Market day in Allerona: Catch it while you still can

This is a sad post, not because anyone dies, but because a way of life is dying. Tourists to Italy may revel in the novelty and charm of weekly outdoor markets. But for small towns like Allerona, they are a fraying link to a quickly vanishing past.

It's a small market, for sure, and with a baby carriage that
looks strikingly similar to Naomi's.

Allerona’s weekly market is held every Wednesday morning, rain or shine (except for snow), unless there is a state holiday. Vendors arrive in small trucks and quickly begin to set up shop. For the fruit and vegetable vendors, one side of the truck opens up and serves as an awning. The vendor stands in the truck bed, surrounding by crates of fresh produce. The townspeople, mostly women, gather in a disorderly fashion in front of the truck, but each one keeps track of who was there first and who arrives after, and no one tries to butt in line.

Fresh, local produce from Roberto

The favored produce vendor, Roberto, has been selling at the Allerona market since he was a teenage boy accompanying his father, who plied the same trade. The other produce vendor, “the Napolitano,” is not as trusted as Roberto and in truth, he is a little sneaky – trying to hide a moldy orange or two at the bottom of the bag, or sneaking in five apples when you ask for three. He tricked me – the unwitting Americana – that way once, and I never bought from him again.

Roberto totals an order.

So the women gathered at Roberto’s truck engage in a lively banter with him and with each other, exchanging recipes, reporting on the state of this one’s health or the other one’s sick mother-in-law or newest grandchild. To Roberto, they’ll say, “give me 10 good oranges” (as if they would otherwise want bad ones), or “give me five pears that are good for cooking,” or “how’s the spinach today?” He weighs each group of items, calculates the price in his head, and adds it to the tally on the cash register. He almost always rounds down to the nearest whole euro. If you are a regular customer, Roberto throws in a carrot or two, a few stalks of celery, and some sprigs of fresh parsley for you to use to make broth or minestre (vegetable soup). I knew I’d finally staked by claim in this little burgh when I finally got up the nerve to ask for the same handful of vegetables he handed every other woman, without her asking. Now I no longer need to ask, either.

Michele in his truck

A truck or two down from Roberto in Michele, who sells items for the casalinghe (housewives). His truck opens at the side and the back, and he stands on the truck bed above his customers, and behind a glass display case filled with shampoo, face creams, deodorant, cheap perfume and makeup. On the shelves behind him are more toiletries, along with sanitary products, cleaning products and solvents. On tables and shelves under the truck’s awning are toilet paper, brooms, mops, garbage bags, laundry detergent, sponges, and just about anything else my mother in law might need to clean her house or mine.

Michele has a little bit of everything.

Roberto and Michele are regulars, as is Luca, the prosciutto and cheese salesman whom Paolo and I refer to as my “boyfriend.” Luca is easy on the eyes, and he always calls me “Cara” (Dear), and I confess that sometimes, I buy prosciutto from him just to catch a little of that glimmer in his eye. But alas, Luca comes to our market only every other week.

On intermittent weeks, there’s a woman selling bras, underwear, swimsuits and pajamas, for both sexes, out of her truck. She’s usually flanked by a humorless man selling pots, pans and kitchen gadgets. Across from them, there’s a fellow selling sheets, towels, bedspreads and comforters. A little bit farther from the center of the market is a guy selling flowers and vegetable plants from his van. Farther still, and very likely because he is “straniero” (foreign) is a Moroccan selling clothes. He knew I was pregnant before most people in town did last year, as he kept trying to talk me into a smaller size of a billowing print top, and I finally had to convince him that I would, indeed, be filling out the larger one. “Incinta,” I whispered with a finger at my lips, the other hand pointed at my then still flat-ish stomach. “Auguri,” he whispered back.

Every woman in town owns one of those plastic bowls
with the sunflowers on them. Most are melted from being set
too close to the stove. 

So this all sounds perfectly quaint and lovely, doesn’t it? Except that our half dozen or so vendors – when that many show up – are a fraction of what the market here used to look like. Even a year or so ago, a shoe vendor would show up regularly. Now, he doesn’t bother to come, nor do the guys selling winter coats, or curtains. Paolo remembers the market stretching all the way down our main road, from the piazza where it’s now held, down past the parking lot and past the carabinieri station. There were competing vendors, as well as more clothiers, farmers selling livestock and freshly made cheese, and a traveling shoe repairman. Now, we’re down to our diehard handful of vendors, and I fear the day will come that they, too, won’t bother to drive up the hill to our little town, because it just won’t be worth the time and gas.

Sheets, tablecloths, and blankets

There was a time that weekly markets were vital to life in towns like Allerona. Before every household had at least one car – or before the casalinghe had their daughters or daughters-in-law to drive them to supermarkets in Orvieto, the markets provided them with everything they needed. Or so they thought, maybe, until the supermarkets opened, with their 200 varieties of dried pasta, 10 types of prosciutto, 15 shapes, sizes and brands of maxi pads, plus baby-food and readymade pizza and entrees. Why settle for what the market vendors can offer, when they can pick and choose from brands, sizes, and flavors?

I admit that I am a contributor to the demise of the market culture. I go to our weekly market just every so often, when I need something and don’t feel like driving “to town” – Allerona Scalo, just 7 minutes’ drive from us – or when I just feel like getting out of the house a little bit. But as often as not, I forget the market is there until Wednesday morning has come and gone. Instead, I go to Scalo or to Orvieto, often with my mother-in-law and an odd cousin or two in tow, and we do our “big shopping” where we can get it all done in one place.

The undeniable factor to the death of market culture is also the death – literally and figuratively – of little towns like ours. Allerona, which once housed more than 1,200 people in an around its castello walls, and brought hundreds more in from the countryside on market day, is dying. There are about 400 people living in centro now. More than half the houses in the town center stand empty, with far away owners in Rome, Genoa or Milan who inherited the homes from a late relative and have barely a passing interest in Allerona. Some come during the Christmas holidays and festas to “get away from it all,” others haven’t turned the key in a door here for a decade or more. Paolo rightly fears that Allerona, in another 20 years or so, will be a ghost town, more so than it already is.

And the accompanying truth is that in another 10 or 20 years, when the last of the generation of women who never learned to drive – and I’m shocked at how many of them there are here – are gone, even the younger women who stay at home to raise their children will still drive to the supermarket rather than frequent the weekly market here.

I spoke to Michele about this the day I took pictures of the market. He lamented the dying tradition here, but said to me, half-questioningly, “Markets are becoming popular in America now, aren’t they?” And I thought of Eastern Market in DC, of the popular Saturday farmer’s market in Sarasota, and how Americans now seem to be seeking out more opportunities to shop local and support small businesses just as Italy is abandoning the same tradition. It may ultimately be the U.S.’s fault – with our permeating pop culture that so entices and offends Europeans – that the market traditions in Europe are dying. But maybe it’s the U.S. that will bring them back, too, who knows.

The fishmonger in our driveway.

I’m happy to report that not all hope is completely lost. Roberto still comes twice a week, on Wednesday market day and on Fridays, when instead of parking at the piazza, he makes the rounds, and stops in several places around town. We he nears the cluster of houses near ours,  he sounds the horn, and by the time he’s parked and opened up the side of his truck, a small group is waiting to him.

On Saturdays, the fishmonger comes and makes his regular stops. Since I’ve purchased from him before, he now stops at the top of our driveway and honks his horn. I step out on the balcony and either wave him off if I don’t need anything, or wave him down if we want fresh fish. He maneuvers the truck down the driveway and opens up the side, to reveal a banquette of fresh fish and shellfish on ice. Our unspoken accord goes something as follows:  I ask for a half kilo of shrimp or four fillets of fish or something along those lines, and he always loads at least a third more than I want onto the scale. I yell at him to stop, he throws on a few more shrimp or another fillet, totals up the bill for far more fish than I intended to purchase, then gives me a “sconto” (discount) of a euro or two.

But really, I don't need that much fish!

I’m probably being taken advantage of by the fishmonger, in the way that Italian vendors like to prenda per il culo (basically, take for an ass) those Americans who are too busy taking pictures and oohing and aahing over the damn quaintness of the scene to realize they’re being ripped off. But that’s okay. It’s our deal, he and I. And if his selling me 10 euro more fish than I want (and discounting 2 euro, of course) means he keeps sounding the horn every Saturday, then we’ll just have to eat more fish.

Springtime in Umbria

Since it's been a while since I've written a new post, and I've got lots of ideas but little time to write, I'm taking the easy way out - I'm posting photos of springtime in Umbria. 

Spring rolled in late this year, but, like every year, it brings with it a dizzying array of wildflowers. Their color and variety make me linger a bit longer on my walks with Daisy, who is all too happy for the extra one-on-one time with Mom (as she is no longer top dog since the birth of our daughter).

Our olive trees are filled with tiny clusters of green berries, which will turn ripe and purply-black by the time  we harvest them in November. Our vines have sprouted thick bunches of tightly huddling sour grapes, which will be sticky-sweet come vendemmia time in September. 

The fruit trees in our yard are full of new fruit, and we even discovered several that didn't bloom last year - two apple trees, a peach tree, an almond tree and a cherry tree, which has fruit ready to pick now. It's almost as though the renewed life in the house - it had stood empty for 10 years - has given renewed life to the trees as well.

The wildflowers will last another couple of more weeks, then they'll give way to a hot, dry summer, that comes replete with biting flies and bloodthirsty mosquitoes. But that's okay... I'll live with the heat and the biting insects, if that's the price I pay for this dazzling annual display of flora and fecundity. 

And at least you'll know why I haven't had time to write. 

Enjoy...

These are "broom" plants in English, but in Italian, they're called "maggio," because they bloom in May. I wish I had scent-o-rama so you could smell their sweet, delicate perfume, which blankets the hills around us. I want to swim in the smell of them!

More maggio

If you are lucky enough to stumble across a country road lined with maggio, you might not want to go home until summertime.

A magnificent cherry tree in full bloom. You can hear the low rumble of bees from 10 yards away.

Future cherries! 

Sweet little wildflowers pop up everywhere.

Even some snapdragon seeds that I tossed in the yard last summer decided to sprout

The right flower can make even a chain link fence look prettier...

Daisy gets it. She is always willing to take time to smell the flowers. And then pee on them.

Naomi’s crowded train ride to citizenship

Our daughter had her first trip to Rome the other day, and it was filled with the kind of highs and lows that Audrey Hepburn must have felt as she careened around on the back of Gregory Peck’s scooter, only to find out that her handsome suitor was really just a reporter trying to get a scoop.

This was so, so not us in Rome.

Well, okay. It wasn't quite that exciting, but it was an eventful day. 


We took Naomi to Rome to register her birth with the US Embassy. Doing so establishes her US citizenship, and eventually will provide her with easy entry and residency in the States should she eventually decide to study or live there.

Since we would be on foot once we arrived in Rome (with her stroller, but no car seat, for her, we wouldn’t be taking any taxi rides), we decided to take an early train so we’d have plenty of time to walk from Stazione Termini up to Via Veneto and the sprawling embassy compound.

But when we arrived at the train station in Orvieto, we learned that the night before, two trains had collided at Terni. The accident was minor, but the after-effects were not. For reasons not quite clear to me (since Orvieto and Terni are not on the same line), the early train was cancelled, and we had to wait nearly an hour for a night train from Vienna. 


Picture a trainload of musky 15 year old Aryan boys, all crowded a little too closely into their sleeper cars, waking, rubbing their eyes and scratching their crotches, and asking, every time the porter passed, just exactly when they’d get their a breakfast of schnitzel, brown bread, and yogurt, anyway.

Picture that since the earlier train did not depart from Florence, all the people in Florence and Chiusi that should have caught the earlier train were packed onto the Viennese train, with all those Austrians plus everyone else who thought they’d take the later train. Now picture that train arriving at Orvieto, to a platform filled with more waiting passengers than there were empty seats on the train.

Now picture a couple, venturing forth with their 5-month-old baby for her first really big outing. They haven’t opened and collapsed her stroller enough yet to do it with ease, and especially to do it quickly, when juggling train tickets and diaper bags and purses and pacifiers.

So we fumbled and stumbled and cursed, and finally found a place to stand on the sardine-packed train. At least Naomi got to lie in her stroller and take a nap.

The stately US Embassy, on Via Veneto.
No inside photos permitted!

Things improved considerably when we got to Rome. We busted a move up to the embassy – for we were now in danger of being late for our appointment – and were welcomed through security with what I have to admit was a refreshing dose of American friendliness and efficiency. The security guards might be Italian, but I think they got their customer service training from a US HR person. Even the embassy bathroom, though Spartan, was nicer than a typical Italian one. It had a toilet seat and toilet paper. Obviously, we were on US soil.

Our next stop was the photo booth on the ground floor of the embassy, as Naomi needed a passport photo. (I was 23 before I got my first passport, and this kid gets one at 5 months? Times they are a changing’…) I thought holding Naomi in my lap for the photo was sufficient, but when we showed her photo to the representative at the service window, we were promptly sent back downstairs. I’d either have to hold her in my lap with a blanket over my head or crouch down, out of sight and hold Naomi up in front of the camera. I opted for the latter. A few more false starts, with her closing her eyes or turning her head away, or yawning, and we finally got a photo of her looking right into the camera.

After our paperwork was checked and submitted, along with Naomi’s mug shot, we were told to wait for “the consulate” to call us. The title alone – the consulate – suggest a certain gravitas, no? So we waited until the Wizard – I mean, the consulate – called us up to the last window. It turns out the consulate is a guy in his late 20s or early 30s, who actually seemed a little too young for such an important-sounding title. But at any rate, with very little pomp and circumstance, he took a look at Naomi and proclaimed her a US citizen. He gave her a lapel pin to commemorate the moment – an Italian and a US flag with poles crossed. The pin, he noted, was made in China, which perhaps speaks volumes about the state of both the Italian and US economies.

She's official! Italian-American
made-in-China flag pin and all.

I felt an unexpected rush of emotion at the moment the boy-consulate proclaimed Naomi a US citizen. I just didn’t think it would be such a big deal – merely a formality to give her more options in the future and make travel a little easier for all of us. Instead, I felt a surge of pride and happiness – I even clapped my hands, for Pete’s sake, and people who know me know I’m not the ebullient type – that she was somehow officially a part of the country I thought I’d left behind more or less for good.

I've been back to visit the US three times since moving to Italy three years ago. It’s at once a strange and familiar land to me now. Where I do feel the refreshing familiarity of being back in my native culture, with all its conveniences and friendliness (and customer service!), I always feel a little bit like I’m standing on its border, looking in. The smiles, the ease of communication, the nuanced vocabulary that I know I’ll never master in Italian – all of those things feel very much like home when I am in the US. But the traffic, the assault of advertising, the giant stores with giant shopping carts and giant fountain drinks (obviously we are on US soil), that’s an America I can’t help but look on with disdain. But more than that, it’s an America that no longer feels like home.

So, I wonder what America our Naomi will find when she starts to be aware of her second homeland. Will it be enticing, or repulsive to her? Will she feel somehow different from her Italian schoolmates because she is half-American, or will her dual citizenship and dual ancestry simply be a subject of curiosity for her, something she accepts with a shrug of the shoulders but not much more. She’ll be bilingual, that much we know. But then, what will be her “mother tongue,” as the Italians like to put it? In which world will this child of both worlds find her home?

All trains lead to Termini, just not always
nearly enough of them. 

I’d love to say that I pondered all those questions on our quiet, reflective train ride back to Orvieto. But instead, we found ourselves once again on a too-crowded train, this one maybe three times as overcrowded as the morning train. The Roman afternoon heat had kicked in, and by the time we got on board, Naomi, Paolo and I were both bathed in sweat, our hair and clothes completely sticking to us. The air conditioner on the train was not working (this is Italy, after all), and there was no way to cool off or calm down Naomi, who was by this point screaming her head off.

A kind passenger (“I have a baby too,” she told me) found a single available seat and led me to it. The rest of the equally sweaty passengers looked at us, a disheveled mom and a screaming baby – wait, how did I become that mom? – with a mix of pity and contempt. It was a scene carved right from travel nightmares.

Naomi finally fell asleep, drenched, in my arms. Paolo came and found us and stood in the aisle. I tried my best Zen breathing to tolerate the heat. He and I looked at each other, with our little dual citizen dozing in my soggy lap, and smiled weakly in a kind of “what can ya do?” way. This is Italy, after all. This is our home.

Honoring the fighters, the fallen, and the really, really old

Last week, we celebrated two very special events in Allerona. April 25 was Italian Liberation Day, and April 27 was Nonno Gino’s birthday. The former is a national holiday, and the latter, well, it should be a national holiday.

April 25 is recognized as the day the partigiani (partisans), or the Italian Resistance succeeded, with Allied help, in driving the last of the Nazis from Italy. It’s also a day to remember Italy’s war dead from both world wars and to pay respect to living war veterans, though those are a rarer and rarer breed anymore.

Allerona's monument to the caduti

In Allerona, April 25 is marked with a small, sweet ceremony in the town’s piazza, or main square. In a garden adjacent to the piazza, there is a monument inscribed with Allerona’s caduti, its fallen soldiers from both wars. The surnames of the dead are the same surnames as those still living in Allerona and in many cases, it appears that whole families of brothers died fighting.

The living combatenti  (fighters) and non-combat veterans like Gino are honored at a lunch in town, which always takes place on April 25 at the same restaurant.

Although I can imagine that it mattered a lot 50, or even 20 years ago, these days, no one worries or talks too much about whom at the lunch was a partrigiani or who was a fascist. I’m pretty sure both are present at the lunch, but as a friend used to say, “Everyone in France was a member of the resistance. Go ahead, ask any of them.” Italy is not so different. Surely not everyone jumped from the fascist ship and switched allegiances. And more than one million people still visit Mussolini’s grave each year, and someone leaves flowers, though you’d be hard pressed to find anyone admitting to it.

But back to the lunch. Paolo and I arranged to take Gino to lunch, along with our friend Susanna. (She is 30 years Gino’s younger, but suffice to say, one is never too old to have a little crush on a younger woman.) Gino was up bright and early and walked, supported by two canes but with a skip in his step, up to the church for 11 a.m. mass. He then walked in the procession, complete with our community band, down Via Centrale, for the wreath laying and brief ceremony at the memorial. 

Gino with some young fella

According to Susanna, when the ceremony was over at noon, Gino immediately started asking, °dove Paolo?” (“Where’s Paolo?”) It didn’t matter that we’d arranged to meet him at home at 12:30; he was ready to be driven to lunch… now. So instead of waiting for us, he caught a ride down to the restaurant and we found him there, already sitting with a group of his friends, all octogenarians 10-15 years his junior.

The lunch proceeded in a usual way, with a hearty antipasto, two pasta courses, platters of meat and vegetables passed, and carafes of the house wine drained and refilled. But the lunch seemed more low-key than in recent years, and even Gino seemed a little bored. Maybe because there were fewer celebrants, as is the case every year, or maybe because no one wanted to sing.

Gino greets Mario

Just as things were winding down and dessert was being served, a surprise guest appeared. Gino’s “little” brother, Mario, 96, was escorted in by his on-in-law. Mario is mostly bedbound these days and a little out of it, so to see him arrive at the lunch, handsomely dressed in a jacket, scarf and fedora, really was unexpected. He walked in to a hail of cheers and applause, and his face lit up.

Gino’s face, too, lit up when he saw his brother. He quickly (well, quickly for a nearly 99-year-old) got up from his chair and shuffled over to Mario. The brothers exchanged kisses on each cheek, and then posed for photos.

Gino, 99, with little brother Mario, 96

Mario was the real guest of honor at the event, as he is the last remaining combatenti in Allerona. An infantryman in the Italian army, he was captured by the British at the second Battle of El Alemain in 1942, a decisive victory for Allied forces. He recalls being marched for day and night through the desert, when at night the surviving prisoners would take jackets and boots off dead soldiers they passed, to stave off the cold and during day, they sweltered in deadly hot temperatures.

Mario spent four years as a POW at a British prison camp in Libya. That at 96, he seems so much less vital than Gino is no doubt testament to his time as a prisoner of war. Watching him eat dessert (a rare occasion that he can eat even semi-solid food), his daughter wiping his chin, it’s hard to imagine Mario the warrior, Mario the scared prisoner of war, or even Mario the young man.

A guy can dream, no?

Gino was once a young man himself. And we saw glimmers of that Friday night, when we celebrated his 99th birthday. If he knew we were planning a big surprise dinner for him, he had the good grace to act surprised when he walked in and everyone shouted “Auguri!” Susanna made sure to sit across from him, since she is one of his favorite people. She kept his wine glass filled too, I’m sure.

Among the gifts presented to Gino (and really, what do you get for a 99-year-old?) was a gag gift, a poster-size calendar of topless young women. That the calendar was from 2009 seemed to make little difference to Gino, who couldn’t contain his laughter as he posed for photo after photo with a different girl of the month, with Mario by his side.

At the lunch for the combatenti, I watched as these men greeted each other warmly and slowly, taking each other’s hands and speaking quietly to one another, in no rush to break the embrace. Their eyes misted over as they greeted one another or joined in song.

And as Gino and his little brother Mario sat at Gino’s birthday party and conversed in an unintelligible, mumbled dialect known only to them, I started to see them as they see, or at least remember, themselves. Perhaps Mario still remembers the hell of a desert battlefield. And Gino still remembers himself as the man who split logs with a single strike of the axe, and who never wasted a single shot when he hunted.

These old men, whom we all admire and adore with the same charmed pity that we might a baby or a new puppy, still know each other as the men they once were: fighters, lovers, hunters, drinkers. And they know they are a dying breed, and we know it too. How many more lunches for the combatenti will we have? Who will sing the songs - or know the words - after they're gone? How soon before no one is left who remembers the boys whose names are inscribed on our war memorial?

Perhaps, in a way I’m only just beginning to understand in my middle age, when we, along with them, get all misty- eyed at these gatherings, it's because we're all afraid of forgetting the past, of losing our history, and of disappearing, a little piece at a time.

Paolo at the lunch for the combatenti

Monstrous tourists and sacred cellphones: A busy day at Il Parco dei Mostri, Bomarzo

The town of Bomarzo sits high above Il Parco dei Mostri.

For some time now, I’d been wanting to visit Il Parco dei Mostri (The Park of the Monsters), a quirky tourist attraction adjacent to the town of Bomarzo, near Viterbo. Since Easter Monday is a festa (legal holiday) in Italy, Paolo promised that he would not work on the house, his new aquarium (don’t even get me started) or any other projects, and we would spend the day doing “whatever (I) wanted.” Bomarzo is only about 40 minutes from us via the autostrada exit at Attigliano, so I announced that was our plan.

Besides, I thought, on Easter Monday, it won’t be very crowded. Those of you who know Italians and their festa behavior better than I, please stifle your laughter.



G-rated turtle.



The Park of the Monsters is a Renaissance sculpture garden, if the Renaissance had LSD, that is. Set amidst the so-called Sacro Bosco (Sacred Woods), the park is filled with fantastic stone carvings of well, as the name suggests, monsters, but also mythological figures, animals both real and imagined, formal courtyards and small-scale buildings. All of the stone carvings were done in situ, meaning they were cleaved from the boulders that were already there.

The garden was the vision of nobleman Pier Francesco Orsini, a member of the wealthy and venerable Orsini clan, whose long and sprawling pedigree in Italy includes three popes, 34 cardinals, and assorted generals, princes and thieves (none of these titles were mutually exclusive). Piety never kept a good man down, and numerous Orsinis were the bastard children of popes and cardinals.



This unfortunate wretch is the giant Cacus
in his death throes, killed by that bully Hercules.



Whether he was conceived in the pope’s chambers or in a whore house (those Orsinis did get around), our Pier Francesco was apparently a romantic guy with a healthy sense of the bizarre. Though the historical record is not clear, the popular tale is that he commissioned the gardens after the death of his beloved wife, Giulia Farnese, who is not to be confused with the Giulia Farnese, who was mistress and baby-mama to Pope Alexander VI, all the while she was married to – you guessed it! – an Orsini, this one the cleverly-named Orsino Orsini (which I think may loosely translate to Little Beary Bear). 

Little Bear was apparently quite content to turn the other cheek while Giulia got busy with the papa of all Papa Bears, Alexander VI. Born Rodrigo Borgia, Alex was quite the man of the cloth himself, if those cloths include bed sheets. Father to four illegitimate children while a still cardinal (including those dastardly siblings and maybe lovers Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia), and later the baby-daddy to his daughter with Giulia Farnese, Alexander took nepotism to new heights by installing his sons as cardinals and dukes, and arranging and then breaking several marriage pacts for Lucrezia, with whom he, too, might have been sleeping. He died at the age of 72, quite possibly by accidental poisoning at the hand of Cesare. That his successor adopted the name Pius is no coincidence.



Pope Alexander VI, who never set
foot at Bomarzo.
For an ugly guy, he got laid a lot.

Oh, but I digress. But only because the lusty Borgias and the dastardly Orsinis are so much more fun than boring, heartsick Pier Francesco, who no-doubt would have hung out in comic book stores and played Dungeons and Dragons were he alive in the 1980s.

Anyway, Pier Francesco conceived of the park on his estate at Bomarzo, either as a physical monument to the non-slutty Giulia Farnese or simply as a place of whimsy for himself and his guests. In either case, the park fell into disuse after his death in 1585. Though artists like Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau were familiar with the overgrown tangle of fantastic sculptures, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Bettini family, who still own the park today, grabbed rakes and lawnmowers and restored the park.  



Fast forward to 2012, and to an unwitting American expat (that would be me) who thought Il Parco dei Mostri was a little-known tourist attraction that drew only those with a taste for the quirky and arcane, like the people who make a special trip to visit the Corn Palace in South Dakota or the World’s Largest Twine Ball, which depending on whom you ask, is located either in Darwin, Minnesota or Cawker City, Kansas. (For clarification purposes, the good people of Darwin renamed their ball of twine the World’s Largest Twine Ball Rolled By One Man, to distinguish it from Cawker City’s World’s Largest Twine Ball, which is a still-growing community effort. Everyone knows Kansans are notorious cheaters, anyway.)

The "hanging house."
I think they held raves here.

But instead of only the few, the geeky and the curious, on this sunny Easter Monday, Paolo, Naomi, me, and every family of eight or more from Rome and vicinity decided to descend on the Sacred Woods. It’s a good thing there are no sacred nymphs or unicorns (other than the stone kind) flitting about those sacred woods, as the baby strollers, ringing cellphones and picnicking Italians would  frighten them all away. One woman blocked one of the few stroller/wheelchair friendly ramps by arguing loudly on the phone, presumably with her soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law (“He’s your son; now he’s your problem!”). Another couple, no doubt the incestuous descendants of some lascivious pope, stood making out in front of a giant stone turtle as a friend waited to snap their photo free of the madding crowd, which was also hoping to snap a more G-rated photo of the turtle. Parents thumbed through photos on their iPhones as their children wiggled under a fence and climbed all over a sculpture of dragon, until a security guard chased them off and scolded the decidedly nonplussed parents. Soccer balls bounced off the ionic columns of model stone temples and the noses of lions. 

 



Paolo and Naomi, at the Temple.

 So, my take away from the Parco dei Mostri is this. It’s a beautiful, fanciful sight, and worth a visit, on a weekday, and not on a weekend or holiday, when Italians clog every bottleneck in the sidewalk and pack the picnic grounds towel-to-towel like they do a Mediterranean beach in August. As we paused on a rare available bench, it was possible to imagine, in between the screaming kids, the ringing cellphones and the wafting smell of grilled meat, that on a less crowded day the park is a lovely spot to spend a few leisurely hours.

And to Renaissance visitors, who saw the park free of the noise pollution of tour buses, passing airplanes and the distant train, it’s ivy-shaded paths, perhaps a bit more fecund and overgrown nearly 500 years ago, I imagine the park and its woods did seem just a little bit sacred. As long as it wasn't a festa.

 

A corner of the sacred woods, probably not
much different than how it looked 500 years ago.



Cleaning house in Italy: It's a family affair

Last week I wrote about the Babysitting Brigade and now, it’s time to tell you about the Cleaning Crew. This is another of those things that makes me marvel about life in our small town – that family members voluntarily offer to clean other family members’ homes, just because they like to help.

At least once a week, I see Paolo’s cousin, Antonella, at her daughter’s house, hanging laundry out to dry. Franca goes to her daughter’s house every morning and makes beds, even though everyone in the house is perfectly capable of making their own. When Paolo and I used to talk on Skype before I moved in Italy, I would often see Franca in the background, mopping the floor or ironing.

Now, I admit that I am no housekeeper. There are a thousand things I’d rather do than mop the floor or iron bed sheets. If I can write my name in the dust on the dining room table, that’s where I make my shopping list. It’s not that I never clean house. It’s just that my standard of a clean house does not meet the standard of the ladies in Paolo’s family.

My mother-in-law, Franca, first tried a subtle approach, advising me to keep a tidy home in case the doctor had to make a house call. I figure if I am too sick to go to the doctor and he has to come to me, clean curtains and wrinkle-free sheets are the least of my worries. So I would nod along, do some token dusting while she was around, and go right back to my regularly scheduled programming, which usually involved working at my computer, talking to friends on Skype, or walking the dog.

So when we moved from Paolo’s old apartment down to our temporary home in Franca’s garage, she realized she needed to take covert action. She became a stealth cleaner. She’d step out on her balcony and if my car wasn’t there, she’d pounce on the opportunity to clean the apartment.  I’d come home to a clean-smelling, freshly mopped and dusted apartment, and a stack of clean laundry neatly folded and yes, ironed.

When we went out of town, she’d call in the reserve troops. Paolo’s aunt and cousin would aide in the effort, pulling out furniture, sweeping and mopping underneath, and even organizing socks and underwear in our dresser drawers. I had hoped that after one of them discovered my vibrator and tucked it in neatly amongst folded panties (yes, they even folded the g-strings–have you ever seen a folded g-string? It’s about the size of a matchbook), they might be dissuaded the next time, but no such luck. So I kept hiding the vibrator in a better spot, only to return from a weekend away to find that spot, too, had been cleaned.

As a new-baby and housewarming gift, friends of mine, aware that I am missing the housekeeping gene, paid for six months of cleaning service. (Now that’s what I call a gift!) So now that we’ve moved (and Franca doesn’t have a key to our house—yet), when the ladies come to visit, it’s mostly just to see the baby. But when Franca’s not holding Naomi, she always asks if there’s something she can do. If I say “no, thank you,” she’s downright disappointed. So I usually try to find some laundry for her to fold, or an undershirt to iron.



Graziella & Franca. I told them to look stern for
the photo, and this was all they could manage.



Recently, we finished the second floor of our house, but it was still full of construction dirt and dust, little flecks of paint on the tile floors, and remnants of masking tape on all the new windows. I put the word out that I once again needed the services of the Cleaning Crew. Graziella, Paolo’s aunt, was out of town for several weeks (no doubt cleaning her son’s apartment in Rome), and she kept telling us to wait until she got back before we cleaned. And I had absolutely no problem with that.

So the other day, while I worked (“You work and make money, Liz, we’ll take care of the cleaning.”), Franca and Graziella attacked the second floor and within a matter of hours, had that tile clean enough to eat off and the windows clear enough to walk right into.

Still, we have different standards for what matters. Outside our second floor bathroom, a small bird of prey (a female lesser kestrel, I believe), likes to perch on the balcony at night and hunt mice in the abandoned vineyard below us. I’ve only seen her once, but she leaves plenty of droppings to let us know she’s a regular. Graziella and Franca were appalled at the pile of white crunchy bird droppings outside the window.

The conversation went something like this:

A female lesser kestrel,
though not the one
upsetting Graziella.

Graziella: A bird is shitting on the balcony.

Me: Yes, I know. She stays there at night.

Graziella: Put something bright-colored in the window and she won’t come back.

Me: But I like her. I want her to come back.

Graziella: Leave the dog out there and the bird won’t come back.

Me. But I like the bird.

Graziella: The bird is shitting on the balcony.



The kestrel let her displeasure be known.



So despite my protests to let perching birds perch, and that she hunts mice that might otherwise come and leave their poop in the house, the balcony got scrubbed clean. I haven’t seen the bird since, nor has she replenished the pile of droppings. But I did notice a new white splotch on the bathroom window. Her parting gift, perhaps. Mountain of poop or not, I’m still hoping she’ll come back. The poop is really no bother, since the balcony won’t get used until a teenaged Naomi uses it to sneak in and out of the house – she is her mother’s daughter, after all.

Despite thier disdain for lesser kestrels, it is still remarkable to me that the women here—and it’s not just my family—are so willing to help their sons and daughters and daughter-in-laws with work that I (and many of my American sisters, I suspect) consider drudgery. But one of the reasons Graziella was so insistent on us waiting for her to clean is that she was actually looking forward to it. And hearing her and Franca chatter and gossip and laugh together while they worked, I guess I can understand why. These women devoted their lives to taking care of husbands, now dead, and raising children who are now grown up and (mostly) out on their own. Helping, which is what they've done all their lives, makes them feel valued and needed.

So in full-on rationalization mode, I offer that I’m actually doing them a favor by letting them clean my house, spend time together, and feel needed by us. And they are needed, for reasons that far, far eclipse their ironing and bird poop cleaning abilities.

Now only if they’d stay out of my underwear drawer.



Gino just supervises. At 99 years old, he's entitled.



A new baby in the Old World

Even before I was pregnant with Naomi, Paolo would regale me with stories of how the nonnas and zias (grandmothers and aunts) in his family all pull together to help care for new babies. I was a bit skeptical at first. Why would Zia Marilena want to take care of her niece’s baby? Wasn’t Nonna Zita too old and tired to care for Cecilia when she was a baby? Besides, why were these women so anxious to help raise their great-nieces and nephews, grandchildren and second cousins once-removed? Surely they resented, just a little, having to care for someone else’s newborn?

When the time was neigh for Naomi to make her debut, I still wasn’t too convinced of the availability of all this free day care. And I definitely wasn’t prepared to ask for help. When one of the women of the family would show up at the house, I was happy to hand off the baby for a few minutes, but asking them to babysit seemed like asking too much.



This is what my workday looks like without babysitters.



Yet within months of Naomi’s arrival, I was working again, and working a lot. I write, edit and teach a distance-learning university course, all of which I can do from anywhere in the world, as long as I have a working computer and reliable internet service. And with financially fortuitous timing, a LOT of work dropped into my lap after the first of the year, and I soon figured out that caring for a newborn and writing original blog and website content were not activities I could do simultaneously.

Circumstances dictated that I call on the Babysitting Brigade.

“Franca,” I asked tentatively of my mother-in-law, “would it be okay if we ate lunch with you, and I left Naomi for a few hours?”

“Si, per piacere!” (my pleasure!) she responded, then, and each time I’ve asked since. And I have asked, a LOT.

The arrangement is as close to ideal as I could hope. I bring Naomi and her diaper bag to Franca’s a little before 1 pm, and Paolo meets me there. We lunch together with Franca and Nonno Gino, then we both leave to go to work—he at whatever job he’s at and me back to our house, to work for a few uninterrupted hours. I go pick her up around 5:30 or 6, after I’ve gotten some work done and Paolo is home to help with Naomi while I finish up and prepare dinner.



He's either calling her Little Pisser or Boss of the House.



Our arrival, or, I should say, Naomi’s arrival (no one really cares about us anymore) at Franca’s is met with a chorus of coos and baby talk, and garbled greetings reserved only for Naomi. I believe they go something like this: Here is the boss of the house! Here is the little sparrow of Nonna! Here is the big baby doll! Here is the little pisser! Here is the chubby-cheeked baby of Nonna!

We barely rate a greeting when we enter. I often think I could walk into Franca’s house, bleeding from several open wounds, and as long as I was bearing Naomi, she would snatch the baby from my hands and step over me after I fell to the floor, my life’s blood slowly trickling away, to fix Naomi’s bottle or change her diaper.

With Cousin Serena, who cannot let a sleeping baby lie.

Paolo’s sister Anarita is even worse. She no longer acknowledges our existence. When she arrives from work at lunch time and sees my car in the driveway, she makes a beeline for Franca’s house, walks in, says “Dove la figlia?” and swipes the baby from whoever happens to be holding her. There are no formalities, no “Can I hold her now?”, nothing. Anarita takes her, cradles her under her neck, and spends as much time as she has available holding Naomi, who usually falls asleep this way. She practically snarls at me when I ask to hold my own baby.

Here, he's either calling her Big Stinky or Big Ugly.

For the rest of the afternoon, Franca, Anarita, and later, when she arrives from school, Paolo’s niece Serena, argue over who gets to hold Naomi next, who’s held her for more than her fair share, what the baby wants, needs or likes, whether she’s too cold or too hot, who’s holding her head right or wrong, who's better at giving her a bottle or changing a diaper. Often, Paolo’s Zia Graziella, Zia Marilena, cousins Antonella and Diana or even a neighbor will join in what nearly becomes a tug of war (or tug of baby) over who gets to hold her next. When she is in one person’s arms, another person is in her face, stroking her cheek, kissing her head or trying to get her to smile. They are incapable of letting a sleeping baby lie. They call her a chorus of silly little terms of endearment, like pulcina (little flea), bruttina (little ugly), guanciatina (little chubby cheeks), puzzona (little stinky), and my least favorite, poverina. It means “poor little one,” and I have to say, Naomi is the least pitiful baby on earth. This kid’s got it made, and she knows it.

With my mother-in-law, Franca. It's all her fault.

In fact, as much as these babysitters have saved my neck, they have ruined my child in the process. Before I started working so much, Naomi was quite content to spend a few hours at a time in her bouncy seat, chattering, dozing or just quietly watching me work on the laptop, wash dishes or fix lunch. Now, she is so accustomed to being held by her legion of babysitters that she has complete and utter disdain for the bouncy seat, or any other spot that’s not in someone’s arms. She conveys this disdain by screaming her little lungs out any time I try to put her down, even after she’s fallen asleep.

No time to pee! There's a baby needs held!

And while I am willing to be Mean Mommy and let her sit in her seat and cry, at least for a few minutes, while I complete some task for which I need both hands, Paolo is not so hard-hearted. The other evening, I took Daisy (the real poverina of the house; she no longer gets nearly the attention she was used to pre-baby) for a longish walk. When we arrived back home, Paolo was holding Naomi and practically hopping from one foot to the other. “Hurry,” he implored,” I have to pee!” I took the baby and reminded him that he could, in fact, put her in her bouncy seat or crib long enough to use the bathroom. “But she’ll cry,” he said. “Oy vey,” I thought.

But my laments are more tongue-in-cheek than anything. The Babysitting Brigade is spoiling my daughter, but better that she suffers from too much attention than too little. That I have built-in, free daycare in the homes of people I love and trust, and more importantly, in the arms of people who love Naomi, is a gift indeed, and just one more reason why I’m glad I’m raising my new baby in the Old World. Now if they would just stop playing tug-of-war with her…