Views, Reviews, Interviews

I'm available for book discussions in New Jersey and Eastern PA. I loved spending time with the Read-It! book club in Caldwell.

Pictures from my trips to Italy available on Cafepress.

On May 25th I participated on a panel discussion at Brown University on the subject of transitions, and signed books at the Brown Bookstore.

Click on each one below to read more:

I'm in the Notable Books

Interview by The Displaced Nation

Nostalgic article by me, in my high school alumni newsletter: Do they know what a difference they've made in our lives?

Review by Yah Gotta Read This!

Review by A Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall's Monika

Review by Bill Madison, author of the authorized biography of Madeline Kahn

Words With Leti

Yah Gotta Read This!

A Befana treat--on New Book Blogger

A Halloween treat--on Morgen Bailey's author spotlight

Interview by Christine Rice

Interview by Lisa Haselton

On Women's Book Reviews

On Flurries of Words

Interview on Jen Wylie's blog

Interview on indiebookspot.com

Interview by J.R. Barker

In the Hunterdon County Democrat

Reviews on Amazon

Some pictures from the travels

The sherbet colors of Liguria

The butcher shop in Sassello, with the curly strand curtain against flies

The autostrada, the Via Aurelia (along the palm trees) and the little church

Delight

Deep despair

Cafe' in Piazza San Marco, with the bandstand

Steps, representing decisions and progress

Inside the Colosseum, where the line is

Trying to make up some time!

Sassello

My son George and I walk through the pedestrian shopping street in Sassello and everything is exactly the same.  Well, not everything:  the butcher has moved across the street, but the shop still has the red curly plastic strand curtain to keep the flies out. 

The bakery is still there, the Bellonotto. 

The tabacchino is still there, with the ceramic sign above it, Tabacchi.  They also carry newspapers and magazines and toys.  They have a display of cheap toys hanging outside.  And inside, it’s the same people.  I couldn’t have told you what they looked like if you had asked, but now that I see them I recognize them. 

And the Bar Gina is still there.  It’s a locale on a prominent corner, and like all Italian bars it’s a bar but it’s open and airy, and this one is famous for its ice cream, particularly fruit ice cream, made with fresh fruit in season like peach, raspberry and melon.  The sign outside has a big ceramic ice cream cone, same as it always had.  We walk inside and Gina is there, scooping ice cream.  Of course.  What else would she be doing?  She is ancient, but she moves with energy.  She keeps the ice cream in deep tubs, so she has to lean over and reach deep into the tubs, not an easy physical thing to do, but she has been doing it for decades and is doing it still.  She’s not personally a charmer, she doesn’t do small talk, but she’s a local legend.

We order two cones, and as she begins work on the first one a little bit chips off the edge.  She sets it aside, and I tell her it’s okay, I don’t mind the little chip.  She says no, she’ll give us another one.  As we walk away with our trophy cones, I turn around, and she has picked up the chipped one and is munching on it.

In the bigger square just outside the old town, the one with the parking spaces, are the stores that sell amaretti, almond macaroons that are the specialty here. 

Back inside the village we walk up the other street.  This one has the hardware store, with an outdoor display of brooms, gloves, knives, mats, watering cans, coffee makers, thermometers, umbrellas, and anything else you might need.  There’s a great Fellini film called I Vitelloni, in which an old woman walks into a small town store and asks for, “two little candles like the ones I bought last year.”  That’s what this store is like.  If you walked in and asked for two clothespins like the ones you bought last year, they would know what you mean, walk to the back, and come back with the clothespins you want.  Then they would package them nicely for you.

Farther down is the shoe store.  What was always remarkable about this store is that it had a giant shoe hanging outside.  And this big shoe is still there, attracting shoppers.  This single brown shoe is the length of three shoes.  The shop carries a selection of sensible footwear of all kinds, arrayed in display cases and on boxes neatly arranged in rows.  The sale items are in baskets, with the low prices advertised with hand-written signs.  I have never bought shoes here and never will, but many must do.

George likes the big shoe.  He will display regularly an interest in unexpected things, not the things I’m trying to share with him.   But we share a like for the big shoe.

 ~.~.~

As a small child and later in high school we lived in Milan and spent the summers in Sassello.  It’s a little town in the Ligurian hinterland, hilly, surrounded by woods.  The town is small but it has some stately buildings, some large churches, and shops.

I love Sassello. 

I don’t remember very much about the early days here, though we have pictures of them.   What I think I remember I may have instead just seen in the pictures.  My trip here today I will also recall from the pictures I’m taking.

My grandparents spent time here with us.  My grandfather was an admiral and our next door neighbor was also an admiral, and I didn’t really know what that meant, so I thought all old men were admirals.

I do recall that there was a big flower bed with dahlias and daisies.  I have put daisies in my garden in New Jersey because of it, but they were overrun by black eyed Susans.  There was a small chapel.  There was also a large tree stump that my sister and I used as a table.  My grandfather’s sister remembered my sister and I offering her tasty mangiarini we had concocted on the tree stump, made of dirt and coffee grinds.  Behind the house there was a grassy field with fruit trees. 

I recall that there was a grape arbor in the garden, with a bench at one end.  We parked the car at the other end of the arbor.  One time my cousin Nino started the car and nearly took out the entire family.

From the house we went hiking in the woods, with the specific goal of mushroom picking.  We were good mushroom pickers—porcini mushrooms primarily.  We have a home movie of my mother holding an exceedingly large mushroom, turning it this way and that for display, the pride of the pick.  Someone else’s dog, a little caramel colored dog named Dick, pronounced Deek, accompanied us on our hikes. 

My father worked in Milan during the week and came on the weekend.  My grandfather would go into town in the morning, food shopping.  He used to take me, and he called me his nipotina prediletta, his favorite granddaughter.  I didn’t know what it meant though I knew to be proud of the moniker.  I’m not sure where that put my sister who was certainly as lovable as I, if not more.  She may have been tiny at the time.  I was a nice and well-mannered kid, a pleaser.

On Sundays we went to church at San Giovanni, a solitary beautiful church on a hilltop surrounded by a small park with a stone wall, benches, and a merry-go-round.  My sister and I wore matching pink and white Sunday dresses, the same ones every Sunday, we only had the one good outfit.  We weren’t poor, I think the culture then was you only had what you needed.  And you did need a good outfit for church, but not multiple ones.

Then we moved to Brazil and this particular part of my childhood ended.

 ~.~.~

 We walk up to see our old house, a little outside of town.  Localita’ Colletto.  A place without street names, just localita’ Colletto.  The house is still there of course, it looks exactly the same.  There is no new construction around it, and no destruction.  It’s the same.

This was a summer place, but there was a couple that lived here year round, Ina and Paolo.  Paolo worked for one of the amaretti makers, he drove a Vespa.  For him a Vespa was not a cool 1960s means of transportation, it was an inexpensive and practical means of transportation.  Ina helped out in the summer, she cleaned houses and sold the eggs from her chickens.  If there is one reason I love chickens, it’s Ina’s chickens, roaming around.  Ina and Paolo did not have any children, and Ina in particular was a great buddy to us, she would give us chewing gum, which was totally forbidden, our parents would never give us chewing gum.

We had two friends in Sassello, two girls the same age as my sister and I—Paola and Maria Elena.  They spent their summers thirty meters from where we spent ours, and we spent hours and hours of every day together. 

We walk by the steps where we used to sit.  I expect to see them, I expect them to be there, but they’re not.  No one is.  It’s all the same, but it isn’t.

 ~.~.~

Memory is a funny thing.  I remember some things clearly, while other things, details really, I don’t remember at all.  But as I see those details again, the memories of them from back then come back.  Things that I had forgotten I now remember, and vividly.  The pattern of the paving stones of the road—stones cut about 2 by 2 inches square, arranged in interweaved semi-circles—is not something stored in any photograph and not something important enough to remember—it was not something I would even have actively noticed back then.  But when I see it again, it’s so characteristic of the place, I remember it now, seeing it again.

There are things I don’t remember that turn out to exist.  And then there are things that I thought I remembered that, on inspection, turn out to be different from what I remembered.  Much of it is related to scale—things appear smaller.  And where I remember things that are no longer verifiable, I have to remain wondering if my recollections are true.

Farewell dinner

My cousin Nino and his wife Linda are coming to dinner with their very tall son again tonight. Gianni’s son is coming too. Nino’s son has spent a month in Boston this summer at a program at Northeastern University. This was a super cool experience for him—that curiosity and fascination with America—and he likes to talk about it.

At dinner he’s sitting across from George and he tells his two top stories: one involves doing laundry and the other cleaning his room. These are clearly two things that he doesn’t do at home. He went all the way to Boston to experience the exoticism of running a washer. I find this hilarious.

The other often told tale from his trip is about his swim in the Atlantic Ocean. He came out of the water yelling, “Viva l’Italia!” The water was so much colder than the one of the Mediterranean!

After dinner the boys go downstairs to play ping pong. When they come back Nino tells me that George didn’t want to play. I knew that, George can’t play ping pong, but watching the big boys play—what a treat! George is beaming.

Linda says, “This can become our tradition, the end of summer dinner.” I hope so, I hope that life allows us to make it an ongoing event. It’s a signal of the differences between us: she feels confident that we will do the same thing again and again, I tend to think events will get in the way.

Naso di Gatto

We have been invited to Naso di Gatto by my mother’s friend Olivia who has recently set up a small summer home there. She tells us all about it all the time, that it’s such a wonderful place, she’s very excited to show it to us and we’re interested in seeing it. The little excursion has turned into an extravaganza that includes my aunt and Paolo, and now Ginevra is going as well. The average age of the party excluding me and George is in the mid-70s.

We have to pick Ginevra and Paolo up along the way. I speak to Ginevra on the phone and I tell her we’ll stop by her house. She says, “No, no, I will wait for you on the Aurelia, where the Conad supermarket used to be.” Funny enough, I actually know where that is. I assure her I don’t mind driving the extra 200 meters up the hill to pick her up at her door but she will not be budged. I don’t get this at all, but fine. Sure enough, she is there waiting for us and gets in the car.

Then we have to pick up Paolo, and my aunt had suggested we pick him up at the Torretta—nowhere near his apartment building. I proposed that we pick him up at his apartment building instead, and she agreed that mine was a better plan. I speak to him on the phone and I tell him we’ll ring the intercom when we get there, and he can come downstairs. He says, “No, no, I will wait for you downstairs in the street.” You know what? Fine. I don’t get it, but sure enough, he is there waiting for us and gets in the car.

I tell him he will have to direct me now, I’m counting on him to get us there because we believe as a group that he is the one who knows where it is. And he does. If we did need directions, they would be, “Drive to the Santuario, and then keep going straight.” Thank goodness we don’t need them.

We drive inland, which means we drive uphill. Way uphill, with many hairpin turns. Naso di Gatto is at 700 meters—2,000 feet—and that’s what makes it pleasantly cool in the summer. It’s a pass, the high point on the road, it’s surrounded by woods. We get there, after all the climbing and all the hairpin turns and all the anticipation. And what it consists of is the road itself, wide at this spot, plus along the road I count three buildings and a chicken coop. That’s it.

We park randomly on the side of the road, the only place in Liguria with all the parking you wish for. Olivia runs out to greet us, she appears immediately out of nowhere. She is so excited to see us. We walk with her to the side of one of the buildings, under a pergola, a grape arbor, a wide one. The structure of the arbor is metal, with a pole in the middle, about 20 feet wide, quite large, and shady from the vines. Underneath the arbor are tables and chairs.

Past the arbor is Olivia’s place—a small and meticulously planned apartment on the ground floor, accessible directly from the outside. Paolo remarks on the solid door with multiple bolts, and George loves the anti-fly curtain consisting of strings of pompons. He will play with this throughout the visit, the highlight of the trip for him, though for him too, this place is soothing and pleasant—there’s nothing to do, but he doesn’t complain.

Olivia is famously friends with an architect, and he helped her fix up the apartment and decorate it. The main room has a long wooden table, a brand new but old-fashioned stove and a light gray marble sink like my grandmother had in her apartment. It’s very nice and I can see why she loves it here, with the cozy apartment and the grape arbor outdoors.

Olivia explained to us that this is an old place, associated with her family. She has relatives in the same building, next door to her. In the old days this was a dormitory for hunters who used to come up from Savona. It’s a completely unknown little gem, even the locals don’t know about it—there’s nothing here but it’s special, and it is cooler. Only Paolo among us had been here before, he used to come up on Sunday drives with his wife and their dog.

After the tour of the indoors we return outside, where Olivia has prepared some specialties. She has pieces of focaccia topped with chunks of lard. I love focaccia but the lard I could do without, but I eat it—I eat the lard in one gulp. She also made apple slices caked in dough and fried. These are delicious and they have their own lore, as all food tends to do. They should be made with mele renette, these may not be renette, but Paolo’s scarfing them, so evidently they will do. She also serves a salad and fruit salad and wine and dessert. We sit under the grape arbor, eating fried apples, it’s lovely.

The tables and chairs under the arbor are communal, for the whole building. Some of the other residents are sitting a few feet away and occasionally we make small talk with them, but only at that distance and infrequently. Just enough to stay on good terms, not enough to get friendly. And we don’t invite them to join in the feast. That’s the protocol clearly, they’re not sitting there saying they can’t believe we’re not inviting them to join us. They could be saving it for later but I don’t think so.

Later Olivia’s relatives come by and she introduces us. Clearly they enjoy each other’s company up here. This is what they do, they hang out, the weather is cool, and they chat and play cards. What else can one want?

Monte Beigua

The Beigua looms over the seaside. At 1,300 meters, it’s 4,000 feet above sea level but it’s right there, you can almost touch it.

It’s not a peak, it’s the high point of a longer mountaintop, but it’s easily identifiable by the TV antennas on the summit—when it’s not shrouded in clouds.

This morning we have planned to go up there. It’s a beautiful sunny day, dazzling… and the TV antennas are shrouded in clouds. My aunt is worried, she would prefer we didn’t go, but I tell her gently I’m sure the clouds will lift, and if it turns out they don’t we’ll turn back. She accepts this graciously though I don’t believe she believes it. Nor do I believe it.

To get the Beigua we have to drive through the Alpicella, halfway up the mountain, with a view down to the sea and woods all around. We stop at the Alpicella to give the clouds a chance to dissipate, though we can see the clouds still there from there. The Alpicella consists of a few houses clustered along the main road, a small parking area with a war memorial, a church, a bar, an elementary school, and a stray dog. There is also a museum, the Esposizione Archeologica Permamente, that we don’t visit.

I point out to George that if we lived here he would have gone to school in this school building. He looks at it but has no comment. It may be too far fetched for him to envision. I wonder what it would be like to live here your whole life. I can’t envision. Do any of the young people still live here their whole life? I’ve been fortunate to see so much of the world, and I often wonder if the opposite would have been better, to stay in one place always. Not the Alpicella necessarily, but why not? How did I end up in New Jersey and someone else spent his whole life in the Alpicella? I can’t explain that.

The little bar is very crowded with men busy chattering. Like all other Italian bars, this is not a dark room but rather an airy place that spills out onto the street. I would like a cappucciono but I’m intimidated by the crowd, I feel too blatantly like someone who has not lived here her whole life, so I pass on the cappuccino for now. It will have to wait.

The clouds still linger over the Beigua but we resume our journey. My aunt had said, “After the Alpicella, turn left.” This was counter intuitive because from the Alpicella the Beigua is to the right, but the road has to wind along the mountain to gain the altitude not all at once, so off to the left we go. This stretch of road is very narrow and very twisty and it feels really long. I make with the horn at every turn, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the horn. George is a little embarrassed by my noise making. He wishes we would climb quietly but I can’t. It’s a scary road. Lovely but scary.

The woods change from conifers, to chestnuts, to beech, patches of one type succeeded by patches of another type. Interestingly, while I expect and fear to suddenly find myself immersed in clouds, there are no clouds here.

There are cars parked along the sides of the road, wherever there’s a little flat space. They look perilously close often to falling off the edge. I would not dare to try to park in these spots, but I suspect those that do know what they’re doing, they’ve probably parked in the same spot for years, possibly even for generations. They know exactly where they need to place the wheels.

They probably tell each other, “I park under the chestnut tree, the one by the rock.”

“The one by the round rock or the chipped rock?”

“The round rock.”

“That’s a good position.”

These are the cars of mushroom pickers, it’s mushroom picking season in the late, late summer going into September.

We reach the top. We know we’re at the top because the road is flat, the scenery is more open, less wooded, and the TV antennas are these, gigantic up close. They have a certain beauty, unexpectedly. They’re sculptural, like a modern David, proclaiming the grandeur of our culture.

The air and ambiance of the top are alpine. This is Liguria, the Riviera, but it snows up here in the winter. My aunt will tell my mother on the phone, “C’e’ la neve sul Beigua,” to announce that winter has arrived. There’s snow on the Beigua.

And funny enough, now the clouds are below us. We can’t see the sea. We skirted the clouds on the way up but they are still there.

There is a lone large building that looks like an alpine refuge, with a restaurant. A little farther there’s a little alpine church. We walk towards the restaurant for my delayed cappuccino. As we approach we are barked at vigorously by a little dog unleashed. George is wary of dogs, he’s a little afraid, and I try to keep myself between him and the little barking creature. There’s no owner around to restrain him, to coax him back, to quiet him, he is alone atop the big mountain with the big TV towers, defending from attack of mamma and bambino.

We get inside the restaurant and I’m a bit intimidated by the fact that we are the only people there, and it’s now late morning and past milk frothing time. Not enough though to recounce cappuccino again. The owner is courteous but not friendly, as you would expect from an alpine man. George gets a can of Coke and a packaged brioche.

We leave the restaurant and walk around. We encounter two hikers, two men in hiking attire, not flashy but hardcore. George is still holding his soda can and one of them says, in Italian, “I’m so thirsty, can I have a sip?”

George looks at him. I can’t tell if he is processing, trying to understand, or if he understood and does not want to part with his soda.

I laugh and ask the two men where they hiked from. They came up from the Giovo, it’s the pass coming up from the coast to go to Sassello. They plan to hike down to Sassello next. The Giovo to the Beigua on foot, all uphill, is a long hike. Then to Sassello, at least it’s downhill, but it’s also long.

“When did you leave?” I ask.

“Around 7:30.”

It’s now late morning. They’re a little apologetic, that it took them so long, that they took it easy.

I say something gracious, required by form, but sincerely.

We talk a bit more. They ask where I’m coming from. George hasn’t said a word so I don’t have to explain that I’m from America but rather I tell them I’ve come up from the coast.

“In macchina,” by car, I hasten to explain, and then I realize that they knew that.

I ask about the road ahead and they tell me it’s a good road, that it was improved for a bicycle race. Good to know. We part company wishing each other well.

George and I stroll off and, as we had already noticed, we have to watch where we step because the entire top of the Beigua is dotted with sheep poopy. By the by, we see the sheep. And suddenly they are coming right at us. I suspect and fear that sheep stampedes are grossly underreported in the media, that they occur tens of times a year, but because they happen in places like up here no one writes about them. I urge someone to take that up, to take up the story of the worldwide problem of sheep stampedes.

I urge George to move off perpendicularly from the moving sheep, and we are safe. There is a grown man shepherd and he looks at us. I’m sure he thinks we’re idiots.

Lunch with Paolo

My mother’s cousin, I will call him Paolo, comes to my aunt’s house for lunch every Wednesday. He is a widower. He comes around a little before lunch time and stays until late afternoon. He has selected the day of the week carefully to avoid his other regularly scheduled commitments, such as the weekly lunch in Ellera with his friend, and to avoid traffic on the Via Aurelia.

This week I mess him up completely because I’m away on Wednesday, but he would like to see us, and so the lunch is moved to Friday. I know he really wants to see us because Friday is bad traffic on the Aurelia. I feel loved.

I brought him a present from America, from my mother, a light green fleece zipper jacket. He opens the package and expresses immediately a concern that the sweater may be too big. He is a tall and very thin man, and he says that everything is always too big, that his aunt gave him a coat in extra large that makes him look like a palombaro—like a deep sea diver. My aunt confirms that in that coat, when he turns suddenly, he knocks things off tables. I tell him to try it on, and he does, and he is pleasantly surprised that, while roomy, it’s not too big.

The present comes with a letter from my mother where she recommends wearing the jacket not as outerwear but as a sweater—under a coat. I imagine it would fit amply under his deep sea diver coat. She also talks in her letter about all the wildlife she sees in her American yard, because she knows he likes wildlife. He says, “I like wildlife.”

“Yes, we know.”

To our Italian family our American life is peculiarly odd and intriguingly exotic.

We eat outside. Paolo is notorious for being an exceedingly picky eater, so even with impeccably selected and prepared foods, as you would expect at my aunt’s house, he will still not like everything. I remember from another trip that he loves stuffed zucchini, but not the stuffed onions and eggplant that are usually prepared alongside. That’s what we have today and he picks carefully to take only the zucchini. Normally this choosy behavior would offend the hostess and be disapproved of, but with him it’s understood and accepted. Paolo is a picky eater.

We tell Paolo he has been invited to join us to visit Olivia at her summer home in Naso di Gatto tomorrow. This is way last minute for him, way out of his comfort zone, not how things happen in his life. He immediately says, “I can’t. Tomorrow morning I have to go to Albisola.”

I quip, “It’s not in the morning, it’s in the afternoon. You will have to find another excuse.”

My aunt laughs and ribs him a little bit.

He thinks, feeling cornered at first, then he relaxes and concedes, “I will come along.” He considers further, “It will be nice.” Deal.

Roma

We have reservations for the bullet train, the super high speed train, the Frecciarossa—Firenze Campo di Marte to Roma Termini in an hour and a half, at speeds of some 200 miles per hour. I have never been to Rome, I have never been on a bullet train, this is very exciting.

The train is at 9:30. We will walk to the station. We will walk even though the lady at the hotel said to take a taxi. We will walk because I’m crazy, but we will walk, and we do walk, and we get there very much ahead of time. In spite of two stops for assorted breakfast pastries and drinks. So we sit in the station and we wait. Waiting is not what George does best, he fidgets.

Campo di Marte is not Florence’s main station. The main station is Santa Maria Novella, next to the church of that name. That’s a head-in station. Because the high speed train is looking to get through quickly, it uses Campo di Marte which is a through station. It’s a quiet little sleepy station.

I’m not sure what to expect as far as how long the train will stop. This is a high speed train, it cannot stop for very long I don’t think. Though it does. It stops with plenty of time for us to find our carriage and our seats. But I don’t know that at the time, so I run, and I make George run. The seats are not numbered exactly sequentially like one would expect. I can’t imagine why. We do find seats next to each other that are not exactly our reserved seats that were not next to each other. We sit next to each other and there’s a little table in front of us and two seats across the table. An older lady is sitting across the table. Her traveling companion, a man, is not sitting with her.

A group of three ladies going to Rome on a vacation rearrange themselves from their own separate assigned seats to the seats across the aisle from us. They talk the whole entire time. They are nice but quite boring, though clearly they enjoy each other’s company. They have a Michelin guide to Rome that they are consulting. I’m not used to seeing Italians with guides, more so the non-Italians.

By the by, the ladies across the aisle pull out little snacks, and so does the lady across from us. On the way back we will find out again that everyone brings little snacks, little cookies, little sandwiches, little juice drinks. George asks, “Why don’t we have snacks?” We are not following proper high speed train protocol or absorbing the full experience that would involve eating a snack.

From the train station, the Colosseum is not far, so—map in hand—we walk down some streets, by a church, through a park. As we get to the end of the park, there are tour buses parked along the curb, we must be near something touristy.

We see a piece of a large gray building behind some trees, and I’m not completely sure, but I do believe that’s it! That’s it!

“George, look, that’s it, that’s the Colosseum!”

We rush to get past the trees to see it better. And it is, it is the Colosseum. It’s right in front of us, and it’s huge, and it looks like it’s supposed to look.

George says, “I was going to try to be cool about it, but actually I’m really excited.”

We walk down to it, and then we’re not sure what to do. Is there an entrace? Where is the entrance? We find the exit and we’re told the entrance is on the opposite side. It’s really big to walk around, and it’s really hot and sunny.

We find the entrance and there is a really big line. A really big line.

“George, do you want to go inside?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because this is the line, it’s really big.”

“I want to go inside.”

“Okay.”

I have to agree with him, we need to go inside. Normally with a big line I would say, we’ll do it next time, but there is no next time here, we have to go inside today.

We stand in line with many other people. It’s hot. The line is disciplined. It’s a bit wide, some four people across, but it’s disciplined

Next to us there’s an odd couple, an older American man and a lovely younger Philippine woman. They are clearly a couple, but a couple with friction. He is boastful and she’s resentful.

He boasts, “You can ask me for anything. You asked me to buy you the fan you’re holding.”

“I bought the fan I’m holding, you wouldn’t buy it for me.”

“But you were free to ask me for it.”

How not to win an argument with a woman.

A Colosseum worker comes alongside the line and explains in English, Italian and French that there is a guided tour available in each of the languages. The cost is 4 euros per person and if you are interested you can exit the line and follow him. Can this be for real? Only a few people are taking him up on it.

I ask him, “How long will this line take?”

“About a half hour.”

“I want the guided tour.”

We exit the line and follow him loosely to another line. I’m very confused, I’m not sure which other line we should be in. I feel that George will feel my stress and go into panic mode. I’m trying to be calm. Somehow I end up in what I think is the correct line.

The American with the Philippine woman are now next to us in line. He’s also confused and stressed. He’s asking for further information. The 4 euros for the guided tour are in addition to the admission fee of 12 euros. He’s disputing this with the Colosseum worker, who is engaged in discussions with him, he’s staying with him even though he really could ignore him. I wonder at that, what makes this Colosseum worker who works in this absolute chaos of an environment stay engaged when this man is arguing with him—unreasonably at that.

The worker argues cogently, “Why would you think that a guides tour would cost 8 euros less than general admission?” Is this man trying to impress his woman?

We finally get to the window and buy our admissions. It turns out George gets in for free, which I didn’t expect, so instead of paying 24 euros for the two of us in the long line, we pay 12 euros for me and 4 euros each for the tour, a total of 20 euros. I jump the line and save 4 euros!

I ask the ticket agent, “Do I have to wait for the tour?” This is the last hurdle, the tour doesn’t start for another half hour.

“Signora, once you’re inside you can move about as you please.”

Success! Though we should really take the tour and learn all kinds of things, we don’t.

We put our tickets through a turnstile and enter. It is still enormously confusing. We manage to go right and into the arena area. We walk a bit. But what we would like to do is go upstairs. How do we get upstairs? We go back the way we came and I’m terrified that we will accidentally exit and have to go through the line again. That is my fear at that moment. We make our way around the Coloseum and finally get to stairs to go up.

There is an exhibit of artifacts found in the Coloseum over the years. Among them are animal bones, a bear skull being the most interesting specimen. There are other exhibits of replicas of gladiator outfits, many of them. They’re pretty cool.

“Why did the Romans have brushes on their helmets?”

“I don’t know, honey.”

We wander some more and then George is done. We find our way back downstairs following some people down stairs labeled “Emergency only.” George knows we’re being illegal and starts to point it out to me but then wisely keeps silent and follows me down the stairs.

We then have to make our way all the way around and across to the other side for the exit.

Outside, there are a couple of souvenir stands and one single food stand. George wants to buy something to eat. The single food stand is sitting on the sweltering asphalt outside the Coloseum, there is no place to sit. I tell George, “Let’s go somewhere else, somewhere in the shade.”

He’s furious with me, he wants something now, but I move on.

We go by an arch and then have two false starts trying to walk through some of the adjoining ruins. We have to turn back, the areas are fenced off. This is very aggravating. The place is huge, and we’re being corraled so we can’t just walk. We end up having to walk down the avenue, the Via dei Fori Imperiali, beautiful name, nasty walk. Crowded. Very sunny and hot. No respite from the heat, no shade. We do buy some water.

Around the Colosseum there are people dressed in gladiator outfits that pose for pictures. We do not induldge but it’s fun and funny.

Halfway up the Via dei Fori Imperiali there’s a little visitor center. We go in, and there’s a snack stand—possibly the most pitiful snack stand in all of Italy, though there is some shade and there are some chairs. George wants to eat here. I tell him, “George, this is the most pathetic snack stand in all of Italy.”

He doesn’t see it at all, but I’m the one who has a hissy fit now, and he backs off.

Inside the little visitor center building there is a model of the forums as they used to be, and he likes that. I don’t really know what a forum is. I will have to research that.

We keep moving. We see many ruins from the avenue, but we can’t deviate, there’s no access from where we are. There are pieces of ruined marble strewn around the ground. There’s a column, Trajan’s colum, with little scenes carved all along the height of it.

At this point I give up on Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, I don’t think we can make it there. We head for the Trevi Fountain next. Along the way, we walk through small crowded streets looking for something to eat that’s not in the sun and not standing up. And not unbelievably crowded hopefully, which every place seems to be.

Suddenly we see the golden arches. George lights up.

“Okay, we can go to McDonald’s.”

It’s pretty crowded also but we do it.

They give me a Coke glass made of glass. I tell them I don’t need it. The lady says, “It’s a free gift.”

I tell her, “We’re traveling, it will break, but thank you.” That’s all I need, to schlep a Coke glass made of glass through Rome the rest of the day. How many of the other people there that day need to carry a glass in their bags?

They charge us for ketchup and mustard.

After lunch we head to the Trevi Fountain, now very close. I had always imagined it as a very large fountain in a very large piazza. Instead it’s a very large fountain in a very small piazza. It takes up the entire piazza—there’s barely a bit of space to walk around it. It is pretty fabulous. George loves it. He wants to through a Euro coin in the fountain and we both do.


There are many, many people all around the fountain and a vigile urbano who keeps them in check with a whistle. When he whistles everyone looks: you got whistled.

Next we go to the Spanish Steps, really Piazza di Spagna and the Trinita’ dei Monti. We get ice cream and I have a confusing experience because I order the Nutella flavor and what I get looks and tastes like stracciatella. I’m aggravated but the man selling ice cream to all kinds of people from all over the world has an aggravating job and I don’t have the heart to enter into a dispute with him. I try to pawn it on George who likes stracciatella and he does trade me for his chocolate ice cream. After a while he decides he made a bad trade and asks to trade back. He gives me my mystery flavor back and by now he’s got the melting ice cream dripping all over the cone, so our hands are all sticky.

There is a small fountain at the base of the steps with a little spigot at which people are lined up. We line up too so we can wash the ice cream sticky off our hands.

This also looks different than I expected: I always thought they were more festive but they’re not that festive, maybe because it’s hot and no one is sitting on the steps in the sun. There are a few people sitting in a sliver of shade and we join them for a while.

Then we climb the steps. Hot. There are vendors selling Louis Vuitton bags along the way.

At the top, there’s an obelisk in front of the church, a real Egyptian obelisk. From the top, there’s a view of St. Peter’s dome in the very distance, so we can say we saw St. Peter’s. If it comes up.

We start to make our way back to Roma Termini, the train station. It’s a little early for that, but we have done our itinerary and we are exhausted. On the way, we stop by the Piazza del Quirinale. There is a phenomenally attired guard at the door, with long plumes streaming down from his helmet.

~.~.~

On the final leg back to the station we stop to eat something at what looks like a quaint Victorian “tea room.” It’s near the train station so I should have known that it would be neither Victorian nor a tea room.

A nice waiter seats us down. We are seated next to the kitchen door, and someone inside is screaming. I don’t really know what he’s saying, but our waiter is asking him to keep it down. Asking him repeatedly, and the guy keeps hollering. Our waiter is visibly upset about it.

At a table near the door there is a tall thin man in skinny jeans looking at a laptop. He is wearing a wedding ring and he is sitting with a woman who looks like a hooker. She could be his wife but I don’t think so. After a while I realize he owns the place, though when he asks a question no one answers him.

I eat the worst ham sandwich I’ve ever eaten, and the waiter continues to be very nice—the only sane person in the place.

Lunch with Carlo

We have a lunch guest at my aunt’s today, I will call him Carlo. I have met him before, on an earlier trip, and I look forward to seeing him.

His significance is this—and it’s from another world: he is my uncle’s friend from prison camp. They were imprisoned together in Germany in World War II. Thankfully they both returned, and while my uncle has passed away, Carlo has reached the age of 87, he is a widower, and he is here having lunch with us.

When I will tell my parents I had lunch with him, they will say, “Oh, yes, that’s your uncle’s friend from prison camp.” Of course. Everyone has one, right?

Interestingly, as an engineer, he also knows my father and his brother professionally, completely unrelated to this other family connection.

We eat outside. He is a lovely man, very proper and thoughtful. We talk about Obama, about Carlo’s new car, about my own rental car which I scraped this morning in the parking garage at the Coop. I show him my rental contract to get his opinion on whether I will get hit with any repair costs. He assesses, accurately as it will turn out, that I will not have to pay the damanges.

We talk about his family and how busy they are, we talk about his summer home here in Liguria—his full time home is in Milan. He wonders if his children will take care of the house when he’s gone, something my aunt also worries about—grown children they all are. She wants to leave the house to her sons in the best possible shape. She contrasts that with other people she knows show plan to leave all the repairs to their heirs. There is no right answer, I don’t think.

We talk about his grandson, an engineering student, and about the new specialties that exist in engineering, and how the kid likes theoretical studies.

My aunt suspects that Carlo would like to be a matchmaker between his grandson and her granddaughter, but if he does, he’s very subtle.

Birthday party

We have been invited to a birthday party by my mother’s cousin Ginevra. It’s the birthday of George’s friend, a friend from prior visits. I tell George he’s super lucky to have a friend in Italy and to be invited to a party. He does think it’s pretty cool. I buy two little toy helicopters for him, only to realize he’s now 15—much more grown up than I remembered him. I apologize to everyone for the ridiculous gift, and of course everyone is gracious.

I have never been to Ginevra’s house so I need directions. I am to turn right into her road and go uphill, and then, “When you get to a little wall, call me.” I don’t see a little wall that distiguishes itself among all the other little walls, and of course this is a little tiny road, with no room to pull over anywhere. I find a little place to stop down a little side street, and I call her.

She asks, “Where are you?”

“I am on a little side street.”

“Where is that?” She has no idea and I have no idea.

After some back and forth she tells me she’s sending someone out for me. Sure enough, here is my mother’s friend Olivia greeting me. I was right there. There’s actually a little parking area at her building, and it’s among olive trees.

She had said it would be a merenda, a snack. When we get there she has a wondeful buffet, much more than a merenda. She has prosciutto and salame and figs, salad, a ham and potato tart, pizza, and other goodies.

The kids go upstairs and after a little while George comes back down and sits and sulks a bit. I ask him why he’s not with the other kids and he says they’re watching volleyball on television. I try to tell him he has to go hang out with them even if he’s bored, that he’s being unreasonable and unpleasant. He won’t budge. Soon enough Ginevra asks me why he’s not hanging out with the other kids and I tell her the truth—I probably should have lied, but I can’t think of a plausible lie right then. I try to be offhand and humorous about it, because really he’s being difficult and that’s his problem rather than everyone else’s. But she does what I knew she would do, she immediately heads upstairs to tell the other kids they need to entertain George. She puts the onus on them to be polite to him when he’s the one who’s being rude to them. This is the extreme politeness of Italians, it’s part of the social fabric.

She shows me her garden and her house, I’ve never been there before. This is her summer place, about twenty minutes away from her main home. Her garden is on multiple levels, there’s a patio, a lower lawn area, and a still lower area with trees that leads out to the street. There are olive trees in her garden.

The apartment is on three levels: there is a living room on the lower level, another living room upstairs, and then her bedroom on the top floor. From the bedroom window she has a great view of the mountains and the sea. It’s a very cheerful place.

She shows me large landscape paintings that she has all over and tells me that her husband painted them. He passed away, and she tells me it was 18 years ago. Such a long time. The paintings are nice, I don’t recall that he painted. He was a fun person, they never had kids and they had fun together, and I think she misses him every single day.

Her niece arrives. Although she’s my second cousin I have seen her just a few times in my life, but I do recall her as very nice, and she is in fact very nice as well as very well dressed in a modern and pretty outfit. She lives in Milan, is married with no kids. She keeps a sailboat in Savona. We chat and take each other’s pictures, all the niceties.

Ginevra tells the story about me that she always tells. One time I was in Milan, when we no longer lived there but many years ago, and they took me out to dinner and then drove me back home, where I was staying. When I got out of the car, I took off my shoes right on the sidewalk. My feet must have hurt quite a bit. And they thought that was absolutely a fantastical thing to do. I still remember the outfit and the shoes I was wearing that day.

I tell her that I have recently run into some people she knows. At a high school reunion in San Francisco I ran into three sisters who lived in the same building in Milan as Ginevra, back when she lived in Milan. I bring greetings from them and their mother, and she remembers them well and gets goose bumps. She tells me she had taken English lessons from their mother, who had told her, “I’m very proud of you.” She says the phrase to me in English, and I tell her she says it really well, and she’s pleased and laughs. These things don’t just happen every day.

The birthday boy is Filipino and his whole family lives in the area and is attending the party. They are cheerful and chatty and fun. Instead of pointing to George as the rude boy, as they should, they are enthralled with his blue-eyed looks and tell each other and then me that he looks like a movie star. I’m not sure about the looks, but he certainly has a primadonna attitude on display today.

As the party winds down, the kids are back upstairs, this time playing video games, and I have to drag George away.

Luceto

On the way back from Sassello I have passed the sign for Luceto every time and not taken the turn. Today I turn. I haven’t been to Luceto in over 20 years. It's a tiny town with a house and a garden that belonged to my mother's family, it has history for us and it's a beautiful little place, as I recall it--personally and through photographs of my mother and her family when they were young. When they were younger than I am today.

I think it’s 100 yards or so after the turn, but it’s not quite that close. I keep going, and I don’t recognize any of it, I’m not sure I’ll find it. Then suddenly, maybe a kilometer from the turn, not far after all, I see it. It looks nothing like I remembered it, but I know I’m there. The little square to the right off the main road where you have to leave the car because the streets are too narrow for cars. The little church with the little steeple that has been restored and repainted into a little bijou.

To the extent that every village has its church and every church has its village, Luceto is a tiny village with a tiny church. It’s on flat ground near the river, or rather near the dry river bed.

We leave the car and walk. The street runs between walls, with orti, vegetable gardens, not visible on the other side of the walls. We turn right under the little arch where the swallows had their nests. We keep walking, with the walls now gone and orti visible—little plots of land meticulously tended.

We walk by a group of people sitting and chatting, and we exchange a “Buona sera.”

Then we get to the house. This house belonged to my grandmother’s family. During the war, World War II, my mother lived in this house. Savona was being bombed, so my grandmother and her brother took their families here, for safety. Her brother had a bomb shelter built into the hillside behind the house. I remember seeing the small cave.

My grandfather was a career officer in the navy, so he was in the war immediately. My mother remembers hearing the declaration of war on the radio, and she remembers them being sad because they knew her father was going to be in it immediately.

My mother remembers multiple families living in the house together during the way, different families coming and going at different times. It’s a nice house but not huge: two stories, three windows across the front, two across the side.

For many years the house was in usufrutto—available for use—to a broad number of descendants, but when my grandmother’s generation passed away the house reverted fully to one set of heirs, who live in Uruguay. They sold it.

There were caretakers, permanent residents of the house. They were there during the war and I remember them both from many years later. They were a married couple, Pedrin and Carmela. Pedrin’s regular job was at the port, where he worked as a longshoreman. In the evening he would come home and take his caprette, his goats, to the dry river bed where they would graze. My aunt remembers that he had more than one goat, while my mother remembers him ever only having one, so there’s a discrepancy in the historical record.

He would come home at the end of the day and ask Carmela, “What’s for dinner?”

“Potatoes and beans.”

“Again?”

I don’t remember the goats, but I remember him: he was strong and very tanned, and he wore a dark blue sleeveless undershirt. He rolled his own cigarettes, which I had never seen anyone else do.

Carmela was small and also very tanned, and when I knew her she wore her gray hair in a bun. My mother remembers her going up the hill behind the house, known as Garbugia’, to collect herbs. I remember arriving at the house once to find her sitting up straight on a little stone bench that was attached to the side of the house, in the sun, immobile, like an old Italian woman Buddha. She had lived here also, she must have sat on that bench so many times. Was she thinking, or just sitting? I wonder.

Back to the present, George and I walk up to the house and there is a dog, a German shepherd, that barks at us furiously and continuously from behind a fence that surrounds the garden. I see the steps leading up to the house, I see the top of the gazebo, I see the house, but I don’t get to enjoy it. I remember next to the steps, there was a tree with a bed of lilies-of-the-valley under it. I would like to see if it’s still there, but I can’t.

On the way back, we stop at a little grocery store, one of these small stores that sell two of everything, and I buy some aranciata S. Pellegrino. The owner is speaking dialect to the customer before me, then he switches to Italian to speak to me. He gives George a piece of candy even though he knows I’m not a local, he knows it because he’s not speaking dialect to me, and even though he must suspect he’ll never see me again.

I tell my aunt later that I went to Luceto, and she says they repainted the house but not well. I tell her I think they did a pretty nice job, that they painted Art Nouveau accents, what the Italians call stile Liberty, around the top, which would be appropriate to the age of the house. She’s not entirely convinced that I know what I’m talking about, but she concedes that if they did, that’s good.

Farewell dinner

My cousin Nino comes to dinner with his family at the end of our stay with his wife Linda and their son who is four years older than George and very, very tall.

These dinners with Nino and his family are very special to me. They always make an effort to see us, even though they are very busy, and I feel that they may develop George's sense and connection to this family--his family.

They just got back from a vacation in the South Pacific, a two-day flight from Genoa through Germany and Los Angeles. A once-in-a-lifetime trip.

On the way there they went to the Grand Canyon. I ask them if they had taken the mule ride into the canyon and they hadn’t, they had been on a helicopter ride. They also stopped in Las Vegas, and they ask me about it. What’s the deal with it? I tell them I personally do not see the attraction, I have been there for work and would not ever consider going for fun. I like nature and quiet and old places, pretty much the un-Vegas. They were a little mystified by it too.

On my work trip, we stayed at the Venetian, and one of my co-workers told me that he imagined that this is what Italy looked like. A Las Vegas casino! Not.

They ask me if Americans eat fruit, they they didn’t see fruit served in restaurants. I tell them that grocery stores sell fruit, and that restaurants sometimes serve berries, frutti di bosco. They are a little doubtful, they imagine that even if there is fruit, it must not taste good. I tell them that where I live there are farm stands. “Ah, che bello.”

One time an American woman told me that all Italians want to move to America. That’s not really the case at all. America is a source of curiosity and fascination, and it’s a great place to visit, but Italians feel a little sorry for us.

Driving cross-country

We have to drive across Italy today. We have to. We need to get from Sestriere, on the French border, to Venice, where we have a hotel reservation for tonight. This is about the longest distance across Italy that one can go. It’s 500 kilometers—300 miles. Mapquest gives is 5 hours and 2 minutes.

Calvin Trillin writes about Americans driving across the country as if they were being chased, always trying to cover more miles, not stopping. Maybe they need to do that, because it’s 3,000 miles across. I’ve personally done it, we stopped some, and it took two weeks.

But a certain factions of Italians, for all the slow life, loves to cover ground too, even if they don’t have as much to cover. Or maybe because of it. You can actually get to your destination quickly if you step on it. In America you can’t, you can get there from here, but not today. Italians give their travel times da casello a casello, from toll booth to toll booth, so they don’t get penalized unfairly for the slow driving stretch getting to the autostrada.

I recall my uncle recounting once that someone passed him when he was driving 220 kilometers per hour. That’s 130 miles per hour. It wasn’t his own speed that amazed him. He was amazed that someone was driving faster than that.

But for every drive going breathtakingly fast, there’s another one in a little old car chugging along. Not everyone drives fast.

When I told people I was going to Venice, every one of them asked if I was taking the train.

“No, I’m driving.” It’s 300 miles, for god’s sake, same as from my house to Boston or from my house to Pittsburgh, both of which drives I’ve done by myself—in bad weather.

We wake up very early in Sestriere because we have gone to bed early. Because there’s no TV where we are staying. We go to breakfast at Galup one last time, and head down.

I call my aunt around 9 o’clock from an autogrill near Piacenza.

She asks, “Are you ready to leave?”

“Actually, we’re in Piacenza.”

“Already?”

“Yes.” We’re American. This is how we drive across the country: as if we’re being chased.

Sestriere

Sestriere is all about the Olympics now. The downhill skiing events were held here in the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics and since then Sestriere is Olympic everything.

To me though, it's where we used to ski and where we played cards in the evening. I want George to be part of that.

It used to be an uncommonly unattractive ski resort, no quaint little alpine buildings but many large apartment buildings with tiny apartments. Sestriere was built in the 1930s. Whereas most ski resorts started out as the original alpine village nested in the valley, Sestriere was built from scratch at the top of the world, with two distinctive round towers as its anchors. It’s on a 2,000 meter pass, 6,000 feet up.

Sestriere may have been the site of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with his elephants in Roman times. Even then there was evidently too much traffic on the Aurelia, he preferred this alpine pass to the road along the shore. Or, more likely, Hannibal was a brilliant tactician, and the Romans did NOT expect this!

Like every place else in Italy, Sestriere has not changed. At least not very much. There is the new Olympic statue in the middle of the road that you have to drive around. There is the Olympic village they’re trying to sell as condos. But there is still also the little gray church where we used to go to mass, standing room only during ski season. There’s the movie theater next to the Galup bar/pastry shop. And there are still the mountains. Looking down towards France the view is long and spectacular. Looking up, there are the Banchetta, the Motta, the Rognosa, the Sises. They rise up high above the town. It’s summer so we’re not here to ski but to hike. And we do.

You can’t hike through the middle because there’s a golf course on the lower ski slopes, the highest golf course in Europe, but it’s easy enough to hike around it. Around it and up. There are well kept trails, and even off the trails, the alpine vegetation is very controlled. There are pine trees and grass and little flowers. We're right at the tree line. It’s not overwhelming deep woods that swallow you up, it’s trees and grass and little flowers, and little streams. George loves the streams, and we stop at each one. The water is cold and clear and it makes a pleasant sound in the otherwise silent air.

I’ve skied here and I’ve hiked here. I know my way around these mountains. Because the woods are not deep, the town stays in view, it’s easy to stay oriented. The lodges that cater to the skiers in winter are open for hikers in the summer. They have broad terraces in the sun that skiers sun themselves on, and they are wonderful in the cool summer air.

We hike up to the Chisonetto, an all-wood alpine lodge where I have a cappuccino and George has a hot chocolate. On the mountain across the way we see little gray specks that look like rocks but are in fact sheep. Someone is grazing his sheep, lots of them, on the summer ski slopes. George can’t make them out, they’re too small and they look too much like rocks from here, he can't visualize them as sheep. We will get confirmation tomorrow that these are not inert minerals but live creatures with active digestive systems—massive poopers!

We keep going. I remember that there’s a dam up higher, with a lake. You can’t see the lake from the ski slopes—at least not from the groomed trails—but I’ve hiked up to it a long time ago in the summer.

We meet a couple coming downhill and I ask them if there’s a lake up ahead. One of them says yes, and the other says no. Huh? They tell me I’ll see what they mean.

And I do when we get there. This is late summer and the lake is dry. George doesn’t get why we came all the way up here. I try to explain to him, but all he sees is a dusty pit. A bit of a bummer. On the plus side, the rest of the way is downhill.

After the nature hike we go into town. The shops are divided between those selling fine sportswear and accessories, and those selling toys and alpine souvenirs. George and I are both partial to the latter. There is no alpine souvenir I don’t like, and George loves toys. He wants me to buy him a big Lego set. The perfect traveling toy, one with 400 little pieces. Sorry but no.

There’s a festival in the center of town. There are booths selling handicrafts, honey, and salame. Always have to have salame.

We had pizza for dinner at a restaurant. A couple from England was sitting at the next table. I wonder if they would have thought of coming here before the Olympic notoriety. Other than this time, most of our meals are at the Galup bar/pastry shop. They sell little rectangular pizzette.

We also go into the grocery store. This store was there way back when, same owners. The father is behind the deli counter, the son, who is now middle aged, is at the register. They did move across the street. Like many Italian grocery stores, this store is relatively small but it sells everything, with one or two of each thing on display. These stores are a marvel to me, they’re so neat and the food looks … pretty. I get a cut of the local cheese, toma, and the father asks me if I want it fresca or stagionata—fresh or aged. I also buy honey for my aunt, who had asked me specifically for it.

The next morning we are up very early. We go to the Galup for breakfast and then head to a hike. Today we’re going around the other side of the golf course. It’s a beautiful sunny day, though a little cool. I only brought one sweater for each of us that we are wearing all the time. In all the pictures George is wearing the same thing.

We go by the Olympic village. It’s a bit below the town, where the mountain starts to drop off towards France, so it’s unobtrusive even though it’s quite large. They’re trying to sell it as condos. “Signora, would you like to come in and look at a condo?”

We keep walking with a view of the mountains towards France, the big open view. Some of the mountains have glaciers on them, I point them out to George. He’s not terribly excited about this walk, and I’m not all that excited about it either. We’re on a small road along the side of the mountain, we’re not really hiking. So I decide to get off the road and go uphill, up the mountain, straight up. It’s doable but it is pretty tough. George gets on one of his unstoppable tirades of complaint. He can’t believe I’m making him do this, where are we going, why are we doing this, he wants to go back. Pretty soon, as he sees that his speech is not working, he resorts to tears. He doesn’t think I know where I’m going, but I do. We’re going to lunch.

This lodge is on the Alpette, a shorter mountain right in front of the town. So we walked and walked and didn’t really get very far. It’s decorated with traditional alpine décor, plus now Olympic memorabilia. The summer Olympics are on TV. I had never actually been to this lodge, it’s large and very nice. As we wait for our lunch, sitting in the sun on the outdoor terrace, the owner brings me a slice of cured meat served on a piece of fried polenta as a complimentary appetizer. Lovely. This is followed by my lunch of polenta. Wonderful.

There are a few other diners, very few, relaxed, with children and dogs. In America, we would enter in conversation in this situation, but here we do not.

After our meal, we leave in the opposite direction from which we came, and this takes us to where we saw the sheep yesterday. Underfoot we have confirmation that they were sheep—droppings everywhere.

Suddenly George announces, “Cacca!” It might be the big lunch, it might be the exercise, it might be the poopy everywhere, it might be all of the above, but George has to go.

I tell him, “We’ll get back soon. Can you hold it until then?”

“No, I have to go now.”

“Well, we can go back to the restaurant.”

“No, I have to go now.”

“Okay then, go here.” I figure there is so much poop up here already that his will not really make a difference.

He drops his shorts right there, squats, and makes a really big one, and then we wipe using leaves. Thankfully the leaves do not turn out to be poisonous.

“Feel better?”

“Yup.”

And we walked on, stepping carefully.

Madonna della Guardia

There is a little church at the tippy top of a barren hill, overlooking the sea, all by itself, lit up at night, it’s called the Madonna della Guardia. Going to that church seems like a cool thing to do, a worthwhile endeavor, a destination. I have seen the sign for it in the town, I know where to go. We take off in the car, drive up a curvy road among houses and buildings, but not for long. Soon the houses end and the road ends, with a little place to leave the car. We are nowhere near the church, and from here on, it’s going to be on foot on a dirt road.

George sees the barren road in the beating sun, processes the situation immediately, and starts to register complaints with the management. I try to be positive and to encourage him on. He is not open to positive encouragement, but we start off. I can’t see the church from the road—fairly flat though we are going to have to gain altitude—which winds around the mountain. I give myself some positive encouragement and I find myself receptive.

This section of mountain was damaged by fire, an incendio, which sounds like a much more apocalyptic event, that’s why it’s so barren. But the mountain is slowly springing back to new plant life. It’s lovely to see up close, nature doing its thing. There’s a certain purity to walking in open space instead of the woods. The view, even just a short way up, is beautiful: the sea, the coast, all the way to Savona.

George becomes more insistent in his complaints, resorting now to tears. He is crying.

When he was little and something horrible happened to him, such as a shoelace untied, or a missing toy, he would wonder aloud, “I’m a great boy, why this keeps happening to me?” He was little but he had a profound sense of cosmic justice. He was a great boy, not just a good boy—a delightful self-assessment—how could life treat him so poorly? Shouldn’t there be a connection? If you did everything right, shouldn’t you be rewarded?

While he no longer expresses himself in precisely these words, he’s thinking right now, how could he be dealt such a blow of unfairness? How could he possibly deserve this? I find it hard to watch him cry, but I want to keep going.

Occasionally, but only very occasionally, we encounter someone coming down the hill, and we proceed. We shoot for a curve in the road, and I’m hoping that beyond that we’ll be close, but it doesn’t look that way, no. We ask a group of descending pilgrims if we’re close, and they look at each other wondering if we're for real, and then say that we’re not, no. So we turn around and walk down. Still a beautiful walk even if we didn’t get to our destination. For a short while there, we were on top of the world.

I will use this church in the future every time George misbehaves or doesn’t eat the food that’s put in front of him. I will point in the direction of the church and say, “La chiesetta!” And he will say, “No, mamma, no,” but he will laugh. Laugh, little boy, laugh, we will still get up there someday.

Portofino

We are going to dinner in Portofino with my cousin Nino, his wife Linda and their son, whos is four years older than George. We get there fairly early. They’re coming from work, from Genova. We sit at an outdoor restaurant right on the harbor, under umbrellas, as the evening slowly turns to night. The lights go on, and the moon rises.

Presently it starts to rain. The waiters move the umbrellas to cover us and the table better. We stay seated and continue eating, and then the rain stops. It was just a brief shower. Linda is cold, she’s a tiny thing and she’s always cold. I’m used to colder weather so I tend to ignore the slight chill.

After dinner we get ice cream at another place and eat it in the piazzetta, looking out at the harbor. Nino’s son runs into some kids he knows and they chat.

At the mouth of the harbor there is a small hill, the Punta di Portofino. At the top of the hill is a castle, Castello Brown. With the moon in the sky the castle looks spooky. George is a bit thrilled by it, what a magical evening. It's beautiful beyond words really, and to share it with family, people who are happy to be with us and with whom we are happy to be, is special. I don't ever want to leave.

But we do. Leaving town we drive past a line of cars waiting to drive into Portofino. Every time a car leaves, another one can enter the town.

~.~.~

We are going to visit Castello Brown—in the daytime. We walk up the hill bright and early. We walk by the church of St. George, who is the patron saint of Portofino. Throughout the town there are ceramic medallions depicting St. George in various dragon-slaying poses. The church sits on a site believed to have had a roman temple, according to a brochure in English we pick up at Castello Brown. Pliny the Elder, or as the brochure says, Pliny the Old, wrote about the area in the second century A.D. We get to Castello Brown before it opens and we have to wait.

The castle is something less than a castle and something more than a villa. It was originally a fortification, going back at least to the 1400s, to protect the sheltered harbor. In the late 1800s the castle was bought by an English man named Montague Yeats Brown for 7,000 lire. I don’t know if that was a little or a lot at the time. By the time the lira was replaced by the euro, 7,000 lire was about $3.50 in American money. Mr. Brown turned the building into a residence that stayed in his family until it was sold to the town in 1961.

We walk up steps through gardens to get there. Inside it’s sparse. There are pictures of famous people who have visited. And most spectacularly there are beautiful terraces with wide views down to Portofino and out to sea. This would have been a beautiful home with a beautiful garden. It is a little spooky still, up high.

Eremo del Deserto

We are going to the Madonna del Deserto, a place I had been once with my aunt and uncle many years ago. It is a monastery, and it’s not in a desert but in deep, deep woods.

After some debate on how to get there, we decide to ask the gardener, a young man who is known to know everything, and it turns out he does know this at least—don’t know about everything else but I can testify that he knows this. It’s good to have such a person around, the proverbial know-it-all, who is annoying when he tells you things he knows but useful when he knows what you don’t know, which by definition is a lot.

We are referring to the place incorrectly as the Madonna del Deserto, it’s really the Eremo del Deserto. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it. Eremo, schmeremo. Once we get that straightened out, so we are clear on where we really want to go, he directs us, “Take the road to Le Faie, and then turn right.” Indeed.

We are headed inland from the coast, uphill. As we turn off the more “main” road, the road gets narrower and more curvy, basically a one-lane two-way road where because of the curves you can only see a few meters in front of you. Harrowing. My aunt tells me to honk on the corners, that’s how it’s done. I feel it’s not manly so I don’t do it, until I get a good scare from an oncoming car, and then I get with the program, I do how it’s done.

After many, many curves, we arrive. It’s a plain fairly large building in an open spot in the woods. There is an old caretaker tending to the front of the building. We walk into the church, light a candle. Then we walk up a short Via Crucis, up a little incline in the woods. There’s something about a Via Crucis that I like. It’s not the spirituality of it, I’m not spiritual, that doesn’t grab me, but there’s something about it, the structure, the symbolism, the fact that in unexpected places you see a cross, then another cross, and you realize it’s a Via Crucis. It’s a universal understanding. In Doylestown, Pennsylvania, there’s a little garden next to the church with a Via Crucis. You see one cross, then another cross, and you realize it’s a Via Crucis.

We go in the little shop. My aunt buys my mother a little medallion and I buy two soaps. George has really no use for any of this. A building in the woods, what?

On the return home, we decide to proceed forward along the road rather than retracing our itinerary. The road continues to be delightfully narrow and frightening. I honk constantly, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the horn—not easy to do.

We get to a little stream with a little room to park the car, so we stop. George loves the stream, finally something he can appreciate. We go to streams all the time in Bucks County, here is something familiar--finally something with which he has a connection!

Sassello

We go back to Sassello in the afternoon. For no reason other than I like to go there. We walk up to San Giovanni, a pretty church in a little park, up a little road, a little away from town, with a view of the wooded hills. The roof of the church has a curved pattern that’s unique. To get up to it there are wide stone steps, and at the top of the steps, there are stone columns with a flame motif at the top. There are stone benches. I have a picture of my uncle sitting on one of the stone benches, and I take a picture of George sitting on the same one.

The front of the church is cobble stoned, and there are some tall trees around. It’s one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen, I love this place.

When we got back from Brazil as teenagers we started coming back to Sassello in the summer again, to a different house right by the old one. The new house used to be occupied by a woman named Giustina who made mattresses. When we told someone where we lived we would say, “Where Giustina used to live, Giustina of the mattresses,” and everyone would know exactly which house it was. She made mattresses stuffed with wool.

Our friends Paola and Maria Elena were still there, and we picked up our friendship where we had left it off. Sitting on the steps. This pattern of friendship has stayed with me all my life—just a very few really good friends. Sometimes I think I don’t have enough friends, but I’m sure that if I wanted more friends I could get more. I really just want a few very good friends with whom I have many connections.

On Sunday we would walk up to San Giovanni to attend the mass, my sister and I and our two friends.

We did not usually have a car in Sassello, my father had the only car in the family, and he was in Milan during the week. We also didn’t have a phone. We walked to the Bar Isaia when my mother had to make a phone call, they had a pay phone service. The Bar Isaia was on the main road, not in the town, it was pretty large, and it had parking outside. At times, it was a cool place where teenagers hung out and played foosball. At other times, it seems that no one went there, but it kept going, with its pay phone service, the only thing we ever went there for.

In the mornings we would go food shopping in town. My mother sent us. She sent us because it was a battle, it was a task for the strong. Each little tiny shop was crowded, and there was an invisible line, where you had to mentally account for who was ahead of you, and then be sure to request to be served when it was your turn. And anybody at any time, these meek looking ladies, would look to cut in front of you if you weren’t quick enough. And then you’d have to call her on it, “Scusi, I was here first.” The whole process is socially acceptable, it’s acceptable to try to cut in front of someone, and it’s acceptable to claim precedence. As long as it’s claimed in a cool tone of voice. If you get heated then you’re considered rude. Even if technically you’re right.

In the afternoon we would go hiking or go splashing in a river, both things I still like to do today with George. Then we’d go into town to Bar Gina for ice cream.

In the evening we would sit on the steps and talk until dark. One year there was a soccer tournament in the evening, and Bar Gina fielded a team—that was the team we rooted for, we became rabid Bar Gina soccer fans. We’d walk home chanting after the games.

The beach club

We are on our way to spend a few days at a beach club in a small cove near Portofino. We stop for dinner in Santa Margherita, it’s George and I, my aunt, and her grandson Fabrizio, Nino’s son.

The first restaurant we stop at offers us a table at the back of the room, near the kitchen. It truly is the only free table, but my aunt declines it. She doesn’t like it.

At the next place we get a table outside, among a sea of tables, close to the street. It’s festive, it’s a nice summer evening, it’s almost electric, there are so many people eating, walking, driving by.

George must feel the electicity because he’s wired. He is uncontrollable, I can’t make him sit still. He knocks over his drink, I get up with him “per fare due passi,” to take a few steps, to try to talk him down, but I can’t. He’s wired.
We have pizza, I eat mine and most of his. Fabrizio eyes the four-cheese pizza but he doesn’t order it. He’s supposed to watch his diet, to eat reasonably, and the four-cheese pizza is too much. “I’ll digest it tomorrow,” he says. It’s supposed to be humorous, but it’s not that funny coming from him. Coming from his father, as I’m sure it does, it would be funny. There’s a whole segment of Italian humor based on extreme exaggeration, and this is an example of it.

~.~.~

Liguria is a region poised to the sea. The mountains behind it are high and wooded, the sea is big and open, between the two are occasional stretches of flat ground, including some beaches. The beaches are small and rocky, not sandy. Most of them are occupied by beach clubs—bagni—bathing establishments, many of them, side by side, elbow to elbow.

Each beach club has a distinctive color scheme and a catchy name such as Bagni Flora, Bagni Paolina, Bagni Sole e Mare, Bagni Surf Club, and Bagni Torino. The latter name I find hilarious. Each one consists of changing shacks that can be rented for the day or by the season, chairs and umbrellas arranged in perfect rows. There’s a snack bar and sometimes games like foosball and pinball machines. Some rent boats, and then there’s the boa, a floating square 20 meters out, 60 feet, that you can swim to and sit on and dive from. And there’s water to rinse your feet at the end of the day.

Some days the beach clubs put little signs out that they are sold out.
There is a whole tradition to the beach club scene. People choose one over the other based on intangibles—usually they know someone who goes there. They go every day, same routine, they sit for hours, they chat, they play cards, maybe they go home for lunch, or they eat there. There’s a certain beauty to the beach clubs, their neatness, the colors, their predictability, year after year, day after day. I used to covet the beach club life when I was young. Although they’re not clubs, they give you a sense of belonging. We went to the beach club with my aunt some, though mostly we went to Sassello. Now I can’t imagine spending my summer that way. It’s just not me.

Plus I don’t like to pay the fees.

So we usually go to the public beach.

For every long sequence of beach clubs, there are a few arm lengths of public beach. The public beaches have to be there, they’re legislated, but they’re tiny. The public beaches have no pretty colors, no umbrellas, no place to change or rinse your feet, and no spare square of sand. They’re usually very crowded and they don’t have that feel, the part I coveted, of belonging. The crowd at the public beaches is not made up of regulars. It’s out of towners down for the day and Eastern Europeans.

But today we are guests of my aunt and we are going to a beach club, and a fancy one at that.

We enter the beach club with my aunt and Fabrizio. The beach is in a tiny cove so the beach club is mostly on decks attached to the rocks next to the beach. There is a tiny little actual sandy beach, and we have two chairs and an umbrella right on the beach, in the front row. This is a plum location, my aunt is treating and I’m sure it’s very expensive.

This is a place where a great tan is very important. All the women wear tiny bikinis and some are even topless, and they lie in the sun all day every day. It looks spectacularly luscious as a life style, but I couldn’t do it. I really couldn’t. I had specifically thought I would go to the beach with George, I had thought of that as an appealing luscious way to spend a vacation, but more than a couple of days would be too much for me and I think eventually for him too.

The life guard is a middle aged man, thin, fully clothed. He is wearing white shorts, a blue polo shirt, and boat shoes. He has his own umbrella and chair on the beach. There is no expectation that anyone will need to be saved. His umbrella and chair are strategically located at the edge of the beach club beach, right before the free beach. The free beach is small and overflowing and his true role in the enterprise I believe is to prevent the free beach bathers from encroaching on the expensive beach club.

There is a second fellow who looks like what I consider a life guard should look like: young, hunky, and in swimming trunks. This young man is there to entertain the children. He runs games and contests of all kinds.

Fabrizio is around 11 years old and one of the bigger kids, he is confident and independent, and I call him the Mayor of the beach club. He collects sea creatures in a bucket with water in it, and he touches them. George is like a little yellow duckling, he follows Fabrizio everywhere, all day. And he calls out to him constantly, “Fabrizio!” “Fabrizio!” “Fabrizio!” At a certain point, Fabrizio gets a little annoyed and tries to shake him, very graciously though. George is little and he’s friendly, and he has no idea he’s getting on his nerves, and he will not be shaken, he stays with him. If Fabrizio stops short, George will run into him.

In the games organized by not the life guard, George plays along as best he can. Not the life guard tells Fabrizio to explain to George what he’s supposed to do. George is klutzy and little and not competitive, so he has no idea what’s going on, but in all the pictures he looks perfectly delighted, with a big smile, and at the end of the day he has a red scrape all over his belly from jumping on and off the floaters.

In addition to the life guard and not the life guard, there are many people working here, there’s a reception/cashier, people working in the restaurant, and a woman who works the towels. They all hustle and are exceedingly attentive and courteous. The following year I will come here without my aunt, and—I’m guessing that because of the English and because George doesn’t look much like me—they thought I was the baby sitter because they didn’t so much as look at me when I walked by. They were completely rude. I never went back again after that.

We have lunch at the beach club and Fabrizio orders the four-cheese pizza. I guess he feels he can digest it today same day.