Italian Quarantine, week one
/Because I didn’t believe we’d really get here, I spared not one thought for what it might be like to quarantine in Italy. “Just get us there,” I muttered under my breath as I scrubbed under the cabinets. “The rest will have to take care of itself.”
Boy, was I right. Because, as those of us who love la bella Italia know, this country is a mamma with broad shoulders, ready to wrap her arms around you so you can lean in and sag against her strength, her wisdom, the constancy of her beauty.
Our days in quarantine have taken on a rhythm, and in that way, they blur together like our lockdown back home in Virginia. Only instead of that blur being chasing down my children to make sure they ate, interspersed with chasing down Keith to make sure he ate, our blur here is kinder. Softer. With moments of incandescent brightness.
Now that the jetlag is over (except for Siena who has hardly slept), Keith and I wake up everyday around seven o’clock. Let me hasten to clarify. We wake up AT THE SAME TIME. After a month of him getting dressed in the dark to rebuild the porch, it’s nice to see him waking up with a sleepy grin because the rooster has crowed one too many times to ignore. Even before the burst of work that happened on the house the last two months, (which we seem characterologically unable to avoid… will this be a fixture of every gap year?), we’ve rarely woken up at the same time since the world closed down in mid-March. Free of the mundane annoyances of getting the kids to school, I woke slowly where he still had the thing called work. All my clients were happy to have their sessions later in the day, so the mornings have been my own to read and putter and go for a run (or an awkward lope would be more accurate).
All this is to say, my husband and I have been speedboats passing in the dawn. The night, too, when it comes to that, as Keith regularly turned in after midnight, where my energy flames out around 11.
So greeting the day together is a revelation.
In my “before” life, I lingered in bed, waking up slowly. Now,, the fresh air calls me to fling off the coverlet, eager to get into the day. Keith makes coffee, while I make breakfast. Something simple, toast from bread our friends have brought from the bakery, or yogurt and fruit that Corrado keeps in supply (you’ll be hearing lots about Corrado; he’s the guy you need to contact if you’re planning a trip to the area. From fetching you from the airport to stocking the house to cooking lessons, he and his wife Angela can set you up… also he’s a funny and charismatic guy and we’re already looking forward to our promised “barbecue” with his family when we are sprung from quarantine next week…you can contact him via his Facebook page ).
After breakfast, our days are a little formless. But that doesn’t make me as edgy as it did back home. I’m learning to follow one leading after another. I write, I read. I’m remembering the contentment of just leaning against the wall of the terrazza to watch birds chase each other across a sky that seems as outstretched as swallows’ wings.
It must be said that this quarantine would be tougher if we hadn’t had the incredible luck to land here, in this house. We’re staying on the side of Spello that overlooks the Chiona valley (when I wrote Il Bel Centro, we lived on the other side that overlooked the Valle Umbra) and our house includes outdoor space that allows us to take full advantage of the spectacular views. The house is oriented so that every bedroom faces the valley. In fact, the apartment sits on another apartment that is nearing completion and the windows in that apartment appear to be set in the old city wall.
I can’t tell you how many times a day I lean out my window to gaze down the wall to the ancient openings in the rock, imagining the farmers that once kept their animals in the rooms below me, and then let my vision drift along the wall to the arch that graces the cover of my memoir, thinking about how these old walls once protected the people of Spello from invading armies. I’ll tell you more about the house soon (edited to add: here is the post about our house and how you can stay here!) , but I wanted to give you a flavor of how we spend our days now, and there’s a lot of leaning out and imagining. This house seems designed to do just that. Partly because it exudes historic charm, but also partly because the house is going on the market, and I probably spend too much time thinking about how to make it mine. Or at least how to get it into hands of people I know so I can claim visiting rights!
This reminds me to mention that there is a one-bedroom apartment called Sognando Spello on the other side of the property (part of the pre-medieval farmhouse) and that apartment is available on airbnb. Pro-tip, it’s highly rated for a reason, it is gorgeous and no detail is spared to make guests comfortable. It’s where I’ll be sending all my friends who (hopefully, pandemic willing) come to visit and as a bonus this means they’ll get to meet Corrado who manages the property. Whoever buys the property would also become owners of the airbnb, a tidy source of income. I’ve thrown this into casual conversation with my husband more than once, to which he just smiles.
Our apartment is separated from the street by a wooden door as big as a gate. Opening the gate from the street, you’ll discover what looks like an alley, with flower boxes fixed into the stone. Our front door is on the right with a table and chairs set outside. Sitting here, it feels like we’re in any of Spello’s charmed alleys, but it’s private and therefore ideal for quarantining. The pathway (I’m not sure if it can properly be called an alley since it’s not a through-way) leads past a landing where there is a stone sink and a wood grill, to the terrazza and that view. The terrazza is lined with a stone perch, along with a table and umbrella and a gas grill.
It’s cool here in the mornings, but you can find us here all day. Sometimes our feet move of their own accord, down the path, to the terrazza. Where we read and draw and study Italian and play scopa.
So much scopa. We brought other games, and yes we’ve played a round or two of Bananagrams and Hive (with their hard tile pieces, they are great when the terrazza is breezy) but mostly it’s been scopa. I’m sure people in the garden below us look up in confusion every time we yell “setteBELL-O!” (if you want to take up this most Italian pasttime, there are many options available. We bought our cards at the magazine and trinket store in the piazza here years ago, but these are pretty similar).
All this lingering outside and watching the afternoon drift along has prompted me to decide to get a tattoo. I’ve flirted with the idea before, but now I feel ready. I asked Siena to draw me some swallows and because she expressed being daunted by the enormity of the task of drawing her mother’s tattoo, I volunteered to draw her some tattoo ideas as well (which I’ll do you the honor of not sharing with you, though they did send Siena into a fit of giggles). She’s eighteen now, as she keeps reminding me, and can do what she likes. Luckily, she’s talked before about how if she gets a tattoo, she wants to find a spot that isn’t too painful, but is also out of the way so it doesn’t allow a future employer to pre-judge her. She also insists on the importance of not getting images tattooed on one’s body that are of fleeting importance, like album covers or a person’s name (I told her “mamma” would be just fine; she rolled her eyes). She’s given swallows her seal of approval for me, and I feel more comfortable with her considering a tattoo of her own, knowing she has such a level head about it.
So I spent a morning sketching her sharks in waistcoats while she did actual work. She presented me with a page of ideas and we discussed tail feathers and how they’re shorter in female swallows and she corrected my ideas about maybe getting color and we talked about wing shapes when birds soar.
Along with drawing and reading and writing, we’ve all upped our Italian learning. We watch “Boris” in the evening, stopping often because the Italian subtitles whiz by recklessly and there isn’t an English subtitle option on Italian Netflix (by the way, I’d planned on keeping Hulu and ditching Netflix before the trip and I’m so glad I didn’t! The programming is completely different here and Netflix is, at least right now, far superior).
Keith is particularly committed to Italian study, and ordered himself a copy of “The Great Gatsby” in Italian. Though he’s learned what I learned with “Pride and Prejudice”—these classics are written in the remote past and so have limited utility. What has been remarkably helpful is L360’s News in Slow Italian. You can read along with the news and commentary, and the difficult words are hyperlinks so you can click on them for English translations. We’re barely hanging onto the Intermediate level right now. My money is on Keith getting to the Advanced level before I do, particularly since he’s also trying out Babbel.
But, to my credit, I have not been hiding this time around. Remember in IBC 1 (that’s what we’re calling it), I loitered in corners and hoped nobody would notice me? Well, I suppose now I’m loitering in quarantine, but I did call the shop in the piazza yesterday to ask if we could get a delivery. And it’s not my fault the pizza place didn’t pick up. I’ve also been the one coordinating with Corrado and I contacted the butcher for a delivery. Though those were via What’s App, so while I tell myself it’s good practice, I’m only convinced that Google Translate is getting a good workout.
In any case, Keith will no doubt reach proficiency before me since he’s not a reader, he’s a learner, so he is giving hours a day to reading his books in Italian, Babbel, and the news. Whereas I am too enamored with story, so I’m luxuriating in hours spent reading for pleasure.
It’s been glorious. First, I advance-read Paul Ardoin’s new mystery, The Watchful Coroner, coming out soon. So good, great edge of seat suspense. Now I’m reading an ebook I got via Libby (the app that gets electronic copies of library books), The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. Which isn’t doing a lot to assuage my sadness that we’re likely not going to get to Israel this year, but it is a fantastic book, great for lovers of Wanderlust reads. I’ll put a review up on the next Grapevine once I finish. I hope you are signed up for The Grapevine, so much fresh content coming!
There’s also been lots of hubbub in the kitchen. Gabe has learned to make espresso and cappuccino and how lovely is it to have him pop his head into my room while I’m reading to ask, “Would you like a coffee?”
Yes.
Always yes.
Our house come equipped with a moka and a Nespresso machine, which I always found a little silly but now I’m wondering where these have been all my life. How easy for Gabe to pop in a pod. Learning to foam milk by heating it and then whipping it was more work, but time well spent I think.
It’s too hot to consider cooking anything elaborate, but we’re still remembering the pasta with sausage sauce I made our first night here. Pork chops grilled outside with potatoes cooked in olive oil and the rosemary Corrado got growing right outside our door was another winner meal. Keith and I loved the rice salad I made, but the kids turned up their noses, with a complaint so identical I thought for a moment they rehearsed it, “I don’t like cold versions of food that should be hot.” Does everyone feel that way? I found it delicious and so refreshing, so if anyone wants the recipe, let me know and I’ll write it up. With our first order from the butcher we made pork braciole (my favorite cut, around the shoulder) and a quick pasta with a sauce made from the handful of tomatoes our friends bring with any gift.
Really I just want to make that sausage sugo again.
I suppose in summary, I’d say our days are simple. Marked sometimes by Paola dropping by with cuttlefish sauce for our evening pasta, or a loaf of bread and onion pizza still warm from the forno, or homemade jam, or lemons and cookies from Liguria (really we are quite spoiled). Or Martha knocking with a bag of bread and produce and olive oil. But mostly it’s a lot of sinking into each moment. Letting scents tilt our noses heavenward until we look at each other with shining eyes to say, “the forno” or “onions and rosemary cooking in olive oil” or “what could they be burning?”
Other moments stand out. The cop arriving at our door rings first among them. We emailed ASL (the health department) when we arrived, as instructed by friends who arrived before us, but hadn’t gotten a response. Keith was reading on the terrazza when Brenda called down from the garden above that a police officer was on the way. We opened the door, masked, our hands clasped in front of us like good children. The lady officer appeared around the bend, neat and trim, her jaunty hat perched on her head, her mask oriented just so. It was tricky to understand, but eventually we figured out that we needed to call ASL. Keith did so immediately, answering their questions about our health. I know other foreigners have received more visits, and phone calls to ask for their temperature (I brought our thermometer for that purpose), so I’ll let you know what happens from here. ASL did tell us that though our quarantine ends the 19th, we are liberated the following day.
Masks drying in our “alley”
Other breaks in the fluid blur of our lives have come in the form of live “concerts”. The guy in the house below will nowadays take his guitar out for a spin about once a day. We love it when he plays Italian songs. We love it when he plays “Country Roads” (and can’t help singing along from our perch on the wall). We love all of it. It’s all we can do to not break into applause. As soon as we hear the first notes strummed across his guitar, we race to the terrazza to listen. When we’re free from quarantine, I want to find him and tell him that his music is the thing I didn’t know our quarantine needed.
Last night’s meteor shower was another delight, this time celestial. Maybe I hadn’t gotten enough of evening breezes, because after feasting on our Magnum ice cream bars, I realized that not once had I sat outside after dinner. The kids decided to join us, which surprised me…sitting under the stars doesn’t really seem the stuff of entertainment. We settled in, and Gabe got to work trying to figure out what planet we keep seeing while eating dinner. it glows magnetically in the fading daylight.
Jupiter!
We leaned back and sighed in wonder. How lovely to dine with Jupiter. Just then we shouted incomprehensibly as a flare of orange split the night sky. We pointed and laughed, our words still unable to take form. Our 13-year-old fact-finder did a spot of research and discovered that we had accidentally stumbled upon Notte di San Lorenzo, an annual event when Italians believe that the skies celebrate the martyrdom of San Lorenzo. The meteor shower happens all over the world, of course, as the earth spins through a standing area of ice and stones. We enjoyed feeling the Italianness of it, as well as the shared experience.
Now, life isn’t all warm breezes carrying the scent of woodsmoke and nights threaded with starlight. Like in any Italian town, the mosquitos here are voracious; thank goodness we aren’t plagued by papatacci as we were in our first year in Spello (not one of those horrible beasts spotted here) and also thank goodness for Susan dropping by with benadryl and dopopuntura (after bite) to soothe Gabe’s blistered appearance. Siena’s lack of sleep dampened her usual sunny energy (and thus all our joy) until we realized that she hadn’t been taking her supplements since we left Charlottesville. Did that help? Maybe. Or maybe it was just time. Or maybe the last 2 days of sleep were a fluke.
Who knows what’s around the bend?
This quarantine of ours, it’s a time of transition. The second week may prove harder, our wanting to don fake mustaches to traipse to Bar Bonci or Bar Birbo or just to walk these hallowed streets may turn to actual aggravation at being closed in. We may get annoyed with all this together time or maybe Gabe hopped up on caffeine will become a liability. Maybe the wall of heat in the forecast will grate our nerves until we get snappy.
Plus, we’re out of wine.
For now, I won’t invite trouble. Instead, I’ll lean into the comfort of these hallowed days. This time of practice. And remembering what it’s like to live slowly, from a heart unriddled by static.
This morning Gabe asked me, “Do you know what I’m looking forward to today?”
“What’s that, honey?”
“A nectarine.”
That pretty much sums it up.
How would you pass your days in Italian quarantine? Please do share this post by using the buttons below to help us share our story!
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