Mom's Italian "Home"

Italy is incredibly beautiful - at least where we've 
traveled throughout Tuscany and Umbria, the hilltop towns are backdrops to vineyards and olive groves (which luckily for us are being harvested as we speak.)  The skies are bluer than blue and we've enjoyed brilliant sun everyday.  The flowers still in bloom this late in October are brilliant in doorways and balconies, and the caregivers tidying their yards are evident as we drive through the small towns.  

Children seem absent unless we manage to be where they are as the afternoon break occurs.  One day a large group descended upon our "castle" for the afternoon and managed to leave us with a teen-age fix for two weeks.  Other than that our "children" appear with their parents for overnights and weekends and generally are smaller than school-age.  There's a chestnut tree threatening to bop us on the bean pretty regularly

 and one group of kids entertained themselves unceasingly by collecting the nuts and carrying them to the picnic table and arranging them.  One morning we found that in the night, one of them had fashioned their name, "ANTONIA" and a

 smiley face out of the nuts.  

No one seems to speak any English, so we settle for "Buon giorno, Buona sera, Buona notte, tutto bene, and Grazie."  It is so weird that we are the strangers; in my life I've never felt so much like the outsider.

At Mass on Sunday, in a positively gorgeous cathedral in Orvieto (which had taken 300 years to build), we were completely excluded by our lack

 of Italian.  Not an announcement; not an inkling of the reading's meaning; no "Welcome to non-Italian speaking worshipers;"  So we were satisfied with the fact that the Allies chose to spare this church from their bombings and that the faithful chose to visit by the busloads.  Pretty heady stuff.  

Dad's Notes

Keys in Every Door

I see keys in doors everywhere: keys in dresser drawers; keys in armoire doors; keys in storage doors. Sometimes the keys take the place of a doorknob.  In Montepulicano, I even see keys in shop doors, closed for siesta.

I asked Signorina Sabina, our wine tour guide, about this practice.  She said, “it depends where you are.  Si, in the small hill towns of Tuscany, but not in Napoli, where the Sicilian Mafia have a stronghold.”

The Mystical 15

What’s with this 15 minute time limit? For the toilette, it is 50 cents for 15 minutes. To park our car, it’s 25 cents for 15 minutes. In the sauna, an hourglass reads 15 minutes.  We are in a gourmet café in Firenze and four men in suits with attaché cases in hand with a woman who orders for them “lunch”: 4 finger pannis, 2 martinis, and 2 red wines. While still standing with their free hand, they inhaled their sandwiches, downed the martinis and wine, and leave, time 15 minutes!

I suppose the optimum time for Italians to do anything is 15 minutes, even amore.

Chewing the Fat

Chewing the fat is never so good as when in Italy.  I discovered this when I ordered my first bistecca, steak.

The Tuscan cut of beef, 3-5 centimeters thick, leaves the fat with the lean on the T-bone.  No salt, it makes it too tough, no olive oil, the fat is on the meat. They cook the meat on 3 sides; the lean is seared like ahi tuna, with a warm pink center.  The fat becomes like grizzle, capturing the flavor of the meet.  So when in Italy, never throw the dog the bone.

Beauty and the “S” curve

The Italian men have picked up on Botticelli’s fantasy with the “S” curve, translate, beautiful women.  Like bobble heads they turn to look at every woman passes by.  It was most evident when Becca and I were walking up the Via Roma (every town must have one) in Siena.

Down comes a man in the arms of his wife or girlfriend, and turns to look at Becca.  I half expected the woman to bop him on the head, but no, she turns also and looks at what Becca is wearing.  They both continue on, happy at what they saw.

Dad's Version of our Trip to the Lavaggio

Trip to the Lavaggio (Laundromat)

We have been in Tuscany for two weeks now and our clothes are beginning to stand up. They smell like the farms below us where prosciutto comes from. I tell Becca I saw a laundermat to the north of us; she thinks it’s south.

She acquiesces to me and heads north. No such luck. She then takes control and we head south. Sighting a Euro Spin, she triumphantly pulls in. Nope, just a grocery store.

We have passed on this trip a view auto lavaggios and even debated if it was possible to do our laundry in a car wash: 4 quarters for a soapy-spray, 4 quarters for a rinse, what about drying? Debate ended.

Maura finally takes charge and says try the big “I”, translation Toursite Informatione. So I walk in and ask the young lady, “aqua lavaggio?” and pull on my sleeve. She says, “Si,” and circles a place on the map. We drive there only to find a dry-cleaners, closed for siesta. We now look at the map and find ads along the boarder; one shows a launderette with its address. We drive there and find it’s called Lava Piu, translation “Wash Peeu.” BINGO!

The day was not a total loss, we find a truckers’ restaurante (Becca is up in arms with my description –“It was not a truck stop Daaaaddddd, it was a nice restaurant that happened to have 6 large semi-trucks in the parking lot.”) We have since adopted it as our place for great food, cheap prices, and awesome tiramisu. So much for the macho, Italian, truck drivers –tiramisu?

Dad's End Time in Firenze

The End Time in Firenze

Our final day in Florence was divided between Jean’s “Walking Tour A”: The Baptistery and the Duomo and “Walking Tour C”: the Bargello (Museo Nazionale) which housed many of the sculpted works of Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, and four different David’s. Standing on the steps of the Duomo between the 3-D sculpted bronze paneled doors of the Baptistery and the huge white-green-pink marble façade of the cathedral gives one the sense of the majesty and mystery of the medieval man’s god and the courage and confidence the Florentine’s had in themselves, more about this later.

Becca and I decided to see the cathedral from above, climbing to the top of the dome, some 464 steps, 330 feet high. The first half of the climb took us up to a circular landing inside the church, which is the base for both the inner and outer dome. Looking down at the apse (those of you who do crossword puzzles should recognize that word) with the alter in the center we see teeny-tiny people, like they had just fallen through the rabbit hole. Looking up on the inside of the inner dome we see painted the dualistic belief in Heaven above with a radiant Christ in judgment and Hell below with Satan torturing and devouring the damned.

Looking at these images one would want to correct any corruption in one’s soul quickly. A death bed conversation may not cut it.

We continue our climb on top of the inner dome and at its center spiral up and out on to the dome itself. What an AWE-FILLED view, looking across the roof tops past the many church and piazzas out into the hilly countryside with row upon row of vineyards and olive groves.

San Lorenzo Market-The Italian merchants like you to try whatever you want before you buy. You can actually make a lunch out of all the free tasting. We stopped to taste balsamic vinegar, aged 12 years that you could die for, so tart and sweet you could top off your ice cream with it. I asked, “Quanto costa??” And hearing the price, I decided to live another day instead.

As we leave Florence, I am amazed at the men and women of the Renaissance, their confidence and courage to do great things. They start a cathedral without the knowledge, nor technology to finish it, leaving a 140 foot hole in the church for the better part of a century until someone could do the math to hold the scaffolding to complete the dome.

Let me finish this on a political note: all that we saw in Florence was just not done by the Pope and the church, the D’Medici’s and the nobility, but also by Joe the Stone Carver, Joe the Mason, Joe the Weaver, and Joe the Potterer. They did so by forming guilds, translate, unionizing, and in solidarity they created a middle class, sharing in the wealth and the power and the glory. I could never understand the concept or desire for small government; they can only give us small steps for mankind. It’s a larger government that enables us to create a renaissance; this is what our taxes pay for. I believe by paying my taxes I am able to still change the world. Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes is quoted as saying, “I like paying taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”