In Love with France, At Home In Italy

 “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”    Well, I'm not so sure about the voice of the turtle part, but at least I haven't heard any gun shots from wild boar hunters, lately. I'm thinking that the wild boar survivors are busy making the next generation of future boar sausages. My hope has been to catch la primavera here during Spring Break, and then get one in  the States on our return. So far, so good!  On a gray day before all the flowers are in bloom, it is easier to appreciate the simple lines of the house. At the left are the new kitchen and pergola, upstairs loggia, and my bathroom, which were made in the space formerly occupied by an old pizza oven and animal quarters. The far right is the oldest part of the house, where the animal troughs have been transformed into a guest room. If you look closely, you ca...

I call before the holiday weekend to tell the gas people that our meter is down to 15. “Non c’e problema, signora. Plenty of time. We will come tomorrow.” The Xmas holiday comes and goes, and nobody shows. When we next look at the gas meter a few days before New Year’s, it reads ZERO! Uh-oh! I am not great at being demanding in any language. I like to leave that to my husband. But in his Italian classes, he hasn’t yet gotten to the lesson that teaches how to be indignant—not that that would ever work in Italy, anyway. So unless our son is here, who knows just the right noises to make to get the natives to do what he wants, that job falls to me. Usually it works, since I manage to say things that are more comical than offensive;for example, I told the gas company “we are at ZERO, e zero non e buono!” Apparently that line was memorably funny, and they said they would send someone right away.  When it started getting dark with no sign of any gas, I was unanimously elected to call b...

While on that post-"Tuscan Sun" breakthrough trip to Italy, I stumbled on an out-of-date "Oprah" magazine that someone had (fatefully?) left at our rental house. In it was a letter from a severely risk-averse person who eventually decided that she could handle "a risk for the week." Or maybe even two. That got me thinking that rather than obsessing about everything, I might be able to handle some risks for the week. I also began to see the hypocrisy of preaching in the classroom for 43 years about the need to allow oneself to be "marked" by new things, to take a risk, and to figure out how to navigate in a culture other than that of my beloved France. So that's part of how a nose-plug type like me ended up plunging into an Italian adventure.

Once upon a time there was, as the French like to say, "une femme d'un certain âge"--and a very risk-averse one, at that--so much so that she would rarely leave her nest. But she had a husband who did not suffer from this problem, and a prince of a son who is an expatriate writer who thought she needed a project. As a birthday present from my husband, I received Under the Tuscan Sun --the book that first pried me out of my nest for a trip to Italy. If you can swing it--if your generous 91-yr-old mother-in-law, the only member of the family with any money sense--leaves you some dough--you can see if two nests are better than one.