There are some things I just have to be in the mood
for. Can you relate? For example, food has seasons. You don’t see
turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie served at a Fourth of July picnic and in the
Midwest where I live, you have to practically finance a mango if you can find
even one in the supermarket after July.
Some of us get antsy when our neighbors fail to dismantle their
Christmas light displays after the first of January and I tend to grant myself
leniency in terms of bra strap exposure until somewhere around Labor Day when
the tanks tops that have been exposing my fashion faux-pas get put away in their
respective storage tote where they will slumber until I dig them back out in
May. There are some matters in which we have expectations
to when and how certain things are to occur.
I lived in Italy for a few years and they were, without
hesitation, some of the most phenomenal, colorful years of my life. I had possessed a bucket list of things I
wanted to see and do in Europe during the course of my residency. One of them
was to spend my Christmases in Tuscany in a quiet farmhouse, me and my husband,
and a little Andrea Boccelli on the portable stereo I trucked in. (Remember the whole “life soundtrack”
thing?) It was a simply magical
experience that I had carefully crafted and articulated right down to the scarf
I wanted to be photographed in while leaning against the cascade of
bougainvilleas just outside of our guesthouse.
We would pack up our tres-chic rented European sedan and stuff it with
the wrapped Christmas gifts we planned to open during our stay. Along with a
suitcase full of clothes, and a handful of maps we gathered from gas stations
along the autostrada, we headed north toward what would be our first of
multiple Tuscan escapes. During the
course of our weeklong hiatus, we relied on coin-flipping (left or right?)
rather than examining the map for navigational guidance. Few Italian streets
have signs and my finger pointing made our navigation all the more
confusing. Mid-navigation, I would
inhale sharply and say, “Wow! Would you look at that beautiful balcony!
Remember how that looks so when we build a house someday you can make that for
me!” My husband, white-knuckled and intense, would tell me to pay attention to
the road and stop peeping in people’s villas as we dizzied ourselves on the
roundabout. When we weren’t bickering over roundabouts and peeping in people’s
villas, we danced by the fire in the fireplace of our farmhouse and drank wine.
We laughed while people-watching in the piazzas of medieval towns right out of
a King Arthur tale. I tasted dainty
marzipan confections from sugar-frosted bakeries and licked the remnants of dark
Perugian chocolate from my fingers. My
husband and I held hands and listened to the youth choirs that lifted their
praises in Latin from the open church halls in the glisten of night. Something happened to me when I was there. It
created a frame of reference for me that suspended me in time.
I have to be in a mood for certain things these days. I
can’t watch “Saving Private Ryan” any old night I happen to stumble across it
on late-night cable. It’s just too heavy. I need to prepare before a movie like
that. I need to be told about it two weeks in advance. In a perfect world, a
friend or coworker would read it in the TV guide two weeks prior to its running
and relay this information to me. I would have enough time then to get a full
eight hours of sleep the night before, a
nutritionally sound breakfast the day of, a workout in the afternoon to
stockpile the feel-good endorphins I would later need when I had turned to a
puddle on my living room carpet. I would also pick up a bottle of wine on my
way home from work to mellow myself out, and then make sure I had enough toilet
paper to blow my nose after my heavy-duty bawling two thirds of the way through
when I realize Matt Damon looks really good in army fatigues and he really
isn’t a Marine in real life. I need to prep for an event like this.
Perhaps my need for preparation came from a childhood where
my mom made ordinary events extraordinary. When I would lose a tooth as a small
child, my mom would spray a dollar bill with cheap hairspray and sift a handful
of craft glitter on it. We didn’t have
much money, but we enjoyed the ride to wherever it was we were going, whether
or not we actually had the money to buy an admission ticket once we arrived. It was much the same way living in Italy. You don’t need anywhere to go, just an open
window and an open heart.
I cannot watch “Under the Tuscan Sun’ without being
prepared. Other than the main character being
a divorcee on a gay tour of Tuscany, the main character and I have much in
common. We are both writers at heart with longings, with a penchant for metaphorical
living. This movie (and I know it’s only
a movie) but it yanks my taut heartstrings the way Roy Clark plucked a banjo.
Give a girl a warning, please! Frances
describes everything she sees, smells, and experiences in Italy and it had a
way of engraining itself into who she was.
You become what you eat, sleep, and breathe.
A while back, my husband and I went to the movies; this
particular action flick we were seeing seemed harmless when I found it in the
local newspaper’s movie listings.
However, seven minutes into the film, it is obvious that the film was
filmed in Venice, Italy and I started to feel as if I had a cantaloupe maturating
in my neck. I was not prepared for this and had really wished I had scrutinized
the plotline and setting a little with a little more discrimination. I shoveled fistfuls of greasy popcorn into my
mouth in hopes of deterring the growth of that pesky cantaloupe that had now
doubled in size. While an unannounced
Matt Damon flick can sneak up on me before I am “in the mood,” anything Italy
is my trigger these days. I confess that
once I even cried at a Barilla pasta commercial on television. There he was that bugger! Andrea Boccelli was
crooning in the background while a beautiful, young Italian couple hovered over
a steaming stockpot of penne pasta while their open kitchen window exposed a
view of the Tuscan countryside that I cherished so much. I wanted to slap that happy couple. They were having penne in Portofino and I was
having a hotdog in my sweatpants. I was totally unprepared for the new
commercial and considered contacting the people at Barilla and letting them
know that this commercial needed a warning that went something like, “The
following advertisement is a paid commercial by Barilla pasta. If you have ever
lived in Italy, and more importantly, if you have left your heart there, please
exercise caution when viewing the following paid program. While Barilla pasta is delicious, the content
you are about to see might cause a cantaloupe to spontaneously sprout in your
throat. Call your nearest travel agent if you experience any discomfort. Buon
appetito!”
Though my memories of Italy have been subject to years’
worth of fading and bleaching, they can be reconstituted with a snippet of
something from an herb garden or an overly-romantic noodle commercial. When
something has begun to show signs of wither, like a plant in a windowless
office, it is usually time for some schmuck to dump a coffee cup’s worth of
water into it. Thank you, Lord, for
those unexpected “dousings.” Thank you
for not allowing my dreams of Italy to fade into oblivion.
