Life in Italy — A Diary
II. Queuing
We stood outside the tiny butcher shop near our rural village (pop. 162), its chalkboard listing the towns from where each piece of its meat hails. Pandemic protocols dictate one person at a time allowed in to shop. These old stoner’s lungs appreciate Italy’s Covid-consciousness, but it multiplies the country’s lack of a sense of urgency. And apparently, the woman ahead of us was purchasing enough meat for her family of twenty for the entire fucking month of August. Rocking back and forth on my heels outside the market, my impatience called to mind waiting outside a one-stall bathroom in a loud, crowded bar, perhaps slightly drunk, and most certainly anxious.
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But it was early Saturday morning and the other assembled shoppers were familiar with one another, unbothered by the wait, politely complaining about the lack of heat to ripen their tomatoes, and the dearth of summer thundershowers to soak the parched soils. Then the old man sitting on the bench, jaunty hat slightly askew and paunch spilling out over his cinched pants, mentioned the word gelato, animating the entire motley group. A middle-aged woman with heavy silver jewelry spoke dismissively about the couple in a neighboring village whose concoction didn’t meet her exacting criteria for frozen milk products. A neighbor chimed in about an excellent version in a gelateria perched above a river, but whose inattentive staff leaves much to be desired. Another man spoke reverently about an unknown spot tucked away in a different town, even walking to his car to ask his wife the exact address. An older gentleman, hands gesturing and eyes wide, talked about an alternative milk (senza latte) gelato, one version spiked with white wine and one laced with Prosecco. A ridiculous number of minutes passed, with the group sharing notes and opinions about textures and flavors and even the temperaments of the various gelato producers, all made within a seven-mile radius. Christ, it wasn’t even 10am.
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I do believe I’ve found my people.
I once told her we couldn’t see each other in public. Not in our small, one-industry town. We could dine and dance and hold hands in cities further afield. But she wouldn’t live in hiding, wasn’t one to sneak around. Panic seized me; not wholly at the notion of introducing and integrating her into my full life, but entirely at the thought of losing my heart. It belonged to her from the moment I saw her twirling her curly hair and walking in circles in her Arts and Crafts kitchen. She wouldn’t even elope, insisting we wed in front of family and friends. A decade in, our union remains. Surrounded only by nature and each other during the pandemic, there were days we woke to new garbage patches of gray hair, spiraling death counts, and another long week of not knowing what day it was or what the fuck we were doing. But she always waited for me to wake, not wanting to disturb my sleep after a fitful night, bringing me to life by making me think and care with stories from her work, and weep from laughter at her impressions and imagined witticisms of Haas, our beloved and long deceased Labrador. Even in moments when I felt like throwing in the towel, screaming ‘uncle’, or waving the white flag, she wouldn’t hear of it. I couldn’t even imagine my life without my wife.
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With the (universal?) exception of fur-lined restraints, I chafe at being confined. I loathe blue jeans, seatbelts, back seats, long plane rides, bras (and therefore, tight sweaters). I’m a wanderer, but like a homing pigeon, I’ve always had a nest to call home, lined with plants and animals, good kitchen tools, and a selection of hats in the closet. But waiting for our new digs to be habitable while riding out Covid, the past few years have been a series of temporary dwellings. We’ve become top-clearance NSA agents at parsing Airbnb listings, quickly separating wheat from the dumpy chaff of spotty Wi-Fi and dodgy bathrooms. My wife is an expert packer who could’ve scored a gig as valet to 18th century royalty, and I can set up a functioning household complete with work spaces as quickly as one can say Martha fucking Stewart.
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Two lives fold neatly into ever-present, bulging suitcases; house sweaters and hiking shoes, knives, salts, spices and evoo, teas, dark-roast beans, a manual grinder and a two-cup Bialetti Moka, a salad spinner, incense, seeds, whisky, chocolate, laptops and a speaker, beeswax tapers, a printer. Like Linus’ security blanket, two LL Bean bags follow me everywhere; packed virgin-tight with books, journals, magazines, and various unread parts of the Sunday paper, some six months old and yellowing at the edges.
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It ain’t home, but we make it work.
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Unplugging, detaching and learning to live with just the pack-worthy essentials is ego-busting, liberating, frustrating. Trying to be ok with the impermanence (never mind the capital-I-Impermanence) while planning for a more grounded future is a Buddhian balancing act for which I’m ill-equipped. So I get stoned, whistle-talk to the owls, watch for the greening of spring, and work on outlines for the next chapter.
