Why I'll Never Hook Up With An Italian Guy

I'm not saying they aren't hot in a primal, musky sort of way, but Italian dudes aren't for me.  Not straight-up guidos anyway, and not those gorillas from Jersey Shore.  A quarter Italian?  Maybe.  But no one from the home land, that's for sure.

Why?  Case in point: Alessio, the contractor who was here at the house yesterday morning, "overseeing" the work on the bathroom floor (meaning: he chatted Christine and I up, talked on his phone, looked at our Facebook photos with us).  He's kinda cute, reminded me of Jason Segal from I Love You, Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. 

Christine was emailing and he said, "Ahh, Facebook?" 

"You have Facebook?" she asked, quickly pulling up the FB website.  "What's your name?"

He spelled and she typed, and up popped his profile, resplendent with a Euro-chic pic of Alessio in super-short hair, tanned face and aviator glasses.  I pointed to his marital status and Christine clicked on the name of his wife.  When her profile popped up, Alessio made his best puppy dog face and shook his head.  "Oh, she -- she's kind of my ex-wife."

Christine and I howled.  I said, "Yeah, as soon as you're out the door, it's -- " and I pantomimed licking my ring finger and forcing my wedding band over my knuckle and into my pocket.  

Alessio said, "Tu?"

"Married," I said.

"Perhaps," and here he did a great Italian male shrug, "you need a... ah, new, husband...?"

"But I like mine," I said, and pulled up my FB page.  The other workers crowded behind Alessio and watched as I scrolled through pix from our visit to Versailles.  Sensing the virility of Raf, even in photos of him bicycling with small girls through the French countryside, Alessio and Mirko faded back to their work, leaving Christine and me to wade through more photos of my family. 

I'm not saying they're not attractive, y'all.  But it ain't gonna happen.  Not up in he-ah!

Jewels in Cortona

This is my friend Christine and the Cortonese jewelry artisan Antonio Massarutto.  Christine showed me a few rings she'd bought from him and, after seeing him strolling his baby through the Piazza Repubblica, insisted that we check out his shop.

I expected a few old-fashioned-looking, hand-hammered rings with tiny stones, but that's not at all what I discovered.

Antonio, who is also a sculptor, uses unusual metals -- white and rose golds, for example -- and gems and stones like fire opals to create clean, modern pieces.  I tried on several, including the gorgeous, hard-angled gold ring at the bottom of this post, with onyx pave-cut gems encrusted on the sides like stars scattered in a constellation.  He put a bronze ring on my finger, which I quickly took off again and pointed to a gold ring.  

"Gold," he said.  "Why always gold?"

"Oh, I'm sort of into the 1970s Carly Simon, big hat, flowy dress, barefoot thing lately," I said.  "I love silver, but I'm more into the gold vibe lately." Christine nodded in agreement, but Antonio, who didn't grow up with American pop culture, obviously, was at a loss.  

"Cah-rrrr-leee Simon?" he asked.  Christine and I shrugged, shared the moment, continued gaping at the jewelry.

Finally, I chose these two delicate simple rings that can be worn together or separately.  "These are for everyday," Antonio said.

What he means is everyday fabulous.

Gastronomica

So, this may be TMI (* Mom, if you're reading this, that means "too much information" *), but most of the time when I travel, my stomach is upset. For example, even at my yoga retreat, an hour away from home, I find that my stomach gets nervous and I have a tough time calming it down. I planned ahead for this, buying medicine that can either speed up or stop any intestinal difficulties should they arise.  Nothing ruins a trip like doubling over in pain before you're even through a museum line.


But there's something so different about this trip to Italy.  I have been telling friends that it's a purpose-free journey; meaning, I've been to many of these tourist spots and museums and cities before, so I don't have any "must-see" items on my list, just a vague "well, if we get there, that'd be pretty cool..." feeling.  No expectations.  Just hoping to soak up some of the culture.  Kinda low-maintenance. 


Five years ago, Christine and I met here, in this house when we attended an art workshop, and so there's an easy familiarity in "living" here together.  We both have some food allergies and are very sensitive to certain foods, so having our own kitchen is a great relief.  Since we only have to feed ourselves - I don't have to forage for kid-friendly options or abide by anything but my own hunger patterns and caffeine requirements - it's super easy.  Scramble some eggs.  Cut an apple and some parmesan.  Peel a blood orange. Mix some ricotta, cashews and ground flaxseed into frutti di basco yogurt. Saute some gorgeous veggies -- mini zucchini, arugula, heirloom tomatoes, cipollini onions, baby carciofi (artichokes) -- in some fresh olive oil from the bottle on the marble counter.  


Yesterday, we went to the tiny family-owned trattoria in Cortona where a grandma cooks in ancient pots in a home-style kitchen and ate steaming bowls of pasta.  I never eat pasta at home, but this (photo at the top of this post) was a bowl of egg tagliatelle, freshly made and topped with a ragu that, yes, your Italian nonna would make. As we ate, one of the owners' daughters arrived with a stroller and her 4-month-old baby boy Andrea, a couple of Cortonese businessmen arrived for lunch and then an expat redhead with her auburn-haired son, everyone making a fuss over the baby with the big eyes and chewable cheeks. The last time I was here, I had to squeeze through the tiny kitchen, navigating my way past the two grandbabies in high chairs eating their lunches, to get to the bathroom.  It seemed like a good sign to me: there's no way a nonna would feed her grandkids anything less than the freshest, most delicious ingredients.  Not being an Italian by birth, this was the next best thing to having a traditional family meal in my Italian grandma's kitchen.


And I feel good.  So relaxed.  My body is happy and well-fed.  Abbondanza indeed!

Caffeine in My Veins

And so I arrived and my friend Christine helped me lug my heavy baggage up a few crazy steep hills and through tiny cobblestone alleys to Casa San Marcos, then up a steep flight of stairs to my room, which overlooks Chiesa San Francesco, a 13th-century church where swallows gather to dip and soar and sing in the springtime.  I tossed my luggage in the corner and took off my boots, then met Christine in the kitchen, where she was busy making the first of what would be several pots of espresso.  Which we drank in mugs, not the thimble-sized caffe cups that the Italians use.  "I know you're wiped," Christine said as we chattered the hours away, "but you have to force yourself to stay up so that jetlag doesn't kill you."  

At 7 pm, I waved the white flag and begged to go to sleep.  Christine ran a hot bath for me in the newly renovated bathroom - I'll have to take pix of it later, you'll drool it's so gorgeous - and after a half-hour and two Tylenol PMs, I was passed out, which seems counter-intuitive considering that I'm a lightweight American coffee drinker.  I awoke at 5:30 the next morning, so by the time Christine and I gathered in the kitchen at 7 am, I was ready for more caffe.  

At 8 am, the contractors arrived to finish the bathroom floors and Christine put on another two pots of espresso while I nursed a "palate-cleanser" of American coffee (made with Starbucks Via coffee powder).  "Caffe?" she offered to the three men, who looked at us suspiciously.  

"Caffe Americano?" Alessio, a dead-ringer for the I Love You, Man actor Jason Segal, asked, nose curling up, eyes squinting. Christine, who spent a year in Rome studying fashion, speaks very passable Italian and assured him that it was strong enough to drink.

The other two guys, full-on back-country Neapolitan dudes from the south, wandered in and grabbed a cup, taking a quick shot from the first pot and gesturing comically at the 2nd one, which was too light (the color of watery mud rather than a thick soupy brown).  Mirko asked if he could smoke.  Between the smell of the cigarette and the warm aroma of the espresso and the loud carrying-on of the Italians, I could swear I was home again.  I swigged back my dull American coffee and went back into the fray, filling my mug with espresso, knowing that it will be a long road of coffee rehab when I return to the US.  

But what the hell, right? When in Rome...

Church Bells Outside My Balcony in Cortona

Cortona Church Bells from Erin Shachory on Vimeo.

The Journey

In recent years, I've found myself snapping quick self-portraits with my packed bags before I leave on a trip.  I'm not sure if it's the idea of capturing the moments BEFORE a life-changing trip that moves me, or the attempt to stop time before it speeds up, but it is like a reflex for me now.  I took this one before I left for Italy on Tuesday morning.


After leaving LA, I had a fabulous, easy flight to Philly, then a quick layover and another flight to Rome. Because it's the off season (I mean, really, why would anyone be traveling to Italy when it's cold and rainy???) and we had a ton of airline miles to use, I wrangled my way into getting first class seats for my trip.  It wasn't as though the aisles were paved with gold or I felt like a celebrity or anything cuckoo like that, but it was really a wonderful experience, starting with a complimentary glass of champagne as I sat down.  


Anyway, I'm telling you this because I was able to take advantage of that part of the journey being an end to itself.  I settled into my seat and watched a Glee marathon on my iPhone - seven episodes in a row, nearly a whole day's worth of show tunes and teen drama - happy as a clam.  It was sublime.  Just that - the ability to be a "captive audience" without distractions or phone or email or kids or anything - was such a gift. 


The second picture is from the 4th leg of my planes-trains-automobiles journey toward Cortona, taken as the train sped quickly away from the Roma Termini (main train station in Rome) toward Tuscany.  I had suddenly remembered the last time I was at the Roma Termini... I was 17 and going with a school trip from Naples to Paris.  We'd changed trains in Rome and, as the train left the station, I was making out with my boyfriend, the steel and chaos and noise of the trains and rails and travelers on the platforms fading rapidly as we raced away from Rome.  


I hadn't thought of that day for years, but now I sat on the train as a woman in her late 30s, wondering how life had wedged so much time and distance between that memory and the current scene. I wondered how it was that I could remember so well what it was like to be that girl on that long-ago train, could empathize with her insecurities and desire to be grown up already damn it, and yet be so far from her.  I thought of the book "A Wrinkle in Time" and the concept of time as a tesseract, a line that connects point A with point B in a nonlinear fashion; instead of being a long line between the two points, it is like a strand of yarn that dips down in the middle and the ends meet each other, so you don't need to cross the entire strand of time to get from one moment to another.  That's what I felt like, sitting on that train listening to Florence & the Machine's "The Dog Days are Over": like I was touching my hand through the window of time to the girl that I was the last time I was here. 


Even the first part of my journey illuminated the difference between now and then - the girl who would sometimes dodge the train conductor and get off the train as soon as it stopped rather than buy a cheap ticket and the woman who had enough airline miles to travel first-class and boarded a train with a pre-purchased rail ticket.  The dog days are over, indeed... but sometimes they are missed.  

Antici-----pation!

Oh, the nail-biting suspense of a trip that is only hours away.  I'm eating breakfast, then will board a shuttle, then go through security, then find my gate, then get on a plane and hope to sleep or watch a few movies... just trying to contain my EXCITEMENT about going to Italy again.

Sure, I've been making light of this trip, which literally knocked on my door and invited itself in.  

"You can stay in Cortona in a friend's villa," Opportunity said, settling onto my couch and sitting back, gazing carelessly at its nails.  "I'll bet you've got airline miles you could use..." and here Opportunity stopped and looked up at me, smiling sheepishly, "...an upshot of your (ahem!) advanced age."

I was about to feel insulted and show Opportunity the finger, then the door, when it presented the prize: two weeks in Italy.  My favorite city (Florence) and the one I've been wanting to see again (Rome).  It's been five years since my last Italian journey and every time I return I feel like I'm home.  I love Italy and I've been saying that I want to go for my 40th birthday for years... not realizing the power that an idea has once you've set it free, that sometimes these magical words can search for a way to make dreams real while you're going about the business of the "real world."

Seeing my shock and the wheels turning above my head like a halo, Opportunity snorted.  "Not so concerned about being 39 anymore, eh?"

"I suppose I could work it out... No, no, I can't..." I stammered.  "The kids, Raf... Who'll walk the dog?" 

Opportunity shrugged, waited.

"...My cat's a nightmare, the laundry piles up, Emme's got so many 5th grade activities... It'll be February for chrissakes, freezing and rainy..."

"You done?" Opportunity asked.

I nodded.  

"The offer stands," it said, suddenly standing up, putting its coat and hat back on.  Winking, it said, "Consider it."

But by the time Opportunity reached the handle of my front door, I'd already shouted, "I'll take it!"

And here we go... Two hours til flight time...