The Dousing of Dreams

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.