Wild Asparagus and Me
/I’ve been doing it again.
Not consciously. Not consciously at all. But I’ve been doing it again.
I’ve been using my children, my family, really, as a shield between me and the unknown.
Which is funny, right? After all, I feel more known in Spello than in my neighborhood in Charlottesville. Not that people really know much about me, so much as they get me. Or maybe it’s that I get myself here and so I project that, who knows. All I know is, this is a safe place for me. I feel like I can make mistakes and people will point them out and that actually feels okay.
And yet.
I’ve been doing it again.
I didn’t realize until this morning when yesterday’s excellent lunch at Drinking Wine and dinner of ridiculous snack foods while playing an escape room in a box (super fun) caught up with me and I felt like I had to get my humors flowing.
Keith, who had already spent the morning practicing driving the Ape (which is, as it turns out, far harder than it seems when you watch old farmers tooling about) had no interest. Siena claimed her hair was wet. Gabe was still asleep, and he had a little bout of his long-haul COVID (I link to this every time I can, because there just isn’t enough conversation about this aspect of the virus, and I don’t want people to struggle to understand what’s happening to themselves or their child a long as we did, since doctors aren’t often aware) symptoms yesterday so I felt it best to let him sleep until his body decided it had had enough.
I stood there in my exercise clothes, hand on the gate and felt…ambivalent.
Not worried, but…unshielded.
It occurred to me that maybe I need my family as armor because though Spello is understandable, Spello in a pandemic is still a learning curve. I don’t want to make mistakes that could signal that I’m not respecting the norms here. So I’m watchful of when to put my mask on, when to take it off, where, etc. With enough of us together, I figure it’s harder to pick out any one of our behaviors. Together, we’re like a flock of birds, rustling and waving and grinning and wriggling.
This could make sense, but I didn’t feel the “click” of having nailed it. This wasn’t about being worried about being with people, I was going to be on a trail, away from people. This feeling, this feeling was more akin to going on a date with someone.
And that person is me. Yes, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I am getting alone time once in awhile thanks to my kids being village-schooled: Siena’s new forays into her studio and art lessons, Gabe’s homeschooling taking him afield as well as his Italian lessons, but those times I’ve been here—home; which is full of distractions.
Going out, for a walk, on my own, with nobody but me to listen to. With nobody but me to refer to. With nobody but me to decide when to turn back. With nobody but me for anyone to look at when they pass…
It felt oddly bare. Not naked, nothing that exposed. More like, if I were a person who wore make-up, to suddenly go out fresh-faced.
Goodness. I used to love being alone. A date with myself, a meal of pho with a book propped in front of me, that used to be an enormous treat. What has this pandemic done to me? The very thought prompted me to fling open the door before I could talk myself out of it. I jogged up the alley to Piazza Gramsci and paused. Where to go? I decide. To the right. Then what? I decide again. To the right again.
As I walked, I passed men and women with large handfuls of asparagus and I remembered Gabe telling Paola about his love of cicoria and how when we went out to forage it, we’d found nothing. Which prompted Siena to declare that we’re terrible at this, to which Gabe shrugged that maybe it’s just out of season. Then Siena clinched, “Then how are restaurants serving it as a seasonal vegetable?” Paola had laughed and said that Gabe was right, it was hard to find any now, restaurants probably pulled it from their freezers. But it was coming, cicoria was. Along with asparagus.
Look what’s in the heart of branches! Spello!
This surprised me. I thought asparagus poked through the ground in spring. But then I realized that when we moved here 8 years ago, I wouldn’t have noticed people hauling in asparagus in September. In September, I couldn’t see the Roman writing etched all over town. Partly because we just got here so had no ability to discern figure from ground. But also because September spells the start of school and my mind had been too busy envisioning one horrific scenario after another to notice people carrying plastic bags. Who has time for asparagus when one’s children were on the cusp of Italian public school? Not me.
I found myself on the aqueduct trail. With a pause at the fountain to press my finger against the faucet to force the water to spring from a notch like a water fountain, I refreshed myself. Then I dragged my hand across the splashes all over my face. I’m not good at turning the springing water into a tidy arc. Not yet anyhow, I consoled myself.
Then I set off, Italian music playing in my earbuds (hey, is it just called music now?)—Jovanotti, Daniele Silvestri, Antonio Maggio, Malika Ayane. Within moments, I found my rhythm.
I ran when I felt like it.
I paused when I felt like it.
I took photos when I felt like it.
I took a detour when I felt like it—when the romance of ducking under an arch of olive boughs pulled me deeper down the hill, until I realized that that scrape of a trail led nowhere and I had to scramble to reach the path again. But I was okay with that. I told myself, better to be a person who attempts a spot of whimsy than one who ignores it.
And once in awhile, I poked about in the spiny asparagus green, hoping for a sighting.
Nothing. Maybe Siena did have the measure of it and we really are terrible at this foraging thing. I thought I could intuit how to relax my eyes and see through the forest-hued bramble to the tender, mint-green stalk; after all, I am usually one of the first to see the Millennium Falcon in the 3-D poster at the Escape Room, but, as it turns out, those skills don’t translate.
Finally, success. A slim and tender stalk. I plunged toward it without thinking and the greenery snatched at my hand. Undaunted, I snapped off the asparagus and popped the end into my mouth.
Do you see the asparagus in there? Me neither. Wait! There it is!
Wow. I’d forgotten how wild asparagus tastes different than its cultivated cousin. I savored its distinct chive flavor. I nibbled a little more and then decided to save it to share with the family.
A single stalk. Or a half-stalk by this point.
Though my walk out I’d seen almost nobody on the trail, on the way back, the hills were full of people scouring under the olive trees. Apparatus, clothes, and, notably, bags heavy with asparagus.
I looked down at my humble stalk.
I decided I want a whole plate of this, and to get that, somebody else would have to cook for me… maybe we can go out to dinner tonight. I remembered how our dinner at Trentina’s in the piazza with Paola, Giovanni, Angelo, and Anna. Keith had ordered tagliolini pasta with wild asparagus and guanciale. That was excellent pasta, just what I wanted now. Thinking back to that night, I giggled remembering how I’d asked Angelo about the gestures for brutta and bella, and he’d shaken his head to tell me that those signs didn’t exist. We burst out laughing to tell him that he’s the one who taught them to us (we’d spent much of quarantine mimicking the sour look on his face when he’d dragged his thumb across his cheek to say, “brutta”). Paola chuckled that those signs were Angelo’s own invention. Which launched him into a story about when someone tells a lot of lies, he’s called a patatone. A big potato. To which Keith and I said in unison that Angelo himself was a patatone. And the bells had rung over the piazza, winding with the evening breezes, and Paola had looked at me and said, “sono contenta” right when I looked at her to say, “sono contenta.” My memories of the wild asparagus are all tied up with that particular joy, and yet, I’m fairly certain that that plate of pasta was extraordinary.
I stopped at one asparagus bramble after another, nibbling a little more of my wilting stalk. It’s funny. I pride myself on my ability to be in the moment, to notice, to appreciate, like that night eating dinner in the piazza. But I can’t find more than one stalk of asparagus in the kilometers of asparagus bramble.
Meanwhile, the bells call villagers into church, but they are finding their church here, in the groves. Gloves to shield their hands, eyes scanning the ground. They know something I’m just figuring out. The universe, she provides.
With time, I hope I can once again lean into this knowledge. That I will trust myself and my eyes and my heart enough to bound into the groves, with hands ready to fill with wild asparagus.
