So it wasn’t until this afternoon that I realized I’m legitimately going to miss this city. And not for reasons you would expect—friends, the dark room, being able to take the train to Rome and back in the space of a day, gelato. But because, like every place you live for an extended period of time, Firenze has begun to feel like home.
On Friday afternoon Libby and I met at the gelateria Grom, our usual haunt—I ordered one of my two favorite combinations: Gianduja and Stracciatella—walked over to the bus stop next to the Duomo, hopped on the 14, and went to Jamie’s apartment for dinner. We watched the second half of the Colin Firth version of Pride & Prejudice (starting from Mr. Darcy’s first proposal), and at 11 o’clock slouched through the pouring rain to the bus stop and returned to our respective apartments.
* * *
I have places I frequent regularly, a female baker I stop to talk to for several minutes before returning to class (usually photography, sometimes sculpture) with quattro bianco e nero biscotti, a barista who knows my order by heart (un cappuccino da portare via), grocery stores and a favorite brand of yogurt (Müller, specifically blackberry and raspberry), friends who live in nearby apartments, public transportation I’m familiar with, shortcuts and routes, meeting places.
I know how to talk to locals and shopkeepers, where to buy bus tickets, how and when I can ride a bus sans ticket (at night, and by re-stamping a previously validated ticket—don’t worry, I’m not turning into a hooligan, sometimes I just get caught late at night without a biglietto, and no tabacchi are open in which to buy a new one). I know where to find a smidgen of peace and quiet when I desperately need some.
And suddenly, just as I’m beginning to pull together the semblance of a life here, it’s time to return to my real home. I honestly can’t tell you exactly how I feel about that. Which is perhaps why I’ve been having such a horrific time falling asleep for the past week.
* * *
I will not, however, miss the burgeoning mosquito population.
* * *
The final photography project is due this Thursday. As of right now, I have printed 17 photographs. I’ve reserved my enlarger (numero sei) for six hours this weekend and for two and a half hours Monday night.
I canned the environmental idea.
Instead, last Saturday, my camera and I traveled to the Parco Della Maremma near Grosseto, a lovely, small town by the Mediterranean. Jacopo helped me find a place to stay—he and his wife have friends who conveniently live virtually in the park and who also conveniently rent out rooms for reasonable rates. (That alliteration was completely coincidental. As was that one.)
When I arrived at the bus station, Paola, a five-foot-tall woman with black, plastic-framed glasses and reddish-brown hair, greeted me in a mixture of English and Italian. I had been under the impression that I’d be speaking Italian for the entire weekend (as had my roommate Sarah, who has yet to be disabused of this notion). Apparently Paola had also been searching for someone on which to practice her English. Thus began two days of me talking in broken Italian and my host responding in broken English. Eventually she took to walking around with a sizeable dictionary labeled “Inglese”.
The drive up to the house, a beautiful white building covered in vines and ornamented with traditional black shutters, was a dirt road littered with rocks and lined with trees. A wooden fence enclosed a backyard filled with children’s toys and clotheslines laden with recently washed laundry.
I clambered out of the Fiat weighed down by my purse, my schoolbag crammed with clothing and toiletries as opposed to its usual load of books, and, of course, my camera. Their daughter, Bianca, was playing in the yard, and she scampered back into the house upon my arrival.
After I put my bags down in the playroom (which, at the time, I mistakenly thought was where I would be sleeping), my hosts served me a delicious lunch, including a cabbage dish that was one of the only, if not the only, cabbage dish I’ve ever truly enjoyed.
Before it was time for dessert, I told Paola and Roberto (the husband) I was going out with my camera. They seemed flabbergasted by the idea of not eating some biscotti a mezzogiorno, but I rarely have dessert after lunch. So, before they themselves delved into their panforte and biscotti, Paola and Bianca walked me to the first little marsh (which was both extremely kind and unexpected, I expected something along the lines of a finger pointing off into the distance for guidance) and returned to the house, leaving me, at last, alone with my thoughts and nature.
* * *
Much of what I did and how I felt and what I wrote about are extremely personal, and I apologize for not planning to include some of the more interesting thoughts that occurred to me that afternoon.
The weather was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for a better day. A light breeze, a smattering of clouds, just enough sun. Birds calling to one another above me. I stopped to write in my journal after I finished my first roll of film. Sitting on an abandoned pile of bricks out of which weeds and flowers were growing, I was surrounded by ancient, thoroughly rusted, farm equipment.
As always at these moments, I thought about nature’s eventual victory over man. What’s odd is that, unlike the majority of my fellow human beings, I find a sort of solace in the idea that nothing would miss our species if it were to disappear from the earth. Human beings are but one of millions of species, and this notion that we are somehow superior to all other living things is but a fool’s attempt to justify his existence. I do not believe I am any more important than the two snowshoe hare and the dog in pursuit I saw at the park simply because I can think about past, present, and future, feel emotions I can define, and sing and dance and write and read.
But I digress. I did not intend to lecture my readers on the meaning of existence and to try to convince them that we are all insignificant in the face of life, the universe, and everything. This is only what I believe; I don’t want to force others to see the world as I do.
For the most part, I wrote about how much more stable my hands are now when taking photos at slower shutter speeds (1/30, 1/15) than they used to be.
* * *
Thirty minutes, several forays into the mud, and much ankle twisting later, I finally arrived at the beach. The translucent blue ocean sparkled, the sand was a pure white, and the wind blew around the wispy plants scattered amongst the dunes. The hour was four, so after I took several photographs, I curled up on the sand with my black fleece over my face and my camera looped around my wrist and tucked between my arm and stomach, and rested for a good long time. And I was wonderfully, wonderfully… wonderfully alone. (Five U.S. dollars to anyone who can specifically identify that reference.)
* * *
I slowly made my way back to the house, stopping constantly to bushwhack, to photograph, and to write. It was with a touch of sadness that I stepped once more through the side door.
But good things waited for me there. Paola and Roberto have Bianca and another child, 22-month-old Francesco, who had been dropped off at lunchtime by their nonno (grandfather). If there is one part of my life back home that I miss most dearly, it may be being around children—when babysitting, volunteering, whatever.
Francesco was an extremely curious little boy, and he took a liking to me immediately. Probably because I made lots of faces at him during that first lunch. He loved moving things around the kitchen table—his glass, several napkins, a soup bowl, a carton of whole milk—and scaring his mother in the process. During lunch on Sunday he tried to escape from his mother’s arms, and when she asked him where he was going, he said, “La,” and pointed at me. She then explained to him that I was returning to Firenze in a few hours, and he became visibly upset.
Bianca was initially more reserved, but once she became comfortable with me, she began to talk avidly in that extremely dear five-year-old way that is hard to explain but easy to identify. She would talk on and on about school and her friends to her mother, all in Italian of course. When we were going to the beach for a bit before my bus was to leave, she asked her mother if she could lead me to the car, and she took my hand and led me around the house to their little white Fiat.
Sitting on the sand, facing away from the sun and the water, I carefully observed Paola with Bianca and Francesco. An idea that had been unconsciously brewing for the past 24 hours came to the forefront of my mind—next time I live in Italy, if there is a next time, I would like to be an au pair for a family that lives in the country. If Paola and Roberto were interested, I’d love to work for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment