Mostly I like living in Italy and rarely, if ever, regret the major life choices that brought me and kept me here, but then, at six o’clock in the morning, I receive an email with a picture of my baby sister holding her newborn son and I wish I lived a little closer, or even right next door.
Yesterday I made my cycling debut. (I feel like there should be a smiley face after that first sentence.)
The orthopedist had recommended cycling the few times I went to see him, and the physical therapist said it would be better than running too much, and some friends from my running club offered to take me out. All I needed was a road bike. And through a friend I managed to borrow one for a couple of months, just to try it out.
When I was still young enough to spend my summers with my grandparents on Lake Berryessa in Northern California, i.e., the most beautiful place in the world, my grandfather would sometimes take me cycling with him along the Silverado Trail. It would have been impossible not to love everything about it: the wine country scenery, the cappuccino before we turned back towards home, the special time away from all the other cousins vying for attention. The way Pop-pop would trick me at the end of every ride into thinking there was something wrong with his bike, or that we needed to stop, so that I would slow down and he could beat me to the car in a final sprint for which he had most likely been storing up all his energy, and which, based on the mischievous grin and sparkle in his eye, was the highlight of his ride.
Yesterday was a much shorter ride on a much easier route but with a much more challenging bike. It may not have been Northern California, but it was Northern Italy. And the way we went was very pretty, lush and verdant, and filled with all the smells of a beautiful spring evening after a light afternoon rain, and I only fell twice. (Again, with the smiley face.)
I liked it. I can hardly wait to try it out again, if my cycling teacher will take me for another spin. (I am still pretty slow, and prone to falling.)
Also, it has come to my attention that, in a little over one month’s time, there will be a triathlon on a pretty lake in the rolling hills of Northern Italy’s wine country, not far from here. A little over a month might give someone, if she were so inclined, enough time to prepare.
Just saying.
Yesterday was Labor Day in Italy and almost everything was closed, including schools and shops and businesses, but not our town pool, which picked the holiday to kick off the summer season. They opened the outdoor pools and water slides, the beach volleyball court, the mini soccer field and the playground. They had games and entertainment for the kids, free beer and spritz for the parents, hot dogs and hamburgers and pizza and chips and trays and trays of sliced bread with Nutella. It has been a cool and rainy spring here, but yesterday was only a little cloudy, and it was warm with a nice breeze. It was very good weather for our first day at the pool.
We rode our bikes there in the morning and we stayed all day, and it felt like the first real day of summer, that carefree feeling of a long string of sunny days ahead.
In the evening, friends came for dinner, the easy kind you don’t really need to impress, but everything turned out well nonetheless, and after we ate the boys put on a miming show for us, mostly about boxing matches or people beating each other up.
Someone said it would take a winter and a summer after my separation to feel OK again, and maybe for her that’s how it was, but it took me longer than that. Two years, less a month, and I was whole again. I was getting better all the time, but it took the injury to get me over the last little hump. I guess sometimes it can do you good to stop running, stand where you are, take a look around. Then everything heals all together and you can start up again with that carefree feeling of a long string of sunny days ahead, and you wouldn’t change a thing.
My sister mentioned something written by Louise Erdrich to me some time ago, something about love and apples and not letting love go to waste. My sister, I think, knows my biggest greatest fear, which is that I might waste this one precious chance at life that I am so lucky to have been given, and she also probably has a pretty clear picture of how I can be when something doesn’t work out the way I thought or hoped it would. I am either more determined to try again, or else I close the book on it. And so the quote has torn me in two ever since she sent it to me.
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
I hate to waste all those sweet apples. But ugh, that bit about the breaking; I’m not about to taste any yet either.
Last night I told the boys they would have to sleep in their own beds, for once. I needed a night to stretch out and not wake up to Four’s laughter in his sleep or Eight’s elbow in my face. They took it pretty well, but not as well as Lou whom I swear I saw perk up at my announcement. Sure enough, when my bedtime came, she followed me upstairs and made a nest for herself on top of the covers between my legs. Usually she doesn’t come right away; she waits for the boys to be good and out before she ventures up to claim her spot on me, and sometimes not even then. It can be dangerous in that bed with so many spastic legs.
She is kind of like my dog. She likes to lie down near me when I am working, and she tries to get me to trip over her whenever I am cooking. I think she is hoping for scraps of fish or chicken, which she sometimes gets as a special treat in her special treat bowl, the one with the little cat face at the bottom, although the little cat ears broke off in the dishwasher.
In the evening, when it’s dark, she sits by the door of our apartment and cries to be let out. I sometimes let her explore the stairwell to get some exercise and see a bit of the outside world, ha ha. She is not very good at jumping or climbing because of something not quite right in her hips, and so she can take the stairs slowly, one at a time, but we have to help her up to the windowsill when she wants to look out. If she is desperate she will climb the radiator. Otherwise we put a chair out for her.
What she lacks in agility she makes up for in goodness. I told her once, firmly, not to climb on the kitchen table when we first got her and she never tried it again. Whenever I am starting to freak out about work she comes over to calm me down. She doesn’t realize that when I am typing furiously at my keyboard to meet a deadline, the last thing I want is a cat sitting on my hands. I try not to hurt her feelings by moving her right away.
When the boys are sick she seeks them out, and when I was having my most particularly intense of the Reiki sessions for my foot and could not relax, she came over and curled up on top of me and all of a sudden it worked. (Although I was willing to try anything, it was until then that I had my doubts about the practice.)
My initial concerns about adopting a pet were similar to my initial concerns about having a baby. Would I get sick of it after a month or two? Would I remember to feed it? Would I be capable of keeping it alive? But luckily, like offspring, animals grow on you, you start to love them and somehow they flourish under your imperfect care, and this makes you only love them more. And they love you and you love them, and so it goes, on and on. And one day you find yourself writing sappy posts on the internet about your most lovely, poorly-proportioned, clumsy cat who is just about perfect in every way, who takes your breath away just by watching the birds outside your window in the springtime, and then calls to you to help her get back down.
Seven turned eight this weekend, and it was a whirlwind of activity.
What can I say about Eight? Every year I think he has grown so much, and changed, and yet the sweet, silly, smart inside part of him that makes him exactly who he is and no one else is always there. He was once so painfully shy and quiet that when he started preschool the teacher told me he did not say a word for the first two months. And he is still very reserved with strangers and bestows hugs and kisses only on very rare occasions, but his second-grade teacher says he is a chatterbox and at home the only way to get him to stop talking is if you give him a book. Although, even then, he will read aloud the funny parts. He tells – and acts out – endless stories. He can get so taken away by the drawn-out story he is telling us at dinner that he will forget to eat and instead stands up because if he’s sitting down it doesn’t come out right. Sometimes, when he pauses, I beg him to take a bite.
He has always touched his brother’s ears and is always searching for them. Sometimes I see him reach out and stroke a close friend’s ears in the same way; it is both intimate and distracted in that easy, careless way young boys have with each other.
He likes school, he likes being with his friends, their races the playground, and he seems to like the learning part of it too. The bits of his days he mentions the most are lunchtime and recess, yoga and chess, and when the art historian comes to restore a statue in the schoolyard with his class.
At home, he reads and draws and writes comics. He still loves Legos and building things.
He is the child who makes me look like I know what I am doing. But really, he is the one who has it all figured out.
The dearth of new blog posts is due to time I’ve been spending at the park with my two favorite boys, a couple of big translation projects, swimming and running. The weather here is absolutely breathtakingly perfect and beautiful in every way and I am so, so happy to feel like my old self again. As of today I am back up to 10k and sometime next week I hope to meet up with my trainer at the track again.
 | Chris on bicycle |
 | Annemarie on feeling the distance |
 | Gilla on feeling the distance |
 | meredith on feeling the distance |
 | Aunt Patti on feeling the distance |
