Family Tides

    Often people - friends, acquaintances, shopkeepers, the guy on the phone line from Milan pitching a new internet provider - ask me how I like living here. "Here" being Italy in general and/or my village of Castiglione Messer Raimondo specifically. I love it. For the most part. The downsides many transplants cite - unwieldy bureaucracy, anarchic driving, the inability to get things done in a hurry - are, for me, like the rollers I navigated when sea kayaking. You learn to stay loose, remain calm, paddle effectively through them, and, at times, lean into them. 

Three of My Favorite Things (Dog optional)

    There ARE some things I miss. Libraries, for instance. Oh! The fortune I spend on books! Easy access to movie theaters where I can watch a film in English. Being able to fluidly complain about lousy customer service. Bagels! Is there anything like a Brooklyn bagel? But the lack of these is manageable. Yes, books are expensive- but I can at least order them online whenever I want. I can stream movies on Amazon Prime (don't hate me!); expressing dissatisfaction with gestures and tone of voice alone is very effective; flakey croissants/cornetti can make up for bagel deprivation. The one thing that is not easily reconcilable is the distance from my family. 

    My Italian neighbor, Manola, told me that "Italians can't understand how you can live so far away from your family." I can't understand it, either. I had no idea that this kind of distance would weigh on me so heavily, especially since my children already all lived a fair distance from me before the move.         The impact whacked me upside the head this past Christmas. I saw photos of my 3 1/2 year old granddaughter running gleefully through Christmas displays, gushing over lighting and decorations and music and toys shouting "Look at all the Christmas! There's so much Christmas! Come look, everybody - look at all the Christmas!" 

" So much Christmas!"

      I walked into a holiday store shortly after to buy a tiny string of lights to hopefully add festiveness to my balcony. Alone. The same kind of display of Christmas cheer made me cry. For the third year in a row, I couldn't share any of it with my extended family. 

     Humans are estimated to be 60 - 70% water. I think we all float about in the same oceanic flow, feeling the effects of its movement to varying degrees. For families - it goes further. We're our own system of waterways, somehow interdependent rivers, inlets, estuaries, and tidal basins. We feel each others inner currents instinctively. Even at a distance. 

     Two years ago I visited my youngest child in California for the first time since moving here. We had a lovely visit, but it left me with uneasy currents rippling inside me. Something wasn't right. A month later, she was in crisis. A months-long GoFundMe campaign was required to see her through, during which the ebb and flow of both our emotions were high and strong. When the phone rings, I always sense when it is her calling. 

Daughter and Comfort Kitty

    Last month granddaughter was in a continual state of alarm after a giant splinter entered her hand. No one could touch the hand. She held it palm up and away from anything and everything for weeks. The empathy I felt was painful. A high tide that prevented me from alighting on anything solid beneath. That tide didn't recede until my daughter sent a photo of a tiny hand, fresh pink skin where the dark slash of a wood chip had been. 

     Then there is my oldest, my son. Quiet. Often hidden. Matter-of-fact. His daily responsibilities to his household full of kids, dogs, a cat, birds, and coy fish are astronomical. He doesn't talk about them much, but even with the occasional text I can feel a heavy stone dropping into the deepest part of me, sending ripples of worry that echo off the shores of my being. The rebounding effect doesn't abate until I can see him in a Facetime call, or in a photo in which he looks healthy and the edge of tension has left his voice. 

    Alpha-gal syndrome. A little known condition caused by a tick bite. Only a few months ago my oldest daughter was diagnosed with it. She can become very ill - or die - from eating red meat or any dairy. To a foodie and passionate cook like her, it was a devastating diagnosis. The best I could do to try to calm the whirlpool of emotions, was send her a vegetarian cookbook. 

Oldest Daughter as Exhausted Mom. 

This was taken before I moved. She's no stranger to difficulties...and managing them. Months of sleepless nights with a colicky infant, yet she still managed to organized a family presence at my and my husband's wedding. 

    The effects of our interconnectedness sometimes ebb. But, like tides, they return to exert their pull.      Two days ago, the youngest, who I thought was well past crisis mode, texted me: "Mom, call me. I have to talk to you." The tide threatened to inundate me until I could get through to her on a video call. Her car had broken down and left her stranded on a highway. In California. 6,000 miles away. She was able to talk through her panic - her own high tide - until she was able to calmly ascertain who comprised her support system. Help came. Waters calmed. But the realization that smooth seas were still not in her itinerary was (still is) unsettling. 

     These currents are often gentle, but so easily stirred. I feel them rocking inside constantly. The awareness of our distance, of my limited ability to rush to help, to spontaneously be there for celebration or crisis, keeps them in motion. So I ebb and flow with my love of being here, sometimes squirrely and confused waves crashing into one another within me. Do I love being here? Yes, absolutely. And no.

Last Photo of All the Family Together... Wedding Day, December, 2021. 

Boxes sitting in Garage Forlornly

 Anniversary of a Purge: What Price A Future?

    Almost exactly 3 years ago, a cavernous box truck with NY plates pulled into the driveway of our suburban Pennsylvania home. Two men in faded Carhart work gear, faces looking worn and dispassionate, loaded  40 boxes of the sole possessions we'd chosen to remain in our lives. The truck swallowed them up with alarming speed and ease. These were destined for an anonymous container vessel sailing to an unknown port to be delivered by a stranger to our home in Italy. Sometime in June. Or July. Or September. Or...maybe sometime later. Casa da Carmine, my temporary home for 12 years, would now be my permanent residence. 

Loading before Sending it Off

    The Pennsylvania house was 2,500 square feet of living space, with a basement covering the its entire footprint. It was chock-a-block full to the gills with furniture, clothing (vintage and otherwise), outdoor sports equipment, workout equipment and gear, books and more books, kitchen gadgets, recording apparatus, electronics, boxes of photos and slides, vinyl albums crammed beneath an old turntable, performance paraphernalia like juggling clubs, stilts, masks, show props, costumes, teaching aids from a 26-year long career, old children's toys, artwork framed and patiently waiting to be framed for years, scripts (torn and annotated), my father's Hess truck collection, my mother's Precious Moments collection, and crates of my children's collections of everything they wanted to keep - but not in their own spaces. This melange of stuff gathered over 30 years of myriad phases of our lives we had to whittle down to fit in a space of about 1,500 square feet. Much of it already occupied with12 summer's worth of gathered necessities. 

    We had decided in July of the previous year to make the move. So, 9 months earlier, as soon as I returned from my summer of hosting guests at Casa da Carmine, the purge began. And the agony. What criteria do you use to decide which pieces of your life, which tangible memories to toss, sell, or give away? Which things might you need to see and hold in the coming years if your mind starts fading? I had an uncle who was severely diabetic but refused to adhere to his prescribed dietary regime. He kept having to have necrotic bits of himself cut away over time until there was little left of his old self. This paring down felt like a psychic version of that. 

    I would sit on the floor of my office room, day after day, surrounded by items from the category of the moment - work, photos, children's toys, etc. - and whip out the psychic scalpel. Did I need the collection of 15 Commedia dell' Arte character masks I'd used in classes and productions over the life of my career? Only one made the cut - a leather one hand crafted by my Italian theater teacher. The rest I donated to a theater with which I'd often worked. We tried to repurpose as much as we could. Gregg gave his pull down lat machine and weight bench to a friend's alternative school. I gave my sewing machine, set pieces, and scenery to a college theater department. A computer, printer, and office supplies were donated to a start up organization supporting LGBTQ+ youth. Pieces of fabric I gifted to a friend whose hobby was creating purses and clothing from used materials. 

Donated. Wasn't Leather

Sorting photos

     Knowing our stuff would be put to good use made the slice and dice less painful. But what if no one wanted it? What if those things that were so precious to you were dismissed by would be new owners? Sometimes quite cavalierly.  Ok. On to the sacred cows of resale: Holy Craig's list, Sacrificial Facebook Marketplace. Our House of Redemption Consignment Shops. Yet...how do you put a price on things that are burrowed deeply into your personal history? 

    My Beatles' dolls? Can I be reimbursed for the memory of my father driving 5 screaming adolescents to their Shea Stadium concert? 

They didn't make the cut; I sold them

    The Hess trucks? What compensation is there for the look of pride on my father's face when they were displayed at his retirement home?

    How about the mini paddle my husband bought for his son for their first canoe trip together?

    Or a daughter's high school chorus trophy award? 

My daughter didn't want it. Only Photo Remains

    

    As the weeks passed and the date of that phantom truck's arrival grew nearer, we knew that, like my uncle's surgeon, we had to become more ruthless with that scalpel if we wanted the new life.

Daughter's Cover art for School Play. She didn't want this, either. 

Last of the Performance Gear

    Carsful of items went to reuse-it shops. Junkluggers truck drivers became new best friends. We borrowed extra trash bins for the weekly garbage collection. I didn't have much time for nostalgia. But my husband lost 20 pounds and developed severe insomnia from the weight of all that deciding. This idea of moving to Italy began to feel like having entered a relationship with a greedy, insatiable lover. And you were stuck with them. Had we made a huge mistake?

    Three years on, writing this in the recently painted, cheery, yellow sitting room, I take stock. There are nostalgic items that made the cut: my college era award for a Shakespeare competition, the blanket my dad crocheted in a VA hospital during WWII; restored, framed photos of Gregg's parents dancing; my grandparents' and great-grandparents' wedding photos; a hand carved Mexican ceremonial mask. There are also new items that light up my soul: a tambourine painted with a couple in traditional Abruzzese dress; a local artist's pastel drawings of this town, a wooden framed mirror lined with hand painted ceramic tiles. There are the items that combine both worlds: pillows I made in PA and brought here to grace the couch bought at the nearby Mondo Convenienza, for example. The shoulder bag that that gifted friend made from my fabric and sent here. 

New and Old Combined

    There ARE items I regret jettisoning: my sea kayak. A promo poster signed by Marcel Marceau, personalized. OUCH. But over the 3 years since that truck vanished down our street, I've realized that things don't hold the pieces of your life together. The memories, the effect of the experiences that created those memories are what remain indelibly imbedded in your being. You can change locations but those always go with you. I'm glad, after all, to be here with all of them. My hope is that they never leave my consciousness.