My Year in Review?

I recently discovered a piece by the writer Alexander Chee from 2014 in which he summed up his year in writing.

And oh what a year it was. You can read about it here. He was an Amtrak writer in residence (because HE was the guy who thought up the idea), he finished a novel and started another.

Most recently he penned a story about Cambodia for Afar, which is pretty much my favorite travel magazine (next semester, he'll be a Writer in Residence in the MFA program at Bennington College where I'm enrolled).

It's a tad bit embarrassing for him to be my inspiration because when I jot down what I've accomplished this year in the World of Writing, it really pales.

But that isn't the point, is it?

I've checked off some pretty cool milestones on my own personal list of goals.

For example, I had a short piece on Afar's Web site about how to approach traveling to Italy (inspired by my own trip back to Italy in May). It's essentially my first paid bit of travel writing. You can read that here.

I also had my first poem published! You can read that here.

A nonfiction story I wrote called "I Come Bearing Gifts" was awarded Honorable Mention by Writer's Digest as part of its annual writing contest this year. A different version of this piece was later published on Catapult's site. B

I also had my first book review published for a short story collection that I personally think would make for a wicked holiday read. You can read the review here.

And already looking ahead to next year, an essay I wrote about work-life balance (after becoming a mother) will appear in an anthology published by the HerStories Project.

(Anthology=book=Jeanne swooning)

A lot of things didn't go my way. For example, I didn't win a grant I'd applied for (again). But the judges did provide feedback -- a first.

My year in review is largely about milestones in the field of Creative Writing. But I've also started freelancing for HLN, a division of CNN. You can also occasionally find my writing in Atlanta magazine, including this story.

It's no Alexander Chee year. But it's something I'm proud of.

Do other people write a Year in Review? I'd love to read other examples.

Found -- in an Italian journal circa 1995

A quote from the great Italian poet and writer Eugenio Montale.

English first, then Italian:

I don't understand why we are born and why we survive but I must admit there are beautiful moments and everyone experiences some. I'm very happy to be here but I feel great sorrow and disgust.

-Eugenio Montale (in an interview with journalist Enzo Biagi)

“Non capisco bene per quali ragioni siamo nati e sopravviviamo pero devo ammettere che ci sono momenti molto belli e ognuno ha i suoi. Sono contentissimo di essere qui, ma con molto dolore e molto disgusto.”

Who's decking the halls?

ME!

Spode Christmas tree coffee cups just for the holiday season?

Check.

Atlanta in the Fall

Atlanta in the fall is a delight...and remains so late into the season. To wit, these two photos, taken at the park in my neighborhood.

But which one is better?

(For my little photo hobby, as if I have time for it).

What I'm Drinking (for Thanksgiving & beyond)

I pretty much drink this wine every night. Colosi 2012 Rosso (Terre Siciliane).

It's a Nero d'Avola blend and it's amazing. I don't know why everyone isn't drinking Sicilian reds and nothing but Sicilian reds every night.

And I think it will go great with the Thanksgiving turkey!

Along with a wonderful Aglianico from Puglia.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A picture of me

At a certain age, there are no good pictures. I'm at that age. So how do you explain this photo? He makes me look thin. I swear that's not how my legs look! But what a photog this guy is. This guy...a.k.a., my three-year-old son, Leo. Best portrait photographer ever.

"Lui is bravo"

Says Mike, Il Nostro Inviato, about our son, Leonardo.

Lui _ is_bravo.

Fair enough, he is bravo. A little combustible package of bravo-ness.

Anche carino.

And charming.

Sign me,
Living in Two Languages
(Due lingue fantastiche)

I heart Bialetti (and I've got the t-shirt to prove it)

I'd honestly like to think I am the only woman in America obsessed enough with the classic Italian Bialetti moka coffee pot that her partner bought her this t-shirt.

But even if that's not true, I get to keep the t-shirt.

So cool!

This is the logical next step when you own, no joke, nine moka coffee pots, some of which you've scattered at relatives' houses and a certain college in Southern Vermont to ensure visits go smoothly.

Of course, the t-shirt came in a cutesy little bag with the Bialetti logo from the fantastic (and new, or new to me) Bialetti shop where Il Nostro Inviato bought it.

Is it wrong to wonder what other Bialetti baubles the store might have sold (i.e., perfect little Christmas gifts for Mamma)?

Maybe. But I'm wondering just the same.

"Eleventeen"

I only have to hear it -- "eleventeen"-- once for it to instantly become my favorite number.

The best number that has never existed.

Let's play a game.

Take someone who's wanted to be writer since she was nine, and then add a child.

(Oh, not just any child, sure. My child. My gorgeous little boy. Leo. L-E-O.)

And then go one step further: allow the writerly mother in question to indulge in a fantasy she never even had.

Which is: Listening while someone, her little someone, learns to speak.

I've written about this topic before (notably here and here). And even if you love me, you may be blanching right now from boredom and pity (for me).

But, oh God, it is so awesome!

The writer's equivalent of someone learning to walk? Run?

When Leo says "eleventeen," I don't correct him. (Probably not something I should admit.)

It's just so cute. Eight, nine, ten, eleventeen.

I do the same thing when he says "fi-ruh" (for the word fire). Ditto: lello, and hangerburger (to go with your hotdog).

It's the greatest blooper reel ever created, as far as I am concerned.

And besides, why correct him when he says, "I want to swing very higher"?

Swinging "very higher" sounds like something I'd like to do, too.

Italian newspapers are beautiful

What I learn from Italy and Italians isn't confined to the language of that country or the customs of that country.

I learn about everything that fascinates them.

And Italians love art -- all art. What's more, they are fascinated with other cultures.

Here's a gorgeous newspaper spread from Sunday's La Repubblica showing off Japanese-inspired comic art drawn by an Italian artist.

He's made a career out of drawing Manga-style comics that the Japanese swoon over.

Me, too! Che bello.

#ThisisAtlanta -- Kudzu covering street signs

Street signs at an abandoned intersection in southeast Atlanta, covered with kudzu.

This is Atlanta.

What Jeanne will find in Paradiso

It's almost obscene how much joy I derive from reading Italian.

Maybe that's how they can convince high school students and others to study foreign languages.

The foreign words knocking about your head and leaping off your tongue feel so good, it's obscene, dude!

Mommy says (no, not me)

During my recent visit to New Jersey, Mommy says to me: 

“She sent him a mass card and everything.” 

Where 'everything' consists of nothing but appears to be the best possible gift. Whoever my mother is talking about has sent a mass card (to my father, following his hip surgery) and nothing more.

But the one small gesture, the one good deed of sending the card looms large in her head, hence a sentence that to a foreigner might not make any sense. All the woman sent was a mass card. But that now constitutes everything.

What a wonderful way to see the world! Delighting in small things. 

I think that might be my true religion. Hers, too.

What I Can't Resist (Italian book version)

Books about Florence or Florentine sayings, written typically for Italians. Yep, that's something I simply cannot resist buying.

This one combines history, pithy sayings, explanations about Florentine traditions and an extensive glossary.

It also has a word I love on the cover: curiosita'. 'Curiosities,' though we don't really use that word in English. In Italian, there's even the verb 'incuriosire,' which you use when you want to say something has intrigued you (or made you curious, obviously). Yay! I love curiosities, especially of a Florentine nature.

So this is something I'm reading right now, when I have a moment (ahem!). In fact, I've stashed it in the car. So if you see me around Atlanta hunched over a book while stopped at a traffic light, I might just be reading this book.

Let's look at the Food Section...

...Says you-know-who, last Wednesday while we were looking at The New York Times over breakfast, per our usual.

And while listening to NPR on the radio, he says, "She said President Obama, Mommy!"

And, "Mommy do you have power?"

(I think he meant superpowers. No.)

He also said, just once, but still, it was dazzling, "Mommy I want to hear what you have to say."

And, "Which one are you going to have?"

And sometimes when we look at magazines, he'll say, "That's art. And that's art," pointing to pictures of art.

"Look, Mommy, it's the Mona Lisa!"

Down here in Atlanta, there's a saying you'll hear sometimes.

"It ain't braggin' if you done it."

Well, okay, I didn't do anything but I'll brag a little that when Leo and I went to the Atlanta airport last week, he spotted the advertisement in this photo and yelled out, "Look, Mommy, it's the Mona Lisa!"

Unprompted, and while riding the airport train.

Of course, his name is Leonardo.

And while he, in fact, is Leonardo da Atlanta, he is aware of that other Leonardo.

Whose most famous painting, he'll tell you, is in Paris.

Pushy commands you grow to love

Here's one:

"Read it, Mommy," as my son Leo pushes a book in my hand.

Sometimes it's even a book in Italian.

Puglia in Tavola, prose poem in mind

Earlier this week, I took down from the book shelf in the kitchen where we keep the cook books a small volume we bought in Puglia: Puglia in Tavola.

And I opened it up this morning, flipping away from the recipe I had bookmarked to see what else is hidden inside there, and I find names of recipes that read like the seeds of prose poems in Italian.

Words so foreign to me, that they beggar the imagination that they could be Italian (and yet I see they are).

Words like: quagghjariedde and ghiemeridde.

I don't cook. But a recipe book in Italian? A little piece of heaven. Almost as good as a ciambellina.

Lost entry from my Italian trip diary

Back against the wall, eyes staring across the street, staring at the #54 , as if I were trying to memorize the address or the pattern of the iron work above the green door.

No need. My old apartment was at Via dei Serragli, 54.

Really I’m waiting for someone to pass. A short young American girl, in pensiero, looking slightly troubled, walking quickly, all business, coming out of the door.

Or a man with long hair tied into a ponytail at the nape of his neck and with a long stride, making his way down the street.

But those people are gone. They’re now approaching middle age and living in Atlanta. Besides, one of them is the person with her back against the wall, trying to retrace her steps, to figure out how she got there or here (and which is which? Am I here or there?).

I look up the bedroom window, which now has a lovely lace curtain. The door is adorned with a fancier campanile, filled with the names of tenants I don't know. But it’s all more the same than different – thank God.

I Good Mommy, I Good? (Poesia per Leonardo)

A poem for Leo, in honor of his third birthday, and the way his words have thoroughly entered my head and changed the way I hear speech -- forever.

*

“I good, Mommy? I good?”

Another little scrap of remembered conversation with you-know-who

“I good, Mommy? I good?”

The words follow me, from my house in Atlanta to the airport

To the airplane, to Bennington

To my notebook, and ultimately here,

To this poem

“I good, Mommy? I good?”

There’s a desperation in his voice

And I notice: his voice is a weapon, a weapon to break every bit of hardness in me,

Incisive and plaintive and capable of dispelling any notion of motherhood I might have invented

His voice, his plaintive, little words, his insistence on knowing if he’s a good boy or not
The abrupt change in tone, the turning of the head when I suggested, not so gently, that
He needed to be a good boy to gain this or that privilege

All of it, all of it, is conspiring to dismantle every intention of being tough with him.

I’m forced to say without any equivocation, “Yes, Leo. Leo’s a good boy.”

Oh how I want to equivocate, my own penchant for pettiness leaning ever so decisively toward quibbling

But the person asking the question isn’t the boy who climbs out of his crib during a nap or the boy who says no,I don't want to, or the boy who insists on walking where his mother fears he will fall

No, no the boy who asks is another

The boy who asks “I good, Mommy? I good?” is all of human kindness in one little body.

The boy who asks “I good, Mommy? I good?” is all of human yearning in one little body.

The boy who asks “I good, Mommy? I good?” is a far better person than I am or ever will be

The boy who asks “I good, Mommy? I good?” would have had his heart broken if I said anything other than yes.