Tag: Home

20Nov

Pomegranate Seeds

The girls are finally in bed, and I’m sinking into the couch with half a beer and two fresh clementines, impulsively ignoring the to-do list that I wrote in flowery cursive to make mopping seem more appealing. (It didn’t.) These November days have been studded with these impulses, little sudden choices in favor of irresponsibility. A ten-minute detour at the park on the way home from school. A midnight game of mancala in bed when Dan and I are too restless to sleep. Guests on a whim. Dissecting a gorgeous red pomegranate instead of ironing. A second cup of tea. Rocking-chair rides with tired little girls, wrapped up in my arms with nowhere else to be.

To tell the truth, I feel embarrassingly petty writing this. Something in my soul believes, deeply, that it was meant to change the world. I feel it in music, I snag against it in great literature, I catch a glimpse of it on perfect blue-skied mornings. And yet, here I am coloring in my November with impulses. Pomegranate seeds.

But, for reasons I can hardly explain, I’m satisfied. I’ve settled into a rhythm of peace—or at least an armed neutrality—with housecleaning, and the cogs of our little family purr smoothly again. (Clean floors cover a multitude of sins, you know.) And my little spur-of-the-moment decisions toward happiness have put more than a year between now and last November. In fact, greatness may not be as far away as I once thought, wispy shreds of a future. I’m finding out that it’s more like pomegranate seeds and heart’s impulses. Like being completely present for one of my girls’ giggles. Like hopping off the beaten path with my husband. Like choosing deep breaths and whimsy. And really, that’s not so petty at all.

18Nov

Arpeggios

It’s that month again. A cough here, a drippy nose there, and then increasingly miserable viruses playing arpeggios on our lungs until spring. Poor Dan and Natalie always get the worst of it… bronchitis… ear infections… antibiotics and nebulizers and mountains of damp tissues. I usually weather through the mess with the special dispensation granted to mothers, but this past weekend knocked me flat. My personal cold settled in with a sonic-boom headache, and at first, I felt pretty trendy—finally joining the ranks of migraine sufferers and all—but spending the whole day in bed is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. Especially when your own head is staging a coup d’état.

After a rush of writing productivity last week, I’ve been melting into the couch… playing a lot of Lego Indiana Jones, watching a lot of “Alias” re-runs, and pretending I don’t notice November sneaking by. Thanksgiving #1 is this coming weekend, and I am not ready for it. In the States, we always invited over college students and friends with no where to go for a feast and games; it was always a special and relaxing day. Even last year, for our first Thanksgiving in Italy, I cooked the traditional meal for a large extended family who had taken us in, and we had a fantastic time. However, I’m dragging my feet this year… maybe because of lingering sickness, but more probably because I’m reluctant to face the stark reality of a whole year gone. Time moves quite a bit faster than I do now.

Blah, blah. I’m sorry, it must the head cold talking. Have I told you about my new dishwasher yet? (Love.) Or that all-from-scratch pumpkin pie with dark caramel sauce and swirly whipped cream is on the menu for Saturday? Or how Sophie travels the house all day long finding books and toiletries and DVDs and dishes and laundry and dust bunnies to bestow on me? (With creation’s cutest smile, of course.) Or that I found strawberry-mango tea and Southern Comfort in the same grocery trip? Or how my sweet husband cooked for me all weekend, including a scrumptious Greek dinner? Or about the possibility of a girls’ night out next week (the first I have taken in… um, two years? for reasons entirely my own fault). Or about Natalie’s hugs?

So many things to be thankful for… even head colds, which help me slow down and inspire Greek cuisine and draw our dear little family together under blankets and heaps of love.

Handy considering it’s that month again!

11Nov

Enamannoyearningcited

Enamored with:
Mark Twain’s description of German opera in A Tramp Abroad. “The racking and pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that I got my teeth fixed.” I love Mark Twain even more than I love Shakespeare, and that’s saying a lot. (Oscar Wilde trumps them both, but that’s beside the point.)

The cauldron of fog overturned on our region two days ago. I love the mystery of not being able to see what’s ahead; for instance, I may know it’s only the supermercato, but perhaps it’s taken on a different personality or grown a mustache in hiding. Plus, the fog is just spooky enough to keep ghost stories on the menu.

Our new… are you ready for this?… {{drumroll}}… dishwasher! It has replaced Sophie’s high chair in the corner of our kitchen and is giving me reason to writhe around our tile floor in a frenzy of joy. The time I spend on dishes has gone from 1 ½ hours a day to 3 minutes. 3 minutes! Excuse me while I go lick the plate rack again.

Tea, after a two-year tastebud hiatus. We don’t have as many options here, but I’ve managed to find a mandarin-spice-cookie flavor that makes my heart sing. And anyway, my beloved peppermint is universal. (Now that I have a tea infuser, I’m itching to make peppermint tea from our riotous little balcony plant. Note to self: Learn how to use a tea infuser.)

My makeshift vanilla-berry candle platter and the friendly glow of small, contained fires. Natalie and I are going to paint holiday scenes on empty baby food jars and then put tea lights in them tomorrow for Christmas, and I’m finally going to get our money’s worth out of those Pottery Barn pumpkin pillars we carted over from the States. This year, I am not taking candles for granted.


Annoyed by:
Adults doing the children’s voices in cartoons.

Waking up to a bathroom-related mess. As in, it should have happened in the bathroom.

Finding myself from time to time really not wanting to be a mom. (See above.)

Other drivers waiting impatiently for my parking spot while I bundle the girls into their carseats.

How very, very yummy those caramel krispy treats were, causing me to make and eat a second batch when I was already full.

How my last entry (posted elsewhere as well) stirred up a level of controversy I never expected… How so many people were adamantly opposed to the government helping out those in need… How my joy over Obama’s election was squished out of me, e-mail by e-mail, until I began to wonder if speaking up was worth it… How this week was down in the first round.


Learning how to:
Respect people who think differently from me, even when their beliefs seem misguided and hurtful, even when they don’t treat me with respect.

Stick around for conflict rather than darting behind the nearest hedge.

Just say no to caramel krispy treats. (Still working on that one.)


Excited about:
Christmas decorations, Christmas photo cards, Christmas art projects, Christmas gifts, Christmas outreach, and a special Christmas treat for all of you!

Getting a favorable response from the company I so longed to work for. We have some tangley logistics to work out, but I am delighted to find out the door is not shut.

A clean house (thank you, dishwasher!), a sweet family, and a whole day wide open to living.

21Oct

Warning: Do Not Scrapbook

I’ve caught that little internet cold that makes its rounds during the chilling downslope of seasons. I was hoping, sincerely, to catch the homey enchantment of A Week In A Life instead; everyone’s week looks so lovely in detail, and scrapbooking! What says “I am a fount of creativity and time-management” more than that? (I have a beautiful bin of scrapbooking supplies myself, but it only comes out during weeks my family agrees not to eat or wear clothes or use the floors. So, not often.) I did try starting a Week In A Life post, and it went like this:

Monday

7:30 a.m. – My alarm goes off, even though I don’t remember setting it last night. I kick husband repeatedly until he gets up to turn it off for me (thankfully for our marriage, he understands I’m not accountable for anything before 10 a.m… and sleeps with me anyway). I lie in bed thinking violent morning thoughts, ruing the day I was born, etc. until Sophie’s hungry shrieks become impossible to tune out.

8:30 a.m. – Natalie, who is coughing up bits of spleen, is sent off to the doctor who prescribes antibiotics and staying home from school. We have a solid ten minutes of fun dusting the living room before she deteriorates into boredom as I start Hour #1 of dishes for the day. “Mommy, can you pleeeeease play with me? Mommy, can you pleeeeease read with me? Mommy, isn’t it a struggle not to succumb to the guilt of wasting away my precious childhood by scrubbing windows that will just be grimy again by the weekend?” She hasn’t coughed once since getting back from the doctor’s, of course.

12:30 p.m. – Sophie, who may or may not be teething, is up from her nap and wants to be held. I, multi-tasker though I am, have limits and cannot manage to hold her whilst simultaneously mashing the potatoes, hanging the wet laundry, and washing Hour #2 of dishes before Dan gets home for lunch. Sophie stands in the middle of the room perfecting her Nazgûl scream. Natalie is frustrated with her puzzle and begins to cry. My sanity calls in a sick day.

Technically, the week started with Sunday, but that found me three seconds away from a nervous breakdown at church, complete with bloodthirsty fantasies toward Natalie’s Sunday School class bully and the very near cussing-out of the kindly old people pestering Sophie into gut-wrenching sobs. It hasn’t exactly been a scrapbook-worthy week.

No, the internet cold I got is the one that makes people forget who they want to be when they grow up and lose inspiration for everything from art to regular showering and wonder why they keep blogging anyway. I caught it right in the face, too. It’s a doozy of a mental crisis, and it usually distills down to The House. More specifically, the messes that characterize The House. Even more specifically, the hours upon vain hours I spend cleaning up the messes that characterize The House under some sort of delusion that it will stay clean. You know, at least for 24 hours.

And now you know how much of a pansy I am. Historically significant elections are going on, my nation is teetering on the brink of economic collapse, war and terrorism are flourishing in the Middle East… and I’m falling into pieces over misplaced loads of laundry and smushed carpet peas. Who knows—maybe The House is just a metaphor for some greater mental tableau I can’t adequately process. I hope I’m that deep.

In some ways, it’s exciting to be in the midst of a breakdown. It means that something is happening, that I could wake up tomorrow with an epiphany or a new superpower. On the other hand, it means I’ve written nary a word in days. It means I feel both aimless and harrowed, and my brain tissue by now is mostly held together with smushed peas. And lemme tell ya—that, combined with soap-splattered clothes and my lack of showering inspiration? Is not a lovely thing.

31Aug

Lemon Drops

My somewhere over the rainbow is escaping me during these last stir-crazy days of summer.

Sophie is suddenly ten months old, which means first steps and wobbly-legged climbing. (Hooray! But also, heaven help us.) She goes on archeological missions through laundry piles and bookshelves and kitchen cabinets and the diaper basket, on her knees so both hands can dig, paperbacks and rash cream flying helter-skelter behind. Every mouthful of food glops immediately back out to be squished in fists, splatted on the floor, massaged into her babyfine red hair. She likes to play in the trash. She knows how to turn the stereo volume on max. She wonders what will happen if she unrolls an entire case of paper towels into that fresh puddle of lotion. I feel like a zookeeper, and a very poor one at that.

Meanwhile, Natalie’s in limbo somewhere between the exuberance of three-years-old and the self-sufficiency of four. School doesn’t start for another month here, so she wanders our tiny apartment looking for something new to occupy all this empty time. She’s good at relocating piles of toys, but not much else interests her these days; the August haze has sucked away her usual creativity. School will be so good for her with its structure and friendship and bright colorful learning, but damn. Another month?! Will we make it that long cooped up with our overworked fans and piles of toys? She has come to understand perfectly what “Give me a minute” means, and this swallows me in guilt, chomps through what little energy I have, belches up a mangled exoskeleton of my best mothering intentions.

This is the time of year when I decide enough with the hot weather already. Yes, I know it was basically yesterday when I was shivering in bed under piles of February blankets, begging summer to get here STAT, but we’re in need of some cool, swirly breezes. Invigoration. Just a touch of minty-fresh chill, and I think I’ll be able to see that chimney top again, one of those perfectly crooked pipes atop an enchanting blue Parisian roof, with my petty troubles melting away like lemon drops above.

13Aug

A Tale of Two Cities

The first two days of vacation never count, at least for me. We emerge from our car sticky and discombobulated (not to mention caked in vomit and puréed peas), and at least a full 36 hours are needed for the sediment to settle. Once the clean towels have been found, the fridge stocked, and everyone’s shoes lined up serenely beside the door, the real vacation starts. And here it is, piecemeal (one post at a time, for now).

Sunday, August 10: Day 3 of Vacation

I’m fascinated by the cobblestones and weathered Latin inscriptions in our current hometown, the hairpin roads veering sharply upward to spy on vast hills dotted with olive groves and pieces of castle. We live in Italy’s oldest city—Etruscan history is around ever corner—and the view takes my breath away. Still, I’ve never felt quite as settled there as I do here in Mestre, my husband’s hometown. The city can boast no quaint hillside beauty as it sprawls from Venice into the Po Valley, but it is alive in a way that the older cities have forgotten.

Bicycles! They roam the streets carrying old ladies in cotton dresses, little girls with pigtails flying furiously, beaming dads with their sons strapped behind, couples holding hands, entire extended families out for a joy ride. Herds of bicycles cluster around the entrances to grocery stores, grazing warm pavement as happily as ever metal and rubber could. Bicycles have their own crosswalks here, their own parking spots, and their own traffic jams. I haven’t ridden a bike in ages—nobody does in our city, for good reason—so an evening ride with Dan and the girls is an immense pleasure.

We set off just as the air begins to cool. At first, we are mirages of sweat and insect repellent, wobbling down the street as we slap at mosquitoes and scratch fresh welts between fingers and behind ears (how do they know?) But intoxication sets in soon. We pedal faster until our faces are bright with wind and sunset, ringing our bells because why not? Churches and pharmacies fly by, and long, colorful streets canopied with trees—giant symphonies of trees, overwhelming green, trees that swell my heart to bursting after a year of scrubby olive groves. A stop at the neighborhood gelateria is compulsory, and within seconds there is chocolate in cones, on fingers, and, of course, dripping off delighted little chins.

We ease our bikes back down the street, past the carabinieri (Italy’s version of military police) fingering their machine guns which are pointed straight at us as they call “Ciao!” with huge smiles. Past the enormous park with its duck ponds and soccer courts and happy memories of Dan and I as newlyweds, riding through enchanted paths at night. Past houses and houses, all perfectly Italian in gorgeous muted colors and tiled balconies spilling over with flowers. Then back to the house we’re staying at that we both kind of wish were home.

[More to come. Don’t touch that dial…]

4Aug

Homeiversary

Snapshots of a late morning walk:

There are always 60-year-old women roaming near the pharmacy as if on patrol. They each have a bag with the familiar green plus sign stamped on the side, and they eagerly show the contents to each other: hemorrhoid medicine, cellulite cream, bunion ointment, pills for a number of increasingly shocking maladies. They lift up their breezy shift dresses to show off injuries amid sympathetic tsk tsks. Many times, the conversation prompts a tirade against doctors or a medical horror story that happened to a friend of a friend of their cousin’s son’s hairstylist (or both!), and a glorious time is had by all. By noon, the patrol is over; the women separate to shop for support bras in the nearby merceria or pick up a loaf of bread for lunch, armed comfortably with medicine and gossip alike.

A large group of young teenagers is clumped around, on, and occasionally under a row of scooters in my parking lot. This is their social epicenter, their designated spot on earth to discuss trivial things with great importance until they grow wrinkled enough do the same in smoky wood-paneled bars. One of the teenagers has brought a car (his mother’s?), and the prettiest girls of the group keep climbing in and out to appreciate the leather against their long tanned legs. (The driver simply appreciates the legs.) The younger teens who are not cool enough to associate with cars or long tanned legs stand around their scooters. They are joking constantly, by the looks of it, or at least making a concerted effort to have fun. A few of them have lollipops, which they try to pass off as cigarettes. They look hopelessly young, peach-fuzzed babies with scooter licenses and budding opinions of the world.

The parks are deserted today except for a few hyperactive pigeons. I don’t know if this is because August is national vacation month or if it simply too hot this morning for children to be allowed outside (they might sweat!), but the swings hang limp and sizzling and forgotten. In one month, these little neighborhood playgrounds will be swarming with babies in strollers, grubby toddlers trying their hardest to eat the gravel, and caregivers trying their hardest to leave the gravel where it belongs. The boisterous older children that are usually here clambering up slides or jumping off see-saws will be in classrooms learning how to become useful members of society. These parks will sparkle with tiny voices, and mornings will cool into an easy rhythm once again.

***

One year ago yesterday, we arrived in Italy. One year ago today, we were exploring our new niche in the world—what doorways in this lovely neighborhood led to produce or ice cream or matches or clothes. I have a hard time believing we’ve been here a year, but the differences are obvious when I let myself see them. For example, I step out of the house with purpose now, or at least little purposes arranged along my route. My feet know where to go for baby formula, for blood tests, for phone cards, and I am so grateful to be out of the haze of unknowing. Also, and more significantly, I understand almost everything people say to me now—80% from this person, 98% from that. (Occasionally 2%, but that’s usually a matter of the speaker’s dialect and/or number of teeth. Or, uh, the amount of sleep I got the night before.) I have not sat down to study Italian since our first month here, but the language has crept into my consciousness little by little until I suddenly realize my vocabulary has doubled. Maybe tripled. I am so relieved to be able to communicate; it feels like power and friendship and one step closer to fitting in.

I can think of so many more ways that I wish I were taking advantage of this sunny Umbrian life, but that will come in time I think. We’ve had a lot on our plates this last year, what with moving in and scavenging for documents and having babies and all, but I’m slowly starting to find my footing here. Next year will seem more natural, as will the year after that, and who knows? Maybe one day I’ll wake up and realize I’m one of those 60-year-old women chatting animatedly outside the pharmacy. (Though I promise you now, I will never show you the contents of my bag.)

© Copyright 2019, all rights reserved.
Site powered by Training Lot.