Bringing up baby in Italy, where the wild things are

Warning: scatological content of an extremely excremental nature

Cocktails and suspension of disbelief advised

Dear Readers,

As many of us expat mums know, bringing forth bambinos in Italy is not for the fainthearted. Apart from the scarcity of epidurals ("in pain you shall bring forth children"--Genesis 3:16 and apparently Holy Gospel here in the Boot*) and the crap-shoot (after seeing the state of their bathrooms I want to add "literally", but that's just sick) that is the birthing experience in public hospitals, the toughest aspect of new mommy-hood is undoubtedly navigating the Lhotse Face of traditional Italian child-rearing, typically embodied in the fearsome, meddlesome, and confounding creature that any self-respecting Sherpa worth his yak butter would steer clear of: the Italian mother-in-law.

Come, stroll down memory lane with me, chickens, while I cull a few cow patties from my experiences as an inexperienced American mother who sailed off through night and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year, to where the wild things are....

Not just a garnish

As we all know, Italian MILs are obsessed with bowel movements: their own, their neighbor's, their children's, and especially their grandchildren's. However, when my first was born, I wasn't quite prepared for the vehemence of my MIL's burning, all-engrossing desire and need to know the exact amount, consistency, color and character of every single one of my son's diaperial evacuations, and how often these occurred.  Poor little Giacomo--he never performed well enough for his nonna; it was either not enough not often enough, or too much too often, or just not the right damn kind. But as annoying as all this was, nothing was worse than the dreaded (oooh, I still get chills racing down my spine just thinking about it) stitichezza, or constipation--easily the dirtiest word in the Italian language.

I learned quickly to conceal the true nature of my son's cacca from her, like Yoda guarding the secrets of the Force from the future Darth Vader. But one day--perhaps my husband and I had hit the Chianti a little too hard and let our guard down--one of us let it slip to the MIL that our infant son hadn't pooped in five days.

And she roared her terrible roars and gnashed her terrible teeth and rolled her terrible eyes and showed her terrible claws

"O Santo Cielo! Non è possibile! Call the doctor! Call the doctor!"

So we did.

And SHE roared her terrible roars and gnashed her terrible teeth and rolled her terrible eyes and showed her terrible claws

The pediatrician pretty much made us feel like what should've been in my son's diaper. I thought she was going to sic social services on us because we were obviously such crappy parents. Needless to say, I learned the Italian word for enema that day (cristere, for those of you who give a shit--or want to give one to someone else).

Well, since that dark day Giacomo was forever labeled stitico in my mother-in-law's eyes (and me, stronza--i.e. turd), which of course meant that she began using all her old wives' tactics to scioglie (loosen) his sweet, innocent bowels, to most of which I simply turned the other cheek. Then, one fine spring day I wandered all la-dee-da out into the garden with himself in tow, so we could admire the flowers and take in a bit of fresh air. Little did I realize we were about to happen upon a witches coven: there gathered among the olive trees and rosemary bushes was the malevolent MIL, and my sister-in-law along with her mother and younger sister--who was also toting a newborn boy and had the cold, dead eyes of the thoroughly inculcated Italian female. My mother-in-law promptly introduced the two babies to one another, "Constipated, meet Emmanuele." Swift as hawks, they closed ranks.

And they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws

They bombarded me with advice and remedies each more preposterous than the last; it was an all-out blitzkrieg of harpy-voiced grenades. And then the A-bomb: "You should use parsley! Yes--parsley! Parsley! Parsley!" they all chanted. "Just take the stem end and insert it into his...."

I said "BE STILL!" and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once...

"I WILL NOT HAVE ANYONE STICKING HERBS UP MY CHILD'S ASS!"

...and they were frightened and called me the most wild thing of all

Still more cow patties

There was the time I appeared in the MIL's kitchen with baby Giacomo buried deep in a sling over my abdomen, sleeping blissfully. She became apoplectic with holy indignation at my blatant attempt at infanticide and did a pretty good impression of someone in the throes of St.Vitus Dance.

And FYI, she wasn't at all impressed when I said that women in Africa use them.

There were numerous times we came to loggerheads over the infamous maglia della salute, or woolen onesie for newborns, held sacred here. I'd tell her "yes, that's just what a vellum-skinned infant who's been floating around in the soothing softness of amniotic fluid for nine months needs: A HAIR SHIRT!"

There was the time she--doubtless tired of the deaf ear I turned to most of her arguments--sent my sister-in-law into my bedroom to badger me into breastfeeding on a set schedule rather than on demand. I calmly confirmed my presence in the 21st century and said that she was welcome to remain in the 18th, if not my room.

There was the time the MIL, obsessed with Giacomo's weight and sure my breast milk wasn't enough and mystified by my adamant refusal to use aggiunte (formula supplements with crumbled cookies in them--yep, you read that right), forced my husband to rent a scale so that he (baby, not husband) could be weighed after every single feeding. I told her the only thing that contraption was fit for was weighing pork loins (or as a shoe horn for wedging her man feet into those outsize clodhoppers), and refused to use it.

Then there was the time my newborn daughter and I were visiting the Duomo one wintry morning and she decided to offload copiously while ensconced in one of those down-padded baby sacs. After heartily, if silently, cursing Arnolfo di Cambio for not including changing stations in his design, I decided to shrug it off. I figured I had about a half hour before significant seepage, so I went over to Max Mara and made a salesgirl hold Gemma while I tried on sweaters. This I did not tell the MIL. 

To all of these declarations of independence (and many more), the entire ferocious and fakakta Italian female Maternity Police--of which my mother-in-law is commander-in-chief--raised their collective shrewish voices in terrifying, hell-rousing, cacophonous union and

ROARED THEIR TERRIBLE ROARS 

AND GNASHED THEIR TERRIBLE TEETH 

AND ROLLED THEIR TERRIBLE EYES 

AND SHOWED THEIR TERRIBLE CLAWS

Yes they most certainly did.

"Now stop!" I said, and sent the wild things off to bed without their supper

Then I stepped into my private boat and waved good-bye, and sailed back over a year, and in and out of weeks, and through a day, and into the night of my very own room...

And there weren't any interfering bitches in there to spoil my supper.

The Queen of all Wild Things,
with her little fecal underachiever

As always, yours from the Tuscan trenches,

Campobello

*The MIL would quote this verse to me during my first pregnancy, bless her idiotic black heart.

The Easter toenail

Dear Readers,

We decided to take to the road on Easter Sunday, picnic basket in tow, and head out to one of those picturesque, ancient Etruscan outposts that punctuate the Tuscan earth like somber stone carbuncles set into silvery-green filigrees of cypress, olive and macchia--that strong-willed, cliff-hugging Mediterranean shrub.

A bit of rain notwithstanding, it was a lovely day, with breezes off the sea washing over our city-dusted bodies and through our thirsty lungs in invigorating, salty blasts. We ate our lunch and cavorted on the beach at the Gulf of Baratti, under the watchful eye of Populonia's old, baleful tower.

Later, in the car, on the way to find some much-needed gelato, Gemma piped up:

"Mommy, you know yesterday when I went to Nonna's? Do you know what she told me?"

I inwardly cringed, imagining something along the lines of Tales of the Illustrious Exploits of Jesus, You're Growing Up a Heathen, or Why a 2-Pound Chocolate Egg is Good for You.

"No, what?" I said.

"She told me that her toenail fell off because it turned all brown and was marcia [rotten, putrid, decayed]."

"Thanks for sharing that, dear."

Of tides and toenails

One would hope the MIL spread the message of the Resurrected Christ with similar enthusiasm.


Yours from the Tuscan trenches,

Campobello

Attack of the five-foot-five heathen woman

Dear Readers,

This post is in essence a prequel to the last one, and helps explain what set me off on that particular rant. Recently, my mother-in-law ambushed my husband over a plate of pasta and told him how she was so very disappointed and sad that our children were not attending Catechism, and that--by obvious extension--were not going to become good Roman Catholics and would probably wind up flame-licked in Hell (a place apparently brimming over with liberal-minded American wives). Well, as you know by now, my dear discerning Readers, nothing gives my hackles rise so much as a meddlesome old lady.

This latest family drama was set off by--get this--my knick-knacks...and is otherwise known as the Great Tchotchke Rebellion of 2011.

Of course, I know the Family has always looked at me askance because 1) I'm foreign and 2) I was raised (in decidedly lukewarm fashion) Armenian Orthodox--and fed hefty doses of mom's Presbyterianism to boot. Once, my father-in-law actually asked me if Armenians believe in Christ. I said, "No, we worship a swarthy, hairy-backed guy named Garabed, former rug-dealer and the God of Stuffed Grapeleaves." My ever-resilient husband has always been regarded as a black sheep because he habitually questioned the status quo: he visited the Hare Krishnas at Villa Vrindavan and read up on Scientology as a teenager, while his mother wailed and rent her garments. (The fact that he also insisted on doing his own laundry was, to her, further proof that he had come under the influence of Satan). So, on this particular day, she also expressed concern over the "heathen images" and "oriental gods" I have around my house (i.e. my serene Buddhas and lovely, carved teak Ganesh, etc.) and that we have no inanimate Jesuses or Marys to bring the Lord's Light into our home. Naturally, if I were to point out to her that, compared to ancient faiths such as Buddhism or Hinduism, Christianity is a mere upstart religon with a renegade recruiter as its point man, she would choke in righteous horror. Her repeated attempts to counteract my iniquitous knick-knacks and insinuate the One True Faith into our home by gifting us things like a watermelon-sized Holy Family musical snow globe have met with failure. Every year at Eastertime she tries to bring a priest into our house to bless it (or perhaps exorcise it)--doubtless believing that if he flings enough holy water on us we'll repent our heathen ways and return to the tractable fold.

But her cardinal beef with us is that we are breaking with tradition. She implored my husband that they are of good, old, upright and long-standing Catholic céppo [stock] and we, in following our own mutinous minds, are an unsightly blemish on the Family's clear complexion.

***

"Bennett looked at him [a Buddhist lama] with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of 'heathen.'"

Shortly after this latest example of my mother-in-laws' mosquito-like intrusiveness, I happened upon the above sentence in Kipling's Kim. Why is it that so many pious jackasses, in the name of religion, are willing--indeed happy--to succumb to the evils of ignorance and bigotry? As many of you know, my in-laws are slavishly Catholic--if the Pope told them to smear themselves with goat droppings and light their hair on fire, they'd do it. To them--and many like them, Catholic and otherwise--their faith is an exclusive club to which only an enlightened few are admitted, leaving the rest of us primordial slugs roiling in an ooze of sin and godlessness. The audacity of the institutions of men in asserting their proprietorship over God continues to astonish me.

A piece of the devil's own bric-a-brac

To tell the truth, I've never been much interested in a God that doesn't allow questioning, doubting, exploring, and seeing the good in all faiths. I am of the firm conviction that firm convictions based on untested experience and unentrained thought--a path never struck with tentative footsteps--are but pontifical pinpoints somewhere on the continuum of fanaticism. And, I must say, I'm not much interested in placating a mother-in-law (or anybody else) who thinks I'm only as good as my creed.

I've always admired people of quiet conviction, whatever their individual faith--those undetected souls among us who strive simply and compassionately to be an example merely by the life they lead, as individual drops of water lie peacefully within a vast pond, feeling no compulsion to evangelize the other drops of water. If only my mother-in-law--that nosy, thick-stockinged, champion of Christ--had a martyrs' mettle to speak her mind to my face, I would ask her, in all earnestness: "I may be an American Armenian Orthodox Protestant semi-Buddhist truth-seeking feminist heathen decorator--but if you prick me, do I not bleed?"

Alas, I have a hunch that any such appeal to reason and intelligence would fall on deaf--and unwaveringly parochial--ears.


Yours, quietly,

Campobello

Of plague and panini

Dear Readers,

Today is the feast day of San Sebastiano, and around Florence all the Misericordias have garlanded their portals and are handing out free little dinner rolls to all comers, in honor of the occasion.

For those of you who don't know, the Misericordia is the centuries-old Catholic-affiliated confraternity that now mostly serves as the Italian ambulance corps and provides supplementary healthcare at supposedly Christian-friendly prices--and San Sebastiano is their patron saint. This being Italy, everybody who's anybody has a patron saint (for example, even Berlusconi has a patron saint: the little-known Saint Pustule, protector of despicable cretins and Viagra-fed pig-fodder). Saint Sebastian, like so many of his zealous colleagues, met a gruesome death: he was martyred by being tied to a post and riddled with imperial arrows, then left for the buzzards to feast upon. He was rescued and healed by a groupie, and then--in a surprising lack of judgement--mouthed-off to the emperor, after which he was summarily, and understandably, clubbed to death. (If you ask me, most of these saints were as tenacious as pit bulls and as dumb as peat moss). Considered the protector against bubonic plague (though I guess he was on sabbatical around 1348-1350) and sundry other epidemics, it's easy to see why the Misericordia adopted him as their mascot.

When I rode past their outpost on my street this morning and saw the sign advertising pane benedetto I thought, "Here we go again--no room in the communal freezer until Easter." You see, dear Readers, my mother-in-law--that serial hoarder and über-Catholic--also loves to stockpile the panini of San Sebastiano. And the reason is obvious: they have been blessed, and by the proper authorities, too (priests are her rock stars). For her, caressing the Eucharist with her tongue, or stuffing two-dozen of these blessed rolls into her freezer (to savor in her private moments) is like leaving a concert with Mick Jaggers' sweaty t-shirt clutched to her delirious breast. To put it bluntly, she gets off on renegade men who know how to whip their audience into a frenzy of adoration. Of course, she also believes that if she crams enough of the pane benedetto down her gullet she'll make it to the promised land that much quicker, perhaps even ahead of everybody else (we all know how much Italians love to jump lines).

So, religiously, every January 20th, she slaps her platypus feet against the asphalt and crosses the street to the Misericordia, where they welcome her with open arms and two large sacks of celestial panini. They know a fanatical groupie when they see one.

Here it is, my mother-in-law's holy Happy Meal

Each little paper bag holds a plastic-wrapped roll akin to something you might scorn at Denny's, and a bonus santino depicting Sebastian in his signature pose, about to be perforated with the arrows of destiny, his rock-stardom assured for all eternity.

Call me irascible, petulant, bilious, choleric and snarky (and I am all of those things, and more)--but I have a question for Sebastiano's roadies: why oh why in the heavenly realm of bread that is Italy are these little flour-and-water benedictions as hard and brittle as a martyr's toenails?

Can somebody please answer that?

Yours,

Campobello

Medea with a touch of schadenfreude

Dear Readers,

To look at her, you wouldn't think my mother-in-law capable of murdering her children. Or poisoning her husband. Or lopping the head off the neighbors' dog with a scythe.

She's a diminutive, demure, hunch-backed, dwarfen old woman who has never worn a pair of trousers in her life. She sports sensible woolen skirts and thick, putty-colored hosiery--and, when around the house, always a long, chintz smock to keep her clothes in respectable condition. When she toddles through the neighborhood in her men's black clodhoppers, head bowed, a benign expression on her face, her hands--with shopping totes dangling from one arm like ganglia--are clasped together tentatively, as if in prayer.

But this is a woman who feeds on the cronaca nera--the sensational journalistic recountings of murder, mayhem and misfortune--like a leech on Jabba the Hutt. For years I have watched her riveted to every grisly news story of infants and fetuses abandoned in dumpsters, toddlers left alone to fall off balconies, and of mothers strangling, stabbing or drowning their own offspring. (Surprisingly, there are thousands of these stories in Italy--clearly, the land where la Mamma reigns supreme has its dark side). The frisson of excitement she experiences over such horrible events is as obvious as the potato-shaped nose on her face. She discusses them endlessly--never failing to interject a devout "O, Signore pietà!" (Lord have mercy!)--and describes all the gruesome details with novelistic brushstrokes worthy of Stephen King. Though my testimony wouldn't hold up in a court of law, I'd swear that at some point her grim narrative begins to sound like wishful thinking.

She's also partial to stories of dogs sinking their teeth into innocent passersby or chewing the arms off babies. She has always harbored the conviction that canines represent malign, satanic forces, and as such should be shunned--like Protestants or feminists--and preferably exterminated from the face of the earth. Even beribboned toy poodles and quivering, hairless chihuahuas send her into paroxysms of fear. When the neighbors' sweet, playful, little black terrier comes prancing and sniffing around, she flees into her house and locks the door as if he were Cerberus incarnate, bent on taking a bite out of her precious pious rump and propelling her into the dank chambers of Hell.

Understand, dear Readers, that my mother-in-law is the most repressed, self-effacing soul there is--she has swallowed her own desires and opinions so long they've metastasized. The notion of free will is as alien to her as, well, wearing pants or ordering in Chinese food. Fanatically serving others in the hope of some Eternal Reward, forever thirsting after a sip from the elusive cup of Life, she's a cross between a heavenly handmaiden with stars in her eyes and a wretched Miss Havisham in a rotting wedding dress.

She didn't choose her life--it was doled out to her like a losing poker hand. And though she endeavors to be a good Catholic, and perform her duties like the good little Christian soldier she is, resentment seeps from her like steam from the lid of a pot kept on a slow, steady boil. She has made innumerable sacrifices for her children and husband--even neighbors and fellow parishoners know her to be easy prey when it comes to their voracious needs. She has told me of the great difficulty she endured in giving birth to four children in under four years, while working part-time as cooks' help and taking care of impossibly demanding invalid relatives, with no help from her paleolithic husband whose only concern was that his meals be on time. Her teeth fell out, her hair thinned, she suffered fainting spells. The midwife told her to stop having children--or get measured for a casket. Her loathing of her husband (the man largely responsible for her servitude) is undisguised, yet she slavishly dispatches her Christian wifely duties--all but one, mind you--as if frantically trying to garner celestial brownie points.

But as the Bard says, "fair is foul, and foul is fair": a while back the doctor told her to slip some liquid valium into her husbands' minestra to calm him down and render him more manageable or some such nonsense, and my mother-in-law asked, "What happens if I give him too much?" with an unmistakable gleam in her eye. Whenever family squabbles arise, she makes sure to fan the flames by playing the "he said, she said" game, pitting one sibling against another with Machiavellian precision, while wringing her hands in feigned concern. If you dare cross her, she lowers her eyes innocently in seeming deference to your opinions--then mounts a campaign of passive-aggressiveness the likes of which would have made even Alexander the Great drop arms and surrender his troops.

And so it happens that Our Lady of Infinite Sacrifice (or Lady Macbeth--take your pick) relishes being the bearer of ill-tidings. You name it, everyone's ailments--including degrees of fever, cataracts, gout, kidney stones, depression, dyspepsia, etc.--along with their financial setbacks, unwanted pregnancies, and myriad other human dramas, is the stuff of conversation. She lays in wait for us to come home from work and accosts us in the courtyard with the latest tales of woe regarding neighbors or family-members. And while it is true that Italians love to discuss illness as much as the English like to talk of the weather, her capacity for ill-omen is unparalleled.

I tell you all this, dear Readers, because this past Sunday morning as soon as we opened our shutters (thus signifying that we were awake, up, and about) she appeared at our door, like a raven, her hands clamped together in what was either meekness or glee, with an air of wistful sadness, and informed us that our 94 year-old neighbor, Ottavino, had died during the night. She proceeded to recount verbatim his wife Lisetta's mournful ululations, and speculated about whether or not she'd now be put into a casa di cura by her daughter, or given over to the care of one those immigrant slave-girls called badanti.  She lingered at our doorstep, eyes downcast, shoulders shrugged at the inevitability of death, nursing homes, and thankless children--savoring her words and the moment.

The ancient Greeks coined the term catharsis--meaning (theatrically speaking) that in order to fully experience their tragedies on the stage, one necessarily entered into the unfolding drama, as it were, and emerged emotionally cleansed. Perhaps my mother-in-law--through her obsession with the calamities and misfortunes of others--is merely purging herself of her own latent fears and frustrations. Perhaps her behavior is harmless enough--however morbid--and I'm a wicked, wicked woman to suspect her of ulterior sentiments.

But be assured of one thing, dear Readers--I watch my back around that little gray-haired, chintz-covered goblin. Because how she really feels about having a wilful, outspoken, independent-minded American daughter-in-law is anybody's guess.


My best regards,

Campobello

(*photo credit: above, Maria Callas as Medea in the film by Pier Paolo Pasolini)

The Christmas Cake that nearly ate Halloween

Dear Readers,

I returned home from work late the other evening and an unspeakable horror met my eyes.

There was a panettone sitting on my kitchen counter.

For those of you unfamiliar with this traditional Italian (originally Milanese but now ubiquitous) yuletide cake, it looks rather like a plump, burnished-brown cupola. Or a squat, toasted chef's toque. Or a giant, megalomaniacal cupcake.   It is typically studded with candied fruit and is --unless you get a really good one--probably the most unimaginative, boring, dirt-dry, holiday dessert you're ever likely to eat.  But, in any event --and this is really the crux of the matter--it's supposed to be served at Christmastime. Mere custom, of course, being of no consequence to my mother-in-law (she of the demure woollen skirts, thick support hose, size 10 men's clodhoppers, and hoard-mentality), who was without a doubt responsible for the abomination.

For a second I just stared at the thing, stunned, while it sat there in all its tawny malevolence, and my mind did some quick calculations. Was this one of last year's leftover panettone? Or the year before that??? Or, if I were to examine its packaging, would I find the expiration date as sometime soon after the Protestant Reformation??!! Then I realized--egads!--she's already stockpiling them for this year!

I'd heard rumors that some of the supermarkets were already carrying Christmas items, and you see, dear Readers, my mother-in-law suffers terribly from POCD--Panettone Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She can't help herself. As soon as they hit the shelves, she methodically makes the rounds of all the supermarkets within a 15-mile radius, gathering discounted panettoni, and squirrelling them away god-knows-where. She's hasn't the slightest interest in quality--she lives for the rock-bottom, two-for-one, bargain-basement panettone--it's all about quantity. (Forget the true Christmas message of selfless giving, forget that there are millions of people starving in the world--she is determined to build a bunker of hoarded panettone and barricade herself within, a shriveled Eva Braun clutching a plastic shopping tote and her tessera sanitaria).

This mite of a woman--who normally never ventures beyond the confines of the neighborhood--will actually board a bus in her quest for €1 cakes. During the month of December, she is always seen humped-over and carrying a panettone or two--along with kilos of mandarins, dates, and walnuts, in preparation for the Yuletide Onslaught--returning home from her shopping expeditions far afield. To facilitate her obsession, she cadges all the fidelity cards of everyone in the neighborhood in order to score the best deals on panettone in every supermarket chain in the city. She does this without shame.

And she typically starts serving panettone at every meal (that is, breakfast, lunch and dinner) from Christmas onward, desisting only for a brief hiatus around Pasqua (when she begins hoarding colomba--the dove-shaped Easter cake). Summer usually sees her dishing out an alternating mix of panettone-colomba, supplies of which only tend to exhaust themselves sometime around the Feast of the Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (This may or may not be coincidence: I'm sure if Mary ate that much panettone, she could only have ascended into heaven with the aid of a forklift).

"My kingdom for a panettone!"

Normally all this insanity begins in say, late November. So you can understand, dear Readers, why I was utterly caught off guard to see one of her cursed Christmas cakes this early on. Clearly it's a sign of the degenerative nature of POCD. She ought to be sedated.

What to do with the damn thing, I asked myself? I toyed with the idea of carving a jack-o-lantern out of it, lighting a candle inside and such--but I was afraid it would caramelize and then explode in a shower of candied citron and raisins. So instead I attached this note to its jaunty cellophane wrapper and, under cover of darkness, stealthily and summarily dumped the thing on her doorstep:

"Dear Madame: please remember that I am a CHRISTMAS CAKE, who particularly resents being foisted on heathens* well before the Anniversary of the Birth of His Most Excellent Lord, Our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Your cooperation is most appreciated. In dulci jubilo, etc. etc."


Yours in all the spirit of the season,

Campobello (the Wicked Witch of the Jest)

* We weathered my mother-in-law's full-watt, passive-aggressive displeasure not long ago when we informed her in no uncertain terms that our son would NOT be going to catechism this year (since we ourselves don't go to Mass and generally think the Catholic Church is just another kind of mafia, or Baywatch with cassocks). She moped around with a muso lungo for three weeks.

Disparate housewives

Dear Readers,

"I could never move to Italy--it's too much work!!" said a friend of mine a while back (note: said friend is a proud, card-carrying self-proclaimed Jewish American Princess). And she's right, of course. If you are a typical Italian wife, whether or not you're a casalinga or have a job outside the home--you work your ass off.

With Christmas approaching, I dread the yearly discussion of ironing which is inevitably brought up by my sisters-in-law at some point during the feast. Florence winters are notoriously damp and clothes hung on the line take forever to dry, thus laundry typically morphs to monstrous proportions. (No one has clothes dryers. No one, that is, except this die-hard). And since Italian women iron everything--even underwear--this means gargantuan mountains of clothes lying about already-cramped homes, waiting to be wrinkle-free and, if not snuggly-soft, at least not as rough as Velcro. Call them masochists, but it seemingly never occurs to these women to just, maybe, ease up a bit and let that t-shirt or pair of briefs go forth into the world with a crinkle or two. And so my sisters-in-law blather on and on: "Goodness, I have so much ironing piled up! Oh my, me too, isn't it terrible? Mercy me, this weather isn't helping! At least spending a couple hours over a hot iron warms me up" Since I am, in this regard, iron-deficient, and since discussing housework is about as pleasant to me as oral surgery, I sit there silently cursing and brooding--like some female Mr Rochester--bored out of my skull, and wondering morosely if I should stuff another piece of panforte down my gullet.

Case in point: my sister-in-law Silvia works part-time, has three kids, and a husband who doesn't lift a finger to help her with housework or matters related to child-rearing (this is, alas, still fairly common among Italian men of a certain mindset and upbringing). My mother-in-law has told me that often Silvia stays up til 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, ironing. She also does all the laundry, cleans the house, cooks most of the meals, takes out the trash, and ferries the kids to doctor's appointments and such. We assume her husband wipes his own behind after going to the toilet, but we can't be sure.

My dear husband--whom I often think must have been adopted--told me that when he was a teenager, he informed his mother of his desire to do his own laundry and ironing. She was aghast with horror and disbelief. "WHAT IN GOD'S NAME DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!" she yelled, when she caught him one night surreptitiously ironing his own clothes (in the living-room, in the dark). "That's for me to do!" she nearly wept, sensing that her entire raison d'etre was being snatched from her like the last bag of tortelli on special at the Coop.

At least her other son, Giorgio, is normal: when his wife is out of town, he dutifully drives his laundry across the city to Mamma's so she can wash, scrub out stubborn stains, iron, darn socks and replace buttons to her hearts' content.

Many italiane mop their homes (called "giving the rag," or dare il cencio) every single day. Seriously, you could eat off these floors, or perform complex surgeries on them without fear of infection. Often when walking along the street, I am showered in detritus as some old biddy on an upper floor shakes her dust cloth out the window. This past summer while at the beach, my American friend Kelly and I were endlessly entertained by our neighbor across the way--a lady "of a certain age", as they say here--cleaning her vacation home from top to bottom all day long, every day, while her husband sat on the terrace reading his newspaper. We were fascinated, and yet horrified. We couldn't tear our eyes away; it was like looking at a train wreck. "No, surely she'll stop now--my God, it's 110 degrees out!" She mopped the floor of the kitchen after every meal. She did laundry all the time, even though there was only the two of them. On her balcony was a full battery of cleaning products the likes of which we'd never seen outside of a hospital. Even her washing machine had a cozy to protect it and keep it from getting dirty. (We were surprised she didn't have one to put over her husband, who was about as animated as an armoir).

Bet you thought you'd seen it all

[As an aside, Kelly told me her Italian husband's grandmother used to starch and iron his dress shirts, fold them, wrap them individually in tissue paper, and stack them neatly in his wardrobe. She's in an insane asylum now.]

My husband and I recently left the kids with my mother-in-law when we went out on an errand. We had inadvertently left a basket of freshly-washed-and-dried laundry in the living-room. When we came back, we saw that she had folded everything with military precision, and it was lying in impossibly neat stacks in the laundry basket. I know it's unkind to say so, but I wanted to eviscerate her. Somehow the thought of her handling my undies (I'm 42 for God's sake!) made my skin crawl. But I know why she did it: she was bored. She can't just sit and do nothing. She can't just play a game or read a book with her grandchildren. She can't help herself, poor thing--it's a reflex, like genuflecting in church or giving candy to hyperactive children. I'm certain she would have ironed everything too, but my ironing board and iron are buried in the storage closet where no one--not even me--can find them.

Dear Readers, don't get me wrong, I don't want to live in a pigsty. I simply believe in moderation in all things. But I just don't understand this paradox even though I've lived in Italy going on 10 years now: where is la dolce vita when it comes to housework? Most Italian women don't seem to read, have hobbies (other than getting their hair done every week), or do any kind of recreational sports--so could it be that housework is their hobby? Their aerobic activity? Or is it a Catholic thing: guilt over leading Adam astray? Cleansing one's sins with rubber gloves, a mop bucket and a liter of Mastro Lindo?

I may never know. But I'll tell you this--the unwrinkled life is not worth living.

Yours, glorious dust bunnies and all,

Campobello