Why Would You Want To Go There?

“Why would you want to go there?” my mother says to me when I tell her that my husband and I are considering moving to Italy for half of the coming year…or years… we haven’t decided. My mother who became a world traveler at the age of four, during the Great Depression, has, in the intervening eighty years, become a homebody, not venturing more than a few hundred miles in any direction from her home unless seriously provoked. Over time, I have come to recognize this as the standard reaction from my parental units no matter where I tell them I might be headed. I believe that “What the hell do you want to do that for?” was what my father said when I told him I was going to Ethiopia. Not speaking to me for eight months was what he did when I decided to move from the frozen tundra that is Cleveland to the beaches of Southern California. (And I ask you, what sane person wouldn’t make that choice when given the opportunity?) And I have not determined the right sequence of words to describe how my parents responded when I chose to travel behind the Iron Curtain with a gay man. My parents were rarely thrilled with my travel choices. Why I couldn’t stay in Ohio and spend my weekends with them and travel to Findlay State Park for adventure was something they couldn’t comprehend and my inability with words when cornered rendered me incapable of explaining to them fully why I couldn’t stay.

Let us examine my mother’s question: Why would I want to go there? The short list is: the weather, the food, the culture, the people. But these are not “my” people. My ancestors are strictly Northern European, some of whom came to the New World nearly 400 years ago. No Italian in me. I don’t have any recent immigrants of whom I am aware. No grandparent from a small town in a distant country that I can trace. No sense of going Home that beckons me to Italy. No, it is the light that draws me…the light that seems brighter and more yellow, 75 watts to New England’s 40. Michelangelo’s light. As though the sun is closer to Italy, loving it so much that it feels it needs to bring more warmth to that already warmed place imbuing the foothills with green and the Adriatic with blue. Actually, it is the tomatoes. If I have only red ripe tomato flesh, a crusty loaf of bread and a 5Euro bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, I will live well. And the fact that if  live in an Italian hill town with a population of 13, 000, it will be impossible for me to sit in traffic jams that last for 45 minutes so that I can travel 12 miles to a job I dislike with increasing capacity.  

It is easy to slip into “ the grass is always greener” phenomenon. When we aren’t “in” the life, in the job, in the house, we can easily picture the loveliness of the experience. Humans have untold capacity for fantasy so we envision the new kitchen with stainless appliances or the team of brilliant engineers we get to lead or the lack of traffic jams and think “It will all be wonderful.” The reality of life-changing experiences is that they make good copy well after the event but are not so wonderful to experience personally. One of my favorite quotes, one of unknown attribution goes something like ‘travel is something to look forward to and fondly back upon but it may not always be pleasant while you are doing it.’ I believe that life-changing events, such as I am contemplating, fall into this category. Though my spouse might argue, I believe I am also a realist. Several months in a garret in Paris, where the first new French word I learned was “cafard” which translates to cockroach, gave me firsthand experience of the struggle of moving into a new country and culture that is not particularly rose-colored. It was this same adventure that provided me with a memory of dancing under the Tour d’Eiffel on Quatorze Juillet as the fireworks exploded above the Seine. Cockroaches and Fireworks, a succinct summation of adventure.

I have a lifelong case of wanderlust. My father would tell you that it stems directly from my birthday. Born late in August, during the two weeks of vacation my father took each year, my birthday was inevitably spent in the back seat of a station wagon going to Michigan or Florida or Massachusetts. The year I got my first Barbie doll we were in Cincinnati visiting my mother’s cousins. Never spending a birthday at home, my father reasoned, has drilled some kind of craziness into her. Yep. Perhaps it’s all Barbie’s fault. I received her as a gift when I turned five, at the dawn of the Women’s Movement. For all her physical deformities, too large breasts, too long legs, too little waist and hips, the ideal embracing of which gave a multitude of eating and other disorders to little girls, Barbie was the first “empowered woman.” She had her own house, her own car, an ethnically diverse circle of friends, and a boyfriend that she didn’t marry. Arguably, she was a role model. So how could my parents think that the year they gave me Malibu Barbie’s Mustang convertible, that I would not identify this as a goal for which to strive? Fifteen years after they made that purchase, there was their daughter, in a Miata, not a Mustang, in Santa Monica, not Malibu, but I was damn close After all, my parents were the ones who set that bar. Why would they think I wouldn’t do it?

My first foray into Italy came during the Writer’s Strike of 1987. I had taken two classes in Art History at Santa Monica College because I was out of a job. The professor was a curmudgeonly fellow with a grizzled beard and a defiant attitude. Each summer he would take any student who could afford it with him on a three-week tour of Italy, Germany and Switzerland. A trip like this is now commonplace among college students but in 1987 it was still rare. Those of us who could afford it were small in number, only 10 of us, and in our late 20s to early 40s. Herb had lived for 20 years in Lugano, Switzerland, teaching at the American School there. After so many years in Europe he had seen all the major cities and works of art they held and he refused to lead our little tour through the summer throngs. Instead he chose to wander. We sat shivering in an inn at the top of a mountain having hiked up a path that eventually became a waterfall in the torrential rain that was unleashed upon our hike. We were greeted in the inn at the end of the hike by a roaring fire (for there was no central heating) and a group of German students with guitars who were singing Beatles’ songs. And we found a quiet restaurant tucked into a cave in southern Switzerland by following a small wooden arrow with the descriptor “Il Grot” scratched upon it. The very best tomatoes I have ever eaten were in that cave. It was Herb’s sense of adventure that made me want to follow him. He discovered the most delightful sights just by being quiet and observing the world around him. He seemed fearless, yet cautious. A Zen Master without knowing it. And he showed me the joys of Italy, not the Botticellis exactly or the doors of the Baptistry although he showed me those things, too. What he truly showed me was the delights of the small Italian hill town that might be projecting a live opera on the outside wall of the opera house so that those who could not afford a ticket could enjoy the music, too. And he showed me why one should always carry a Swiss Army knife, though what he might do with it in today’s airport is a mystery. And he taught me that life could be a little sweeter when you know the words to La Donna Mobilier and can sing along with a Nona in the train station in Pesaro.

I am having a fantasy. Not really the “Year in Provence” meets “Under the Tuscan Sun” because those involve too much renovation. My fantasy is more of the perfectly renovated house with quirky neighbors who speak no English but who watch The Love Boat on Satellite tv. I am looking for the “everything is warm” fantasy after 15 winters in the American Northeast. I want to go where the snow fall average is three inches for the season. Where I can take a bus through the rugged winding roads without having to drive it myself. Where every morning dawns with birds and roosters and the sunlight lasts 15 hours a day all year long. I want quiet and time to meditate.  And my fantasy has a rich soundtrack of World Music and indy pop. Drop in visitors bring wine and chocolately desserts, stay for two days and leave us richer in spirit. The bedding is magically and methodically cleaned each week and the housekeeping happens while we are sleeping. The kitchen is complete with only the pans and utensils necessary for me to become a brilliant Italian chef. We meet the most interesting people, our Italian relatives love us and introduce us to all their friends. We sing, we dance, we cook, we laugh. In short, all the things we don’t do now.