Filed under: Transitions
I last wrote to this blog a year ago pretty exactly. It’s been a year and I can’t quite believe that. So here’s the preamble, the explanation, the preface to me writing again. Because I think I’m going to need to write again.
That’s the reason I guess….when I’m in the midst of the whirlwind I can’t write, I don’t even want to my thoughts can organize and take care of themselves. When I’m in the quiet places between I need to write I need to get the thoughts out of my head so that they can find a place to rest instead of constantly stirring.
So in short that is what’s happened I got caught up in my own private whirlwind and now I’m out on the other side of the storm.
I’m a mom now. I found out I was pregnant in February. My favorite Italian phrase is dato alla luce or given to the light it’s an old italian euphemism for birth. I gave Jacob Oak Freels to the light on the 6th of October, 2008.
I’m a graduate student now. I finished my first semester of the Master’s of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of California, Berkeley in December.
I’m a resident of California. I live in Berkeley, California now not is Alabama.
AND (this is the most significant and to my reassumption of writing this blog) I’m on parental leave from school for the next year.
Whirlwind year followed now by…. preternatural calm.
Well calm on the outside, but not really in my own head which is why I feel the need to write again. I’m not terribly good at it I know but, I need to again so here it is. The mental spew of 2009.
Filed under: Transitions
There are a series of events that signify your introduction as a working unit of society in most cultures (don’t quote me). In the United States there is basically one singular rite of passage. The all important Driver’s License. With the Driver’s License you go from dependent and immobile to independent and mobile all in one big defining swoop. Later you will probably move out of your parent’s house but, the defining moment is the moment you get your driver’s license and get the keys to your first car.
I’ve passed through this rite of passage before right around my sixteenth birthday like everybody else. In Italy though of course we didn’t have a car, we sold ours before leaving. And unfortunately for me in Italy my US driver’s license got stolen. So when I got back to the US I was in the pre-teen state of mobility… as in I couldn’t.
Last week I did it all again. As if it were my initiation back into American culture, my welcome back rite of passage, I got a driver’s license and a car. I was dead scared of taking the driver’s test again. Not because I thought I didn’t know how to drive but, the sheer thought of failing the driver’s test at 24 and having to retake it, the sheer contemplation of that greatest of humiliations had me diligently studying the driver’s manual and panicking in the testing line like as if it was the first time again. Waiting in the dingy 1970s wood panelling waiting room watching the paint peel off the walls. From the other room you could hear every question answered by the people who entered the office before you. The man before me went in to the office and my tension mounted then I heard “Sir, when did you first get your driver’s license?” “Well, ma’amm I rekon thet I’v hed an Alabama driverrs licisence all me lif.” “Sir, you have to have gotten your driver’s license after you turned 16, did you take the test maybe when you were 16 or 19 years old.” “Wellll, yeh I rekin that that is right, maybe when I ws 16 or 19.” “And what year would that be, Sir?” “MMMM, I dn’t know.” By this time I was almost rolling and all the tension had dispersed at least from me. In the end I didn’t have to do the test again they just looked up my valid Arkansas License and gave me an Alabama one again.
The next day we got a car. Now we are fully car-ed and stereo-ed and license-ed and I have again entered adulthood in the United States.
Filed under: Transitions
So we’re back. We got back right before Christmas and have now celebrated two holidays. First impression once off the plane: Everything is ridiculously wide! Cars, roads, stores, tables and food portions…… everything! There is a general air of expansiveness in every built object in sight. For a couple of days it was kind of disorienting but, I think it will feel normal again later even if it doesn’t become more appreciated. I think we’ve delayed reverse culture shock because of the holidays. I’m so wrapped up in doing the holiday thing that I don’t think it has really set in that we aren’t going back afterward. I’m waiting for that one to set in. I’ll write again in about two weeks and probably will be exploding with …. oh my gosh I had forgotten that it was like this! how can we live with this stuff. Right now we’re in San Diego. So far we’ve made our tour through Huntsville, AL and Atlanta, GA…..by the way I don’t think I’m ever going to move to Atlanta. Of all the cities we’ve been in again so far it seems the most likely to explode/implode once gas prices go up. We flew here to San Diego on Southwest and I think so far it has been one of the most American experiences since we’ve been back. At the beginning of the flight the stewardess’ tossed the peanuts down the aisle telling everyone to pick one up if they could as they went skittering back toward the tail. The black woman beside me was gently cursing them for unkindness as she missed peanut bag after peanut bag and the kids in the back laughed and at that moment I’m thinking … only in the USofA. It’s not bad, it’s entertaining and stunts like that explain why the US provides 3/4 of the entertainment for the rest of the world. We like to laugh at ourselves and really so do they! Later in the flight the same thing happened to all the stuff in my purse….also thouroughly entertaining. Crawling down the aisle gathering my stuff out from under peoples feet while trying my hardest to ignore the stewardess who was asking everyone to get in their seats over the intercom was definitely fodder for the travel episode of a sitcom. Ok so end of randomized thought for the moment….
We’ve got 3 saturdays, 3 sundays, 3 mondays, 3 tuesdays, 2 wednesdays, 2 tuesdays, 2 thursdays and 2 fridays to go until we move back to the United States of America onto the North American continent and away from Europe, Italy and Vicenza. Which after more than 2 years is a little weird. It’s like coming into the last week of college or highschool all over again.
Goodbyes are always hard. I usually deal with them by practically ignoring them. I say goodbye and I say I’ll miss you but, I’ve never been good at the teary or prolonged part and it just seems somehow less final to me to just say a simple goodbye and go. That’s me. I have trouble feeling really sorry at the goodbye because somehow to me it seems like a negation of the relationship itself. I figure that friendships are precious and no matter how short or long they last because of the circumstances of life they are still beautiful things. That in a way the time itself, the time that you had, is marred by long goodbyes that seem to show a need to say that it was sure that the relationship would stay the same forever. It is that way for most relationships and then for those that are most important you will do all you can to see them again to continue to be apart of their life so when you say goodbye it is always certain that it is just for a time. That is my rationale at least for my own behaviour although really it is probably just a way to let myself follow my own inclinations …..
I have found that my ideas of this run counter to the culture here in Italy. I do not feel just in assuming either that things or people will remain unchanged or that any particular change is final. What I have found here is that people assume constancy, believe in the possiblity of immutablity …. and tend to feel that to be transient is in a way to be a traitor. So it’s hard to make friendships because they know that as a foriegner you will probably leave someday. Even harder in a way are those who do allow you to be friends that you eventually do have to say goodbye to.
We’ve been saying goodbye for the last three weeks to different sets of people and really it’s hard …. mostly for me it is hard to watch their faces get a little harder, like their eyes are saying “You see! You are leaving. I shouldn’t have trusted you because now I have to say goodbye, better not to have been friends and not have to say goodbye in this way.” Then their lips say: “Allora Arrivederci! perchè voi partite, vero? Tornate agli Stati Uniti per sempre.” (So Till we see eachother again! Because you guys are leaving, right? Your going back to the United States forever.) At that point watching their eyes and listening to their words I feel truly sad. Not because I’m convinced that we will never come back to Italy. In fact I am rather more convinced that anything is possible. But to watch them feel hurt because I couldn’t stay for a life time hurts. At the same time it makes me want to protest….
My family came to visit us about a week ago! It was fantastic, though now our 2 person apartment seem quite a bit quieter after being inundated with 4 more people for a week and a half. It was very fun though because we had saved up all these things to do with them. You know when you don’t go do the things that there are to do in the town you live in until people come to visit. Well that is what we did and it turned out great. First there was a flurry of food….there are so many good cheeses and wines and salami objects that are to expensive and heavy for everyday that are perfect to eat when there is company and no one is thinking about dieting or staying in shape.
Good food you need to try if you come to the Veneto:
Sopresa di Schio with or without garlic
Asiago cheese…all types very old to very young
Seafood if you are by the sea
and white sparkling wines!
The biggest food hit though was chocolates from our local chocolate store where they make them in the back and sell them with coffee out front….passion fruit chocolate is the best ever! (it melts in your mouth like who knows what softly caressing your taste buds into submission until you are so satisfied you cannot even contemplate eating another piece because the satisfaction would morph into painful ectasy! and yes they really are that good)
Besides the food we went to see a lot of the things we’d saved up, wanting to go see them but, putting it off based on we live here laziness. It was good to see the places, it was good to be a tourist for a week but, in some ways it drove home the fact that we are only in Italy for two more months.
While seeing Soave castle with it’s perfectly kept ramparts that give you a sweeping view of the valley, (a castle we pass every time we get on the highway and that I’ve been wanting to go see since April) was amazing it also meant that that untied up end wasn’t loose any more it was done. In some ways it felt like the store of undone things was part of our reassurance that we actually lived here and as people that live here we can always go look at it later. Soave and the museums in Vicenza itself were more like that for me. Riva del Garda and Sirmione and Aquileia were less so because they are further away I think.
So now we’ve showed off our church and our life to someone else outside of ourselves that will be apart of our life after we leave Vicenza. That part of it was really satisfying because without it when you get back you have this uncanny feeling that in everyone elses eyes you were just missing for 2 years not actually living a real life while you were gone, just gone, dormant somehow. Now that my family has seen my life I feel less like leaving is an approaching doom for my memories of being here though I do feel like it is more certain that we are leaving now.
