Sharing Italy with our Daughter, Part 3

Our daughter Sandra, a woman in her own right.

Sharing Italy with our Daughter, Part 2

Mom and daughter...the bond that is never broken. My mother used to quote the old saying (she said it was Irish), 'Your son is your son 'til he takes him a wife; your daughter's your daughter for all of her life'. Sandra is the joy of my life.

March 2006, dinner at Antica Taverna Via Stella, my favorite Veronese restaurant. I always feel at home there, and I am drawn to have our special occasions there.

March 2006...taking a moment in Venice.

In a water taxi out to Murano.

A Mother-Daughter moment. I look like I am saying a Momism...'No, absolutely not, don't even talk to me about that'. Sandra has her 'Mom will get over it' look on.

Our day at the Lake in 2007.

Sharing Italy with our Daughter, Part 1

These photos are of Sandra and her Dad, sharing Italy from 2002 through May 2007. Our greatest joy is to have her come 'home' to Verona (her phrase) and then take her places.

In 2002, before our move to Verona, she came to Italy with us for two weeks. We went all over, the Grand Tour.

In 2006, she came to Italy for my birthday in March. It was the first time we had been together since August 1, 2005. How wonderful to see her. We went to Venice for the weekend, staying at the Pensione Accademia.


Again in 2006, she joined us for Thanksgiving Week. Though it was cold and snowy, and everything was shut down, we drove to the Dolomiti, so that she could see those magnificent mountains.

The photo directly above is an example of the 'two peas in a pod' thing. They do this unconsciously. Probably discussing New York Life. They are sitting in a restaurant in the Dolomiti, the only one we could find open in late November. Everything closes for two months before the frenetic ski season.

We also drove to Lazise on Lake Gardia for lunch.




In 2007, she arrived in late April, staying 10 days this time. We spent one day out on Lake Garda, taking a high-speed ferry to Malcesine for lunch.

They even hung out at the beach by the castle in Sirmione.

Then three days in the northern Lagoon on the island of Torcello at the Locanda Cipriani. What a history that place has!

We anticipate another visit in October 2007, just ten days this time at home in Verona. With a couple of day trips. The exchange rate USD to Euro is AWFUL, so we will cool our heels at the palazzo. *big smile*

Apartment hunting, 2005

An aerial view of the main piazza, Piazza Bra, and the Arena.

The view from our balcony.
Looking up towards our balcony and, to the right, our living room windows.
The neighborhood. The bridge is out of the picture to the left. Our building is on the far right. The two white awnings are at the best pizzeria in the city, Salvatore.
Angel in the door of our building.

Angel and I never had the same idea about what we were doing. I thought I was escaping suburban conformist life in America and going to a better more authentic life in Italy, hopefully for a very very long time. Angel believed, essentially, that he had been 'perfectly happy in my rut', and that he was going to give this a try for a year or two. Yet he agreed to fund this whole project, and agreed to take all our 'stuff'. I told him I wanted to plunge into the icy water of culture shock all the way, and make a new home, not a pied a terre.

We went to Verona in late March, very early April to look for an apartment to fulfill our last requirement to obtain from the Italian Consulate in NYC our Elective Residence visa...a one year official contract for a place to live. We both agreed that the apartment had to have 'the Wow! factor', or else why uproot our lives? We have a beautiful home in New Jersey, it isn't as if someone was holding guns to our heads.

Angel had contacted Weichert Realtors in New Jersey who referred us to COFIM agency in Verona. The first day, the very first day, we saw the apartment in which we now live. As it was when we found our house in New Jersey, and each other, it was love at first sight. The rest of the first week we went through the motions of looking at eleven other apartments, but nothing compared.

The remainder of the month...which we spent in a little hotel (the apartment we had rented for one month having turned out to be a disaster, so we had to live in a hotel)...was all spent with negotiations.

Many times, Angel said, I just can't do this. We would walk past a small park with freshly mown grass, and he would start to say, I'll never smell fresh cut grass again. I began to call his anxiety-driven moods his self-directed black holes. He said I was like the Queen Mary...having set a course, nothing could stop me.

In retrospect, there was really absolutely no way we could have known that we were walking into such a terrible situation. The previous tenant, with whom we met several times, voluntarily described the neighbors as being buon educati...well behaved. Not. The problematic neighbor told us how happy she was to have Americans for neighbors, and an older couple without children so there would be no noise problems. Not.

So, with his hand shaking, Angel signed the contract. We celebrated that evening at our favorite restaurant. And already the next day, Angel was saying, What have I done! I put this down to expected nerves over the enormity of the commitment. Now, the ball was in our court, and we were due in Verona on August 2 to take up our new lives.

A few things about Verona, 2004, Part 2

In four weeks of language school, we saw and did a lot of wonderful things. None was more 'other', out of my experience of my life, than the torchlight parade and reenactment of the revolt against Napolean by the Veronese in 1797. We showed up, having no idea what to expect. Each year has turned out to be a little different. Actually, in 2007, there was no parade, because the 2006 parade got a little out of control, so the powers-that-be cancelled the celebration for 2007.



Ever been in a torchlight parade, with torches made the old-fashioned way with burning pitch? We are in Europe, where each person is responsible for his or her own safety, so you have to keep your eyes open for a burning scrap of the mantle of the torch flying off. I saw such a scrap fly off, and land in a woman's furled umbrella. Unseen by the woman, I had a visio...unless I acted quickly...of the woman turning into a human pyre in front of my eyes. So without thinking, I mean really without thinking, I reached into her umbrella to pull out the scrap. This is how napalm must feel, on your fingers. And it was only a tiny dot. My hand burned all night.


Raised in California in the '50s, going to 4th of July parades in Redwood City with baton twirlers and marching bands, I am destined to love these things. So the sight of fields of silken banners twirling in the night made my heart race.

This is the kitchen table of our little rental apartment on via Interrato della Aqua Morta. The name of the street means 'burial of the dead waters'. It used to be a small canal leading to the Adige River, a canal still used in the latter half of the 1800s, but is now a busy filled-in paved street. Our apartment was two levels, with a roof terrace, totally exposed to the sun, where Angel slept before doing his language school homework. This is one of two dinners I prepared in four weeks. We're in Italy...eat out!

One of my favorite shots of the city, taken from the Teatro Romano, which is on the side of the Adige where we live. The view is of the Centro, the old historic center. The first big pointed tower is Chiesa San'Anastasia, and the shorter one to the right is Torre Lamberti.

Well, here we are, Sandra's parents who ran away from home. Our daughter lives in our house in New Jersey, while we are spending a few 'student semesters' (maybe ten or twelve) in Italy.

A few things about Verona, 2004, Part 1

This was the year we came to language school. We stretched our brains around trying to learn the basics of pronunciation and grammar in four weeks. Total immersion. Four hours a day, five days a week. As Angel would always say by about 11:30 in the morning, my brain is going BOOM BOOM. Then there was a school-related activity in the afternoon, and a minimum of two hours of homework each night. One night, because I had been sick for three days, I decided to study vocabulary for three hours, instead of doing my 'compiti' (homework) assignment, and the next morning reasonably explained to the instructor, Enrico, my decision. No, that did not fly. A ten-minute lecture later on the importance of structure and repitition in learning a language, I resolved to be a good student and not skip any more compiti.

Each morning we walked from our rental apartment to school, stopping at Nello's cafe for an incredible cappucchino.

Verona is a city of fashion, relentless and everywhere. This is a life-size advertising piece to the right of a door into a small dress shop. Note the left hand on the breast, and her provocative posture even though she seems completely detached from the panting man attached to the hand. Angel calls Verona the city of hipbones and belly buttons. In Spring, Fall and Winter, everyone is buried in sweaters, coats, scarves, hats. But in Summer, the skimpier the better, the more see-through the better. Summer fashions in Verona would get a woman picked up for loitering in Manhattan. And what is a 5'2" size 14 (on a good day) woman to do? I have a lot of flowy skirts in my wardrobe, and sexy shoes. Shoes I can do.

This is one of my favorite photos. A store window reflecting a building. I just like the juxtaposition.

When passing by, I always look up to remark on this wonderful roofline. It is unique to the city, alone in its fantasy.

Prosciutto di Parma. With any kind of cheese. With any kind of melon. All by itself. The real thing.

Sweetness and Light

Sweetness and light. A phrase my Italian-American father used to derisively hurl at my Irish-American mother because he disdained her outlook on life. He was a realist, he said; she always wore rose-colored glasses, he said. She only saw beauty and good, even where there was none, he said.

A tourist is caught in a warp of sweetness and light. Everything is fresh and new. Familiarity has not bred contempt.