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

Reflections on artichokes

Dear Readers,

One of the things I love about Spring's first tentative footfalls is the advent of the artichoke. The tema, the morelli--lovely, petite, and as tender as young maidens--I'd much rather be presented with a prickly bouquet of these amiable thistles than any vainglorious flower.

A recent lunch with the effervescent and erudite Patricia of Tillie's Tuscan Table began with one of my favorite dishes: a deliciously astringent salad of thinly-sliced raw artichokes, delicate shavings of parmigiano, and scattered tendrils of arugula. Among many things, we talked of what we, as expats, like about living in Italy. Patricia--in her inimitable way--proclaimed, "Italy's the only place that will support my wine habit." There followed an impassioned discussion of the mind-boggling array of cheap, excellent-quality wines that are ours for the taking. Then I looked down at my plate and said, "Artichokes. Like this. That's what I love about Italy."

And, I must say, I love a lunch like that: the artichokes followed by a thick t-bone of wood-charred veal--so juicy I could cry just thinking about it--accompanied by perfect roasted potatoes and a dish of teasingly bitter, velvety spinach. A carafe of honest house red. Simple things, in season--this is the kind of alchemy at which Italy still excels.

To my companion, I added, "I like living in Italy because my kids get to grow up eating like this. That and the fact that they're unlikely to get shot while in their classroom." The cultural hegemony of the Happy Meal and the Glock 9 has yet to encroach upon this sunny peninsula, thank God.

But, I'm torn. Expat life is complicated--at least for me. On the one hand I seem to be ruled by my gluttonous tendencies and my penchant for old buildings, on the other I often experience a longing so intense that it is at times overwhelming. For home soil? All the soothing right angles of America? The deep comfort of English? The allure of other, as yet unexplored, continents? Yes. For sure. But there's something else.

Tim Parks talks of a sort of "structural conflict" inherent in the expats' life. One of its more obvious aspects is living in a foreign language. He says that he arrived in Verona not speaking a word of Italian, and now he lectures in Italian, and lectures on translating from English into Italian (a most difficult kind of translating). "And every moment, every word I speak, I'm on guard against mistakes, I'm listening to correct my accent. It will never be quite right." Even after some thirty-odd years! But I completely understand him--this constant schism in the brain is fatiguing.

Yet he--as do I--loves Italian. "It has become my destiny," he says, "My whole life is tied up with Italy. And I hate it. I hate it for having become my destiny. For taking up so much space."

For taking up so much space. Sometimes I just want to take the world I inhabit for granted. I don't want to have to think about it. I want all that space which Italy occupies in my life to be freed up, to make room for something--anything--else.

But I'd wager I'm kind of spoiled now, even ruined, so to speak. I'm used to the daily challenges, the fish-out-of-water feeling, the fact that I'm always being forced to learn new things and reflect on the culture in which I find myself. I realize that I may very well be addicted to the expat life--if that space were empty, I'd likely grieve the loss. "Would I get better," Parks wonders, "if I went back to the UK and lived a monochrome English life? Or would I just have the same problem the other way round? Yearning for Italy. Most likely the damage, like the benefits, is irreversible now."*

I often think of moving on; I have a restless nature. Who knows what landscapes the future holds, or what my latitude and longitude will be? It's exciting to contemplate. For now, though, the artichokes beckon and I come to the table--hungry and willing to be satisfied.


Yours,

Campobello

*Tim Parks, Teach Us to Sit Still

Sociable medicine

Dear Readers,

Sundry winter ills have recently propelled me into the labyrinthine Italian healthcare system, or Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, which, I might add [insert oozing sarcasm] is always a pleasure. To me, partaking of this [insert oozing sarcasm again] service is often like being inside Waiting for Godot for all eternity.

But I'm not going to write about all the waiting, the telephoning, the accruing and distributing of certificates and papers, the take-a-number machines, the dingy offices, the vacant-faced medical personnel, etc. What I want to tell you about is the realization--or revelation?--I had that all the elaborate machinations of the system exist in order to give Italy's inordinately large population of old farts--or geriatric mafia--a social life. You see, the more you are forced to hang out in doctors' offices and clinics, the more chances you get to trade grisly anatomical chit-chat with your fellow snowy-domed sufferers.

For example, the doctor's waiting-room I was recently prisoner to was full of black-clad decrepits in shapeless parkas and sturdy shoes, all hacking ostentatiously as if they had tuberculosis, sighing heavily, and bemoaning their fate to those around them:

"Maria Santa, I haven't slept in days!"
"I have The Fever!" (La febbre is always intoned ominously as if one were invoking Satan)
"I can't have a bowel movement!"
"My liver hurts!"
"I've had the runs for a week!"
"My hemorrhoids are acting up!"
"O Dio, I'm unable to swallow!"

These proclamations always elicit sympathetic responses, followed by a curious one-upmanship:

"Well, I haven't had regular bowel movements for thirty years!"
"Well, my pee is purple!"
"Well, the ringing in my ears sounds like the intro to Porta a porta!"

This is a by-product of living in a Catholic country, of course. Suffering is expected, enjoyed even. Since you claim your Celestial Sweepstakes prize in the next, eternal life, you may as well wallow in your own misery in this more temporal existence. And be sure to tell everybody about it (no Anglo-American reticence here, thank you very much!)--indeed, why not compete with your neighbors to see who suffers most? I get the feeling these old folks believe that the size of their eternal reward shall be directly proportionate to the amount of physical suffering they have endured here on earth. Thus, according to geriatric logic, varicose veins equals a meagerly-appointed, single room in Heaven's hostel, while inflamed boils combined with gout and perhaps the insertion of a pacemaker garners a deluxe suite in God's five-star spa & resort, complete with cherubic-cheeked cabana boys serving drinks with paper umbrellas in them, poolside.

There's no shame whatsoever in the body's afflictions, in fact it's all part of polite conversation. When I see a neighbor on the street and volley a perfunctory "hello, how are you?" in passing, I am often stopped and served up a hair-raising tale of invasive surgical procedures, squamous skin conditions with frightening Latin names, harrowing infections of biblical perniciousness, and other torments of the damned. Once, when I went to a neighbor's apartment to return something I'd borrowed, I was met at the door by her harried elderly mother (she lives with her parents, of course) who said, "Oh! Please, wait only a moment--I was just giving my husband an enema. I'll be right back." I then spent an agonizing ten minutes on the threshold, trying not to imagine the goings-on down the corridor, desiring with every fiber of my being to creep back down the stairs, but forced by some perverse sense of etiquette to listen to an enema being administered to--from the sound of things--a most recalcitrant old man. Presently the barrel-shaped Signora returned, huffing and snapping her rubber gloves off crisply, and said, "Now, what is it you wanted?" I tossed her the parcel and fled.

If you listen closely, dear Readers, you will hear it. Like the constant drone of motorini, the never-ending raga of the ailments of the nation's elderly can be heard in every doctor's office, clinic, alimentari, beauty salon, bank, city street or piazza. Blood-pressure and white blood-cell counts, toe fungus, swollen ankles, inert thyroids, osteoporosis--the moribund music is pervasive. What's fit only for the ears of trained medical personnel in other parts of the world is, I repeat, fodder for everyday conversation in the Bel Paese.

I suppose one could view all this senile social interaction as part of the charm of Italy, indicative of a slower pace of life that allows lonely, chatty septuagenarians and their ilk the chance to feel connected to those around them, evidence of a fast-fading way of life that is bound to go the route of the brontosaurus. I suppose one could smile beneficently when a harpy-voiced old crone chirps out the state of her much-belabored intestinal tract in a dull, five-by-six-foot unheated room packed with germ-ridden supplicants. It's enchanting really.

To give yet another example--while standing in line at the pharmacy last week to fill a prescription, I had to wait fifteen minutes while the potato-faced geezer in front of me regaled the pharmacist with the excruciating details of his cataract surgery. And she didn't care one whit that I was waiting (perhaps even in dire need of life-saving medicines), but seemed to be really enthusiastically listening. I shuffled my feet, shifted my weight from one leg to the other, looked at my watch--to no avail. Cataract Man would have his say.

The chosen people


But who am I to criticize, to cast aspersions (and acerbic aspersions, at that)? I know that someday I, too, will be old. And then I, too, may gain great pleasure in recounting at length to the pharmacist (or anyone who will listen) the story of my recent hip-replacement surgery or my losing battle with incontinence--while a host of impatient souls in line behind me riddle my back with imaginary daggers as they wait fruitlessly to fill their prescriptions.

I do believe I shall relish it.


Yours,

Campobello

Hey, you! Mr. Marzipan-man!

Dear Grown-ups,

My mommy is letting me guest write on her blog--well, I mean, I talk and she types. Because I'm only six years old. But I have things to say. Oh boy--do I!

There's a man, a very strange-looking man, who's in charge of Italy. I don't know why, but his face looks like the browned hide of a caramel apple--and not the good kind, but the kind with all sorts of toxic preservatives, the kind a creepy ex-prison-inmate carny serves you with a leer, the kind my mommy won't let me eat. Also, his hair looks very fake--it never moves! I don't think even a cyclone would muss it up. It looks like a bunch of kids from the scuola materna colored it on with pennarelli--and they were 3 year-olds, so they didn't do a very good job, either. And his skin is very tight and pulled across his face, like someone trying to do a Number Two, or maybe someone trying to do a zombie-face. Anyway, he's scary. He'd make a good scarecrow, though I don't think it would be a very nice thing to do to the crows.

I think he must be a very bad man, because it seems like he's always lying. The reason I think he's always lying is because he's always saying things like, "I didn't do it! Everybody's blaming me! It's a plot!" To paraphrase Shakespeare, methinks he doth protest too much (mommy helped me with that one--I've only just started reading Pimpa). The bad man also says things like, "They're all against me! Nobody loves me! Everyone else is doing it! Puritans and moralists, the lot of you!" Exactly like a big baby. I should know because this is how I used to behave--then I turned five.

A bunch of femmine gathered and marched in Florence this past Sunday in protest of the bad, shellac-faced man. I couldn't go because I had homework to do. But even though I'm small, I'd still like my voice to be heard.

The way I see it, my life in Italy could go in one of two directions when I grow up: I can be an empty-headed velina and future member of parliament, or I can use my brain and considerable spark and do something far more interesting with my life. Why on earth would I want to parade my surgically-enhanced poppe and butt-cheeks around on prime-time television when I could be splitting atoms or discovering a cure for cancer or feeding the world's hungry? Why would I want to be groped by a bunch of whisky-swilling, cigar-puffing, withered old buffoons in a private villa when I could be writing my dissertation, or training for the Olympics, or working an honest job? Why be the stiletto-heeled validation an aging, unrepentent reptile needs? I'd like to take this broom and whip the almond-paste-faced man across his mummified ass (my mommy says sometimes nothing less than a good cuss-word will do the job--especially if it's for a worthy cause). Maybe that'd knock some sense of decency into him. Or at least it might get his hair to move.

So here's what I would say to the man who runs Italy if I could, and if he would bother to listen: I may seem small and weak, I may look tomboyish and very un-velina-like, and my boobs might never grow bigger than hard-boiled eggs--but I'd rather be a garden gnome than be one of your lousy showgirls, or ego-stroking party-favors, or Minister of Lingerie or whatever. You're a rotten apple, Mr. Berlusconi. A trickster, a doofus. Someday, I'll take hearty bites out of men like you and spit them out.

But for now I'm gonna go have some cookies....

Bye!

Gemma

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

E.T. phon home

Dear Readers,

Don't expect much from this post. I shan't dazzle you with brilliant word play, I certainly won't entertain you with witty observations, and in fact I just may bore you to distraction. For I have begun 2011 in a colossal fugue.

So much so that this post is actually about my hair. Yep, that's right, my hair. Isn't it enchanting? Aren't you titillated? At the very least I'm sure you're all glued to your screens, mouths agape in horror, as if witnessing the derailment of a train that goes careening off haplessly into the night--metal twisting and sparks flying--and wondering, "No! Is she really going to write about her hair?"

Just watch me.

While all writers have moments of self-doubt, I've spent recent nights writhing under my duvet, my gut smoldering with the sensation of futility, while the hobgoblins of mediocrity wreak havoc on my psyche, certain that I'm some kind of latter-day Bartleby the Scrivener--a tragicomic figure doomed to ignominy and blogging in obscurity. E.T.--in case you were about to make the wrong assumption--does not in this instance refer to the shriveled little gnome from outer space with a penchant for beer (and who is incidentally probably a much better writer than me in his native...whatever he speaks). It stands for Elizabeth the Trite. For that's how I feel lately--like a talentless hack. A talentless hack with bad, bad hair. The worst kind.

Let me first assert that I never begin the new year with resolutions. Resolutions are for suckers. Well, once I did make a new years' resolution, with my best friend Juliann--the only one I ever stuck to. (Or, to which I ever stuck. See? That was a sentence worthy of a talentless hack). The resolution, brilliant in its simplicity, was to learn to drink martinis with both style and aplomb. But I suppose that was less a resolution and more a kind of inebriate, fledgling-boozehound suicide pact a twenty-something Dean Martin might have made with Frank Sinatra--the kind of pact made to kick off New Years' Evening circa 1991 at a teeming bar in the South End of Boston, and merely the first rung on the ladder up to the slide of life-long dissolution. I digress. What I meant to say was that this year began much like every other of late--which is to say, in blinking disbelief. Nevertheless, I was humming along more or less happily in the burgeoning days of 2011, until last Thursday, when the postman rang twice.*

The devilishly good-looking, ever-tanned Giovanni, in his dapper blue and yellow postal uniform, brought me a small Christmas package from a friend in the States that was mailed over a month ago, and I went down to the gate to retrieve it. (The holidays, of course, being long gone--stuffed away like our tree in its cardboard sarcophagus in the dank depths of the ripostiglio. As an added insult, I had to pay the Dogana its customary customs pizzo, or extortion fee, which of course I did because it's useless to fight these things--they're as inevitable as death though far less pleasant).

Only until I went back inside and happened to glimpse myself in the mirror did I realize that I had forgotten to comb my hair--and being a nervous hair-twirler, I had, over the course of the morning spent doing housework and generally antagonizing my computer, worked my locks into feral cave-woman proportions. How could I have committed such an atrocity in front of the handsome Giovanni??!!

Perhaps it was high time I resolved to do something, after all.

I briefly and dementedly considered procuring an always-perfect, easy-to-care-for wig--but knew that it would become the abused plaything of my nefarious offspring, and quite possibly be used as a Swiffer in my own moments of domestic dereliction. Instead, the very next day I stormed into the beauty salon for a desperately overdue tune-up. I go so infrequently (putting it off until I begin to resemble my long-dead grandmother) that I must always endure a serious confab among the staff over how best to handle my hair--with its unruly cowlicks, various layers of grown-out color, and insidious gray stealth-hairs--as if they are attempting to deactivate a bomb or remove a brain tumor.

Unlike most women, I do not take pleasure in a trip to the salon. It's something I feel I must do, like going to the dentist, in order to ensure against one day becoming a toothless, snaggle-haired crone. Anyway, I get through the worst of the color-job and the cut and then I'm in the final stretch--the piega. How did I want my spiffy new hair styled? Lisci or riccioli? The answer was easy, and I gave it without thinking--it's the one I always give: blow it out straight. All my life I've struggled uphill against my natural wave like Sisyphus hauling rock, or Oprah trying to say no to the fried cheese sticks. I've always longed for thick, raven-black, Indian-straight hair--the kind of hair over which wars are fought and empires won and kings enthralled. Cher hair.

On the way home, my sleek new 'do tucked under a jaunty red helmet, I cycled past an electronics store and suddenly screeched the brakes, skidded, and left a black tire-mark of utter decisiveness on the blood red of the bike lane. Why am I forever dissatisfied with what God or Brahma gave me? Why do I force my undisciplined mane to contort into the straight and narrow? Damned if I wasn't going to invest in my locks and shell out €49 for a highfalutin' hairdryer with an attachment that looks like some sort of Henry Ford-era turbine, guaranteed to pump up luscious curls.

So, yes, I bought a phon--that's the annoying way Italians have of saying hairdryer, instead of asciugacapelli. Pronounced like a cross between "phone" and "fawn", it's one of my all-time linguistic pet peeves. According to my Garzanti it's supposed to be fon, from the German Föhn--which means hairdryer (or large, unwieldy sausage)--but for some reason the common way of spelling it is phon, though this is from the Greek phone which means "sound." Which is just dumb. (There are a host of ill-conceived words which have been warped into Italian, the mere hearing of which gives my hackles rise and makes me long to clobber the offending speaker with a Louisville Slugger. Among the worst are water for "toilet," pronounced "VA-tair" as if by some sadistic, imperious, chainsmoking Russian ballet teacher and ex-KGB operative; hamburger [self-explanatory], pronounced "ahm-BOOR-ghair," which sounds just like bile sluicing through a duct; and computer [ibid.], pronounced "kohm--POO--tair" in the manner of a French idiot. Sheesh. If you're gonna hijack our words at least make a semblance of pronouncing them right). Again I digress.

I therefore declare 2011 the Year of My Hair--in which those devil-may-care, insouciant locks shall have their druthers. I promise to nurture them (most of the time) and bask in their curliness. I may be a talentless hack, but I don't have to look like one. Cher, beware.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll ease up on the self-flagellation a bit this year too, and stuff a sock into the maw of my inner critic (who, coincidentally, also has the voice of a sadistic, imperious, chainsmoking Russian ballet teacher and ex-KGB operative). But until I gather the strength, all you big-name writers with your fancy book contracts--well--you've probably got nothing to worry about.


Yours in--hopefully--fugacious fugueness,

Campobello

*A reader and friend--hi there, Alexandra!--was privy to this story via email, poor thing.

Kung Fu Christmas

Dear Readers,

"A real warrior never quits, and... I WILL NEVER QUIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Thus spake Po in Kung Fu Panda (surely one of the greatest animated films ever made), a present from Babbo Natale to my children this year. It occured to me that this is probably the unspoken battle-cry of most people when the holiday season rises up menacingly on the horizon, a tinsel-covered, raisin-studded juggernaut whose blows we must endure--and strive to subdue with every fiber of our being--or be crushed by the sheer soul-sapping force of its pernicious yuletide power.

Ever notice how the Christmas season is described in increasingly apocalyptic terms? Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Stores lure us to their doors at inhuman hours to suffer the tortures of the damned, with the prospect of saving twenty-five percent dangled in front of us like plenary indulgences. Thankfully, many of the crueler punishments of the season are absent or at least milder in Italy, but we do make up for it by packing in more actual holidays, and therefore more opportunities for agony. The beast rears its head here on December 8th--the Feast of the Immaculate Conception--and finishes by crunching the last of our weary bones on January 6th, the Epiphany. Christmas is technically a two-day siege (or two-and-a-half if you count Christmas Eve feasting), with the 26th being Santo Stefano. In Italy it is common to spend both the main holiday meal of lunch as well as dinner together with family (do the math--that's five family meals in three days!) which--if you factor in dysfunction, ignorance, bigotry, bad hygiene, endless hillbilly barzellette, and oafish table manners--makes for a hair-tearing, eyeball-gouging, fingernail-ripping experience. It truly takes a warrior spirit to tackle this most formidable of foes. 

If you're curious as to what the End Days will be like, then go to an Italian supermarket on the weekend before Christmas, where you will witness a roiling, writhing sea of frenzied humanity who wield shopping carts like bumper cars, frantically grabbing at shelves and filling their carts as if WW3 was about to break out, and where a thin-lipped, beshriveled old lady in an enormous fur coat will unceremoniously knock you to the ground and pry the very last tub of mascarpone from your twitching hands. (I can think of nowhere better suited to the execution of a few well-placed kung fu moves--if not an all-out Jackie Chan fight scene--than an Italian supermarket on the eve of a major holiday). This insanity is, unfortunately, as much a part of Italian culture and history as the Renaissance--though it's a little-known fact, Dante, in his original version of the Inferno (before the final edit), made suffering perpetual Christmases the tenth circle of Hell.

To further illustrate my point, I'll share with you this electronic missive--and clear cry for help--which I received from a friend on Christmas Day (I imagined him gasping for breath, his trembling hands clawing the keyboard): "...family killing me...like being chained on my back to a rock while vultures tear out my entrails...." We all have an image of how we want Christmas to be, don't we? Something very Norman Rockwell--a snowbound cottage with a crackling log fire and stockings hung by the chimney with care, carolers, the scent of pine, a rustic table set with a glistening roast and rounded by family members whose joined hands give thanks, children whose faces are aglow with pleasure over their new Flexible Flyers. THIS is the Christmas we desperately strive for, the one we fight for--but it's not the Christmas we usually get. Instead, family holiday get-togethers are more akin to getting boils lanced, or having leeches applied--or having your entrails tinker-toyed with by scavengers.

A woman came into the shop a couple days after the holiday, one of our regular customers, a Brit with a clear eye and sassy haircut, and as conversation inevitably turned to Christmas coping strategies, she said matter-of-factly, "I don't think anybody really likes Christmas--it's just something you have to get through." Like amoebic dysentery or stomach flu or tax season. So why do we keep torturing ourselves? Flinging ourselves into the breach, year after year?

A wise warrior chooses his battles, dear Readers. And Christmas, with all its swagger and glittery trappings, is an invading army which I prefer to let march right past me, unmolested. Serenity is what I crave this time of year. I strive to be as still as a lotus on a blue pond, as resolute as a stalk of bamboo, and as free as a smooth-feathered crane in flight. It's the time for us four to hole up like moles, share some good food and wine, enjoy the fire glowing warmly in the hearth--while the holiday maelstrom rages outside our door. As kung fu master Oogway sagely observes, "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called 'the present.'"

Christmas present, indeed.


Yours,

Campobello

What's wrong with this picture?

Dear Readers,

As many of you may know, Florence was hit with a Michigan-worthy blizzard the other day, and the city is still reeling from both the incomparable beauty of it all and the utter chaos caused by city bureaucrats being woefully--if not adamantly--unprepared. Without getting into the irony of the fact that apparently Tuscans don't believe in salting their roads as well as their bread, I wanted to describe to you a scene I observed on the evening of the snowstorm, after the worst of it was over and an otherworldly hush had settled over the land. It seemed innocent enough.

I returned home to find my nephew Giulio happily making a snowman in the garden. He smiled broadly and shyly and waved hello, his shaggy mop of dark hair framing his impish face, completely simpatico. A short while later when I went out to get some more wood for the fire, I saw he was still there, the darkening, snow-perfumed sky enfolding him and his Tuscan version of Frosty. Then a shadowy figure emerged from behind the snow-dusted hedge, which was partially screening my view--it was my sister-in-law, Giulio's mother, in the craziest get-up I'd yet seen during this bout of freak weather (thick legwarmers pulled up over sweatpants, a man's parka with a few sweaters oozing out of it at odd angles, a fishermen's hat that was three sizes too big, and bright yellow rubber clogs). After surveying her son's handiwork, she admonished, "Don't stay out too much longer, Giulio, you'll catch cold--besides, it's getting dark." "Sì, mamma," came the obedient reply.

Did I mention that Giulio is twenty-five years old?

Anglo-Saxon mothers of a certain smothersome and anxious stripe are sometimes called "helicopter moms." Well, then--comparatively speaking--Italian mothers are Sherman tanks. Nothing bulldozes a testosterone-laced Italian male and tramples his independence quite so effectively and absolutely as the crippling, hyper-concerned treads of la mamma italiana.

Don't get me wrong--naturally there's nothing askew about an adult having a little fun building a snowman (I might have gladly made one myself, but being a Michigan girl, I've probably surpassed the Wolverine State quota of 2,500 snowmen per life span). But the next day, while Giulio spent the afternoon proudly putting the finishing touches on his opera d'arte, enjoying the sun and the crisp, rarefied air, another scene was playing itself out....

My 85-year-old father-in-law was shoveling snow--huffing and heaving like an early steam locomotive--alongside Giulio's dad, Luca (who, quite honestly, was faring little better).

The family compound being situated on a large plot of land, we were practically buried by snow--there were no clear walkways, the driveway was inundated, and all the cars were blocked in. Thus there was a certain urgency over the driveway being cleared because Matteo--Giulio's brother, age 23--needed desperately to get out with the car (apparently he wanted to meet up with friends--perhaps to build snowmen of their own). You see, dear Readers, my nephews don't work and both live at home with their parents, like so very many Italians, and seem content to do so for years and years--and years--to come. And while they're the two sweetest guys you'd ever hope to meet, they remain utterly naive and as if frozen in some kind of perpetual childhood, like Peter Pan or Michael Jackson. Of course, the pathetic*, rather clownish figure of the Italian mammone is known the world over and is, I think, as indigenous to this sunny peninsula as wild boar and corrupt politicians with bad hair plugs. I have never seen my nephews take out the trash, help clear the table after meals (let alone assist--gasp!--with actual meal preparation or washing dishes), do laundry, do yardwork--do anything, really, that might be construed as chores or taking the bull by the horns.


My name is Giorgio.
I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.

So--let us consider for a moment the picture I have drawn for you, dear Readers, and then let us contemplate in whose hands lies the future of this funny, ungovernable, boot-shaped outcrop of civilized Europe. Soft and immutable--spending their parents' hard-earned money with alacrity, revving their motorini with careless abandon, gobbling meals with the heedlessness of lactating babes, buttoning up their Diesel jeans and lacing their Converse shoes--are these hands capable of scrabbling out a place for Italy in the world that clamors and groans with endeavor outside its very doorstep? To me, these butter-fat, enfeebled, mother-fed hands which prefer to dally with ephemeral pleasures--like snow in Florence--seem far more suited to Neverland than the reality the rest of us mere mortals inhabit.

Yours from the front lines,

Campobello

*An admittedly--an unabashedly--Anglo-Saxon term of judgment for which I offer no apology. To most Italians, of course, there is absolutely nothing conceivably wrong in having your mother either buy or launder your underwear (at age 40 and beyond).

Search Words to live by

Dear Readers,

As you may know, most bloggers employ a nifty spy-like tool to see who's visiting their site--this involves a tracker that not only gives the readers' location, but any referring sites as well as any search words used to lead folks to the blog itself.  Here are a few of the searches that have recently led some intrepid souls to my blog:

"horny midwestern women"  This from someone (presumably also horny) in Illinois. I must say I took wicked pleasure in knowing that a lascivious corn-fed lothario seeking to satisfy his rampant lust with some sex-starved daughter of the Grain Belt was led to my PG-13 musings on Florence. That is, until I remembered that I, too, happen to be a, well--er--midwestern woman. Hmm. Maybe I ought to be flattered.

"brazen bm" (that's b.m. for bowel movement, by the way!). This from--who else?--a New Yorker. Now, I ask you, what kind of person needs this sort of information? Was he or she trying to establish the criteria for some kind of defecation Richter scale, presumably progressing from timid, tentative and meek b.m.'s to the boisterous, bold and brazen kind? And more importantly--why? Was this person seeking knowledge, advice, photos, or--god forbid--a YouTube video? At any rate, I'm sure my good, clean blog failed to provide the sought-after answers or relief; in fact, it probably caused the anonymous googler not a little constipation--I mean, consternation.

"renaissance toilet"  My favorite, from someone in Washington, D.C. A Lavatory Historian researching his dissertation on toilets through the ages perhaps? Someone trying to channel his inner Michelangelo after some bad burritos? Or maybe one of our illustrious politicians was looking to install an antique fixture in his Georgetown colonial, or--dare I conjecture?--the White House. It suddenly strikes me that the renaissance toilet is probably an altogether fitting place in which to deposit one's brazen b.m.'s, don't you think?

Let me just say how very touched I am that in matters scatological or pertaining to midwestern lechery, Google sees fit to lead the little lost lambs of the internet to my virtual doorstep.



Your humble scrivener,

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)

Certifiably insane

Dear Readers,

After living in Italy nearly a decade, I am certain--though they would cagily deny their own existence, like the mafia--that there's a secret cadre of fiendish bureaucrats locked away in a dank room in a crumbling palazzo somewhere, smoking cigars and guzzling grappa, their flat, brittle, octogenarian bums scraping against cracked leather upolstery, plotting ways to make everybody's lives ten-thousand times more complicated than they need to be. They're the kind of villains you'd see in old silent films, curling their handlebar mustaches and rubbing their hands together with Machiavellian glee.

There are many, many examples I could give to illustrate their dastardly deeds, but I am going to focus on only one at present: the certificato medico (medical certificate). Italians love to certify just about everything--from acts of Parliament to acts of God. To this end, notaries do a brisk business (while making a killing, their fees being notoriously exorbitant), and you practically need a marca da bollo (official stamp) just to pass gas. But the medical certificate has to be one of the cruelest punishments ever inflicted on the Italian populace.

Let's say I fall ill. I'm wracked with fever, my nose is gushing, I feel like I've been run over by a bus. Naturally, I call off work. But do I get to crawl back into bed, perhaps with a hot cup of honey-laced tea, and slip into a restful coma? No! I have to haul myself over to my doctor's ambulatorio and wait two hours in an unheated antechamber with a bunch of ancient hypochondriacs who prattle on endlessly about their aching vertebrae and loose bowel movements, while inside my skull aboriginal rhythms are pounding themselves out mercilessly. I need to get my doctor to certify that I am indeed sick enough to miss work--even for just one day (apparently bringing my employer an enormous pile of slimy, used tissues is not proof enough). The process of certification entails the doctor listening to me say "I'm sick" while observing my variously oozing bodily humors, after which she fills out an official slip of paper and hands it over to me. Ah, but it doesn't end there, dear Readers! This piece of paper has two sections, one of which I am to give my employer upon my return to work, and the other is to be dispatched immediately to INPS (Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale), the government arm which pays out sick leave. This must be done--under penalty of death--by registered mail, which means (oh, joy!) a trip to the post office. So, after enduring the doctor's office, I'm forced to drag my flu-ridden mass of molecules over to the nearest branch of the Poste Italiane, take a number (usually #101 out of 500), and stand and wait, praying that I infect the dour-faced employees who move slower than indolent, dyslexic sloths.

Exhausted, I return home after 3 or 4 hours of divertimento. All this to absent myself from a five hour work shift. Complicating the whole endeavor is the fact that my doctor has her ambulatorio in my vicinity only four times a week--three miserly morning slots, and once, more amply, in the evening (though the place is usually teeming like a leper colony). The post office closes adamantly at 1pm, so you really have to hustle if you want to be beaten down and tormented in timely fashion.

Here's another example: recently, I wanted to enroll in a yoga class, having decided that I ought to start looking after my well-being and de-stressing in a way that doesn't involve popping a cork. I went for a free trial lesson at a lovely yoga studio, tried not to blanch at the enrollment fees, and was given a brochure that explained their policy. When I got home and read it, I was surprised to see that a certificato medico was required before one could participate in classes. "A medical certificate for an hour of beginner's yoga a week?" I thought to myself, "We're not talking rugby, pole-vaulting, or the four-minute mile here--this is downward dog, the sun salute, the corpse pose for god's sake!" So I did what I usually do in these cases of bureaucratic water-torture--I narrowed my eyes, clenched my jaw and prepared to submit. I dropped by the pharmacy the next evening and asked the pharmacist if she would leave a note for my doctor (who'd be in her office next door the following morning) asking for a certificate saying something along the lines of "Ms. Petrosian is unlikely to drop dead of cardiac arrest if she were to do a wee bit of yoga."

"Ah, but for the certificato medico sport non agonistico [non-agony-inducing?] you have to pay," said the pharmacist. "Oh! Ah, um, er...how much is it?" I asked, with trepidation. "Usually around 35-65 Euro." I nearly went into cardiac arrest right there. "Does that mean she has to examine me? You know, give me an EKG, stress test, repeated flagellation with a yoga strap?" "Typically no--it's just for the certificato itself." I see. Just to have a simple piece of paper from my primary-care physician, for whose service and the national health service in general I render lavishly and unfailingly unto Caesar, I was being asked to shell out an extra tithe. Disgruntled and fuming, I went home and tallied up the total real cost of doing yoga (I discovered that these certificati for sports have to be renewed every year) and thought, to hell with it. I ordered some yoga dvds from Amazon UK instead.

(By the way, in order for children to participate in any remotely sporty after-school activity, they need to have a medical certificate--which needs to be re-issued every year, of course. If you have two or more children, doing at least one activity each, you can see how the costs swiftly add up. If you add in parents who might like to join a gym or something profligate like that, there's some serious lining of pockets going on).

One last anecdote and then I'll leave you in peace, dear Readers. My son suffers from a few food allergies, and in order to eat at the mensa every day at school, he needs--you guessed it!--a certificato medico attesting to the fact. Naturally, as his mother, I am the last person on earth qualified to communicate a health condition to the school (though, apparently, I am deemed responsible enough to pay the lunch bill of €140 for two children every month). This certificate has to be re-submitted every scholastic year, though thankfully it is free of charge. So, at the beginning of September, I girded my loins and set out to procure this year's certificato for Giacomo.

Our pediatrician only takes calls from--get this--8:15-9:15am, Monday thru Friday. Not a minute before, not a minute after (always tricky, given that I have to squeeze my work commute into this time-frame).  Usually the line is busy because 400 parents are trying to reach him simultaneously, and I have to hit re-dial, oh, maybe 62 times before getting through. (You could call during his afternoon ambulatorio, interrupting him during office visits, but only if a kid's on their death bed--and be prepared to grovel). Anyway, eventually I get through, ask for the certificate, he agrees to have it ready for pick-up the following evening, my husband brings it home. I hand it over on the first day of school, quite pleased with myself.

Well, two days ago the school called because Giacomo ate something with egg in it and had a mild reaction. Egg wasn't included among the allergens listed in the medical certificate, I discovered--apparently the doctor forgot, and I, being so distracted from running around after all these damn certificati, didn't catch the omission. I was told that a NEW (and improved) certificato was needed immediately so my son wouldn't be served any more egg.

If this is all starting to sound like a play by Beckett or Ionesco, then you're beginning to understand what it's like to live under this uniquely Italian form of bureaucratic despotism.

                                                               ***

An enlightened Italian pediatrician--bless his subversive soul--wrote a wonderful article railing against useless medical certificates.* In it he makes the following calculations:

--Italy has around 7,000 pediatricians, who are writing on average 10 medical certificates a day, thereby producing some 70,000 certificates per day (these certificates are needed for many absurd reasons besides sports and food allergies), and consuming an estimated 14,000 reams of paper per year.

--He supposes that for every certificate issued, a parent must spend at least a half-hour in getting it, which adds up to some 35,000 hours per day. This in turn adds up to a conservative estimate (based on 200 days) per year of 7,000,000 wasted hours, or the equivalent of one year of work by 4 full-time employees.

--He rightly assumes that most of these trips required to pick up and deliver medical certificates are made by car. Estimating a minimum of 2 km distance per certificate, on any given day, then, some 140,000 km are being traveled! That's 28,000,000 km per year, with a consumption of gasoline estimated at 2,000,000 litres.

He concludes by saying that maybe--just maybe--this "festival of idiocy" will one day end, and that all the time and energy expended over medical certificates (requesting them, producing them, procuring them, distributing them, reading them, organizing them, filing them, saving them, etc.) can then be invested in things that are infinitely more useful and gratifying.**

So lest you wonder why Italy's economic growth rate is something like minus 22%, or why we're not producing any more Nobel Laureates, the answer is easy: everyone is far too busy chasing after certificati medici.


My best regards,

Campobello

*"Tutto bene: ecco il certificato medico inutile," di Vincenzo Calia, in Un Pediatra per Amico, n.1, gennaio-febbraio 2007. For those of you who read Italian, it's worth a google.

**I would add that if you're reading this it means you are at least minimally computer-literate. And therefore you--like me--may very well ask yourselves why, in this the 21st century, Italy doesn't avail itself of technology and have these interminable certificati simply wing their way through cyberspace, granting us all--our much-suffering environment inlcuded--some relief?

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.

Cultural imperialism, one sandwich at a time

Dear Readers,

I'm feeling guilty.  I served a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich to an Italian child yesterday.

Granted, the ingredients were top-quality: unadulterated peanut butter from the Netherlands, delicious locally-produced strawberry preserves, durum-wheat bread.  And yet, I couldn't help but think that I was being horribly blasphemous.

To be completely truthful, I have never been a huge fan of PB&J--sure, I was fed Skippy and Welch's as a child, but as soon as I hit middle school, the days of such gloppy kid-grub were behind me.  Peanut butter reappeared in my life only when I was pregnant with my first child, in the form of a major first-trimester craving--but I Italianized it somewhat by eating it plain on top of fette biscottate.  Recently, however, while racking my brains to try and come up with a new act in the culinary variety-show all we moms stage for our children, it occurred to me to try and introduce this quintessentially American concoction.  After all, I thought, it's part of their heritage--like baseball and televangelist sex scandals.

Well, my son gave the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich rave reviews, and for the past couple months has been devouring them happily, even for breakfast.  But yesterday I was unprepared for the timorousness I felt when Giacomo asked for one as an after school snack while his friend Marco was over.  My experience with many Italian mothers is that they are very particular about what goes into their childrens' mouths, and most of them seem to cultivate bizarre, arbitrary culinary aversions and eccentricities: no tomatoes for Alessandro, nothing fried for Gaia, Leonardo only eats pasta, Matilde won't eat cheese, absolutely nothing spicy for Francesco, Irene is strawberry-intolerant, Pietro hates bananas, no-primi-only-secondi for Maria Giulia, no beans in Mirko's minestrone, etc.  Italian mothers love to regale you with the list of all the foods their kids refuse to eat and how impossibly picky they are.  I've discovered, in the course of such conversations, that it is really the parents themselves who are impossibly picky, and this culinary fastidiousness gets handed down to their offspring like DNA.  As you can imagine, in this kind of hostile atmosphere, consuming ethnic food, or cibo straniero, is tantamount to digestive treason.

So--I asked the notoriously-picky, little sandy-haired bambino if he was sure he wanted to try a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.  By way of explanation I said, "It's kind of like Nutella, only peanutty," (Italian kids scarf Nutella like it's manna).  I opened the jar and let him smell it.  Since he neither fainted nor recoiled in horror, I thought, "okay then, here goes!"  I carefully prepared the foreign sandwiches like an offering for the Black Mass and set them before the boys. 

The verdict?  Marco LOVED it.  He went on and on about how good it was: "è buonissimo! Buonissimo davvero!"

But while I smiled inwardly at this small triumph of American culinary firepower, part of me felt as if I was corrupting this child.  I couldn't help but wonder about Marco going home and telling his mother what he ate at our house.  "You ate what?  Cosa?  Burro d'arachidi e marmellata???  Ma non ti fa male la pancia? [your tummy doesn't hurt, does it?]."

Of course, I need not expound on the glories of Italian cuisine here--its merits have been exalted in countless cookbooks, televsion programs, journals, etc. to the point that it's now part of the collective unconscious. Italians themselves have unbounded faith in its being the best cuisine on the planet.  In fact, more Italians worship their mamma's recipes than they do any deities within the Catholic Church.  Unfortunately, we Americans have earned a very bad reputation for our culinary paganism--which makes serving a humble, un-pedigreed, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich to an Italian seem like a subversive act.  Italy has already seen more than its fair share of the onslaught of American culture in the form of supermarkets, shopping malls, megaplexes, bad 80's television shows, and the ubiquitousness of poppa-khorn at childrens' parties.  Must I, too, attempt to colonize the Bel Paese--offending its culinary heritage with my seditious after-school snacks?  Am I some kind of peanut-butter-wielding, arrogant, Mommy-Raj?

No, surely the sacred and the profane can exist side by side.  Surely peanut-butter-and-jelly can cohabitate peacefully with the very Florentine schiacciata.  Surely, by making room for my innocent little American sandwich, the grand edifice of Italian cuisine will not topple and fall into ruin like some lost, decadent civilization. 

Or will it?


Yours,

Campobello

The strange, sad tale of Mr. Rabbit

Dear Readers,

My neighborhood is full of characters.  Really, at times I feel as if I'd landed in a Fellini film.

For instance, there's the woman whom everyone refers to as "La Pazzarella" ("crazy woman")--a wildly-gray-haired Hermes who rides up and down the street on her bicycle in the same ratty brown parka year-round, small suitcase akimbo in her basket, ranting and doomsaying at the top of her voice.  Apparently, some years ago her lesbian lover died and she's been off her hinges ever since.  There's Maria "La Sarda" ("the Sardinian," forever known by this moniker even though she's been in Florence 60-odd years)--a tiny, plump, witch-voiced widow with raven-dyed hair whose husband used to beat her, and who is partial to the skinned rabbits' heads my father-in-law supplies her for use in her Sardinian brews.  Tullia, another old widow (we're rife with them)--so big-boned she looks like she could tear a man to pieces with her bare hands--often shows up at a strategic hour at my in-laws' house and stands beside the table, in tears, bewailing her widows' lot throughout their dinner, or at least until she's invited to sit down and eat. 

I've only heard tell of a certain Valkiria (that's Valkyrie--can you imagine having such a name?!); I've never met nor seen her around.  Legend has it she's morbidly obese and can't leave the house--one sees only her husband, Vittorio, scurrying about the neighborhood procuring victuals to take home to her.  Maria Grazia, another heavy-weight, with a voice like a hen being slowly eviscerated--is to be avoided at all costs.  If she manages to corner you, she will blather on and on until you begin to drool and your eyes roll back in their sockets.  Margherita ("Daisy"), is an ancient, toothless, snow-haired crone who always sits on a tiny stool in front of her building, croaking "ciao bello!" to all the bambini and cadging groceries and handouts from any passersby with plastic shoppers in hand. 

Then there's Don Germano, the sweet-yet-curmudgeonly chain-smoking club-footed priest, who is so infirm he can barely stand and deliver the homily (well, at least they're always brief).  Our neighborhood convent boasts a small coterie of cloistered Benedictine nuns--all of them decrepit yet eternally girlish, in the way of women who have been cut off from men, the world, and dvd's of Sex and the City.  There's Balestri, the local handy-man--a glossy-domed, ham-faced geezer who totters purposefully up and down the street in his weighty tool-belt, lugging power-saws, two-by-fours and ladders. 

Our postino, Giovanni, is perma-tanned and handsome as sin, always jovial, and possessing the utterly relaxed air--endemic in many government employees--of one who never, ever works too hard or takes things too seriously.  Lisetta (or "little Lisa"), a putty-lump of an old biddy with a voice like a sandpiper, is so averse to the (admittedly) voracious Tuscan-variety of mosquito that she goes around all summer wearing long-sleeves and trousers whose ends are secured with rubber bands, and a large hat covered with a gauzy veil--like some strange geriatric Florentine beekeeper.

I could go on, of course.  But I wanted to relate the story I heard recently from Signor Coniglio (I prefer to think of him as Mr. Rabbit; it sounds rather fairy-tale-like in English).  He's an old gentleman, egg-shaped, kind-faced, with a small, elegant mustache, who works as a part-time gardener at the rather grand villa up the hill behind our house.  He is also a volunteer driver for our neighborhood Misericordia--the ages-old charitable medical/ambulance corps.  I have a soft spot for Mr. Rabbit because of a kindness he showed me a few years ago.  My daughter Gemma, then three, had seen fit to stick a small bead up her nose, and I needed to get her to the hospital so it could be removed safely.  I walked her over to the Misericordia and Mr. Rabbit drove us to the emergency room.  He stayed with us and even helped me, the doctor, and two nurses hold the banshee-like Gemma down while the bead was extracted--then drove us home, chatting softly and amiably all the way.
                      
                                                           ***

One day recently, on his way up to the villa, Mr. Rabbit stopped in our garden and, for reasons I could not fathom at the time, told his story.

"You know that I come from Sicily--my wife and I came up here in the 1950's.  Well, I was born and raised in Palermo.  My given name is Castrense, Castrense Coniglio, though I've always gone by Enzo.  [Castrense, which is a decidedly odd name for a child, was an obscure medieval Southern Italian saint whose shrine is in Monreale--though now he does have his own Facebook fan page]

We were poor and my mother had to go outside the home and work.  From just shortly after the time I was born, she would leave me in the care of my older brother.  He would brutalize me.  I have a memory from when I was six months old.  How can I remember something from when I was only six months old, you might ask?  Doctors have since told me it is impossible to have memories from only six months old, but I tell you I have this very, very distinct memory from that time.

I was alone with my brother and I was crying, as babies do.  He became enraged, and took the safety pin from my diaper and jammed the sharp end into my backside.  He pushed it in deeper and deeper, as deep as he could.  He twisted it.  I felt it hit my tailbone, then go in.  I was screaming in pain, but he didn't stop, he just kept twisting it into the bone until the pin broke off.

As I got older--old enough to talk, I suppose--my brother would threaten me never to tell that story to our mother or to anyone.  He said if our father found out he would kill him.  So I protected my brother.  To make sure I wouldn't tell, he used to grab my jaw and squeeze so hard I thought it would break, until I swore to him again I wouldn't tell a soul.  My jaw and lower face became deformed with these repeated assaults.

I have always suffered from intense spasms of pain in my left leg, as a result of my brother's brutality.  Finally, in the '70's, with the availablity of MRI's, the doctors were able to see the source of my pain--the pin that remained stuck in my tailbone.  They operated on me to remove it.

Well, they managed to remove part of it--it had rusted, you know--but the rest of the pin remained embedded, too close to a major vein to be safely removed.  Over time, layers of bone had grown over it and around it--which the doctor explained was the bone's way of trying to heal itself and minimize the foreign object.  It's as if the pin became part of the bone itself.  So, you see, I will never be completely free of the pain."

As he spoke, Mr. Rabbit's usually soft, round, mellow voice was edged--just slightly--with a certain rawness, and with what I think was a kind of longing.
                                                                           
                                                               ***       

For his faith, San Castrense was made a prisoner.  His persecutors intended to load him onto a battered boat and send him off into the sea, leaving him at the mercy of the waves, sure that he would sink and drown.  But an angel appeared to him and, telling him what trials lay in store, assured him not to despair.  The angel said that, whatever fate awaited him, a wonderful place had been prepared for him, a place of peace in which he would be liberated from every horror.  And so it happened.  According to the legend, San Castrense's boat, quite miraculously, reached the shores of Campania safely.  He went on to live his life, in service to others.

Yours,

Campobello

Not for beginners: an Italian wedding feast

Dear Readers,

I write this with a chilled martini glass of bubbly Citrosodina (think Italian Alka-Seltzer) by my side.  Here's why: I just got back from an Italian wedding.

If there's one area where Italians excel, one innate skill they possess that places them leaps-and-bounds beyond all others--it's feasting.  Indeed, if marathon eating were an Olympic sport, the Italians would be undefeated world champions.  No one can touch them.

Let me describe the proceedings.  After a hot, midday ceremony in the Red Room of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, our group--some 100 of us--made its way to a lovely agriturismo in the nearby Chianti hills.  We arrived at about 1pm, and awaiting us was a fabulous outdoor buffet of traditional antipasti layed out on a mile-long groaning-board and flanked by a battalion of waiters who began serving us with crisp, military precision.  People fell upon the food with rapacious enthusiasm, like bliss-filled wolves.  All the Tuscan crowd-pleasers were present: a spinel-colored haunch of prosciutto being carved by a sepoy-like, grave-faced old codger; trays of fried zucchini and their blossoms, eggplant, and squares of polenta; little quivering balls of fresh mozzarella swimming in their own milk in a large silver urn; slices of pecorino drizzled with local honey; bruschetta with fresh tomato and basil; chicken-liver crostini; a huge terracotta terrine brimming with thick pappa col pomodoro, and a bowl of cold farro salad.  There was prosecco in abundance--always the kick-off libation in Italy--and white wine, vodka-infused punch, and fruit juice for the kiddies.

Then, after a while, we were ushered into the airy restaurant, where we essentially spent the next three hours at table.

We began with a succession of three primi: risotto with porcini mushrooms, straccetti with zucchini flowers, and crespelle alla fiorentina (delicious spinach-filled crepes in a tomato-béchamel sauce).  Then an enormous veal roast that had been set aflame was paraded around the dining-room before being carved and served with rosemary-flecked roasted potatoes.  After that, we were given thick slices of rare, wood-grilled bistecca alla fiorentina, grilled porcini caps, along with a refreshing salad of mixed greens.  There was plenty of Chianti to wash it all down with, and baskets of excellent saltless bread at hand.  We lacked for nothing (except perhaps a vomitorium to repair to now and again).  Finally, of course, came the wedding cake: a giant, colorful pastry-cream tart topped with fresh, dewy berries.

The children (mine included) began gamboling about--having miraculously, but entirely in the way of Italian children, managed to stay more or less at table all this time and eat their fill.  A small baby cried and mewed testily until tasty tidbits of Tuscan fare found their way to her mouth.  A spunky chocolate labrador named Rigoletto careened around wildly, at intervals performing a sort of canine tarantella.  At about 5 pm, I stumbled away from the table and out into the surrounding garden, utterly spent.

As you can see, dear Readers, meals of this sort aren't for neophytes, or the faint-hearted, or people who are afraid of carbs.  This is epic eating, Ironman eating--the gastronomic equivalent of scaling K2.  To make it to the top one must be fearless, determined, and a little mad.  Or at the very least, Italian.

Mind you, I thoroughly enjoy a good meal and a good wine--why, excess is my middle name. (I often think that in a past life I could easily have been a sybaritic nineteenth-century burgermeister who'd polish off a twelve-course meal at Maxim's in solemn and reverent joy, then top it off with a fat Cuban cigar and a Moulin Rouge showgirl). But even after some 10 years in the Bel Paese, I still have trouble keeping pace with the locals.

It's not over till the fat lady sings, as they say.  A table had been set up in the garden, arrayed with digestivi and various liqueurs, trays of cream-filled bigné, fingers of the very Florentine schiacciata all'uva, and an immense bowl of sliced fresh peaches on ice.  Attendants brought tray after tray of espresso out to waiting hands and gasps of pleasure all around.  I had a shot of Montenegro and collapsed in a chair.

Incredibly, as I slumped in defeat, the Italian revelers carried on, smoking cigars, nibbling pastries, and drinking Sambuca.  The thing is, this wasn't even their second-wind--they'd never lost the first one.  It was awe-inspiring.

Around 6pm, as Ride of the the Valkyries blared from the stereo system, some of the hunkier young men stripped to their underwear and jumped into the pool.  Then the bride jumped in.  The groom joined her, and general youthful mayhem ensued.  I was surprised they didn't sink like stones after all that food and drink.  If there was such a place as a Tuscan Valhalla, these would be the resident Gods.

Finally, at nearly 7pm, the gastric stupor overtaking my body like gangrene, the fat lady sang.  And--my dear Readers--she was me.

Yours,

Campobello