... because a seasonally misinformed mosquito had stung all the parts of her body peeking out from underneath the bedcovers - hand, shoulder, neck, face - causing her fingers to swell so much that she had to run cold water over them to get her rings off. At four in the morning. Unfair. Now my eyelid is twitching from fatigue.
Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.
The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.
* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.
In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.
So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.
28 October 2008
In Which She Awakes at Four in the Morning
... because a seasonally misinformed mosquito had stung all the parts of her body peeking out from underneath the bedcovers - hand, shoulder, neck, face - causing her fingers to swell so much that she had to run cold water over them to get her rings off. At four in the morning. Unfair. Now my eyelid is twitching from fatigue.
Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.
The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.
* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.
In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.
So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.
Here's a piece of current Italian culture of which I feel an actual part: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/news/news-detailed.asp?newsid=11316 . The boys' school is going on strike, uno sciopero (shoh-pear-OH), this Thursday, so all the working parents in the neighborhood are scrambling to make plans. One of mine will go to his grandmother while the other stays at home with the housekeeper, so I'll still have my morning free. Then we'll have pizza lunch with mom, then the old babysitter will come say goodbye because she's leaving next week for Berlin (we already have plans to go visit her around Easter, hurrah!), then we commence the normal Thursday schedule of taking the bus to bring F-- to tennis, playing on the inflatable slide, coming home to an empty house to eat dinner in three while the parents tango. While we wait in the schoolyard for the kids' release I've talked with many of the mothers about this school problem, also read about it in the newspaper, heard about it on the radio and television, and it's cool to know that this little elementary school is one of the tons of schools - up to the universities, in some cities - all over Italy joining to protest the new laws.
The weather has changed. The leaves are yellow, amber, and falling, and it's begun to rain. All of my pants are too long, and I only have one sweatshirt with a hood, so Mom, I might take you up on that Amex mini-spree that I never took! It's hard for me to get up the energy to leave the house when all this gloom makes me want to read all morning - which I could very well do, if I wanted to - but I think I balance my time fairly well between puttering around the house, and getting oot and aboot. Today I spent my bonus* on a card for ten visits to P--'s gym, which I plan to use to go to ex-ballerina Giorgia's Wednesday morning tone-up class, and just last week I found a nearby cafe that will be My Place, run by two dark-haired chicks in their late twenties whose warm smiles and cheery chatter make it fun to sit against the far corner and watch the morning rush.
* A few weekends ago, the couple for whom I work took a weekend vacation to London, and left me for three days with their boys. They called in the troops - two aunts, a grandma - but nevertheless it was scary to know that I alone was in charge of two little boys for 72 whole hours! The one to feed them, clothe them, get them to Boy Scouts and to school on time, with the right equipment, etcetera, not to mention keep them quasi-entertained, and keep them from killing each other. For these three days I received a week's extra pay, which was awesome, but I also think I cut at least sixteen months off of my life.
In these days I'm feeling lethargic, like I eat too much pasta and don't walk downtown as often as I initially did. The Italian class was too easy for me, so I'm back to square one in terms of learning to speak the language: I drop in to visit P--'s mother at her home and let her make coffee for me, secretly pretending that she is my own wizened, complaining, foreign grandmother; strike up banal conversations with other cafe dwellers, about the headlines or the weather; ask strangers for the definition of an unknown word in my Italian book (currently "Il Piccolo Principe") or newspaper, and answer the questions that naturally follow, like where I'm from and what I'm doing here. It's not a classroom, but it works.
So... my employers have offered me an incentive to stay in Torino longer than my prescribed year -- my own apartment, so I don't have to live with them, and fewer hours (only after school, no work in the mornings). At times it sounds like a manageable situation, but I keep coming back to the gut feeling that the Bay Area wants me to come back, and that I want to come back to the Bay. To my family and friends, and a chance to get reacquainted with the city I basically left in 2004. This situation is cool, and I know I'll miss living here, hearing and speaking Italian, etc, but I don't think I'm ready to actually begin a life in another country, and that's exactly what I'd be doing.
12 October 2008
In Which An Old Friend Comes To Visit
Turin, Piedmont, Italy
Doug, one of my dearest friends from the first weeks of high school, came to stay in Turin for three days. Only a few days before his arrival, something big and terrible hit me square in the gut, rendering me lethargic and hopeless: homesickness, like I'd never seen before. This wasn't the nostalgia I felt at the end of high school, the sixes and sevens I felt when I studied abroad, nor the identity crisis I felt when I moved to Colorado for college. This was a pure, opaque longing for my home, for my own bed in a sunny room in Berkeley, California; for my mother's voice, my father's embrace, and familiar footsteps in the other room; for a panoramic view from Arlington Boulevard, and a 510 area code. It was the realisation that, for all my romantic desire to live abroad and meet the world, I actually do belong in the Bay Area among my family and friends. This realisation manifested itself into nausea, loss of appetite, and extreme fatigue. I cried in the shower, and at night. Being with the kids got increasingly difficult, and after two days with no sleep I thought it would never get better.
Then Doug showed up on a night train from Milan, my tall, solid, American friend with sturdy walking boots, deep voice, square jaw, and glimmering cache of shared memories. He expected nothing more from me than a panoramic view from one of the city's highest spots (the tippy top of the Mole Antonellia/National Cinema Museum) and as many, or few, hours I could spare from my normal work schedule. We ventured into one of Torino's "Irish Pubs" (a.k.a. brewery for English-speaking tourists) for a couple of pints of beer and lots of gossip about high school friends. We hugged a lot, walked a lot, as I showed him the city I'm trying to call my own. And in the courtyard of a palace, despite the passage of more than one elderly tour group, he shouldered the weight of my heartache just long enough for me to catch my breath and muster up the strength to go on. All I needed, it seemed, was someone who knew me well to remind me that this coming here to Torino so soon after graduation wasn't necessarily a bad decision for which I should blame myself, but a hard decision. Choosing to do something difficult doesn't mean that I made a bad choice. He reminded me of some of the other hard things I've done in my life, and asked me to tell him about why I wanted to do it in the first place. Aren't I learning a lot about myself, he asked, about the Italian culture and language? Aren't I living with a family that indeed cares about me, and using skype and email to keep in touch with the ones across the world? Yes, wiping away my tears, yes, I'm doing all of that. It just feels like forever, I said, feeling small. It's just hard sometimes. And we hugged again and again until I sent him off on a train towards Florence with a little brown paper bag lunch. The day he left, I slept all night for the first time in five days. I could breathe again. Three days later marked four months, one third of a year, since I had landed in Torino, and the remaining eight that had looked so incredibly long seemed briefer.
Doug, one of my dearest friends from the first weeks of high school, came to stay in Turin for three days. Only a few days before his arrival, something big and terrible hit me square in the gut, rendering me lethargic and hopeless: homesickness, like I'd never seen before. This wasn't the nostalgia I felt at the end of high school, the sixes and sevens I felt when I studied abroad, nor the identity crisis I felt when I moved to Colorado for college. This was a pure, opaque longing for my home, for my own bed in a sunny room in Berkeley, California; for my mother's voice, my father's embrace, and familiar footsteps in the other room; for a panoramic view from Arlington Boulevard, and a 510 area code. It was the realisation that, for all my romantic desire to live abroad and meet the world, I actually do belong in the Bay Area among my family and friends. This realisation manifested itself into nausea, loss of appetite, and extreme fatigue. I cried in the shower, and at night. Being with the kids got increasingly difficult, and after two days with no sleep I thought it would never get better.
Then Doug showed up on a night train from Milan, my tall, solid, American friend with sturdy walking boots, deep voice, square jaw, and glimmering cache of shared memories. He expected nothing more from me than a panoramic view from one of the city's highest spots (the tippy top of the Mole Antonellia/National Cinema Museum) and as many, or few, hours I could spare from my normal work schedule. We ventured into one of Torino's "Irish Pubs" (a.k.a. brewery for English-speaking tourists) for a couple of pints of beer and lots of gossip about high school friends. We hugged a lot, walked a lot, as I showed him the city I'm trying to call my own. And in the courtyard of a palace, despite the passage of more than one elderly tour group, he shouldered the weight of my heartache just long enough for me to catch my breath and muster up the strength to go on. All I needed, it seemed, was someone who knew me well to remind me that this coming here to Torino so soon after graduation wasn't necessarily a bad decision for which I should blame myself, but a hard decision. Choosing to do something difficult doesn't mean that I made a bad choice. He reminded me of some of the other hard things I've done in my life, and asked me to tell him about why I wanted to do it in the first place. Aren't I learning a lot about myself, he asked, about the Italian culture and language? Aren't I living with a family that indeed cares about me, and using skype and email to keep in touch with the ones across the world? Yes, wiping away my tears, yes, I'm doing all of that. It just feels like forever, I said, feeling small. It's just hard sometimes. And we hugged again and again until I sent him off on a train towards Florence with a little brown paper bag lunch. The day he left, I slept all night for the first time in five days. I could breathe again. Three days later marked four months, one third of a year, since I had landed in Torino, and the remaining eight that had looked so incredibly long seemed briefer.
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