In Italy, the streets are my lab

OK let's back up a moment. I've told you that I want to buy everything in Italy -- even maybe the air. I've tempted you with some of the dishes I've been scarfing up. Now I want to return to the first sensations of my trip, once the long flight was over and I was reunited with Italy.

The first morning in Milan (which is to say the first morning of the trip), I wake at 6:50a and head out subito (immediately) on foot while Leo and Mike sleep. 

Left out of the hotel, left onto Via Turati (where Mike is delighted to discover the San Carlo potato chip HQ is) to find the perfect caffe/coffee bar for a cappuccino & una ciambellina. I did OK – a small corner job, workman-like but some of the paste (pastries) I bought were still hot! And fancy isn't always the ticket.

I begin collecting information immediately because in Italy, the street is part of my lab -- language lab, culture lab, architecture lab. The coffee bars, too, and any surface that contains Italian writing. They are my beat.

So I notice the massive macchinetta for the coffee is giving the barista trouble and the building that houses the American embassy is also home to Radio Monte Carlo (the station name, when I read or say it quietly to myself, is broadcast in my head in the original Italian that you would hear on the radio).

I also notice, much to my chagrin, that English is everywhere – everywhere. But for different audiences. In some cases, it's there to communicate to people born speaking English. In other cases, it's an absurd flourish (or whatever the opposite of flourish is) to an otherwise Italian-only public service message or advertisement (Trenitalia, I am looking at you!).

Morning #2, I go to Il Chiosco Manin, an outdoor coffee counter in Milan, just to the left of an entrance to the public gardens. A customer beside me ordered, “Un caffe per cortesia.” (‘A coffee, please,’ except that he used the form of please that includes the word ‘courtesy’ – and the order feels extra courtly. Also, for those of you playing along at home, un caffe = an espresso. If you want a cappuccino -- and I do -- you have to say cappuccino).

Another man bikes up to get his coffee. “Ciao Salvatore,” he says to the barman.

While I have my cappuccino at the tiny bancone that sits on the street, the radio is on, and it’s perfection.

Another woman arrives at Il Chiosco and the barista says, “Ciao Lorena.” It's like I'm gatecrashing a party where everyone else knows each other, but no one minds I am there.

I eye the oranges that are used for smoothies – tempting. Meanwhile someone calls out, “Buon di!” And then the garbage truck arrives – and the sanitation workers get out of the truck to have their coffees, too.

I am observing. And when I am done observing while standing still, I say my goodbyes to the barista and begin walking again to observe some more. I feel like I could walk all day and only then would I be sated, happy, fully on vacation. 

Vacation for Jeanne = walking in Italy (while someone speaks behind me, next to me, near me in Italian).

Now I am walking through a stone gate that’s part of the old walls of the city – next to the fancy shopping street Via della Spiga – and the sidewalk ducks under a portico (do we have porticos in America? We should). 

Courtyards abound in Milan and the portoni (front doors/main entrances of buildings) to them reveal oases of greenery and sometimes sculpture.

I’ve struggled to find an open giornalaio in Milan – even the concierge at our hotel shrugged his shoulders. Victims of the pandemic, which is heartbreaking because newsstands are Italian mom-and-pop stores that double as mini-piazzas. A place for an exchange. (They also sell Pokemon cards! Ask me how I know!)

But Mike manages to buy for me at Milano Centrale:

-La Settimana Enigmistica (weekly puzzle magazine)

-Bell’Italia (most beautiful travel magazine you've ever seen)

-La Cucina Italiana (food mag)

Doing the frontpage crossword in the puzzle mag ('Settimana Enigmistica' -- you can see the word 'enigma' in there), I learn, or re-learn, that 'musicare' is a verb (clue: “Musicò Tosca.”)

I am collecting information about 1,000 tiny moments, 1,000 tiny encounters between myself and Italy. Later in Rome, I trip over myself to snap a photo of the perfect graffiti spotted as we entered the Villa Borghese from Piazza del Popolo: ‘Sei bella come Roma’ = You're as beautiful as Rome. Not sure there is a way to top that, other than -- maybe -- you're as beautiful as the Taj Mahal or a hologram of your face should be beamed permanently from the sky.

Everything that has words draws my attention (as I may have, ahem, mentioned). I walk the streets each morning silently repeating phrases from ads, billboards, shop windows (Idraulico, giorno e notte = Plumber available all hours; Traslochi/sgomberi = relocations, junk removal; Saldi = sales).  I am shopping a lot but mainly my kind of acquisti, like anything sold at the giornalaio (newsstand). Yesterday I bought La Gazzetta dello Sport just so Leo could see Italy’s pink sports newspaper (he marveled that there seemed to be 35 pages about soccer and 1 page about car racing and maybe 1 page about volleyball and that’s it). I told him that anywhere in Italy, when you see someone across the bar or piazza holding a pink newspaper, you know at a glance he or she (OR HE!) is reading the national sports newspaper.

What I bought so far:

Il Corriere della Sera (2X)

L’Espresso (magazine)

Panorama (magazine)

A new red Moka coffee pot from Bialetti (yes I now have probably 10 Mokas of various sizes)

La Gazzetta dello Sport (see above)

A lightweight plastic basketball for Leo (dal giornalaio!)

A kitchen towel

A place mat with the “definition” of Spaghetti

A bare midriff shirt (ma sei matta? Am shopping around now for a new lifestyle so I can actually wear it)

A green wool sweater from Benetton like the brown one I've had for more years than I care to admit

10 or so books (including two by Edith Bruck; when Leo saw another copy of Andremo in Città, he said, ‘Mommy you have that one already!’ I suppose seeing it around the house for a few years will do that.)

*

I am no different than all the other tourists snapping photos. Except I snap photos of the 'Missing dog' flyers on utility poles and the tree stumps some cracker jack street artist has transformed into sculpture, not to mention compelling graffiti and street signs of particular relevance (I will always take photo of  the sign for Via della Vigna Vecchia anytime I visit Florence -- it was once my home).

We are taking trams in Milan and some of them are “antiques.” The #1 tram line that we took to Castello Sforzesco is just such a model. Wooden bench seats line the walls of the tram. There’s a shimmy and shake to its accelerations. Like a museum that allows a step back in time in addition to a method of transportation.

One of the major streets in Milan is Via Alessandro Manzoni and that tickles me for some reason. Like, where in New York is the F. Scott Fitzgerald Boulevard?!

Italy is basically just one big Tickle-me Elmo doll. Every damn thing -- good or bad -- intrigues me.

That's all for now from Il Belpaese!

-30- 

Greatest compliment ever? (In Rome)

"Sei bella come Roma."

I'm available if anyone wants to say this about me ("You're as beautiful as Rome"). 

Spotted on the approach to the Villa Borghese.

Hard to think of a better way to woo a woman. Men, take note!

-30-

I sing of ciambelline, tagliatelle & vino

Arma virumque cano ... the three words that launch Virgil's Aeneid (and also indirectly my study of Italian since studying the modern Romans means studying Italian) and which I memorized long ago in my high school Latin class translate as: "I sing of arms and the man..."

Nothing quite so lofty for me; rather, it is of ciambelline, tagliatelle, cappuccino (made right), biscotti, focaccia, polenta, prosciutto, cioccolato and vino that I sing.

I wouldn't even say I have eaten particularly good on this trip, compared to other visits or to the period when I spent months and years here. But still, let's be serious: I have eaten things fit for a president. Or maybe even the Pope. Because in Italy, non si scherza. No joking around (when it comes to food -- lots of joking around when it comes to everything else).

At night when I am drifting off to sleep or on a long car ride, I often think about what makes Italy different from America, and when it comes to food, I always think their penchant, their insistence, their belief in moderation is the key. As I walk the streets of Italy surrounded by the artful display windows of coffee bars and osterie and gelaterie, it can be hard to believe that Italians subscribe to moderation but oh, they do. I often tell people about the scenes I've witnessed at dinner parties where Italians fight over who will be FORCED to eat what's left of the pasta dish or the second course. Because if they believe they've had enough, they are loathe to have more than enough.

I don't know if I've really embraced moderation this trip -- my trips to Italy in the past decade have often consisted of double breakfasts (two ciambelline -- yes due!!! -- or a ciambellina followed by a yoghurt), something I would never have done when I lived here. But I know that anytime I've overdone it, I've felt ill at ease. And I think that's how Italians feel. They don't want to be "stuffed," as we would say in America. They want to satisfy their hunger and then move on.

OK, without further ado, here's a sampling of what I've eaten during this visit to Italy:

*Ciambelline: these are the donut-shaped pastries that are my favorite and which inspire a hunt each trip (each morning of each trip) to find the best. The hunt is especially keen since this is the second holiday in Florence where my old pasticceria/bar is closed for vacation. Also see name of blog.

*Bomboloni: Same basic stuff as a ciambellina (singular) but without the hole and typically filled with custard. If donuts came without the hole and were light and airy and fresh from the oven: they would be bomboloni.

*Focaccia: Salty, oily bread. So good it's made its way -- in bastardized form, typically -- to America.

*Polenta con i funghi: I don't eat polenta much outside of Italy but I do like it. And also good with mushrooms.

*Prosciutto crudo: the only kind of prosciutto I eat. I love its salty, silky texture. I had it in sandwiches and plain, as part of antipasti.

*Crostini: (as you probably know) little toast appetizers that in Tuscany frequently feature pate. Delicious! Especially in Italy. Not especially outside of Italy.

*Fiori di zucca (fritti): fried zucchini flowers. Had them in Florence at Antico Ristori dei Cambi near Borgo San Frediano. Squisiti (literally: exquisite).

*Panzanella (con pane croccante): Prepared by my friend Veronica, this "wet" salad features bread prominently, in addition to tomatoes and cucumbers.

*Polpo (had it twice, in fact): Octopus. I could be an Octopusarian.

*Pecorino con miele: Florentines (dare I say Italians?) like combining salty pecorino cheese & honey. Had it at Osteria Centopoveri.

*Cioccolato alle nocciole: Like a bacio candy, but a whole chocolate bar with WHOLE hazelnuts. Yes it exists, yes it rocks and in Italy the supermarket stocks plenty.

*Gelato, gusto: nocciola (and only nocciola): I don't always eat a lot of gelato but this trip I haven't resisted all that well. And why should I? Last I checked even Ben & Jerry's doesn't make hazelnut ice cream (plain -- it's already perfect, no need to add any zany ingredients).

Plus: a dozen cappuccini, and gallons of fizzy water.

And I still don't think it's enough. 

Buon appetito, y'all!

-30-

Italy, or walk, eat, drink, pray, revel

Here in Italy, I want, I want, I want.

I want to explore, roam, browse, buy, consume, swim, run, row, climb, grab, have, revel. 

In my other life, I have learned to tame some of my worst desires and urges so I can (quite happily, most days) live a nice, quiet suburban, semi-Catholic life. 

But here in Florence (and before that, to some degree, in Rome and Milan), I become someone  who could work for the Home Shopping Network. I walk into stores I like and just begin grabbing things (mentally, at least) because I know I want everything and my time is limited and I need to go home with something that reminds me of the holiday's golden hours (which, of course, remind me of the original golden hours, so many years ago).

I want to do high-brow and low-brow and no brow. I want to spend the time here tiring my body -- no, I want to spend the day tiring my mind. Wait, no: I want to spend the day tiring my spirit.

I engineered it so I would wake up early today – usually that means writing, and here we are, 7 a.m., Thursday morning. But I also want to run along the Arno. And I also want to see the pietre d’inciampo.  And search for the best ciambellina (while having another caffe). I want to revisit old haunts but no, I want to find new worlds and environments.

That's not all: I want to write in my journal. I want to take photos. I want to record snippets of conversation at bus stops.

Also, like I said: I want to shop until I drop (which I NEVER want to do). Oh and I’d like, with Leo, to light a candle in every church we encounter (while saying a prayer for Mommy).

I want to walk along the cobblestones. I want to find the rare green oases hidden in this city (or go up into the mountains, as we did yesterday with Mike's friend, Dante. The other Dante?). I want a holiday with my family where I am explaining my Italian world in English to my American son, and I also want to be so immersed in Italian I feel buried by la lingua di Dante (Dante Alghieri and Mike's friend, Dante).

I want it all.

And I have already written this diary entry! More or less -- four years ago, and also six years ago and also…

But I feel these desires so keenly now because I know how time works. When I was here in 2018, we were already speaking of a future trip in 2020.

Need I say there was no future trip in 2020? We were prisoners of the backyard.

Yet even now, as Covid has slightly receded (or our fear of it has), I know I won’t be back next month – maybe not even next year.

And so I want, I want, I want. And I only have three days left to fulfill all of these voglie and desideri and fantasie.

While I would prefer to want less, I am happy to say the thing I want most is to walk every street in Florence. And you might be surprised how close I am to doing just that!

-30-

1957, or The Year in Writing and Failing

Could I be someone who fails precociously? Or one who precociously concludes that she will fail? (My sister, Liz, at one time simply said I was precocious, and left it at that).

Here's why I ask.

Each year in December, I sum up my year in writing (here's the post from 2019), and literary translation. I list articles and essays that I've published, and grants for translation projects I've been fortunate to win. 

The year-end taking-stock has been an enjoyable new ritual as I am able to log a few solid accomplishments each year even though I am still a completely unknown writer (trust me) and an emerging literary translator (emerging at my tender age, by the way, not so great).  

I usually don't begin writing the post until toward the end of the year.

But 2022 is diverging so thoroughly from the outline of my writing goals for the year that in a fit of despair, I am going to tell you about it right now. I am going to say right now that while I am writing, I am failing.

And it's because I'd decided that 2022 would be the year to write about the uncle I never knew.

What I didn’t know: it would also be the year I struggled to write about the uncle I never knew.

Nicknamed Spike, he died long before I was born -- before he could even become my uncle. And now halfway through what I’d dubbed the Year of Spike, I feel unsure of how to tell his story, unclear which elements should be my essay’s focus. And it’s making me nervous. 

It’s not that I can’t write about Uncle Spike next year. It’s just that I set aside this year in my writing life because it marks the 65^th anniversary of his untimely death at age 18. Sixty-five years since his fatal car crash in 1957, which deprived my mother, a nursing student at the time, of her beloved younger brother.

And I've already set aside the story many times. Each time, in fact, that she said of the brother she lost, "We were very close."

How many times must she have said that over the years? I can hardly guess but in the past decade I know for certain she has said it several times -- often enough that I finally realized if ever she speaks about Spike when she and I are alone, she repeats some combination of those words: We were very close. Or: "My brother and I were very close." Without fail.

She said it during a rainy July 4th weekend eight years ago while Leo was napping in the bedroom on the second floor and Mike was reading sci-fi stories over his toddler shoulder, leaving me alone with my mother in the living room below.

I noted in my diary then, "This morning she said it again: 'My brother and I were very close.' ... Perhaps as a means of remembering something that’s now so long ago, it’s been thoroughly cleansed from her life."

I went on to write in my diary, "Who was Spike Tisdall? But more than that, I want to know what was Mommy like when she was with Spike Tisdall? What was lost when he was lost? I almost feel like he might have been the coolest person she ever knew." 

Those words finally shook me from the selfishness that often hovers at one end of the parent-child relationship (i.e., my end).

It was an indication that I needed to investigate this moment in my mother's life. Because whenever she's pronounced those words, it's as if in a trance. Because despite having four daughters and a husband to whom she was quite dedicated (lucky him!), she didn't say those words very often. She was a wonderful, traditional mother but also someone who would admonish us when we were growing up with this piece of her mind: "I don't want to be your best friend."

All of this speculation and rumination about Spike swirled about when I had recently enrolled in the MFA program at Bennington College and was busy bumbling down the road marked 'Fiction.' I (stupidly) wasn't thinking about Nonfiction. So the light bulb that I needed to study my family history remained flashing on low in the back rooms of my mind while I worked on other essays and projects. 

Until my father got sick, that is, and it became clear my mother was in the early stages of dementia. 

At that point, I had already laid the groundwork for gathering the information I needed to know about this beloved brother and the close bond he had formed with Mommy. One of the first tasks had been: finding out when Spike died. I can't tell what that says about our family dynamic: I didn't know when he died until 2015 when I searched online for his obituary.

That unleashed me down a rabbit hole of speculation. Up until that moment, the dates that anchored me in time as far as family history were 1936 (the year my father was born), 1938 (the year my mother was born) and 1966, the year my parents married. What lay between was a bit of a no man's land. Not anymore.

Similarly, I am haunted by the casual way my mother supplied the date that Spike died during a conversation I recorded last year for posterity. Age 84 at the time of the interview and more or less housebound, she had already begun to slip into dementia, spending her days chain-smoking, unsure of the month or sometimes even the season. 

But when I inquired if Spike had died during the summer, barely a second passed before she said, “July 25.” 

The way she would recite our birthdays or Christmas Day. Like a bullet train conveying the information to me, cutting through her mental fog.

So, early on in this project, drafts were littered with references to famous dates in history: July 4, 1776, for example, and December 7, 1941 – the day for our parents and grandparents that lived in infamy -- as I aimed to construct a realistic timeline of her life (and the dates that resonated with her). I was so struck by how quickly she summoned the date of his death from her addled brain that I began reimagining her personal calendar of milestones. It’s the day, I now suspect, that divides her life in two. And I was trying to couch it in light of other moments. One more unneeded detour, I suppose.

So many other interesting tidbits have emerged while I've been researching my lost uncle -- including documents I would otherwise not have had. For example, an archival newspaper article about the crash from a now-defunct local publication, The Patent Trader, which covered Westchester, where my grandparents had a lake house (one that sat about a mile or so from the site of the car accident). I keep a print-out of the article on my bureau so the five-word headline greets me every time I reach for a pair of socks: "Youth, 18, Killed in Crash.” 

It’s a basic news headline. Yet when you know the “youth” in question, it has all the sorrow of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Also: he was driving a brand-new convertible that had been a graduation gift from my grandparents. He was headed off -- possibly on scholarship, my aunt says -- to the College of the Holy Cross for his freshman year.

And sixty-five years later, some of his old Brooklyn Prep classmates (octogenarians whom I tracked down on the Internet) remained so shocked by his death that they hastened to reply to my email, offering little remembrances that seem to be spit out of a time machine. One said Spike was a bit of a wild man and mentioned something about "smoochie-smoochie basement parties."

It's been nothing short of exhilarating to finally know more about this phantom in my family tree. And that's an end unto itself.

But I so wish to publish an essay about it and have failed again and again to gain an acceptance, even as I have approached the material from various angles and in differing formats (flash CNF, for example).

Why do we write? Why do we bother?

I don't know. I only know I am galvanized -- no, haunted -- when I think about the annual silent vigil my mother has possibly kept on July 25. This secret part of her life that I ache to know more about.

I will keep writing -- this practice has saved my life too many times to abandon it. But it's not without failure. Not in 2022, the year of writing and failing. I will report back in December as I always do. In the meantime, we'll all keeping toiling away so we can map out on paper the world we imagine in our minds, the world we hunger to illuminate through words.

-30-

Italian trip prep? La Canzone del Sole

... Some moments are truly as stunning as they sound.

Imagine the scene: I am 20 years old, I am sitting on the cobblestones of Piazza del Campo in Siena one Spring afternoon and next to me are Italian student friends who are singing songs while strumming guitars.

One song heavy in the rotation is made up mainly of simple Italian words that even this wayward study abroad gal could understand: la canzone (the song) del (of the) sole (sun). La canzone del sole. The song of the sun.

I only had to hear it a few times before it became forever my favorite Italian song and one of the many small facets of Italian life -- one of the many small moments of a semester abroad -- that essentially wedded me to Italy for life (like being the Bride of Christ? Kinda).

There were many afternoons of music in piazza that Spring. And as we sprawled out in Siena's central square (the site of the famed summer horse races), I would ask Nando to play the song over and over, to the point where he had long since tired of it. But for me it conveyed the magic of understanding words in another language, and understanding a pop song, to boot. It's also an awesome love song! A song about faded love, about love's fickleness, about the ways we link ourselves to others -- and then unlink ourselves. 

Fast forward many years, and it's the perfect song to blast on my phone while I walk the dog around my suburban Connecticut neighborhood (Caramel is too rambunctious to risk using headphones -- I need to keep some part of all of my senses trained on her). The perfect song to prepare for my trip to Italy. Indeed the first part of the preparation for any return: immersing myself in memories.

-LYRICS-

Cosa vuol dir "sono una donna, ormai"?
Io non conosco quel sorriso sicuro che hai
Non so chi sei, non so più chi sei
Mi fai paura oramai, purtroppo 

(ENGLISH -- my impromptu translation -- abbi' pazienza, non me ne fido)

What's that mean, 'I'm a woman now'?

I don't know this cocksure smile you have 

I don't know who you are, I don't know you anymore 

Alas now you frighten me

(Sorry but they sound so much better in Italian) 

The artist, Lucio Battisti, remains one of my favorite Italian singers, and a legend among singer-songwriters in Italy (RAI Radio did a wonderful docu-podcast about him that you can find here).

I'm in overdrive preparing for the full immersion that will occur next week when I arrive in Italy -- I'm watching the Italian news on TV (and a soap opera that takes place in Naples), listening to an amazing podcast about overlooked Italian women writers (my specialty) and reading a novel by the stunning and inspiring Sardinian writer Michela Murgia. 

But nothing beats the perfect pop song, especially when it's a song that convinces you to commit your life to studying a foreign language and the incomparable, inimitable people who speak it.

-30-

Leo turns 7 -- Lost diary entry from the Leo Journal

July 9, 2019

He’s 7 today, dear journal – the journal that only exists because 10 days before *he* was born, I was suffering a bout of insomnia and felt compelled to write, and then kept writing, and then emboldened both by the writing and the perseverance that had been required to have a baby at my advanced age (!), I went to grad school (long-deferred dream), began writing and publishing essays, began teaching, BEGAN LIVING. 

BEGAN -- again.

Seven years old, the boy who has completely changed my life. Long have I known of my weakness for men – I just didn’t know it would be a boy over whom I would completely lose my mind, a boy who would conspire to soften every rough edge I have (mind you, he’s still working on that one, bless his heart). A boy who would help me exit that dark wood I had strayed into, to crib a line from Dante. I lurve this boy, I lurf him. 

Sure, I am hyperbole personified but I am comfortable saying he saved my life. Even if it were hyperbole, what of it? If I believe he SAVED my life, that life is SAVED, regardless. I think of the Van Morrison song, “I Forgot that Love Existed.” That’s how his presence in my life feels. And it’s seven years of feeling this way.

Lost Diary Entry

-30-

Caro Diario -- "Mi pare superfluo..." (Primo Levi)

Caro diario,

Non si scordano certi frasi, colte sia in conversazione che tramite la lettura. Una tal frase si trova nel prologo del libro di Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo:

"Mi pare superfluo aggiungere che nessuno dei fatti è inventato..."

Avrò modo di leggere e rileggere quella frase perché l'anno scorso quando ho fatto un salto a New York, mi sono comprata una nuova copia del libro e l'ho lasciato sul comodino insieme ad altri libri che volevo leggere o rileggere quest'anno (compreso Il sistema periodico, sempre di Levi).

La frase mi colpisce per diversi motivi. 

Per primo, con quel pensiero Levi avverte che ci sarà chi mette in dubbio il suo racconto dei giorni trascorsi nel Lager. Agghiacciante.

Poi sinceramente è anche agghiacciante quando pensi che sia accaduto proprio come ha detto lui. L'autore non ha inventato niente perché il male esiste, eccome.

Quanto ha sofferto Levi a sentire i dubbi dei negazionisti (me l'ha raccontato Edith Bruck e lui pure ne ha scritto). Non bastava sopravvivere, doveva anche soffrire i commenti di chi non ci capiva nulla.

E quindi, si che questa frase me la ricordo. Quanto gli dobbiamo per suo coraggio.

-30-

Mi consigli un ristorante? Ultimate Florence dining guide

I consider the author of the Italian blog IO AMO FIRENZE the gold standard for restaurant reviews of places in Florence. She has visited nearly every restaurant in Florence, I suspect! She's also extremely knowledgeable about the city. And now she has written the ultimate guide to dining in Florence.

Your Italian rusty? All you really need to know is the meaning of the subheds, and I'll help you out. Here are the first two categories:

'Trattorie tipiche' = literally typical restaurants, or what I would call traditional, local eateries. Something authentically Florentine. These are the places I've visited time and time again.

Ristoranti toscani di fascia più alta -- Higher-caliber (and high dollar) restaurants that serve Tuscan cuisine

Once you've decided what kind of dining experience you want, google the name of the restaurant (in bold) and see if it's in a part of the city you want to visit. You won't go wrong with her recommendations if you're looking to have a typical Italian meal (she's also very knowledgeable about other kinds of cuisine, especially Asian, but here limits herself to Italian food).

Many of these are restaurants aren't mentioned much in guide books, if at all. For my money, I'd like to visit the following places she mentions (under trattorie):

*Sostanza (detto i’Troia) 

*Trattoria Marione

*Il Brindellone

If you see a place you want to go and would like a translation of what she wrote, leave a comment here!

I've blogged about great places to eat as well and you may want to take a look at where I ate in 2015 on a solo trip to the city of Dante:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2015/05/where-to-eat-in-florence-update.html

There's also a quickie overall guide to Florence that I put together a few years ago:

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2016/05/my-quick-hit-guide-to-florence.html

The guide at IO AMO FIRENZE is, again, here:

https://www.ioamofirenze.it/mi-consigli-un-ristorante/

Buon appetito!

-30-

Avon Journal, No. 408 -- From The Lost Diary Entry Archive

Today during a brief visit to the beach, as I mounted the steps to the boardwalk and turned around for one last look, I said silently to myself, “Goodbye, Atlantic Ocean. I love you!” 

It wasn’t the first time; that’s what I usually say or sign (by blowing a kiss, say) but it struck me. 

How odd. How sad. How true. This stretch of the Atlantic that I've been visiting practically since the day I was born ... it fills me with an almost painful nostalgia. Navigating life through acute saudade. Is that my problem? 

Before I leave Avon, I pull the car over to sum things up. And I write: "What’s lost: conversations. Artful and funny ones. My parents could tell stories well, or at the very least, they could to me; I found them endless entertaining (and annoying, to be sure)." 

While at the beach I think of how we are recruited from our childhood into the fan clubs of our parents. I will be haunted forever by their stories, their gripes, their crusades.

I write this in part because I'd recorded them during the visit, and I thought I would queue up the interviews in the car to listen. But after a minute or so of listening to my father, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I imagine him knowing, I imagine him sensing that there is only one reason I have finally begun to conduct my most important interview.

During the visit, I walk through Avon like Thoreau, taking possession of every old home, of the brown shingled Anglican church, of the B&B with the Gaelic name, just with my gaze. I need to walk the streets other than Sylvania, somehow their unfamiliarity mesmerizes me, and I find a hunger to memorize the facades of the homes I like. I linger in front of them, almost spellbound by their existence. Some of them are set back from the street – which is rare in Avon, so notable; some have Irish sayings hanging over the front steps. Some have cozy porches that make me ache with envy, even as the porch at my parents waits for me. 

I like the streets where the homes have a double identity – they front the pond or are near the pond, for example, so beyond sitting two blocks from the beach, they are homes by a pond. Or the homes that line the Shark River Inlet. It feels almost audacious in its consumption – two identities not one. Beach home and home along a river inlet.

I need to carve out more time to walk in Avon but it isn’t easy. Yet the older homes are disappearing. That’s a slight exaggeration but it is true new 'gaudy monstrosities' (to steal a line from "Ocean's 11") pop up each time I visit. New empty lots appear, cleared of someone’s life.

Eventually the tiny, pink cottage a block from the beach will disappear. How acute will my nostalgia be then?

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Lost diary entry

Current obsessions

-Flash CNF (I just love the essay "Things I Lost" by Brian Arundel, which was published by Brevity)

-Switzerland

-Translating women authors

(but also translating a male author who writes in an original way about suicide)

-What happened in Brooklyn in 1957

-The NPR music show "Afropop Worldwide"

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From Leo's Book of Questions (entry #5,004)

Oct. 4, 2020

Leo asks me, “Mommy, what do you like better, addition or subtraction?”

(Addition, son, no question).

(Lost diary entry)

Addendum (2026): He's the master of the question. The other day he asked me for the name of my favorite movie director. He also likes to ask me the names of my favorite cities.

But here's an entry from back in the day at the link below and the question zeroes in on who in our little family loves fish the most. Any guesses who's going to come out on top?

https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2021/06/who-loves-fish-most-from-leo-journal.html

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Non è l’incapacità di narrare ... (Furio Colombo)

“Non è l’incapacità di narrare, ma l’incapacità della cosa di essere narrata.”

-- Furio Colombo, in his introduction to Daniela Padoan’s Come una rana d’inverno: Conversazioni con tre sopravissute ad Auschwitz (Milan: Bompiani, 2004). 

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From the starry journal:

“Does Daddy know he’s dying?”

Lost diary archive

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My First Mother's Day

The morning of my first Mother’s Day, something strange happened. Something that has nothing to do with motherhood -- or not exactly. 

I was sleep-deprived like any other first-time mom that morning. 

But it wasn't because of Leo, who was ten months old. Instead, the day before, I had worked obsessively on a short story in between Saturday chores. Fiction, in other words. What on earth, I thought. I was a journalist, pure and simple.

The piece – my first attempt at writing fiction since the seminal (!) story "Mrs. GoodCookies," which I wrote in childhood -- wouldn’t leave me alone; what double life was the main character hiding? (An American ex-pat, as it turns out).

While I endeavored to figure this out, a double life of my own emerged, as I contrived to find time to write as if scrambling to conceal an affair. I invented an excuse about having to drive to the office to work on a project – on Saturday, something I never did. I also wrote – in my head – while pushing my son in his stroller through the Grant Park farmer’s market, then raced to my computer once back home so I could transcribe the lines.

That night, I went to bed late (10:30 p.m.!!! no joke), still on a high from having written the story. I awoke the next morning at 4:30 a.m., unable to get back to sleep because sentences for the story were chasing me around in the dark. What was happening to me?

Spoiler alert: the story hasn't been published, beyond my Bennington thesis, and may never be ready for print.

But the experience galvanized me to make writing my primary hobby, my main vice, my eternal crutch, my singular passion, my vocation. If you want to torture me -- do you?! -- take away my writing implements (and my Italian coffee, which happen to go hand in hand -- #5amwritersclub #sometimes).

Ten days before Leo was born, I'd scribbled something on the back of an envelope while sleepless in the middle of the night. (I wrote about it briefly here for Longreads). The next night I did the same thing. Then in the hospital that warm July I brought along a journal (as the photo above attests) -- something I hadn't done since my ex-pat years in Italy.

Slowly I began making time and space for writing, especially after Mr. Leonardo Patrick began sleeping through the night.

Yet the Mother's Day of my first full year as a mother was the turning point. Writing took over my brain. And thankfully it continues to pull the levers.

For years, I was convinced becoming a mother would force me to abandon all thought of books, politics, current events – everything. I would cease to be me, I assumed, even as my Aunt Maureen said motherhood made her more flexible (turns out: she was right!).

Instead, the birth of Leo sparked the rebirth of my writing life. Far from sending the life of the mind in exile, it reunited me with creative writing. 

(I think it helps that I only have one child; there was no time for my mother to reunite with anything other than the vacuum or the dishes).

I don't live an unusual life. I certainly don't live an unusually successful life. But this one unusual happenstance changed everything.

Long had I searched for the door into the World of Writing -- the door to wanting to write all the time. I was told at age 9 that I would become a writer, for better or for worse. But how to do that? I didn't know.

With great envy did I read profiles of writers and artists, whose passion for their craft seeped out of the pages and into my jaded mind.

What I know now: they had given up everything for their work. 

And I believe that when I gave up everything to have Leo -- infertility will convince you that most of your worldly vices need to go -- the result was not only a baby (THANK GOD THANK GOD THANK GOD) but a writing life, too.

Not the writing life I dreamed of -- the one I didn't even allow myself to imagine.

To be clear, it's a writing life that so far hasn't yielded a book (I was thrilled about the short story I wrote on my first Mother's Day but I don't remember my classmates being all that thrilled with it later during at a workshop at Bennington -- my blessed destination after writing that story). No one knows my name. I don't even teach writing full-time. But I write all the time -- and it's, again, a vocation, a vacation, a trip to the spa (and to the moon), an evening out, a session with the therapist.

So on Mother's Day, I plan to do a little writing. 

Oh and HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, ladies!

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Kitchen music

For my birthday, Mike bought me an old-school clock radio that I've placed in the kitchen. It's because when we were in NYC, I instinctively tuned a similar radio in our hotel room to WKCR.

We're talking terrestrial radio -- the kind you might have cranked up when Casey Kaseem was still broadcasting -- and so we can't get WKCR, Columbia University's venerable station. Not from the kitchen in Connecticut.

But what comes in good is a local college radio station that plays classical music most of the time (and occasionally Portuguese folk music).

So we're good. Because tuning into WKCR amounts to a bid to dial up my father and the result is the same with any kind of classical music, since that was what he listened to almost all the time if he wasn't listening to jazz. 

That was the kind of music at the concerts he and my mother attended assiduously on Long Island and in Manhattan (a few times even Vienna and Milan!).

That was the music on my father's old radio, the one perched on the sill of the open window of the garage, just to the left of the basketball hoop, which would accompany him as he wandered his garden in Hicksville in search of petal perfection.

​​

Shoot -- maybe he could have even been a classical music show host.

Plus, it's nice to hear music. Especially after a long stint of silence.

And maybe, as they say, classical music will help shape the young mind in our care.

One day, while Chopin was playing on this new clock radio, Leo wandered into the kitchen and turning toward the sound remarked appreciatively, "Ahhh ... piano music." 

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Ocean Vuong on "the wound that ... will never heal"

Lost garden (Avon Journal)

April 11, 2021

Avon journal

My mother laments the state of the garden, but my father’s stewardship saw to it that the yard today is positively crowded with daffodils. And the magnolia tree is blooming, and a mourning dove is nesting on the ladder by the side of the garage. There are even flowers in the pots that line the alley. The garden is still vibrant, and the arbor  (though overgrown and neglected) is still a triumph, a genteel structure that makes the backyard into an 8-year-old boy’s maze. Yesterday afternoon, Leo entertained himself by climbing my father's trees, riding his scooter in the alley and playing soccer with me; he was happy; resourceful; he loves the way the garden is lush with all kinds of flowers and trees. He rummaged a bit in the garage/shed (a little boy’s paradise); and he helped me pick daffodils after we arrived Friday night.

For Leo, nothing has changed and so maybe for me it is that way, too. 

Lost diary entry

4 months in, requiem (again) for the man who taught me 'requiem'

I keep a digital journal in a Word file on my computer, and when I have written 30 pages or so of journal entries, I start a new file. It's always labeled by the date of the first entry, and sometimes I add a word or two to convey mood or season. Like 'Covid.' (Or 'Second Covid Fall,' ahem).

The journal I am filling now is labeled "5 December 2021 -- JOURNAL -- Babbo." 

Babbo. Daddy.

It felt right to begin a new journal that day, the day he died. The day a new era, like or not, began.

Since then, we've recorded our first Christmas without him. We charged into a new year -- without him. And my mother has moved into a nursing home.

Time doesn't heal all wounds -- it distracts you, with new events, new worries, new frivolities. I suppose that's if you're lucky.

But there are still moments of wretched clarity. A few days after Christmas, I was listening to holiday music on the stereo after dinner -- something he would do -- and perhaps the buzz of the wine at dinner combined with the glow of an afternoon meander made me vulnerable and made it plain what I had somehow forgotten while walking, eating, tidying: He’s dead, gone, never coming back. Not anywhere I can reach. Not even estranged from me but still alive. 

“The dead stay dead,” to quote, once again, the erstwhile Bennington poet, Donald Hall. 

Put a different way: Requiem for the man who taught me the word 'requiem.'

(He loved to listen to requiems, my father).

Certain ideas become clear and they probably sound absurd to repeat but here goes one: Life was better before he died.

Well, of course, right?

But now I know that we've crossed a border from which there is no turning back. And I mean, wow, what days those were when he was still vigorous and bouncing my son on his knees.

Friends, you're wiser than me so you probably knew to savor the moment when your child bounced on your father's knee.

Driving home one day from my mother's nursing home, I thought about his voice (as I mentioned in his second obit, it was an instrument that could entertain, thunder, threaten and tease), thought about what it would sound like to hear it, wondered if he could see me crying in my car.

I thought about how interesting I found him. How his curiosity -- and the drive with which he pursued the objects of his curiosity -- was formidable, how it completely informed me. Informed my life, my personality. You could probably call me "vigorous" and it's borrowed vigor. Learned vigor.

It’s like I wish someone had told me this: the part of your life where your parents are still alive and well is what matters. Afterwards? Yeah, well, ahem...

To be sure, they will also annoy you during those golden days! Kvetching, exerting pressure, advancing opinions you don't want to hear, or, in the case of my father, mentioning repeatedly "what you ought to do." (You = me).

But what's notable: you're still making memories with them.

We've reached four months without my father, and there are no new memories. 

I've cried a proverbial river of tears. But often the sentiment closest to my state of mind -- if I am lucky -- is sarcastic disbelief. “You gotta be fucking kidding me”: that’s my actual thought when I stop and think that Daddy has died. When I spot his face in the photo on my computer background, with that smug-but-friendly smile.

Him? They got him?

Scarcely seems possible. 

And yet here we are.

Like I said, as I stumble through what we may later call 'the first year after Daddy died,' I come to all kinds of absurd conclusions -- like there ought to be a class for preparing for your parents' decline and subsequent demise. Because when I care for my mother now, I do everything wrong (or at least awkward, delayed, confused) and I believe it's because I am in some ways shell-shocked. We spent decades teasing her but now I realize we did so with the tacit conviction that she was still an awesome authority figure. Still a full-fledged adult who didn't need us to do anything but act responsible or set the table.

Now she's so vulnerable in every way and I am unprepared for it all. This situation could go on for years and I still think I would be expecting her to "be in charge." To remember that today is Tuesday (or Saturday, as the case may be), to know that Leo is in the fourth grade, to have activities she wants to pursue.

To end this blog post in a somewhat cheery way -- or grimly cheerful -- I suppose I could say, "Consider the alternative."

That I wouldn't be mourning him so keenly. And I guess that is the cost of love. Life's greatest gift, which if handled correctly will have you bursting into tears as you head for the Tappan Zee, your mother's nursing home receding in the distance.

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