching tv shows and movies in English with Italian subtitles -- surprisingly helpful)...

Italian

Dove Mi Trovo
Jhumpa Lahiri moved her family to Rome and decided to write a book in Italian.  (My dream is to write a book in English.)  I've read a page.  I bought it for Daniel for Christmas.  Then he wrapped it up for me.  He's reading it now while I work on Nicholas Sparks.  I cheat and read it once he's written in what the new (to us) Italian words mean.  (Just reread Interpreter of Maladies with English classes here.  Love it more every time I read it.  Had super project guidelines from TA colleague...a reminder that thorough project descriptions can get you good work out of students.  I've often thought that one of my biggest strengths is that I'm resourceful, i.e. there is ton that I don't know, but I know to whom to go to get help, information, advice, expertise, smarts, wisdom, knowledge, a laugh, etc.)

Le Parole che non ti ho detto
The Nicholas Sparks novel I picked up at a used book sale.  Message in a bottle.  Single mom who's a journalist.  I like when there's dialogue because I can understand more (oh, golly, is this how our students feel in English classes?...is this why my students are loving Antigone?).

[Tonight at Lidl (grocery store) the clerk says something and I stare blankly.  Hannah takes the grocery separator and tosses it up in the air.  I'm thinking, Did she understand him right?  Did he really just ask her to throw that thing up in the air?  It's a bad throw.  They agree.

When we walk out with banana and donut in hand, I ask her, "How did you understand what he was telling you to do?  That was so random."

She says, "He said, 'Prova,' so I knew he was saying try to throw it.  I think you're better at speaking Italian and I'm better at understanding Italian."

How can I read her homework so much more easily than she can but she can understand the folks at Lidl, at bars, at Emme Piu while I stand dazed?]

Novecento
Play that Italian colleague here recommended.  I read about ten pages and then switched to the Nicholas Sparks and Jhumpa Lahiri.  I'll return to soon.  It's like the library -- I want to follow up and not be pathetic, i.e. tell my Italian colleague that I've read it while I'm here.

Pietro Pizza
Yay for kid books and William Steig!

Perche non dormi, Machietta?
You can always find a children's book about falling asleep, and this one was easy enough for us to get.  Phew.

English

Less
Christa sent.  Read it on beach in Scituate.  Each day I'd pack up my book and chair, eager to see what muddle Arthur Less, middle-aged gay man from San Francisco was getting himself into.  Light yet poignant, travel journal of sorts, relationship analysis, humorous protagonist.  I thoroughly enjoyed.

An American Marriage
Another Christa gift...I put this one off because it looked intense and dark.  But then in December it called to me, and I couldn't wait to read it.  Tough lives and loves and decisions.  Outstandingly sad and strong.  So many different ways for life to go...and entirely different and incomprehensible for me, as a white woman, to understand what this means for a black man in America.

Early Autumn (Spenser novel)
First and only (thus far) Spenser novel I've read.  Friend (Tom) recommended and has been reading these for years.  I read on the bus ride to Terracina in September.  So fun.  Just like watching tv and relaxing and laughing.  Super fun read.

The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
I don't usually read nonfiction.  Fiction is more of a break for me.  I liked most the parts that told about Caravaggio himself, a brilliant artist with a horrible temper and a penchant for getting himself into trouble.  The world of art history -- much like the world of Classics -- ends up feeling so narrow, so devoted to dates and names and small marks, that I recall why I didn't pursue Classics beyond college and summers.  Novel also makes me think of friend (Jim) who recommended it: does he read nonfiction much faster than I do?  This took me a month at least.

An Odyssey
Mendelsohn's story of his dad's sitting in on his class on The Odyssey at Columbia.  Recommended by same friend who reads nonfiction.  Super story and fantastic review of The Odyssey.  Again I think, Does Jim read anything light or fast?  Maybe these are light or quick compared to law writing (he's a lawyer).

The Nightingale
Friend (Jess) from TA recommended a few years ago, and I finally gave it a try.  I couldn't put this book down in August.  I read it when I was solo here in Viterbo, eager to learn about these sisters and about World War II and France.  An excellently written page turner which taught me some real history, too.  I love when this happens.  (Teaching Antigone now makes me think of this novel, too...I'd want to be an Antigone or one of these women who risks their lives to save people and do the right thing...and I feel like people I know would be these people.  I'd want to be.  But would I?  Or would I be Ismene, wishing the minute the big brave thing was done that I had done it, too?  So easy to see myself as Ismene...I'll have to do that visualization thing where you would imagine yourself doing something so it comes true.  I'll imagine an Antigone moment in hopes that I can be Antigone rather than rule-following Ismene.  Even if I'm not Antigone caliber, I feel lucky in that I can imagine certain friends as Antigone.  That's gotta count for something.)

The Book that Matters Most
Another August read.  Decent.  Feel like I should read all the books the book club read but not inclined to quite yet.  So many seemed heavy.


New books on nightstand...

• Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott  (gift from Julie who has given me so many books, many of which I end up recommending and buying as gifts later for other friends)
• Circe by Madeleine Miller (Santa gift)

Biblioteca

Take 1:
Find the Viterbo Library.  On a walk I search near Porta Fiorentina, phone in hand to discover this library.  An Italian colleague told me about it in September, and I want to follow through on finding it and getting a library card.  So often I ask questions and/or express interest in what people share with me, e.g. a performance, a library, a hiking trail.  There is not enough time to follow up on everything, but I want to follow up at least some of the time (also not to seem entirely pathetic).  My colleague Danieli tells me, "They charge for a library card.  Ten euro.  Gotta discourage reading as much as we can," he says, making fun of Italy the way only an Italian can.

I go out Porta Fiorentina looking for the library, but there's just the park and a huge intersection. When I look at my phone, I realize that Danieli meant the Porta Fiorentina train station, a few blocks from there (from where we have caught the train to Rome, most recently, Connor and Hannah and I running back from the platform in hopes of seeing Mary, who was running behind when my colleague Dave saw her and offered to drive her to the train station to catch the 2:56pm Rome train to meet my dad and Jacqueline -- yes, I was being ambitious on a Friday afternoon -- and Dave got her there with two minutes to spare before the train pulled away with the four of us on it, Dave the hero driving away in his car).  Across from the train station there is a building with approximately five entrances.  Five different doors, each on an adjoining building, claim Biblioteca Viterbo Anselmo Anselmi.  I don't know which door to try, so instead I just read the hours.  The library closes daily for lunch.  It's lunch time.  I'll have to come back another day.

Take 2:
Two weeks later I am still determined to get a library card here in Viterbo.  I'm not sure exactly why: the kids read in Italian for homework; I have three Italian books I work on slowly and sporadically and with some luck I'll finish one by the end of 2019; our apartment has a few Italian versions of Geronimo Stilton and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Mary even found the Italian version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on a bookshelf last week -- a gift since she needs to read a science fiction or fantasy novel in Italian for school by the end of the month.

But still.  Even though we don't need books, I need to go the library, check it out, get a card.  At home in Waltham the library is a staple of our lives: we get books and movies, do work there, bump into acquaintances and friends, bring neighborhood buddies.  We also have a deal with our children that if they get themselves there via bike or feet, they can play on the computers there.  The kids check out double digit numbers of books at a time, reading them all, accumulating fines that we pay monthly, seemingly never annoying the Children's Room librarians who know them, what they like, which books to hold for them.  The library is a blessed, safe, homey, cozy place for all of us.

I don't hold such a high expectation for the Viterbo Library.  But I think that going and getting a card, visiting some, will ground us more, connect us to the community or teach us something new.  And we can take out some children's books to learn Italian, too.  Sebastian said to me a few months ago, "We need little kid books.  Just a sentence a page so it's not overwhelming."  I feel the same.  As much as I want to see what's going to happen with Teresa in my four euro Nicholas Sparks novel, I could really use the pick-me-up of actually finishing an Italian book, no matter what it is.  Go, Dog, Go would be pretty good (a P. D. Eastman favorite at home).

I pick a door with Viterbo Biblioteca Anselmo Anselmi in white letters.  I don't know which door and building to choose, so I choose the first one, the one closest to the main road.  I walk a set of stairs, then another, then another.  Finally I see a sign that says Biblioteca.  That's it, a sign.  An elevator in front of me, a door to the left, and a door to the right.  I try the right: the door opens and there in front of me is a desk with two librarians and even some books nearby.  We might be the only ones there: these two librarians behind the desk, me, maybe twenty books.  I'm wondering, Is this it?  I mean, I didn't expect a big library, but...We greet each other and I explain that I would like to get a library card.  The computer is down, they tell me.  Come back another time.  I ask about cards for the kids, and they show me to the Children's Room.  There, in beautiful Italian, the librarian tells me again that the system is down, but she gives me papers to fill out for each child to apply for a library card.  Cards for children are gratis, she tells me.  Whenever I don't understand and give her a baffled look, she immediately switches to English with ease and clarity.  But unless I show utter confusion, she sticks with Italian.  I love her for this.  I don't know whether she is being polite by speaking in Italian to me or kind or just not even thinking about it.  I speak my Italian, and she speaks hers until English is necessary.  It's such a kindness.  She even writes in on the forms that ask for addresses for the kids and then, underneath, for me, "Come sopra," (As above) to save me rewriting my address four more times.

I promise I'll come back.  There was no one else in the Children's Room either; I'm thinking she might remember me and the four forms she gave me.

Take 3:
At least a week goes by.  I write down "library" on my list of things to do.  I have to make this errand part of one of my walks or I won't go.  Mary and I have filled out forms for me and all four kids.  I get to the right entrance of the right building, the right staircases and floor, and finally, the right door and desk.  The system is up.  The librarians recognize me, take my form, photocopy my passport, and explain that I can use the computers but the kids can't.  No problem (in my mind).  They even give me a tour: they show me the movie section, the stacks, the periodicals.  In the children's room, the bilingual librarian patiently and methodically enters all the kids' information into the system while I browse.

An hour and a half I leave with five library cards, the movie Roxanne (thinking we can watch it as a family in English or Italian and with the other subtitles), and two children's books: Pizza Pietro and Perche non dormi, Machietta?  Pete's a Pizza (William Steig) was a favorite of the older kids years ago, when they had a babysitter who would act out the story with them, carrying them to the couch and putting cheese/pieces of paper and pepperoni/checkers on them.

These are books we can read and finish.


Take 4:
New deal with kids: if you read the books that I brought home from the library, you can come back to the library and choose a movie.  (The limit here at the Viterbo library is three items per checkout, and you may keep items for thirty days.  In Waltham, no limit of items and two weeks.)

On snow day number two (and today makes number three in the last two weeks), I force the kids on an excursion to the library.  There's no snow.  It fell.  It melted.  The mayor called a snow day.  (Kids are wondering, Maybe we should stay for another year?)

I go for my walk and tell them, "Meet me in one hour at Porta Fiorentina."  On my walk I listen to a podcast on This American Life.  This one I've had in my inbox from a colleague at Thayer: it's on libraries.  The timing is perfect.  The stories are beautiful.  I'm teary.  And I'm feeling good about my forced field trip for the kids.  (This American Life on libraries)  (And I'm still getting a tutorial on how to do links and hyperlinks from colleague at home, so that link is my latest accomplishment -- yes!)

The girls meet me on time.  On the way up the stairs I say to them, "Just to tell you, this won't be like home."

They look at me.  They laugh.

"We know."

I think, Of course they know this.  It's January: they know not to expect anything to be the way it is at home.

We walk out with five movies and nine books.  This morning, snow day number three (seriously, it's 35 and sunny at the moment and supposed to start raining at 3pm), Sebastian and I read Il Tempo per Sognare.  I hear Mary and Daniel reading it now.  Poor Theo has so much to do that he lies down and dreams that there are ten Theos to help him, only to discover that more people means more work.  I've read it twice now and I have about ten words to look up.  (I'm lazy in looking up words.  I skim over what I don't know when I can't figure it out by context or Latin or roots.  Daniel looks up every word he doesn't know.)

Mary tells me that she's reading a library book because it's easier than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I tell her how I didn't know all the words and still have ten to look up.  She says that she doesn't either, and while she wants to know all the words, she shouldn't really be reading a book for which she does know all the words.

Oh, right.

Take 5:
No idea.  But feeling sure there will be one.

Dolomites and Thereafter

The second week of Christmas break we drove to the Dolomites -- via Perugia, Florence, Verona, Venice, Bolzano -- to take the kids skiing.  At home, we take the kids skiing once per year, during my March break.  They've taken a few lessons, and they'll take advice from Daniel or friends or their grandfather.  They like to learn, and they love to ski, and they don't want to use their few days of skiing each year to take lessons.  So we left Viterbo on a Friday and reached Ortisei (which used to be part of Austria) on Wednesday morning.  Part of me wondered if all the hype -- this final destination that it took five days to reach -- would be worth it.  Would the kids actually enjoy it once we were there?  Would I actually get some daytime hours solo while Daniel skied with the kids?  (I stopped skiing a few years ago after a day of skiing with Sebastian and Mary and Daniel at Wachusett.  I was cold, nervous, and walking down a huge --for me -- hill; I had fallen, it was icy, and my knees and back were a bit nervous.  I like skiing, but I don't love it -- cross country would be more my style, and I really detest being cold and nervous and anxious that I'm about to throw out my back or hips or knees.  I was skiing because the kids love it, and it's nice to do together, and because I want to model doing rather than watching for them (perhaps most for my girls?).

Walking down that icy Wachusett mountain, I thought, "No more.  I don't have to do this.  I will run and walk and play tennis and soccer and basketball and swim and ice skate.  I will model active and will do lots with them.  But I will no longer ski with them."

Now they're all beyond the bunny hill and needing me beside them, so it's even easier for me to put the guilt aside.  So while they skied with Daniel, I hiked in the woods.  Hike might be an overstatement since I wasn't doing huge hills; rather, I was taking long walks that were beautiful and up high.  The mountains, the houses below that look so different from every other part of Italy, the blue sky, the peace.  At home I feel a bit nervous in the woods solo; here I didn't feel nervous at all.  I thought, This feels entirely necessary for my body and mind and spirit.  In one part there were rocks; in another moss.  A little ice in one spot; dirt in another.  Red and white markers helped me find my way, something I often don't follow because I'm with others who do this tracking the trail for me.  On my own, I had to rely on myself, and I was glad to do it, to feel independent and solo and relaxed, too.  No one's agenda: only mine.

My agenda: walk.

The air and the trees and the moss revived me in a way that I thought might last for weeks.

I told myself, "I will make more of an effort to get out to the mountains or just for nature-like walks when we're back in Viterbo."

It's so much easier to do my loop around the walls, but so good to get out into the woods.

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We're back in Viterbo.  It's Sunday.  When we wake up, I suggest to Daniel that we go on a small hike this morning.  We bribe the kids with no church if we go out to the woods instead.  We drive to Lago di Vico to find a trail for us adults and an open space for the kids to play.  A few false stops, i.e. over an hour later, and we are finally in the beech tree area.  The trees are bare, and it's not blooming, but it's still beautiful: moss and rocks and mud and trees upon trees, bare and all.

We plan to follow the red and white paint, a loop trail that should take about an hour.  Once we find a spot and a trail, and all the kids catch up, it's time for a croccante-nutella snack, and then we're on our way again, feeling like we're scaling rocks to make it to the top before we head back down towards the parking lot.  We slip going downhill, drag mud with us, run in a way that it's hard to stop (well, the kids do this -- I don't).

The morning outing ends up with a return home at 3pm, troppo tarde.  We've lost two soccer balls and one frisbee, and we've gotten our shoes so muddy that we're not bringing them into our apartment.  But it was worth it.

All week I'll have this thought of being out in the woods with me.

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Back at home, I am reserved about making (big) (any?) plans on a Sunday.  I want to end the weekend with a good family dinner, get down time before the busyness of the week, finish up a weekend list of things to do that I can never get to during the week, get adequate down time (which I often think I need more of than most people do).  Here it was me that suggested the hike, wrote in the afternoon rather than preparing for the week, served dinner after 8pm, went to bed way too late for a Sunday night.  I need more sleep, yes, but I also like this approach of not feeling that Monday morning brings a stop to all relaxing and productivity outside work.

I hope I take some of this back with me.

Juliet's Balcony

On our way up to Venice over break, we saw that Verona was on our way.  The kids said, "No thanks."  But Daniel and I couldn't let it go.

"You'll read Romeo and Juliet some day, and then you'll be excited that you saw the balcony of Juliet!"

"We'll go to see just the amphitheatre and Juliet's house."

They weren't convinced, but we went anyway.

I played them two songs:
Taylor's Swift's "Love Story": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E.  Mary used to be a huge Taylor Swift fan.  I liked her early stuff -- just fun and positive and catchy.  I remember reading or hearing her talk about this song, how she read Romeo and Juliet in high school and didn't like that it had a sad ending, so she wrote this song as an alternate ending.  We listened to it twice on the way.

Indigo Girls' "Romeo and Juliette": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fiXkvsKpdk.  I think I got introduced to the Indigo Girls when I was a junior in college, the semester I lived in Rome.  My friend Nicole played them, and I got hooked.  A friend at Belmont Hill lent me cd's of their older stuff; a friend took me to their concert at Brandeis; my roommates in San Francisco had all their cd's; my friend Jenny put "A Hammer and a Nail" and "Get Out the Map" on a mix or two when people still made mixes on tapes (those were the days!...which reminds me of a Ten Thousand Maniac song called, "These Are Days," which is a fairly beautiful song and reminiscent of other times...).  Music is pretty wonderful that way, reminding us of times and places and people.  Last week as I prepared my classroom for class, I found myself humming a tune and I wasn't sure what it was for a minute, and then realized that I was humming Anne Murray, music my parents listened to all the time when I was a kid.  And now, a week later, other songs come to mind but not that Anne Murray one.

So we played these songs, got to Verona, walked around the amphitheatre -- literally around, we didn't want to pay for tickets.  Then we headed to Juliet's house.

A mob crowded the archway in front of the house.  So we packed in, Italian-style, i.e. no line, no trying to let people go who may have been in front of us, no attempt at order or fairness, instead just staying close to each other and pushing along with everyone else.  But then, once we were under the arch, in a mini-tunnel of sorts, I stopped: there were notes posted all over the inside of the arch.

Love notes.

People were holding hands, kissing, reading the notes.  Taking selfies inside the arch of love notes.  Love letters surrounding them, surrounding us, taped up and pasted up all around.  (Isn't there a song "Tunnel of Love"?)  If Verona is romantic, then my goodness, people were making Verona romantic.  (I think I end up feeling romantic not in places like this, but in ordinary places that no one would consider romantic.  Alas.)  But a letter or a note, well, that's something.  The notes were to people, or even to a yet not met person...optimistic and fun.  Odes to Juliet.  Homage to the bard.  But more often, simple expressions of love from one person to another in all different languages.

The legend goes that you rub the statue of Juliet on the breast for good luck in love.  I touched her arm, feeling too weird to put my hand on her breast (even though everyone else was), thinking, If I want to show this to teenagers in an English class in years to come, I'd rather avoid the snickers and awkwardness of that one.

Apparently Shakespeare loved Verona, so he set his story there (based on families from another town).  What he did was inspire expressions of love in writing, an acceptable graffiti of sorts.  Miniature love letters.

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We have our mail forwarded to my sister Christine and then she mails it to us.  This week we got some Christmas cards in her big envelope.  One was from a friend who used to work at Thayer.  Claire worked in the bookstore until TA did online book ordering.  Claire also sorted the mail.  She got to know Daniel because he would occasionally send me postcards to school, just hi and how are you and things like that.  He knew that postcards are fair game, i.e. anyone can read them, and he was fine with that.  Claire got a kick out of the postcards.  So sometimes he'd add a note to her, too.

Romantic: A little archway to Juliet's house in Verona or a mailbox in the basement of the Glover building at Thayer?

Or maybe what really matters is just the reminder.

New Normal

It's Sunday night, my night to cook dinner.  I like Sunday dinner, and I don't like doing the dishes afterwards when I've gone with the Italian time for dinner, 8:15pm, so I'm still doing dishes at 10pm.  As the water goes cold, I'm reminded of the things that have become so common to us this year, like cold water.  No matter how many times the "technician" comes to check the boiler, we end up needing to increase the pressure in the boiler at least weekly to get hot water and heat.  (This means going out to our boiler on our mini-balcony, reaching under, turning a blue nob a little, waiting for it to get into the green triangle on the dial, and then turning that blue nob closed tight.)  Or often, even if the pressure is up, we turn on the water in the front bathroom or kitchen and realize, Oh, we need to turn on a spigot in the other bathroom to get hot water in the front of the apartment!  It's okay.  It's become normal.  A new normal.  Well, at this point, perhaps an old normal.

So this makes me think, What else has become normal?

The kids' wearing uniforms -- too strong a word, but navy pants and white polos -- to school.

Getting lunch from the Mensa every day.  The Mensa is the dining hall for SYA kids and faculty, other students and faculty from universities nearby, etc.  The truth is that I go rarely because I like to come to our quiet kitchen when no one's home and enjoy a few minutes to myself, heating up Mensa leftovers from the day before.  Daniel goes nearly daily, eating often with my colleagues, and then gets food to go for the gang.  We don't need to buy lunch food because we've got the mensa.
Hanging out our laundry.  We did this in August, then stopped because I liked the soft feel from the dryer.  Then Daniel got us going again for a bit with hanging stuff out.  Then the kids started using the dryer again (it's easier than hanging the clothes out for the runner), so we went with that.  After our northern Italy trip, seeing clothing and sheets on clothelines everywhere, I thought, Okay, we're living in Italy.  Italians hang out their laundry.  We have got to return to that.  Daniel put up new clotheslines this week.  We're back at it.  Italians, we can do this, too.

Words.  So we don't get all the Italian we hear.  We get a fraction of it.  But we're getting better.  While I did dishes tonight, I put on Andrea Bocelli.  The kids had just gone to bed, so I put in my headphones and listened to "Vivo per lei."  And I actually understood a number of the words.  This is not to say that I understood what the lines/sentences/lyrics meant, but I heard actual Italian words.  Last week there were two times -- once at school and once somewhere else -- that I heard more Italian words, I mean, actually deciphered them.  I wondered, Are these people talking more slowly for my benefit?  Their sentences did not sound like an endless stream of syllables that were a song I would never get.  (Or as Sebastian said when I explained this phenomenon to him, "Yeah, right: it's becoming not just noises strung together.")  They actually seemed to be speaking words.  Tonight, through my headphones, Andrea Bocelli was singing actual Italian words.  I had this moment of imagining life in a year, a Sunday night, doing dishes in our kitchen in Waltham, listening to this very cd.  And thinking then, Remember when we listened to this voice when we were in Italy?  It's strange to know that you will miss the very thing that you're doing.

Not running around to athletic contests at all.  Sebastian tells us that he has a basketball game next weekend.  We're heading to Rome to see my Dad and Jacqueline.  He might have to skip his game.  We rarely, if ever, skip athletic contests at home.

Sitting with the kids while they do their homework.

The kids are all at the same school for the second time in their lives.  (They had one year together at Plympton.)

I teach three classes, and they are all the same prep.  (Usually I teach four classes that are four different preps.  So we would think that I would have so much less work this year.  HA.)

I walk two blocks to work.

I sometimes see Daniel during the day.

The orange Fiat, the six of us squeezed in.

Daniel's cooking dinner six nights a week.  (Let's keep this norm.)

Having our own parent bathroom.  (luxury)

Temperate weather.  I'm not sure it's gone below thirty degrees yet here in Viterbo.

Bars/cafes with real cups and saucers.

A faculty and staff of 12 people.

No teaching on Wednesdays.  Planning meetings, grading, student meetings, excursions/activities.  There's work to do, but no actual teaching.

Its feeling strange if I don't have time to write at least once a week.

Parking the Fiat in a parking lot that's a six minute walk from our house.  Daniel's driving up to our apartment building, dropping off groceries, and then going to park the car.

Stopping to get a coffee or tea or hot chocolate by myself, with Daniel, or with the kids.  Why at home does there never seem to be time for such a thing?  When I see students and colleagues at home walking into school with their DD cups, I always think, "How do they make the time for that every morning?"  Last year Sebastian and I went to a wake one day after school.  After the wake (his first), we went to Starbucks and sat.  He had an egg sandwich and hot chocolate, and I had a tea.  We sat for about twenty minutes, then we headed back to Waltham.  I remember that afternoon vividly, and I know he does, too.  It was outside our norm, to pick up a snack like that, and then to actually sit and have it at a place together, not rushing off to the next place.  And why do euros feel less important than dollars?  ...because it's a year here and we can't recover this time?  Perhaps.  But really, can we recover any time?

Daily walks around the medieval walls of Viterbo.

Getting up at 6:45am.  (In Waltham I leave the house by 7am at the latest.)

Blowing a fuse not quite daily, but often.  ("Unplug the kettle!"  "Turn off the washer machine!"  "Who turned on the oven?")

Museums to break up a ride

Perugina Museum in Perugia: 

• the 2:45 reservation got us out of the house to start our northern Italy vacation over Christmas vacation
• story of Luisa Spagnoli
• a love story I'll have to look up to understand completely (http://lifeisabowlofpasta.com/2016/03/09/luisa-spagnoli-chocolatier-entrepreneur-feminist-fashion-house/)
• Luisa Spagnoli's creating jobs for women during WWI and making a daycare center on site so these women could work
• model of biggest bacio ever made
• samples upon samples
• the factory seen through glass, machines churning out baci and automatically wrapping them up, reminding us of a Curious George book
• Connor's purchase of a Perugina bear
• memory of friends who visited and came here, returning to us in Viterbo with a box of dark chocolate truffles and notice of the newest pink bacio
• frisbee in the parking lot

Lamberghini Museum in Bologna:

• what happens when you ask the kids on a four hour ride, "Is there anywhere anyone wants to stop on the way?  We're headed through Bologna."  The one child with a phone, the thirteen-year-old, answers, "The Lamberghini Museum."
• now I will remember that a g with an h after it is always hard in Italian
• sending photos to Gus and Orly, the kids' friends back in Waltham who follow cars as much as our kids
• a timeline that noted Lamberghini highlights along with world highlights, including that Ireland granted marriage rights to gay people in 2015 (Mary: "Only since 2015?")

Venice

December 1992
Junior year of college I went to Venice with some other Centro students for a weekend.  I remember walking over a bridge from the train station, standing in Piazza San Marco, eating big chunks of chocolate, taking a gondola ride.  Mostly I remember all those canals, my new semester-in-Rome friends, walking around.

December 2018
The kids stood on a little no-name bridge and watched the gondolas going by.  Daniel almost took a picture of the woman in the gondola who seemed to be texting on her phone.  The kids watched each gondola approach the bridge and begin to go under; then they ran to the other side, racing the gondolier, I imagine.  They did this again and again and again.  This reminded me of Beaver Brook Park and Reservation in Belmont (MA) and Pooh sticks.  As you'd expect, there's a brook there.  Sebastian and Mary, when younger than Con and Han now, used to stand on the little bridge, throw sticks into the brook, then run to the other side to watch the sticks come out the other side.  Sebastian told me once, "We're playing Pooh sticks," referring to a Winnie the Pooh story he'd read.

Venice, Italy, and Belmont, Massachusetts -- kids standing on bridges and playing games.

We used our phones to get to the famed Rialto Bridge.  The small bridges were fun, but it's the Rialto Bridge we'd heard about.  So we headed there.  We stood on it, again watching the gondolas and the folks looking out of their hotel rooms.  The kids just stood, leaning on the rail, watching the water, the boats, the people.  Just watching.  No rush.

When we stopped for gelato, Sebastian ordered a crepe.  Daniel and Hannah have been making crepes in the past few months.  But here, here we watched this woman heat up her flat metal surface, pour her batter, scrape it neatly from the sides, spread it thin.  The kids licked their gelato while we stood mesmerized by the woman making the perfect crepe (I'm reminded of the performers in Rome -- breakdancers, mimes, painters...so many ways to make art and/or to entertain).  Thin, golden brown, expertly flipped.  So fine.  She folded it, spread Nutella, put it adroitly into a cardboard holder like the ones they use for french fries back at Saffi in Viterbo.  We all begged him for a bite.

In the church of San Marco, Mary pointed to the ground to show us the squares of marble that she and Daniel had noticed on their walk through the church.  We walked with our heads down, admiring the geometric patterns.  After a while Mary said, "Don't you think it's strange that we're in this famous church and we all keep looking down at the floor?"

We got to the island of Murano too late to see any glass blowers, but we admired the glass in the one shop still open until the store owner -- fearful that we'd break something or just eager to close up once it was clear we weren't going to buy anything? -- told us she was closing.  Mary found a restaurant for dinner, where we tried yet another tiramisu -- having learned that tiramisu is a Venetian dessert and means "pick-me-up"...tirare: pull; mi: me; sull: up...how cool is that!?!? -- and Hannah insisted, on the way back to find an ATC boat (public transportation system in Venice) that we cross every bridge, back and forth, back and forth, til we got to the dock.  Connor, chuckling, let me know that he'd managed a day of pizza for every meal.  (Would I have insisted on different meals if I'd realized?  Unlikely.)

Small regret: not buying a small painting in a small store that the kids wandered into when we first arrived on Venice.  Two small rooms, the artist there talking with people, the kids admiring the bright colors and noting the sign that said, "Please respect the artist's work," and had an x through a picture of a camera.  Tourist error is usually to buy such a thing, especially early on in a trip. But this kid-led moment had a sweetness to it.  The kids didn't care about museums or churches in Venice.  This man's paintings were museum for them, and they loved just admiring them they way they liked watching the canals, wandering into the glass store, standing on bridges.

I liked being a kid tourist, not my sometimes-what-is-there-to-see tourist self.  I liked looking at the intricate decoration around windows as we floated along the canal, the columns, the light on the buildings and on the water.  I liked just looking around.

We had said no to a gondola ride early on -- too expensive when we could take the public transportation boats for which we'd bought two-day passes.  But having lost Sebastian for fifteen minutes -- not really, he didn't know he was lost when we crossed the Bridge of Sighs...he was just waiting where he thought we were taking the next ATC boat -- feeling not up for a 90 minute boat ride to Burano, realizing that none of us would be back to this magical spot for many years, I suggested the gondola ride.  Again I felt like one of the kids, just taking it all in, needing no dates and historical or literary information (though, I confess, reading/teaching Othello this past fall certainly came to mind), just wanting to let it seep in, especially visually.  I felt like we were walking around in a children's book of castles and magical houses and bridges and boats.  One page after another.

Daniele's Gondola.  Really, that was the name.  A sign, I thought.  The sun set behind Sebastian down the other end of the gondola.  The girls snuggled to stay warm.  Connor smiled with delight to be away from the Grand Canal, liking the quiet of the smaller canals ("Too many people and too much smoke," he says of Venice).  We asked our gondolier questions and he told us how he used to live in Mestre, but now lived in Venice with his wife and two daughters.  He used to drive an ATC boat, and then learn how to drive (right verb?) a gondolier afterwards.  For two years, he did both a job and the training for being a gondolier.  His dad had been a gondolier, too.  He showed us a photo of his children.  He pushed off the walls of houses with his foot, touching the gondola to a wall not even once.  He told us by the last turn, "That's a hard one," detailing the length of the gondola and the distance across for the turn (numbers I don't recall; I recall only that we were in awe by the closeness of the numbers, the lack of margin...for Italians a norm though, as we've learned: there are almost no margins for driving).  He squatted down to get into a photo Mary took of Daniel and me.  We laughed with him.  He laughed with us.  We stumbled over Italian while he stumbled over English.  He told us that he usually doesn't talk with the tourists on his gondola: usually they are on their phones.

We asked him what he would do for New Year's Eve that night.  "My wife is making food now," he said.  "We have friends who will come over.  The kids will play."

Offro Io

Any teacher will tell you that the first day back is rough.  I know the first day after vacation is tough for most people in most jobs, but it's teaching and teachers I know most, and by noon it feels like 5pm.  This morning I taught three classes, met some parents, did some work, and was ready for sleeping.  It was noon.  So I went for a walk, prepped a Jhumpa Lahiri story, and debated tea or coffee.

Break Bar is downstairs from our apartment.  We don't go there often (Bar 103 and Happiness are more our go-to's), but I like to go sometimes because they're our neighbors.

I walked up to the counter and asked for a cappuccino normale.

The woman working asked me something like, "Senza shumo?"

I hadn't heard this one before.  So I repeated, "Normale."  Then, getting a bit braver and knowing that I have to keep talking with people and I have to understand what people are talking about, I asked, "Shumo?  Non capisco shumo.  Crema? Latte?"

"No.  No."

She made the cappuccino, which looked normal to me (though with no fancy decoration on top in shape of a heart or some such design as is often the case), and we tried to figure out shumo together.  She asked these other customers, two older women to my right.  I showed them the google translate app on my phone, asking them to help me spell shumo, which, it turned out, was shiumo, which translates on the app as "foam."  I taught them how to say "foam," and they taught me "shiumo," pointing to the frothy milk in my cup.

We laughed.

A few moments later, as they two women went to pay and leave, one stopped and said to me, "Offro io.  Italiana...."  I didn't understand the second half of what she said.  But I had learned the first half when I graded SYA Capstone assignments during sei giorni (six days of Italian high school for our students): each SYA student was given money to treat an Italian student to lunch one afternoon after school.  The name of the assignment was "Offro Io."

Aghast, I was about to say to this woman offering to buy my cappuccino, "Perche?!"

Why would this woman I've never met before buy me a coffee?  Why such a gesture?  I wanted to say, "I can't let you do that.  Let me buy you your coffee."  But I was afraid that that would be rude or unappreciative or just odd.  We had shared a moment of understanding, a short conversation, a connection of sorts.  Perhaps she was telling me that this was an Italian thing to do.  A colleague earlier in the year told me not to feel awkward when someone offers a kindness: trust that the person really wants to do the kindness.  She told me, "We say, 'Fare non complementi,' and this means that you accept the kindness."

I thought to myself, "Fare non complementi."  (I could totally be destroying this saying and spelling.)

To the woman now paying for my cappuccino with foam I said, "Grazie mille."

2019: First Day of Classes

We are starting the year with a ten minute freewrite of sorts on something that made you feel that you were home again after the holiday break.  Students can write on anything they want -- a person, a street, a coffee spot, a room, a moment -- in any medium they like -- poem, letter, story, etc.

So then, for me, what's made me feel that I am back home, in our home for this year here in Viterbo?

For the first week of break we stayed here for Christmas.  It was delightful -- relaxed, quiet, restful.  Daniel and I swam and walked and had cappuccino together; Sebastian and Connor and Hannah built legos; Connor and Hannah raced their remote cars; we all read; Mary made brownies with Russian-tip-decorated frosting, and we all ate a bunch of sugar.  And then, cabin fever hit in our apartment and it was time to take our planned trip north.

We returned a week later, a Saturday night, running to catch the end of the Befana Parade: the longest stocking ever carried by women dressed up as witches and giving out candy to bambini through Viterbo, then placed on the top of Fiat 500s and driven to a church beyond the walls.  I lost the girls, we lost Connor, we all found each other by Via Carletti (our street).

Home.

Back in the apartment, no heat and no hot water.

Home.

We unpacked and then the kids sprawled over the couches and read their new books, and we ate Mary's leftover brownies, that somehow, after eight days on the kitchen table uncovered, tasted not stale but fudgy; caramel popcorn from a student; eventually pizza from Sale e Pepe.

Home.

Sunday morning the kids begged not to go to mass at Sacra Famiglia: they had homework and wanted to relax.

Home.

It's the last day of vacation! they said.  I deferred to Daniel: we went to Sacra Famiglia.  The first song was not a usual song that I knew.  The Holy, Holy, Holy was not a song that I knew.  Even the Alleluia before the gospel was not the usual Alleluia.  Was the change in songs because it was the Epiphany, a huge deal here, or were they changing things up for 2019?  I could appreciate the songs and the choir: the director opened her mouth wide to enunciate the words (not that I could understand them), and the choir was exuberant in their singing.  The songs seemed longer than usual.  But there were no familiar arm movements, no easy joy watching Hannah sing along and do every clap.  At communion I looked around.  I missed Brandeis -- Mary Lou and Karen and Gretchen and Allison and Daphne and Donna and Ralph and all these people at church at Brandeis that make us feel hugged all the time.  We don't see these folks much if at all outside Sunday mornings, but they are a spiritual and religious home for us.  We see them on Sundays.  They are church and community for us.  I look forward to seeing them, to being next to them, to talking with them during coffee hour after mass.  I stood in line for communion getting a little teary, thinking  of how people are happy here because they have community, friends, a big network of family.  And I laugh at the hundreds of WhatsApp messages that come through not just for homework but for Christmas and New Year's and Epiphany, but really, isn't what these Italians are doing with all these messages and emojis all about connecting?  I have mocked.  I have scoffed.  I have laughed.  But they, they just keep reaching out and connecting.  (And this now makes me think of Whitman's "A Noiseless, Patient Spider," in which that soul, like the spider, keeps throwing out filament, filament, filament, to try to connect to whatever or whoever will be a true and fulfilling other.)  I missed home, real home -- our neighborhood and the folks I see whenever I'm out for a walk, our mail carrier, our friends at church.  That feeling of being surrounded, embraced -- hugged --  so much of the time.

I couldn't find the last song in the book I had snagged from the floor under a pew.  As a woman walked by, I asked her which number the song was.  She stopped, looked and looked until she found it, looking in the index, back to the songs, back to the index, back to the songs.  It took more than a minute, and she kept going.  She pointed to the song, then waited a moment, then pointed to the exact words the choir was singing.  I thanked her.  She smiled graciously, patiently, then turned to her friends who had come to greet her.

Sebastian beside me, I sang until the choir stopped entirely.  I love a good song to end a mass.  I sat down to grab my jacket.

Two women appeared in front of me.

"Buongiorno," we greeted each other.

Emanuela and Marilena, they told me.  Marilena said in clear English, "Hello.  We see you here at mass each week, and we wanted to say hello and welcome you to our family here."

I almost cried again, but this time not out of missing but out of gratitude.  You see us!  You welcome us to your family, to your church!

We went over names and jobs (ours) and schools (Santa Maria dell' Paradiso, SYA, St. Thomas') to give them some context for our coming to Sacra Famiglia week after week.  I spoke mostly in Italian; Marilena spoke mostly in English; Emanuela sat between us and smiled encouragingly.  Then Marilena told me (in Italian) about a lunch after mass on February 3 here at Sacra Famiglia.

"Volete venire?" she said.
"Si!  Que cosa portiamo?" I asked.
"Niente."

She and Emanuela explained how there is a big cucina at the church, the kids jocano, the adulti preparano pranzo e parlano.  She asked again, "Volete venire?"

Sacra Famiglia is not Brandeis.  But someone said hi to us and invited us to the church lunch.

That's a feeling of home anywhere.