In Love with France, At Home In Italy

The Dean of my residential college is a man of many parts--adviser, psychologist, teacher, wordsmith, disciplinarian, but mostly philosopher. During any given year, four hundred students look to him for whatever they are missing from home. Every Sunday night, he sends something he modestly calls "Notes and News," whose ostensible purpose is to forecast events and opportunities. But the highlight is always a thoughtful essay about how to live. On the cusp of returning to my academic home, I am thinking about an idea he brought up in last week's message:the concept of the liminal zone--the place where both expats and college students dwell, perhaps without even realizing it. "Liminal zone" is a fancy term for being poised on a threshold--neither here, nor there. As someone who has given her heart to more than one country, I like to think I know something about that. France started off as the love of my life. I teach her language and literat...

Looks like paradise and a great place to have to oneself for a few weeks, no? Well, it pretty much is. But only by day. The other night I went down to turn off the light in the kitchen only to find that it had been taken over by flying and crawling aliens. They were everywhere, and I had to jump out of my delicious torpor and into a killing frenzy. Last year’s invasion of the flying ants had resumed! They had made an initial appearance the other day, but I had taken what I thought were definitive extreme measures to reclaim my turf. (Just goes to show that the Ancient Greeks did not have a monopoly on hubris.) I had removed all temptations from the counter and ferreted them out of the most unexpected places. I think the other members of the family might be surprised to know that they are not the only ones in the house to love coffee. The biggest swarm of them was on top of and under the machine. But there were some tea-totalers, too, who had decided to set up residence in the...

This toilet has gone totally Italian! Number 9 on the Hit Parade of things that went guasto (kaput/busted) while D and G were away on vacation was J's toilet seat. How did it happen?  Another "mistero"--that's the Italian language showing how easy it can be to trick the unsuspecting speaker of English into a spelling goof. Now I don't want to accuse anyone, but I noticed it  "dopo"("after") our very thorough, "robusta" cleaner, the former Moldovan surgical nurse, came to clean. J had naively gone off to Rome for two days to visit the kids, leaving his toilet seat behind and vulnerable. On his return, it had become a dangerous weapon.

So my old friend from college naively writes to ask, "How is it going in hot, sunny Italy?" I think he was expecting me to say that everything was going great. But that would be a lie. This was my more-than-you-want-to know answer: All hell has been breaking loose here, which always seems to happen when our architect friends on whom we depend to keep us out of deep doodoo go away for vacation. To start, our pool has been the victim of a hostile takeover by wild animals called "nutria" who consider it their private Club Med and communal latrine, pooping all over our parade. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Once I get my sense of humor back, it might make a funny story, but to have so many things and systems go wrong at once is quite a challenge: "error" messages on the hot water heater, a short circuit in the new outdoor lights (useful to watch the animals cavorting in the pool), suddenly no water coming into any indoor or outdoor faucet, the fri...

Here is the increasingly hysterical exchange of texts in which my husband tries to get help from D about our wild-animals-in-the-pool problem. To appreciate the juxtaposition between the relative calm of our BN (before-nutria) and AN (after-nutria) life, I include the innocuous text that preceded all the trouble. In all fairness, I should say that our best friend and architect D's level of English is right up there with J's level of Italian, but here, only D has the courage to write in a foreign language. D to J: Ok for dinner tomorrow at 8 pm to Cecilia? J:There are 2 living animals in our pool today. They happily swim and poop in the water. They are now hiding in the filter baskets--very much alive.  How do we get them out? D:What kind of animals they are? How much big? J:About 30-40 cm with long tail. They make a cooing, squealing sound. And they are good swimmers. They swam under water when they saw me--then hid in the filter--one animal in each filter. Water rats?  I...

J escaped to Rome for two days with the kids. Or maybe just to get away from Nutria Central. On the day of his expected return, we exchanged some emails on this all-consuming subject. (Moi to J, visiting our son and daughter-in-law in Rome): Farmer G came on his own an hour ago and we toured the property and found a few more spots where the nutria found a way in. One spot was alongside the fig tree near the pool. Even though they had to climb to get up to it, there are ledges that come up from the neighbor's oliveto that made it possible. There was another possible entry point behind the low stone wall below the newer staircase. On the steep hillside, where there are two levels of fencing, there was an opening. Needless to say we blocked those, as well as the ones you found. The temporary fence by the water controls is a point of vulnerability, but Farmer G is awaiting the architect’s instructions before doing anything more than these rock-block measures. He also ...

TO: Our brillliant architects and friends, D&G  Subject: bella vacanza? Ciao, We and our dear nutria hope that you had a marvelous vacation. Our Hotel, with its Club Med (especially designed for hairy animals with long tails and gigantic orange teeth) has been a great success with the nutria:they awarded 4 stars to our pool, and above all to our toilet facilities which have been so well used and appreciated by all. They reserved special praise for our excellent clean-up service. As they put it, "there’s a certain Signore J, head of the Poop Patrol, who comes regularly to clean up whatever we leave behind."      We leave tomorrow at 7AM for a little vacation from them. Therefore, we regret to say that it’s possible that for the next few days, the service around here will not be up to its usual standard. Too bad about that.-- baci, D de P  AND ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER? We returned, with great trepidation from our trip to visit friends on the ...

I was concerned that I might have been taking a wrong turn by mentioning the 50’s TV show, “Dragnet” in two recent postings. After all, who but a Baby Boomer was likely to remember that show? Well, (maybe) not to worry. The latest issue of “Vanity Fair” just arrived with an article titled “Pepe Le Perp” about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. The pullout quote said: “IT WAS REMARKABLE HOW RAPIDLY DSK’S ALLEGED ATTACK WAS PERCEIVED AND POPULARIZED AS INTRINSICALLY, INIMICALLY FRENCH.” But what caught my eye was a reference to none other than Jack Webb and “Dragnet.” The article mused about DSK’s arrest: “So accustomed are we to the privileges of rank and authority conferring royal immunity that seeing the long arm of law enforcement snag a high-ranker, like an outfielder reaching over the fence to rob a home run, restored one’s faith in the virtues taught us by Jack Webb in “Dragnet.” As I said in an earlier post, Webb was a man ahead of his time. But he is turning out to be a man fo...

OHMYGOSH! You would not believe the size of the unwelcome visitor I just very carefully cupped and ushered out. Remember all those little scorpions we've occasionally seen around and wondered, where's your daddy? Well, he just appeared on the floor of the guardaroba:yikes! We are not talkin' small! I didn't have my glasses on when I walked by this giant black thing, thinking it might be a very big beetle. But once I put them on, uh-uh. Somehow I managed to get the bedroom light on, open the door, turn on the hall light, open the Smiling Buddha window and send him elsewhere. But my special cup took a beating in the process. Never fear, however. I have repaired it and it is now ready for further action. Oy! But better in the guardaroba than in the bedroom. I am thinking that he may have come in with the towels and clothes I carried up from the pool. I prefer to think that he lives elsewhere. I would have liked to have taken his photo just to prove that this is no ...