A Meeting with the Mayor

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Today was the fateful meeting with the Mayor. We all dressed up, but in the end, there was too much delighted squealing echoing through the corridors of the Municipio for our comfort, so I took the two little squealers downstairs, and we went to the optician to get my glasses fixed and then sang “Five Little Ducks,” and several other counting-down songs as we waited in the piazza outside.

Meanwhile, Tony and Carla waited for the Mayor. We had arrived nice and early, since last time Carla went to speak to him (about us, before we moved here) he had scheduled five people to meet with him at 11:00 a.m.,… Read more

Why isn’t your three-year-old in school?

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

After I meet people here in Italy, their first question is usually, oh, so your three-year-old is starting preschool this year, right? No. Wrong. I smile, and say, “no, we do preschool at home.” And then, lest they imagine I am insulting them or Italy or (heaven forbid) the Italian school system, I usually add that we did preschool at home in the United States too.

The idea of waiting till a child is four to send him to school is bizarre enough to them. I do not find it necessary to give them a heart attack by adding that I plan not to send them to school until they go off to college.… Read more

And the Bride Wore Cream

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Advisory note: non-Foodies may find this entry tedious. Just come back tomorrow for something more exciting or philosophical.

Have you ever spent an entire afternoon just eating? No? Well, neither had I until we were precipitously invited to an Italian wedding yesterday.

For the past few weeks since we ran out of bee pollen, we’ve been searching for it all over. Friday evening the people who sold us our dandelion honey dropped by and told us where we could find pollen. So yesterday morning we hopped on our bikes and rode up to Vigna, some three kilometers up the road toward Certosa di Pesio.… Read more

Don’t Know Much About History

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

This question of history is one I’ve been puzzling over for the past few months. It is more than an academic question for me. In fact, it turns out to be both personal and practical. Who am I, after all? What are my roots? Where are my loyalties? To whom and to what are my duties? For the less peripatetic, perhaps these questions are easily answered. Indeed, probably there is something pathetically lost about asking them at all. But I cannot help asking, because I possess, as yet, no clear answer.

My husband and children will soon officially possess both American and Italian citizenship.… Read more

Reviving the Collective Unconscious

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

As we contemplate taking an extended trip back to the United States, I think about the things we’ve learned and changed in Italy. We hopped on our bikes yesterday afternoon (it was another of those afternoons where Axa was not quite tired enough to nap, but not quite rested enough to be nice. It’s a tough transition from nap to no nap.) and rode out another country road. We stopped in a little town called Margherita, which boasts a 13th century tower.

The tower is impressive. It’s not particularly large, nor does it stand out much on first glance. But if you really look at it, the tower does project an aura of age, of permanence, of having overseen many, many events.… Read more

Never Expect it the Same Way Twice

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Productivity for us here in Italy seems to be more a product of serendipity than careful planning. It’s not that we don’t plan exhaustively. But sometimes things turn out better when we just go with the flow. Our internet has been grinding to a halt fairly often lately. We can get reliable dial-up, which us O.K. for email and other more basic tasks. But we cannot send large attachments, and forget about Skype calls (we don’t have a home phone, and we’ve been trying to set up quite a lot of things for our trip to the U.S.)., or web-conferencing.

We had a web-conference scheduled for Thursday evening, which we were forced to cancel.… Read more

San Diego

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We’ve ditched the Italian schedule. No more dinners at 7:00. We need to get this family to bed at a reasonable time. Tony was thinking yesterday that most of our productive, happy family time is in the morning. Afternoon is for naps. So we’ve decided to lengthen the morning at the expense of the afternoon. Instead of having a three-hour morning and a seven-hour afternoon, we’ll have a five-hour morning and a five-hour afternoon, and spend some time in the afternoon doing things like tidying the house, setting out everyone’s clothes, and fixing a picnic lunch for the next day.

For the past year or so (since our second child was born, coincidentally enough), we’ve had something of a schedule fetish.… Read more

Chiusa Aperta

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We were part of the action last night. Chiusa Aperta is the traditional annual village festival in Chiusa Pesio. We arrived 45 minutes late because we had been eating pizza at our favorite little pizzeria in town. Tony and I like the vegetarian pizza, which changes with the seasons. It still had zucchini and eggplant, but the red peppers had been replaced since last month with green beans. Green beans on a pizza? Yes! It was excellent. Axa’s favorite pizza is margherita, which is just tomato sauce, mozzarella, and oregano. She tried some of ours, but in the end she just picked off all the vegetables, so her piece ended up margherita too.… Read more

The Importance of History

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Tony woke me up at 6:00 a.m. this morning. “Sarah! Sarah!” I rolled over and looked at him blearily. “Domenico wasn’t Italian. He was French! I’ve been up all night worrying about it, and then I got online and saw a map. The Duchy of Savoy was up in the mountains, and the French just went around and conquered the plain. Everybody wanted the plains of Piedmont.” By now, sleep had fled.

It couldn’t end this way. Domenico had to be Italian. Could it be possible that we hadn’t thought of one crucial detail? We got up together and went out to the living room.… Read more

Awkward

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Last night we had an awkward moment. No, it was more like ninety awkward moments. We had decided to have dinner downstairs at the picnic table. Unfortunately, as Tony arrived with a stack of plates, he realized that Giorgio and Carla, our neighbors across the way, and the family downstairs were all having a communal dinner at the picnic table. He heard them suddenly fall silent, and then rapid whispering. No matter. There is a second, smaller table, so he turned toward it. However, it was holding their dessert. They quickly moved it. Thoroughly embarrassed, he set the plates down.

I came down with food, and suggested that we retreat upstairs, since we had obviously made a serious faux pas.… Read more