Things I love about Italy

Underdressed in Milan

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

No, make that severely underdressed.

On our way out of Italy, we decided to make a day of it in Milan. We planned to take the 7:45 bus to Cuneo, then a 9:00 train, which would leave us in Milan around 12:30. However, for some reason Raj woke up at 4:45 in the morning. He lay in bed, quietly humming to himself with his eyes wide open, for the next half hour. Finally, we decided to get up and leave on the 6:10 bus and get there an hour and a half earlier.

So we madly packed up the clothes that hadn’t been quite dry the day before, did our last-minute cleaning, and finally got the children up.… Read more

Pazienza

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I had intended to celebrate the 100th post on this blog by taking it public. It has been private for several months, ever since we were in difficulties with Teresa in Saluzzo. My hope was that we could celebrate the 100th post by having Tony’s Italian citizenship officially recognized. No dice. But I’m making it public anyway. I’m tired of feeling like if people knew my thoughts they wouldn’t like me. They would. And it doesn’t matter anyway. My blog is a true story.

This has not been the best week as far as citizenship is concerned. Mainly, we have been getting more and more apprehensive that it would not happen before we left for our trip to the U.S… 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

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

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

Nature Study

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Yesterday we biked out to a nice little meadow we spotted some distance away from the road. Charlotte Mason’s idea of nature study has begun to make an impression on me. At first, I only pretended to be interested in the insects and view them as sweet, delicate little creatures. But I have begun to develop a real appreciation and even affection for them. Which is good, since the long summer grass is full of them. We saw several varieties of grasshoppers, a big black beetle, a small white bug with five black stripes on its back, each apparently ending at an eye (maybe some were decoys?),… Read more

In Fangorn Forest

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

One thing I have learned from the Italians is the importance of planning work and similar responsibilities around home, family, and other beautiful things in life, rather than the other way around. We enjoy running our business, but it doesn’t hold a candle to our children, or our relationship with each other and with God, or even a good cheese course (well maybe the cheese).

In San Diego, I was convinced that the whole world suffered from overscheduling. Nobody seemed to have time for anything except work (adults) or school and extracurricular activities (children). Oh, and going to the gym. The typical way for a conversation to end was, “well, I know you’re busy, so I’ll let you go,” or “well, I have to go.”… Read more

More Raw . . . . (no, not milk)

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We found raw honey two nights ago. It was easy to find, just like everything else here (well, no, not everything. Not coconut oil or books in English). We just popped in at a house down the street with a sign that says “Miele.” They had three kinds on hand: castagno (chestnut. a very strong flavor, and one that we’ve been enduring since I bought a kilo of chestnut honey in Saluzzo months ago), dandelion, and melata.

Coincidentally, I was just reading about melata honey the other day when I was researching apitherapy (healing with honey and other bee products). We’ve done a few rounds of royal jelly, but I wanted some unprocessed stuff straight from the farm.… Read more

Donkey Milk

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I originally conceived this blog as a clear, straight-forward guide to claiming Italian citizenship jure sanginis. I was inspired by Michael Santulli, from whom I first learned of the possibility of jure sanginis. His blog is a calm, detailed description of a logical process–claiming jure sanguinis through his Italian grandmother at his U.S. consulate. So I started the blog, and it ran away with me. Now here I am in Italy, but I find that my account is neither calm nor especially logical. At least I believe I can claim to be detailed.

And if sometimes I stray from my stated topic, it’s only to remind us why, after all, we wanted to move to Italy in the first place.… Read more