Arrivederci Carloforte

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”

- William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”


We’ve had good times in Carloforte…

In just three months, we’ve been charmed by the village and adopted by its people. We’ve grown to appreciate the “village lifestyle”, where mail is sent to us via general delivery, where Jenna feels safe enough to venture out independently and where, the first time we tried to rent a DVD at the rental store, the only identification needed was our cell phone number written on a Post-it note
We’ve been fortunate to make such great friends--with Rafaella and her family, but also with people from Ireland, the UK, Poland, Milan and Rome—people generous enough to invite us into their homes, into their swimming pools, and onto their sailboats; people willing to jump over the language barrier to make new friends of strangers.
We’ve celebrated Jeff’s 50th birthday, and our 12th wedding anniversary here, and we’ve watched a shy, skinny cat become an affectionate, healthy mother to 3 lively kittens.
We’ve learned a lot about the proud Sardinians, about the sordid history of Isola di San Pietro, the slavery and the savagery and the Mafioso influences, about the quaint original Baraka structures, and the ancient Nuranghes scattered around the area (ancient stone structures build by Sardinian Fred Flintstones nearly 3000 years ago). We’ve developed local tastes for tuna pizza, cheap Sardinian white wine, and Mirto, a digestif made from tiny blackish-blue myrtle berries that grow freely in this area.
We’ve had the luxury and time to immerse ourselves in Mediterranean island life, to explore a unique town and a beautiful island, to relax and read and swim and cook.
We’ve begun to dream in Italian regularly…

And of course, like most real experiences in life, we’ve had our share of challenges.
Like the jellyfish stings and sunburns, visits to the dottore (doctor), the parking tickets, cheese codes, and the frustrations with our limited language skills.
Or there was that time when we accidentally burned that table and thought we’d paid a reasonable amount of money for the damage, but then were confronted in the piazza months later by the grandmother who convinced us that the damages were so severe that we needed to pay several HUNDRED more Euro.
Or that time we all got Swimmer’s Ear and thought it was just a bad ear infection, but then the pain got so intense that Jenna and I had to go to the hospital (which, by the way, cost only 36 Euro for two emergency visits).
Or that fateful day when Jeff jumped from the cliff into the ocean and lost his WEDDING ring. And how we snorkeled and searched for days and days and never found it.
Or that time we almost capsized the little boat we rented.
Or that time I was driving down that narrow street and clipped a parked van, managing to scrape the entire length of both vehicles. And the trouble we had filling out the accident report I found in the glove compartment, because the form was written in French (we have a French car, leased in France). And how I had to call France, and they had to find both an English and Italian interpreter.
Or that time Jeff was washing Terry’s sailboat and accidentally dropped an important piece of the boat into the water (the hatch cover) and it sank to the bottom, and how we couldn’t find it, and we had to rent a scuba diver to retrieve it.
But the challenges and “bad” times are all part of the package, an integral piece of the patchwork of experiences that make this time in Italy not an idyllic holiday resort vacation, but real life adventure. At least this is what Jeff keeps reminding me.

We are finally off to caretake a villa in Le Marche, a new region where we will undoubtedly stumble and blunder and manage to pull it off somehow.

NEXT UP: Le Marche

Harvest

“How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character”

-Henry David Thoreau

The heat of summer has mellowed into early fall. The morning sun no longer assaults as it rises, the dew sits on the patio a little longer each day and the breeze actually has a cooling effect. The days warm to a point of pleasure instead of pain and the ocean feels colder during our afternoon swims. The long summer evenings are gone--we still eat dinner al fresco, but we eat sooner, and we need sweaters and a bright candle to enjoy our food.

The crowds that stormed Carloforte in August have all gone home and once again it is quiet and peaceful. The cacti are “flowering” with buds of cactus fruit, and the migrating flamingos have taken on a distinctly pinkish hue. The season is changing and we will soon leave this lovely place.
The other day, our landlord Rafaella invited us over to join their annual harvest of uva (grapes). Needless to say, we were excited to have something to do for a change.
Rafaella and her husband Salvatore live at the northern edge of town, while “nonno” and “nonna” Rosso (the grandparents) live on the adjacent property. The Rossos have lived in Carloforte since the village was formed—they are original Carlofortini, descendents of the original 200 settlers given land to harvest.
Both families have several acres of land--Rafaella’s is primarily devoted to their 3 horses and a large vegetable garden. The quintessential Italian mother, she’s always sending us home with delicious bounty from her garden: zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, watermelon, mint plants, and even capperi (capers) that she picks from her own plants, coats into a salt bath, and preserves in a vinegar/water mixture. I often confuse the word “capperi” (capers) with “capelli” (hair)—a mistake that Rafaella thinks is a riot.
The grandparent’s property is primarily devoted to grapevines, from which the family wine is made. Nonno makes a rough and rustic “blush” blend combing all uve on their property regardless of variety, size, color and quality.
By the time we arrived that day, the sun had burned away the cool morning clouds and the whole family was already hard at work. As usual, everyone turned out for the event. Salvatore has two sisters, both married with children, and we’ve come to know the whole gang—aunts, uncles, cousins. Over the summer, we’ve joined them for lazy afternoons at the beach, gelato in the piazza and late evening strolls on the lungomare. We’ve been invited to family dinners, and met for pizza at their favorite restaurant (La Conca, on the other side of the island.) In a sense, they’ve taken us under their warm Italian wing.
The instructions we were given for harvesting the grapes was simple: “tutte le uve”—all the grapes. Jenna and I were given clippers, while Jeff was ushered back to help out with the “crushing” of the grapes in a huge manual masher.
The vines were heavy with clusters of varying color and size that, to our untrained eyes, appeared to represent several different varieties – small, light green round grapes with a tinge of red, greenish-yellow grapes, larger dark green oval grapes and even deep blue ones. I popped a few into my mouth, and they tasted sour-sweet, warm and soft and seedy.
We expressed some concern with sorting protocol, but were reminded with a smile “tutte le uve”, all the grapes were to be cut and mixed together. With clippers in hand, we worked our way down the orderly rows, cutting the clusters and filling up the buckets. Bending, squatting, reaching, breathing in the smell of grapes and sun-baked earth, it felt so good to get hot and sweaty and tired from actually working.
Harvest is immediately satisfying work. Whether it’s a grape or a tomato, a pumpkin or peach, it’s that point in time a plant strives for, the whole point of its existence, that peak zenith moment when it so readily lets go of the thing it’s been nurturing, its creation. We cut and cut and cut, and as each bucket filled, we lugged it back to the “crushing” area. No selective process, no sorting, no de-stemming, we unceremoniously dumped the whole kit-and-caboodle into the masher and cranked away, slowly turning the mixture in the large fermenting vat.
An impressive assortment of insects buzzed around the top of the vat, drawn to the smell of the fruity broth.
It was no-nonsense wine making, taken down to the basic elements: cut grapes, squish grapes, save juice. Tomorrow, the mixture would be pressed to separate juice from skins and stems.
Without filtration, yeast or sulfates, the juice was bound for barrel sometime next week where it would remain until approximately next November when it would be “bottled” into reused (and pretty clean) gallon jugs. Certainly, the ancient art of winemaking can get much more complicated, but nonno Rosso’s technique was about as simple as it gets.
The kids helped by taking turns at the crank wheel, but soon became bored with the effort of work and darted inside the cool house to sit on the floor and dress up Barbies (girls) or hang Barbies by their necks (boys). Much teasing and taunting was had by both.
After a few hours, we’d picked all the grapes, and I imagined I could hear the vines breathe a collective sigh of relief, basking in a job well done, their mission complete, purpose fulfilled, time now to finally rest and relax.
Afterward, we all sat around the long dining table for a hearty midday meal, feasting on pesto lasagna, marinated vegetables, stuffed tiny peppers and wine (the product of last year’s harvest). After the meal was finished and the dishes were taken away, I was so tired my eyes could barely stay open.
I was grateful when, minutes later, Rafaella walked over to me and said, “Now, we sleep” and I nodded in agreement and said, “Si, anche noi” (yes, us too).
For the first time in months, we actually had a REASON for an afternoon siesta, and it was good.


NEXT UP: Arrivederci Carloforte

Transitions

“The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and the establishment of the new, constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism”

-John C. Calhoun


Basically, our reason for coming to Italy was, “Why not?” The timing seemed right.
Our goals were a little vague—but intentionally so. We hoped to find a place to live, a lovely hilltown close to the sea, an affordable place that felt right to us. On previous trips to Italy, we’d flitted from town to town as “stranieri” (tourists). This time we wanted to put down some roots, stay long enough in one place in order to live more as locals and less as tourists-- to develop relationships and experience the rhythm of a local Italian life. We hoped to find work, but that prospect was a little more complicated, because in order to work legally in Italy we needed specific “documenti” (i.e., a visa) from the U.S., which we didn’t have. Mostly we were hoping, in this initial 6-month period (May to November), to figure out how to live here more permanently—maybe next year, maybe several years from now.
It took us about a month of hard searching to find “our place”, this island (Isola di San Pietro), this town of Carloforte. And when we found it, we knew it was special. A little slice of paradise.
Living here is indeed magical. A vital village teeming with locals of all ages, in a beautiful setting of azure waters, white sand beaches and hidden coves, baked in sunshine every day. What more could we want?
But as each lovely day flows into the next, and the next, and the next, time begins to slow. Days and weeks merge, and we find ourselves lulled into something like a walking sleep, groggy, lethargic, unable to remember what day it is, staring for long periods of time at nothing in particular. We are saturated in wonder--so what’s wrong?
When we first got to the island, there were always new places to explore, new experiences to occupy our time. But this is a small island, and we’ve had a lot of time. Jeff has ridden his bicycle up and down the island so many times he’s practically worn a groove in each of the three roads. Even working up the energy to go to the beach has become tedious. We’ve found so many hard-to-find “eyes of St. Lucia” we can fill a coffee cup.
I stopped having adventures to write about because we keep doing the same things over and over again.
It’s funny how quickly we get “used” to things, even really beautiful good things. Whether it’s a lovely ocean, a beautiful beach, a nice home, a good marriage, it’s hard to keep a fresh perspective. All those things in life that start out new and beautiful and exciting—they might still be there, but as the newness fades, the familiarity seeps in and we stop seeing the beauty. It takes so much work to keep seeing things new, to keep a fresh outlook. It’s hard to keep appreciating things.
Appreciation is easier when we compare something with its opposite. Eckhart Tolle says if everything in the world were blue, we wouldn’t even see blue anymore, because there wouldn’t be anything to compare it to. So we appreciate the sun when it’s balanced with rain. We appreciate the summer when it’s balanced with winter. We appreciate ease when it’s balanced with stress.
Rest and relaxation are good, but without anything to compare it to (like work) there comes a point when relaxation turns a corner and becomes flat and lifeless, and not even very restful. Some days, the most taxing thing I do all day is write up a grocery list. Or take a shower. On days when we have an actual thing to do, like someone invites us over to dinner, we’re almost giddy with excitement. It’s pathetic.
Feeling restless, we’ve branched out a bit, hopped the ferry and explored mainland Sardinia, taken day-trips to Cagliari, driven up to Alghero a few times. We’ve come to appreciate mainland Sardinia’s unique, remote, stark beauty.
But we needed something more.
What was this new and unfamiliar feeling?
Malaise?
Meloncholia?
Boredom?
By nature, Jeff and I are vibrant-minded people who never have a problem with occupying our time. We’re hard workers but we know how to relax and enjoy life. We share an appreciation for the Zen of “what is”, but also a quest for adventure.
We have found ourselves in a situation we hadn’t anticipated: neither tourist nor resident, we’re in this “in between” place. If we were tourists, on vacation, we’d just relax and explore, move on if things got boring. If we were residents, our lives would inevitably be structured around work, around accomplishing something.
Here we were, in ITALY, a country of endless beauty, feeling relaxed, yet restless and caged. Trapped. Bound by our remote location, but also by our limited budget, a budget so tight we haven’t set foot in a Carloforte restaurant other than to order a pizza
We began to fantasize about adventure, hopping a ferry to Sicily, hitting the open road. But not only did we have an agreement with our landlords for 2-1/2 more months of ridiculously low rent, but also we knew from experience that road travel is expensive and exhausting. Living out of a suitcase, eating in restaurants every meal, staying in hotels—we couldn’t afford it. Our situation here was good and sustainable, inexpensive and safe. Hitting the road was so enticing, though--maybe we’d find more towns like Carloforte. But maybe not. It was a serious gamble.
The road was calling to us. We longed for adventure, for newness, for something to happen.
We gnashed over our situation.
And then as luck (or destiny) would have it…something happened.
Ever since our travels began, we’ve been on a few email lists, alerting us to potential caretaker/housesitter positions. Usually, they’re either in locations we’re not interested in (like South Dakota) or jobs we’re not interested in (like cleaning) or qualified for (like horse experts), but one day I found a house-sitting opportunity in Le Marche region east of Rome. Assignment: take care of 2 dogs while the owners go on vacation to Croatia. Dogs! Le Marche! We jumped on it immediately, sent them our resume/profile, references, and spent the entire day, alternately checking email and crossing our fingers, chanting, “Please pick us, please pick us”. By the end of the day, we’d connected with the owners, they loved our profile, it seemed like the perfect fit, and the deal was done.
We were wild with excitement, dizzy with the prospect of a new adventure. A whole new region to explore! Something to write about! It’s the perfect opportunity to relocate and still save money. We leave in just a few short weeks.
The next day we talked to our landlords and gently explained the situation, and they were wonderfully understanding, mostly just sad we were leaving. (Rafaella even cried).
It feels strange to be this excited about leaving a place we were so excited to find, but life is strange sometimes.

NEXT UP: Harvest

Bambini (Children)

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things”

-Plato



Jenna walks through the piazza and people smile at her. She’s our “Italian ambassador” for good reason: she paves the way simply by being a child.
Children are revered in Italy. Often, I see an adult caress little Maria or little Mario’s face in both hands, and gaze at them with something like rapture, as if they’re looking at the Savior, the Christ child, the Miracle. Of course that doesn’t stop the adults from screaming at the kids a few minutes later…”Mario, BASTA!”(stop).
I have a photograph of Jenna in Italy when she is 18 months old. She’s racing across the piazza in Bologna, bursting with toddler exuberance, elbows bent, stout little arms and legs pumping, and the people in the background are all watching her, smiling.
On these warm, late summer nights in Carloforte dark-skinned children run joyously wild in the piazza, yelling, playing, some on bicycles or scooters, most without helmets or parents nearby.
I’ve noticed that whether it’s the lack of helmets, lifejackets, seatbelts, guardrails or parents, there’s a pretty relaxed attitude about safety around here. Somehow, despite all this recklessness, the children not only survive, they thrive. There’s a sense that everyone is watching out for them, and all villagers (parents or not) seem to embrace this role.
The other day in the piazza a small child was playing and then fell hard and hit his head. The “head-hitting-pavement” sound is one that most parents are familiar with, and within seconds several adults rushed to the child. The boy was crying and wailing and one man picked him up while the others encircled him, murmuring calm, comforting words and gently rubbing the boy’s back. The mother finally showed up a few seconds later, and the other adults (all of them strangers) casually went back to what they were doing. It was sweet and caring and so “communal”.
Jenna, our Ambassador, seems more integrated into this community than Jeff or I—primarily because she spends full days in the company of Italian families. Jenna’s ability to forge friendships (first with our landlord’s girl Sara, then with our boat neighbors Arianna and Flavia from Rome, and most recently with the new girls across the street, Carola and Angelica from Milan) has resulted in her essentially “brokering” relationships with the adults as well. Thanks to Jenna, we’ve not only been invited to several dinners and sailboat rides, but we’ve also made some wonderful new friends.
Jenna loves going to Sara’s house. It’s a child’s paradise--horses and rabbits, chickens and kittens. There are jump ropes and Barbies and movies and even a big brother who loves to irritate little girls. Every day is a new adventure. The other day they found a live scorpion in a box of cards. Often, Jenna is invited to lunch, dinner or an occasional sleepover. Sometimes the cousins visit--little Eletra, who has a shy smile and likes to sit on Jenna’s lap, and Zeno a pudgy boy who likes to taunt the others but ends up spending a lot of time by himself, in Italian “time-out”, pouting and crying.
The fact that the household speaks virtually no English doesn’t bother Jenna. In fact, she loves coming home with fun new Italian slang words. Our current favorite is the word “DAI” (DYE-EEE) which translates (loosely) to “Oh COME on!”—so Jenna says to me,”MaMA, daiiiiiii” when she’s begging for gelato. Or Jeff says, “Jenna, daiiiiiii” when she’s not doing her chores. The word is best spoken in very dramatic fashion, with a long “ee” sound.
Jenna says it’s really not that hard to communicate in Italian. “You only have to say a few short words to get them to understand what you mean.” she says, “Even though I only know short Italian words, I combine them to say bigger things. Plus, I use a lot of hand motions”. She says that the hardest part is understanding what people are saying. “They could be saying something as simple as, ‘Hey, could you come over to my house?’ but you don’t know, and it takes about an hour to figure out what they mean’”.
Jenna is experiencing what Jeff and I have come to realize: when you don’t know the language very well, a person has to really WANT to make the effort to overcome the language barrier in order to communicate. It’s a unique filtering system, because it weeds out all those people who really aren’t interested.
Sara and Jenna often go to church on Sundays. Not being church-goers ourselves, I think Jenna is intrigued by the ritual and ceremony of the Italian Catholic Church, but also enjoys the social factor. All the kids sit in the front pews, and from Jenna’s reports, they do lots of singing and some “prayering”. Jenna loves collecting the beautiful “offering cards” she gets at church, with the lovely picture of the Madonna. A few weeks ago, she saw her first baptism. She described how the baby girl was dressed in a long white christening gown, and was gently handed over to the priest by her parents. The priest then dipped an ornate spoon into the water and dribbled it over her tiny head. Jenna said the little girl looked pretty grumpy about the whole affair, but when the priest then held her up and the little girl saw the whole congregation smiling at her, her face broke into a big smile.
After church, all the children run down to the local gelatoria, where they each get one scoop of free gelato, an ingenious incentive for church attendance.
Living in Italy with Jenna has been lovely and challenging.
Of course, we try to make this experience enjoyable, but just as we’re always trying to make LIFE enjoyable for our daughter, it doesn’t always turn out that way. And the funny thing is, while as parents we never actually want our children to suffer, it is precisely in those moments that they learn important things—like how to be flexible, patient, independent, brave, have a sense of humor, laugh at your mistakes. Adversity is a good teacher.
Jenna has been forced to sit through endless hours of air, ferry, bus and auto travel, waiting in lines and the inevitable delays. She’s been stuffed into back seats crammed with luggage, and ridden cramped smelly buses that whip around winding hairpin turns next to sheer cliffs. She’s survived dangerous bouncy boat rides, sunburns and painful swimmer’s ear. She’s slept on couches and floors and in tiny attic spaces. She’s had to handle cold showers and filthy toilets and terrible food. She’s had to battle bees and mosquitos, jellyfish and scorpions. She’s lugged her suitcase across bumpy streets, and up multiple flights of stairs. She’s been so hot and tired she can barely stand up. She’s had to listen to her parents judge each others driving skills, and bicker over maps, directions, who’s right and who’s working harder.
But despite all these challenges and frustrations, Jenna keeps waking up fresh every morning, asking us what we’re going to do today.
We see her looks of wonder and excitement as she experiences this very different culture. We watch her emerging independence, as she walks to the village by herself, meets new friends. We feel proud to hear her speak confidently in Italian, ordering gelato and candy and cheese. We remark on her bravery, as she hikes down a steep rocky mountainside, or rides her boogie board in crashing waves, or jumps off a cliff into the water.
She somehow talks us into carnival rides that turn out to be thrilling, and desserts that turn out to be delicious and movies that we end up actually enjoying.
The thing about being in Italy with a child is that children have that wonderful ability to pull you into their kid world, and make you see things differently (if you’re willing). Time is different in the Italian kid world—“Abbiamo tempo”: we have plenty of time to play, plenty of time to stop and notice all the tiniest details, the brightly colored insect, or the lizard scurrying across the hot stones, the colors of the buildings, or the intricate pattern in the cobblestones. We have time to sit and watch the daily life of a village, to learn a new language together, to frolic on the beach or read or just float in an ocean that is actually warm. We have time to learn new card games and make picnics and look at the stars.
We have time.

NEXT UP: All this TIME has got to lead up to something…transitions