Where do All the Old Men Go?

Yesterday, while waiting at the parruchiera of the brilliant Manola for color to overpower my ever more powerful grey hairs, I read an article in "Il Fino" a slim magazine devoted to life in the communities of the Fino valley. The Fino valley is the name given to the group of towns surrounding the Fino River. It's not much of a river, really. More like a stony gash in the lowest part of the hills surrounding it through which water sometimes flows. Apparently, water flowed abundantly enough in the last several hundred years to enable the existence of Arsita, Bisenti, Castellenti, Montefino, amd our own little village of Castiglione Messer Raimondo.
The article on which I alighted in order to give my brain an Italian language workout was entitled "Chiude l'Ultimo Barbiere di Castiglione".  It was about the closing of the barber shop of Belfino. He has operated his shop in the same location - a tiny, cave-like space carved in the tufa stone underneath the church steps - for 48 years, since 1968. He turned 83 in March and has said, "Basta!" He cannot keep up with the times. He regrets having to close. It has been a place to which men have come not only for a haircut, but because, in his own words,
"I was a bit psychologist, a bit friend, and a bit confidant. The old men chose my shop and are sad it is closing. Times change. But not habits. These men still want to have their hair cut as they did at one time - slowly, and in a familiar environment."
My grandfather, Carlo, was a barber, too. He closed his shop in Plainfield, NJ, when he, also could not keep up with the changes. People then were asking for Beatle cuts and 'Fro's and Carnaby Street chic. These were beyond his ken. So he, too, acquiesced to a shifting tide and moored his boat.
I wonder where the men who sat around his shop chatting, reading the local paper, or arguing went to? Where will the old men who frequent Belfino's shop go now? Not only for the haircuts that are ingrained into their identities, but for the company, the camaraderie, the comfort of familiar tradition?
Abruzzo is a region that hews to tradition more closely than any other area of Italy to which I have been. The rituals of life, the celebrations, the food, the music, all spring from the same deep, old, sturdy taproot from which their grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, and n
beyond have received life and around which they built their lives.

Candle Making

Antipasto at Ristorante Antica Loggia

The Church of San Donato, decorated for
The Festival of Its Namesake

The men still parade the statues of the Virgin Mary and Holy Infant on their shoulders, through narrow streets lit with candles, while the faithful process, chant, and pray in a delicate blend of Catholicism and paganism. The women still sit in front of doorways, knees wide to make a fabric bowl of their aprons as they shell fava beans and chitter away in the dialect I have yet to understand. People still debate, passionately, which maceleria has the best meat for arrosticini - the mutton grilled on skewers that is the pride of every Abruzzese holiday, group celebration, soccer day, or picnic. There are still shepherds in Campo Imperatore who graze herds through its vast, pristine fields to provide the source for this meat. People still communicate from balcony to street, perhaps before even thinking to text. Children run in the square with friends while teenagers flirt and laugh too loudly in their awkwardness and, yes, check their smart phones regularly. A woman will still take another woman's arm when passing her in the street inviting her to her house for un caffe'. Even if she is l'Americana or l'Americana's foreign guest. Men able to the railing at the far end of the bellevedere to gaze out over the Fino Valley, perhaps to ponder where all the water went.

 
                                        Musicians at Val Fino al Canto, the annual music festival in Arsita

These are all done with un-self conscious grace. There are no displays for tourists exhorting crowds following a raised umbrella and continuously adjusting their " whispers" to step up and buy goods. Organized tourism is finding its way into Abruzzo. I am grateful for that. This is an Italy that needs to be shared. It is an Italy that continually keeps its promise of being Italian, to offer what many visitors seek when they come here. It is an endangered Italy.
Belfino has said that he hopes someone younger will take over the shop. If  they do, he will give them all the equipment in the shop for free. I am hoping this happens. I am hoping the torch is passed. Otherwise, where will all the old men go?

Memoria da Carmine per Memorial Day

The last night my father, Carmine, whose first name graces this guesthouse and last name graces my Italian passport, spent on this earth, he bolted up ramrod straight in his wheelchair and blurted,

"You know what today is?"

It startled me. Bolting was no mean feat for someone in the final stages of mesothelioma. The energy and speed of his movement upended my concentration on the episode of "Judge Judy" we were watching, an activity we did so often it somnamulized me. All I could do was bark a clipped

"No, what?" 

"It's sixty years ago today I was shot."

Although I had seen the crater of scar tissue on the inside of my father's knee, he had never spoken about it. 

"You mean, when you were wounded in the army?"

"Yeah. In the Pacific. A sniper."

"Did it hurt?" was the first follow up that came to mind.

Carmine looked at me as though my marbles were spilling out of my head and rolling under the couch. 

"Did it hurt? It hurt like a sonofabitch!" 

I decided to ask something a little less reminiscent of a kindergarten show and tell.

"How did it happen?"

For the first time in the 55 years I'd known him, he told me.

He was on night patrol. On a Pacific Island - Sampei is the name I remember although I could be making that up because it sounds like something he said which I don't remember. He liked it there. It was tropical - warm. He liked warm weather, the warmer the better, a trait he passed on to me. He 

always wanted to go back when there was no war. After a turn-around to enable him to make another 

pass on his patrol path, he heard a shot, felt a sting "like a bad bee sting" in his leg, and fell to the 

ground.

"I screamed like hell. Two of my buddies ran out and dragged me back to cover."

"Then what?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Then I went home." 

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, 

"I was lucky. I don't know why he missed hitting me where he'd kill me. Too much sake, maybe. Got my buddy the night before. He died in my arms."

That was it. He went back to Judge Judy. 

The next day he was gone. The sniper - his disease - got him in the night.

  

This is my sixth Memorial Day in Italy. It is strange to be in a country in which it is a weekend like any other weekend. Especially a country which, for the better part of my father's army career, was on the opposite side of his army. I wonder how my grandfather felt sending four boys off to fight against the country of his birth? I wonder what my Italian friends and neighbors would think about my 
celebrating my dad's service ? I know that among Italians there are mixed feelings

about American activity in World War II. One of my Italian friends, from Pisa, has grandparents on opposite sides of the fence. Her grandfather resented the Americans because they bombed his neighborhood. Her grandmother, who lived close to Campo dei Miracoli and the Leaning Tower, where bombing was off limits, loved having Americans in her neighborhood. They gave her chocolate.

Regardless, it seems there is little doubt that Americans were vital in bringing about an end to a difficult era for the Italian Republic.
A few years ago, I had the front of Casa da Carmine refinished and repainted. When I went to the
"geometra" - a combination surveyor/architect - to complete the paperwork, there was a photo of him with the American gangster Lucky Luciano on the wall. My eyes gaped at it.
"Oh, yes", the geometra said, "He used to visit this part of Italy. You know how he got to be a free man?"
I shook my head.
"His mafia connections. He used the ones he had in Sicily to clear the way for the Americans to land.
He helped turn the war around. So the American government let him go. No jail for his crimes."
I looked sideways at him and tilted my head. He opened his hands, palms out, arms spread and nodded.
"True!" He said.
I wonder what my father would say if he knew that an Italian-American gangster and the Mafia helped him win the war? I think he'd laugh.
Thank you for your service, Dad.
Grazie mille per il tuo servicio, babbo.

Carmine and Me

Putting the Pieces Together

The little blue Lancia Y I bought four years ago to help me get to know Abruzzo jostles down a mountain road. My body absorbs the bounce from potholes, rocks with the dizzying curves, rolls left or right in sync with the "Blue Dolphin" as I call it to avoid the "frana (rock slides), and comes to a slight pause with it before continuing ahead when the road narrows to a sliver of a lane with a sheer drop to one side. I smile. The rhythms are familiar and welcome. They let me know I'm really back.  Really most sincerely back. My customary frenetic, all-doing-all -the-time rhythm has automatically reset itself. To Abruzzo pace.
 I stop half a dozen times on the way to the grocery store - still referred to by the locals a "il forno (the oven)" because it started out as just a bakery. I stop to talk to the umteenth person who calls out to me "Ben tornata! (welcome back, but literally- well returned). I learn that Donatella , the owner of the fruit and vegetable shop just below the house, has had a baby! Maria Vittoria, now three months old. I stop for a cappuccino at La Lanterna bar and tease Emidio that it has to be his best since it is my first one since arriving last night. He loads it with an extra coating of powdered cocoa. I stop to watch one of the town's ubiquitous older men - retired now, but still dressing daily in crisply pressed trousers, an almost glowingly white dress shirt, dark tie, and dark blue sport jacket. His hair lies in two precisely shaped fluffs of blue-grey separated by a thin, straight part on the left side. His aftershave makes his walnut toned skin glisten. It reminds me of my father's face just after he shaved in the morning. My sense memory takes in the scent of his after shave. The man ambles down the quiet street, bis hands clasped behind him, eyes straight ahead, seeing with the ingrained knowledge of this place, but looking inward at some distant or unfamiliar landscape. He doesn't greet me and I let him go by, continuing undisturbed on his inward journey.
I arrive home to make soup for dinner. Home. It seems odd to refer to a somewhere in which you spend only 3 months a year as "home". Don't I already have a full time home? But more than coming home to a "where", I come home to a "who". To a me that exists only here. Try as I might to replicate the conditions in my other home that coaxes out that other being, I fail. There is a brittleness that sets in, a crusty over-baked shell that subtly closes me in. I never understand it. I never consciously
choose the different me's. I just know there is a difference. The pieces of me just fit together differently here.
Last night, no sooner had I walked inside the front door of my Casa da Carmine - smelly, fatigue-drunk, feet throbbing red pulps, back and legs screaming "I HATE YOU!!!", than my doorbell rang. When I opened it, my neighbor Manola wrapped me in a sturdy hug. Then she stood me at arms length and locked on my bleary eyes.
"Hai mangiato", she asked. (Have you eaten?)
"Si. Un pannino qalche ore fa." (Yes, a sandwich a few hours ago.)
Manola did that thing Italians do with their hands that looks like they're covering your BS with fresh dirt - waving them back and forth horizontally, palms up.
"No!" she said, then swept me into her house.
I sat in her kitchen for nearly two hours, mumbling, forgetting the simplest Italian words, at times staring blankly at Manola as she whipped up a dinner of pasta with oil, garlic, sautéed breadcrumbs
(she ground them fresh from a loaf on the table), and hot pepper flakes. She served it to me with
cheese, wine, and shelled fava beans, which her husband, Angelo, showed me how to peel with my
teeth. Dessert was waffles with powdered sugar. It was not what I'd envisioned eating after 24 hours of moving in cars, planes, busses, and on my own sorry feet, lugging a suitcase, a backpack and a messenger bag filled with electronic devices in/on/off all but the plane. I thought all I could ask my body to process were a few lettuce leaves. I thought my body couldn't do anything more strenuous. But Manola's meal, far from taxing me further, soothed me, settled me. Let me know I had arrived. The other "me" was homing in.

Saving Jasmine

When I googled "jasmine distress" -lower case "j" - up came sites titled "Jasmine Damsel in Distress with Text" , "Not Your Damsel in Distress - Jasmine on Pinterest", and "Gala Jasmine Green Tea to Soothe Distress." Not what I had in mind.
Three years ago I bought a jasmine bush at an open air market in the nearby town of Bisenti. It was over five feet tall, full of blossoms, and cost only 12 euro. The ones I'd seen at nurseries were smaller, less flowered, and cost upwards of 25 euro. I had been searching for one for several weeks. It was a serendipitous find, I believed. Greg was coming in just a week.
I wanted to plant the  jasmine on my tiny terrazzo for him. So he could enjoy its fragrance on his first visit to Casa da Carmine. He discovered his love for the scent of jasmine on his first trip to Italy in 2006. It was a trip whose anticipation filled me with hope and dread.
"What if he hates the place?" I'd ask myself. How might THAT play to his batty for the boot Italianate partner? But on one of his first days in the country, he pulled to a stop as we walked down the sidewalk of a Tuscan town.
"What is THAT? " he blurted.
"What?", I asked. I looked towards the window of the bakery across the street.
"That smell!" He inhaled into all of his 6', 220 pound, his rapture more like a Jane Austen heroine than his he-man adventure guy self.
"Oh." I looked to the edge of the walk and saw a block long, 5 foot high jasmine hedge. "It'sthe jasmine. It's the season."
"Wow." Was all he said. And continued inhaling deeply.
From then on, whenever we found jasmine, he would pick blossoms and put them in my hair, stuff them down my blouse, okay, yes, even in my underwear. I imagined fumes trailing me as I walked down the street. But Greg was gaga for the scent. That and the Dolomite section of the Alps were his
favorite parts of the trip.
I couldn't very well plant the Dolomites on my terrace. So I scored the jasmine bush.
Bringing it home, I had to nestle to root ball in the front passenger seat and hang the top out the rear driver's side window. I seat belted it in. I balanced it on my shoulder to get it into the front door, up the stairs, through the bathroom to the terrazzo door, and down the winding stairway to the terrazzo. When I unwrapped the twine that held the branches together, I saw why it was so cheap. The guy had to get rid of it. It had been compressed for so long the vines were compacted and tangled in a twisted
mess not unlike a thin gold chain that had knotted itself. I had no idea where to begin. So I randomly picked a vine. Like the untangling of a chain, I would follow a branch so far - and be halted by an unyielding knot. I backtracked and tried a new route. Over and over and over. I analyzed. I cajoled. I
asked it for guidance. I prayed. I cursed. I apologized for accidentally snapping off branches and shredding flowers. After two and a half hours, both jasmine and I looked beat. White starbursts and
delicate green tendrils covered the terrace.the vines hung spread out, gaping and sproinging in
haphazard directions. I cut open the  burlap sack that held the root ball. The roots looked no better
than the vines. The ball resembled a roadmap to nowhere. But I went ahead and lopped off a few
inches from the bottom, like the man at the stand had instructed. I planted roots and vines in a huge

aluminum washtub. I had not idea if this was good for the plant. It was all I had. It was already full of dirt. I watered jasmine until the surface of the dirt was wet, just like I had been told. I stood back to survey my accomplishment. Splayed out against the grey stone wall, still sagging but thick with white blooms, it looked like a weary bride at the end of her wedding reception. One who was ready to bolt after realizing her mistake. I swiped a hand across my forehead, leaving a smear of dirt that ran down the side of my face with the sweat.
"Just like me", I thought. "Leap into a project just because I had the idea in my head. Having no idea what the hell I'm doing."
It was kind of like the whole process of getting the house in the first place. All at once, this jasmine seemed like my familiar and my great white hope. A metaphor for this dream of owning a house in
Italy. Jasmine and I stared at each other.
"Please don't die." I said.
She spent several days curling up her leaves and shedding them in the pot. Half the blossoms turned
brown and brittle. I nursed her with plant food and water retention goblets. Then shiny green leaves began to appear. More and more each day. Bright bids burst into bloom like flashes from a film noir newsman's camera, by the time Gregg arrived, the terrazzo was a fragrant paradise.our first dinner there was a full-blown sensory spectacle.
Throughout the rest of the summer, I would sit on the terrazzo, a glass of wine or limoncello in hand,
and beam at the jasmine.
"You and me, kid! We made it!"
We survived my impetuous dreaming on faith, guesses, intuition, and dumb luck.

Last summer, the day I returned after my nine months in the US, I dumped my suitcases in the
entranceway, ran to the door to the terrazzo, and flung it open. The jasmine had exploded! It spread
out so thickly it practically obscured the wall; it snaked around the stair railing and up the stairs
nearly to the bathroom; it reached out beyond the pot, tendrils bobbing in mid-air, searching for new surfaces to conquer. I ran laughing down the stairs, clapping my hands.
"Good job, jazzy!" I said.

This year, I again flung open the terrazzo door as soon as I arrived. I saw the jasmine. It felt like someone had pitched a fast ball at my heart. Jasmine was scrawny and spindly. Most of the leaves were red or rust colored and fluttering off the vine as I stared. I saw not buds or emergent white stars. Jasmine looked ......defeated. Like a boxer who had gone down in the tenth round. I wept. Before I could get down the stairs, a cold rain began to pelt the terrace and all it held. Huge droplets hit the ground and exploded, looking like mini mines were detonating up from the ground. I retreated into the house.

Today I went down for a closer look. There is more green than I thought. Nodes on the vines sport
tiny buds, still balled up in fear but open to possibilities. I set to my hope and by gosh by golly work, pulling off dead and dying leaves, pruning, topping off the pot with fresh soil, feeding and watering.
As I do, the church bells herald a funeral procession. They peal low and slow like sobs stifled to prevent an all-out weepfest. I am saving jasmine. Oh yes I am! Jasmine is my will and my hope for the future. She needs to be here to encourage me. To help me believe. And she needs to be here as my final resting place. My family knows this. This is where they have to put my ashes. Some day. When jasmine and I have bloomed here for many, many years. Buck up, girl! I need you!
P.S. I am happy to report that Rosemary is doing splendidly.

Jasmine- this year

Jasmine- last year 

Rosemary

Mountains

      I ran this morning, on the first single-digit day in the countdown to my departure. I didn't think I would. I didn't think I could. I got home late last night. 1:15 AM, my neighbor, Fernando, told me whenI greeted him today. He watches me like a hawk. He raises his eyebrows and corners of his mouth and wags a finger at me when he reveals the hour at which he clocked me returning home on any given night. When this first happened, I didn't know if I should be offended or creeped out. But I came to see he is just looking out for me. Last night I went to the opening night of my favorite summer festival - Valfino al Canto, the Fino Valley in Song. It is a musical unleashing of traditional Abruzzese music, dance, song, food, and crafts that floods the streets of tiny Arsita and sweeps everyone in them up in a tsunami of jubilation. The whole community prepares the town for this event two or three days prior to its start. Men, women, children, teenagers, old folks set up tables, assemble decorations, prepare arrosticini, pasta, and coatto (mutton slow cooked in tasty to ato sauce) and oversee the construction of puppets to be used in the opening procession. I was willingly swept away in the festivities. I ate a lot. I drank a lot. I danced a lot. I slept a little. My body was not in a running mood this morning.

Spontaneous song and dance

Content Participant

         Then I threw open the shutters of the bedroom window. That has seemed an innate gesture since the first time I did it on my first trip to Italy. It harkens back to an archaic memory, one that has been buried so deep and for so long in my DNA that the memory rings like a tuning fork in the core of my being. It echoes all the gestures of all the people who did them and stored them in their own DNA to be echoed in me. The open shutters revealed the mountains. They are clear today,
calm and steady after a summer of tumult. Capricious or angry or sullen or unexpected storms. The most recent seems to have been their last release of pent-up winter force. The rain was a wide, grey, impenetrable curtain twisted every which way by winds that bent Signore Gambacorta's eight foot almond try nearly to the ground. Lightening pierced the ridge just south of Montefino, narrowly missing impaling its bell tower. Hail tapped insistently at the bathroom door. But for the past few days those massifs have been gentle giants. Only a puff of a cloud resting on a peak or a shoulder tells of the past rants and  rages.
       The mountains are my strongest and steadiest companions here. I had to run towards them, like a child on her first day of school who knows she'll soon be torn from her mother. I ran towards them with an open heart. They stayed as they were, accepting me, guiding me. I was hot, sweaty, at times a bit giddy from the effort. But I kept running. Running and
running past my usual turn-around point. Wanting to run I to the arms of those mighty, scary, powerful, soothing beasts. On my way back, panting, soaked, leaving droplets of salt water in my wake like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs, I recalled that the author Ignacio Silone had remarked on the mountains of his native land. Back at the house, I looked up his words:
"   The destiny of the people living in the region of Abruzzo.....has been defined mainly by the mountains...the people of Abruzzo have experienced a common and singular destiny, characterized by persistent loyalty to their economic and social
ideas, even beyond any practical utility; all of which would be inexplicable unless we consider that the constant factor in their existence is the most primitive and stable of all elements: nature. Yes, Signore Silone, and nothing defines or dominates nature like mountains. I saw, heard, tasted, felt this primitive and constant life force in the exuberance of of the singers, the joy of the dancers who pulled anyone and everyone, including yours truly, into the dance to partner with them in that joy, in the blurred lines of boundaries as strangers became dining buddies at the food tables, in the laughter and stories that erupted there as we connected in any language that served us. The Abruzzese people are those mountains and
the mountains are those people. In nine days both will be gone from me. I had to run. I had to throw myself in the mountain's embrace. So it can sustain me for whatever waits me in the months to come.

The Gran Sasso d' Italia mountain range

Good People

A Grrek woman I knew and loved as much for her unabashed opinions as for the unabashed sass with which she expressed them would listen politely when people would talk of their travels outside the US. Every once in a while she would murmur "oh, yah" with what seemed like enthusiasm. When the erstwhile traveler left her presence, though, she would plant herself in her rightful kitchen chair, throw her arms arms across her chest, raise her nose so she could sway her chin side to side and proclaim "What a show-off!" There were many of these offenders, and I suppose,were she alive, I would now be added to the list. I accept the moniker and readers, be forewarned, I am now going to show off.
Within days of my arrival in Abruzzo in general and this area of it in particular, there occurs an attitude adjustment of such magnitude that I become a different person. It comes inadvertently from the people here. I visit my favorite ceramics shop in Bisenti. The shop owner, Patrizia, and I hug, genuinely happy to see each other.
     "La familia, sta bene?" "Your family is well? "
      "Si, si!" I say, and she beams, even though she has never met my family. "E la tua? Tue figlie stanno crescendo, vero? " "Your girls are growing, right?"  I have met her daughters and they are beautiful.
       "Si, si! Anche la piccola!" "Yes, yes, even the youngest!"
        I can't wait to see her. I can't imagine her growing. She has been the tiny one ever since I met her four years ago.
        I pick out a spoon rest to replace one I broke last summer. It depicts a country scene in sepia, green, and yellow with an old stone farmhouse near a creek. The scene is alive with detail. Her husband, Camillo's specialty, I know. I also pick out a card of hand-made paper. I need to send a thank-you note. She looks at the price on the spoon rest ans shrugs.
       "Veinte euro." 20 instead of the 24 euro on the price tag. The card she slides back to me.    
        "Nineteen. Un regalo." "Nothing. A gift." 

          The next day guests drive me to see a new pasticeria they have found in nearby Castilenti. Tony, one of them, is a passionate foodie and is excited to have discovered this treasure. As soon as we enter, the woman behind the counter recognizes him.
        "Bon di! " she greets him, local dialect for "buon giorno". Her wattage increases exponentially as she and Tony continue chatting in the dialect, which neither his wife nor I can understand. After a particularly bright word punctuation, the bakery woman zips behind the counter and pops back around with rotund sugared doughnuts, each about the size of a golf ball.  We must each tek one. Tony and Mary decline, so the woman hands all three to me, beaming with expectation. So even though I never, and I mean never for as long as I can remember, eat doughnuts, I politely take one and bite into it. It is the best piece of pastry I have ever eaten! Light, mildly sweet, even with the sugar, and filled with real, creamy smooth egg custard. My eyes bug out and a smile explodes on my
face. The woman claps her hands and proceeds to fill a lunch bag sized sack full of these and other
pastries. All the while the three of us are waving our hands and crying, "No, no, no, no!".  To no
avail. The woman rolls down the top of the bag and thrusts it at us.
      "Mangia domani, doppo domani. Non e' molto! " "Eat tomorrow, or the day after. It's not much."

The rounds in the middle tray are known as "bomba" : bombs. You certainly could eat enough of them to explode!

       The town's butcher, Donato, does likewise with sausages. Plus he buys us all coffee.

Donato the butcher. 

       These could, by our skeptical American minds, be dismissed as a uniquely Italian form of
product promotion. The equivalent of free samples in the local grocery store. But wait - there's. Ore to show off.
       Twice I have been invited for dinner to the home of Giovanna, the woman who cleans my house. Mine is not the only one she cleans. She works for several other people. She cleans, cares for a bed-ridden elderly lady, and baby-sits three small children. Carlo, her husband, works in a nearby factory that makes bathroom fixtures. When we arrive each time, he gives us the grand tour of their farm - the impossibly tidy rows of chicken wire, straight and even that house his ducks, geese, hens, roosters, and goats. In back of them is a long, low barn with pigeon pens, rabbit hutches, and a stall for this year's suckling pig. He walks us through the vegetable garden, past his fig trees, over to the
vineyard, and points out the hillside with their 150 olive trees. The equipment for caring for all of this agriculture is stored in an open set of bays under a corrugated tin roof supported by massive concrete
and rebar pillars. All of this he maintains himself. While working full time.

Carlo firing up the grill for arrosticini. Yes, with a blow torch. 

When he had stalled us enough so that Giovanna can complete her tasks in the kitchen, he ushers us into the house. We eat. Frittelli (a fried dough kind of bread), antipasto of prosciutto, capitols, and pancetta made from last
year's pig, pappardelle pasta, two additional meats for "il secondo", not pepper condiments made from those grown in their garden, homemade wine, salad with their exquisite olive oil, strawberries and fresh whipped cream, limoncello, crema limone, and chocolate liquor. My house gift to them of a box of chocolates from the gourmet chocolate shop in town seems blatantly paltry. When we are all able to breathe again; when I am sure I can drive up/down the one-lane road that winds from their house to mine, we take our leave, expressing thanks with words that cannot hold them. We make our way to the car gingerly, so we don't drop the eggs, meat, lemons, wine, fritelli, and preserved peppers sotto olio that Giovanna has insisted we take home. She also insists we come again.
      At home, it is all I can do to flop on my bed, worn out from feasting. Giovanna has piles of dishes to wash, food to put away, napkins and tablecloths to launder. And work to go to early in the morning. But as we left, as she shooed us away from helping her with any clean-up, she told us how
happy she was to have us,
      "E' stato un piacere!" "It was a pleasure!"  "Voi siete familia!  Tu e  Mary siete come sorelle", she finished as her eyes shine. "You are all family! You and Mary are like sisters!"
        On my bed, my head spinning like Dorothy's after the tornado-instigated bonk on the head, I know I am not in Kansas any more. Or anywhere else in the States. I am in a land where sharing, opening one's heart to others is so much the norm it is unthinkable to do otherwise. Generosity, the joy of sharing, the pleasure of opening one's home and being to others is innate. Crack. I hear the sound of an American attitude adjusting.

I Am the Egg (wo) Man

I outfitted myself for a morning run. Well, okay, more like a combination run/walk/slog. It was still 3 days before the Bearman was due to arrive and usher in three weeks of hiking and sea kayaking. I needed the dusty hills of the country road leading out of town to get my cardio system ready. Curling uphill, downhill, past olive groves slanting downwards from undulating hills, the road changes from macadam to gravel before reaching my turn around near a football field sized tomato patch. The final uphill slog into town comes a half hour after this. Even though I had been running every other day for the past 6 weeks, I felt unprepared. I was planning to tackle the Corno Grande this summer, after all - at nearly 3,000 meters the highest peak in the Appenines. And very rocky. And steep. So it was time to get moving. Everything was in check - cell phone in pocket in case the nasty dogs nastied at me, frozen water bottle thawed just enough for the sippy thing to pop up, sunglasses - oops! In ran upstairs to retrieve them. When I ran back down, there she was. She stood well inside the front door. In her hand she held a bulging plastic bag. I didn't recognize her, although she dressed like all the other older ladies in town - black, shin-length dress with a discreet floral print, square-toed shoes that provided a sturdy platform for her swollen ankles, grey hair cropped just short enough to reveal gold rosettes on her earlobes, and the obligatory gold cross at her neck.
      "Do you need some eggs?" she asked, holding up the plastic bag. It looked half full. I did, in fact, need some.
      "Six euro for the whole bag."
      "Oh, no,no,no", I said. "I don't need that many. I'll just take a few. Maybe four or so."
       The woman continued as if she hadn't heard me. Or maybe my Italian was too bad to understand.
       "Three euro a dozen. But the whole bag for six euro. And I'll give you six for free. A gift."
        I shook my head. "No, thank you. That's too many. I'm here all by myself"
        The woman wobbled further inside and peered around. She tapped on the door to the downstairs kitchen.
        "Isn't there another family here?"
        "Yes, for now, " I said."but they are guests. They don't live here all the time. I'm here alone. I
         can't eat all those eggs."
         "She shrugged. "Put them in the refrigerator"
         I tried to speak, but didn't have the words I needed with which to counter her.
         I stammered. "But, I still won't be able to eat so many eggs. It will take me a long time. They'll go bad before I can eat them all."
         "Six euro," she insisted. "And six eggs as a gift."
          "What if I buy six eggs? How much?"
            Egg Woman opened her arms wide, palms upturned, and fixed her eyes on mine.
           "No! No! It is such a good bargain! Six euro. The whole bag. Six eggs I give you as a gift!"
            The sun was rising in the sky. I less than an hour it would be straight above, broiling the road and me on the last leg of my run. The frozen water bottle was weeping on the desktop.
           "My Italian is not so good," I said. "So tell me - you are saying I can buy the whole bag of eggs for six euro?"
           Egg Woman nodded.
           "Okay. But I don't have six euro exactly."
            "Give me a ten. I'll make change." She held the bag out to me and shook it just enough so it could whisper in collusion. She smiled.
             I ran upstairs, got a 10 euro note, and gave it to her. She gave me change in 50 and 20 centessimi coins.
            I then placed 32 eggs in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator.  As I ran I though about my attempt to resist the Egg Woman. It occurred to me that climbing the Corno Grande might be the easier task.

I am your Egg (wo) Man . You will obey.