This:
is my culinary art supply cabinet.
I tend to bake on the spur of the moment, and I love having a variety of ingredients always standing at attention. For instance, this morning? After waking up from a long insomniac night with a head being clenched in fists of misery, I could whip up some warm molassesey ginger crinkles for breakfast.
Dear crush,
Perhaps it’s because I never know what to expect when you invite me on a date. You’ve taken me to IMAX and waterfalls, Alligator Alley and concerts, ski slopes and dinner, and you never let on what we’re doing until the last possible moment. (I never catch on either, thanks to my gullibility trusting nature and disinclination toward geography.) Last Monday’s date night involved aperitivi in a little downtown bar and then the impossible—“The Dark Knight,” in English, in a large-screen theater. With box seats. You realize I can die a happy woman now, right?
Perhaps it’s because the next morning, while I was burrowed under the covers effectively not helping you get the girls dressed, you were making me a picture-perfect cappuccino… which you then brought to me in bed. I fully commend you for rising to the challenge and finding a way to wake me without incurring any wrath whatsoever. In fact, I can’t think of a lovelier start to a day than coffee with a heaping spoonful of lovin’.
Perhaps it’s because you suspected one day last week had been a little gloomy and brought me home a pot of cheery orange! flowers wrapped in a cheery orange! bow. Of all the people in the world, including myself, you know best how I tick. Perhaps it’s because, even though we’re leaning slightly in different directions about the presidential election, we can still die laughing together at SNL’s political sketches. I’m so glad to share my weird particular sense of humor with you. Perhaps it’s because you encourage me relentlessly until I go completely sane and have a fabulous day.
Perhaps all of the above are why I find myself loving you a smidgen or two. You never know.
XOXO,
Your secret admirer
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…]
I had been hoping that I shared a birthday with someone really fantastically cool, like Sean Connery or Chuck Norris. So when my Google search said “No one else EVER IN HISTORY shares a birthday with you, SUCKER!” I understandably felt all cold and alone in this world. Until I remembered Dooce. Who just happens to be really fantastically cool.
So happy birthday to Dooce and myself. Instead of blowing out candles for a wish this year (and rooting for either a wild mustang! or a baby sister! like I used to), I’m writing my own wish list for this year—little and big things I’d love to do before my next birthday rolls around. It’s like I’m growing up or something…
~ Stay out far too late one night just to enjoy
~ Make butterscotch pudding from scratch
~ Learn one beautiful piano piece well enough to play by memory
~ Submit at least ten short items for publication
~ Learn enough Italian to take myself to the dentist
~ Go dancing
~ Write down the girls’ birth stories for them
~ Conquer my fear of ski lifts once and for all
~ Finish my book
~ Help someone through a difficult situation
~ Run around the entire Wii Fit island without giving up
~ Earn at least $1 on my own
~ Have an adventure
~ Learn all the lyrics to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” (so I don’t have to keep filling in “da da das” when I sing it to Sophie before bed)
~ Get in touch with old friends
~ Venture into an erboristeria (colorful and intimidating Italian herb shops)
~ Wake up early without wanting to injure someone
~ Roll sushi with Dan
~ Start college funds for the girls
~ Try a new flavor of ice cream
~ Walk from our house to the very top of downtown
~ Experiment with a new hairstyle (any suggestions?)
~ Create a new holiday tradition
~ Make an acquaintance my friend
~ Buy a canvas and paint it
~ Skip with Natalie in the rain
~ Rethink an opinion
~ Send a kind letter to someone who deserves it
Now for some birthday gelato… (for breakfast, because I’m not that grown up yet)
Tension:
Ease:
C’est la vie, non?
This July, I’m digging:
Sophie’s chubby legs, round and kissable, her skin sensitive like her mother’s but happiest barefoot anyway.
Dan’s magical summer-green mojitos… especially watching him smash the limes with sugar and mint freshly picked from our balcony. (But especially-especially drinking them…)
Wearing my favorite extra-long jeans with silver ballet flats, strappy black stilettos, and $1 Old Navy flip-flops in a row.
Free jazz, funk, and swing concerts downtown, turned up LOUD to fill the whole park with colorful instruments and spontaneous booty-shaking.
Perfectly still afternoon naps, the fan swirling sunbeams in lazy circles around the bedroom.
Discovering my super-hula hoop powers on Wii Fit (watch out, world!).
Dinner guests at last (after a long self-imposed hiatus) with easy conversation and easy smiles, kim-bab and chocolate stout cake and cold slurps of watermelon.
Pony tails every day, no apologies.
“Fitness” berry blend, a.k.a gorgeous purple juice infused with caffeine—my groovy summer alternative to coffee.
The Polyphonic Spree music videos radiating ridiculous, happy energy (check out “Lithium” if you’re a cheery type of Nirvana fan).
Nine (nine!) new flavors of Lip Smackers to be left in strategic spots around the house and loved to lip-smacking death by Natalie and me.
Wide open windows.
Growing up, I learned to hate the song “Count Your Blessings.” (Please tell me some of you are old-fashioned enough to know it too?)
Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.
(Lyrics by Johnson Oatman, a 19th century preacher who probably got beat up a lot as a kid)
No matter how many times I sang it, its birthday wish mantra never worked. The magic elixir of contrived thankfulness turned stale when I swallowed it, and nothing ever got better as a result.
—
Dan and I lay awake in bed far, far too late last night talking (a bad habit that’s always been too delightful to shake) about the life we could be living right now had we just accepted it. We wandered through shadowy conjectures of a big suburban house and a six-figure salary. Bulging pockets. Unlimited comfort. Dollar signs popping out of our eyes just like in cartoons. We have been so tempted some days to quit our grad-schooling, world-traveling teetertotter life and grab the easy one dangling very much within reach.
But no matter how beautiful the bait looks, we know we are happiest as free fish with the whole ocean to play in. We need adventure, he and I, even if it sometimes looks like instability. Money matters so much less to us than experience… though, admittedly, a lot of experiences are easier to come by with a fat wallet.
I’ve been skulking on the outskirts of panic lately, and it helps to keep all of this in mind. It is so easy to feel lost in a new culture, especially with talk of moving to a different city soon. Especially with quickly growing babies and quickly disappearing time. Especially with the kind of urgent, helpless inspiration my brain manufactures without warning. Especially when unexpected expenses converge like thunderheads over water and more water, no dry land in sight. It’s the price of diving headlong into the ocean.
So I beat myself over the head with logic and lecture myself with my own beliefs. Keep everything in perspective… and This will all be worth it some day… But for all the mental haranguing I do to keep myself on track, the only thing that truly brings me out of dark moods is thankfulness—spontaneous and unplannable. It happened today when the girls woke up from their naps together with that gorgeous, sleepy glow of afternoon dreams. I looked at their faces, and simple as that, I was floating. To be able to know these vibrant little people, to be able to kiss their cheeks and read them bedtime stories and add beauty to their eternal souls was like a living in a sudden song. Unexplainable joy.
That’s how thankfulness got me out of our tightly-walled house and into the sunshine today. The girls and I had to go out for a necessary purchase—strawberry gelato with two spoons—and a playground date. We really had no choice but to have a perfect, panic-free evening once I realized how ridiculously, extravagantly rich we are together.
Of course, later came a particularly fussy bathtime and dirty dishes and the dull thud of reality and the fear that everything good about my day was horribly cliché…
But if sunwarmed giggles with these two and overwhelming lightheartedness become cliché for me, I will have more to appreciate than Uncle Moneybags or even Johnson Oatman himself could ever count.
—-
By the way, and on a completely different topic, I wish everyone in the world could get a chance to read this.
