Blue

Regaleali is about 1200 acres of mostly grapevines, some olive orchards and few wheat fields and hay fields and three fairly significant holding ponds where most, if not all of the water for the estate comes from. I have been noticing the ponds lately as I drive by one vineyard  towards Vallelunga. On the way up to Casa Grande I can see two more as I look down the valley of vineyards. Because the light is changing here as it is getting warmer and the winds are not as strong the sky is getting bluer and bluer and the water in the ponds, towards the end of the day, seems blue too. A deep cerulean blue. The water in the ponds hold the blue as if it was their rightful color.  I am happy they do because it adds, to this ever changing quilt of a  landscape, a spot of color that ties the sky to the increasingly dry land.

The hay fields have been cut all around the country side and on neighboring estates. While some of the ground on the fields is still pale and dry looking, miraculously many of the fields are turning green with new growth of 'herba' for the animals to eat, making a fantastic green background for the huge round bails of hay that are randomly scattered in the fields. They look like an art installation that I only wish I could have created. Simple, proportioned, filled with depth and meaning and no irony.

The wheat fields have transformed from short stubbly chartreuse green sprigs to tall flowing and graceful bluish-green wheat to their now current and seemingly final stage of perfectly pitched wheat color. But despite their apparent dryness the fields still blow smoothly in the winds looking like rippleing water. Alive.

And then there are the now leafed out green grapevines. The green contrasting with the dark brown earth creating a repetitive pattern, another minimalist artist installation. However, to maintain this look, the ever growing runners from the vines need to be constantly tied up. It seems this and weeding will happen until the vendemia in October. 

There is a vastness to this quilt that is hard for me to take in some times. Ironically though I crave the vastness. However, as I was trying, yet again, to capture it all in little pixals I heard my self saying out loud, "Stop already." I am not sure if I was telling myself to stop shooting because I can't capture the landscape or if I was talking to the landscape to stop being so impossible. And then, a few days later the weather changed and we got a sense of what the real heat is like here and how oppressive it can be. (July and August must be something) There is a wind, but it is hot. The sky is not blue but white and dusty. And the landscape momentarily stopped being beautiful, it actually seemed out of focus. But, just three days ago, this weather broke and it is fresh again. The sky cleared and the lines and patterns were all crisp once again. There was even a rain for a the past few nights. A welcome rain, a welcome freshness as we prepare to leave here tomorrow, nearly six months since we arrived.

These last two shots are from our bedroom window. the one on the left is from September 2009. And the other is from about two weeks ago, early June 2010.

POLL

If your four year old, who knows nothing of punk rock, the late 80's, or Mohawk Indians for that matter, requests to have his hair cut into a mohawk ("no hair on the sides and just a line of hair on top, Daddy, so that it will be easier to bonk my head into you"), do you think we should oblige him? Or do you think we should ignore the request, given that he asked for it when he saw a bald man reading the paper in the bar here? This is my question. Also, just two days ago he came home with this drawing he did in school. It is him with a mohawk.

From our perspective. In the last year we have given into swords (blame Peter Pan and pirates) and even guns (blame Berkeley Parents list for these very thoughtful and rational posts on boys and guns. 

Here is an outtake from one of those posts: "My advice is, don't worry about the guns. When I was a kid I had lots of toy guns and toy soldiers, I watched war TV shows and would play war games with my friends. And I outgrew it, as did all my peers, and as a young adult I was protesting against war. From what I can tell, there's just a phase when little boys are fascinated with good and evil (''bad guys'') and conflict. My advice to you is play with your kid. Sometimes he'll want you to be the bad guy so he can kill you. Let him. I don't mean you should allow yourself to be physically hurt, but when he shoots you, make dramatic sounds and die, or better yet plead for mercy and promise to be good if he spares you. He probably won't, then die anyway. The main thing is to let your kid win. Jim." 

And, for the most part, we are not totally regretting those decisions to let this boy do these traditional boy things. We also let him paint his nails and put barettes in his hair too. We take him to churches on a regular basis, he is very gentle and sweet with other kids, he loves his Barbie plastic cell phone and he is exposed to nature. (He did not break that little blue egg, he was very concerned about the mother and baby bird.)  Also, he likes to practice the dance he learned at school in public places. And he was actually quite timid when Carmello let him hold that scythe to cut some lentil plants down.

I hate guns, now. But I remember well playing guns, cowboys and Indians, Star Wars, cops and bad guys. All of it. I also remember well burning everything I could, Matchbox cars and GI Joe's come to mind. And I did much of this right near the oil tank in the basement, fortunately we are all here to tell about it. After all that, somehow, in my late teens I developed a distaste for violence. (I still like fire quite a bit. And maybe that is why I make these smoke drawings? 

In fact, since we let Elio play with the gun he found in Michele's cardboard box (full of mostly broken toys of which the overarching themes are military/war and farm equipment/animals), he now plays with it only sporadically and the gun never comes into our house.

So, maybe, just maybe, if we give him the mohawk now he will avoid having a mullet (like I did in the late 80's) when he is a teenager.

We can only hope.

June 2.

June 2 and I noticed the first blooms on the oleander. 

It reminds me of every bloom time and planting time that I missed writing down in the last five months we have been here. I will have to look back to my photos and decipher from them the dates and months of what bloomed when.

I remember, just a few weeks ago, Pompeo and Carmello (the gardener for Case Grandi) and Francesco planting squash, zucchini and peperoni plants that they started from seeds in their makeshift greenhouses. They planted them in exceptionally straight lines, evenly spaced apart using these sticks to open little holes in the ground that were whittled to a point on the bottom but otherwise seem to be nature-made to fit in your hand. They then ran long strips of irrigation tape down the row and now, a few weeks later, the plants are three times bigger.

In the vegetable garden a few meters up a small hill towards Case Vecchie, Pompeo has done a great job of re-laying out the vegetable garden (orto) into a grid with a straight path down the center. This is helpful in many ways. It will be easier to keep track of the varieties but also it will allow guests to more easily walk through and see the garden. Before it was literally a jumble and you could easily step the wrong way while stepping over weeds and squash a squash. I remember back in March/April when Carmello and Pampeo were discussing the new layout. There was a lot of loud discussion with them walking away from each other moving their hands in a disgusted motion. But all is tranquillo now, as they like to say here, and the vegetables in this garden are quickly growing. The ricci, which I guess is a type of chickory, has suddenly, in the last 5 days, grown spires up to about 2 feet. There are 4 or 5 different types of carciofi and melanzana, more peperoni, sparacelli, and fagioli, prezzemolo (parsley), basilico and sedano (celery).

Carmello also planted a few long rows of white cannelini beans. The bean/seed he planted were this fantastic pink like large Advils falling gently from Carmello's rough worn hands into the shallow troughs. What day was that? May 4th?

And what day was it that Giovanni (the gardener for the flower garden and orchard and bees) pruned the fig trees to within inches of being stumps? (February 16th) Now they are all branched out and leafed out and holding firm green fruits that will begin to ripen in late June and keep producing through to October. Same with the roses and all the many other vines in the garden. All is back to an outward life like the sun. 

4!

We love telling Elio the story of the day he was born, and for now he loves hearing it. We will, I am sure, drag this tradition out as long as possible and then even longer. He will roll his eyes, whine and soon just straight out tell us to stop telling the story, and we may oblige. (But I am sure Kate and I will then just retell it to each other.)

What a day. Two and a half weeks earlier than expected. Every year, strangely, we recognize in him the one day old we had in 2006. Ready to go, on the move, and of course, brilliant. 

Now, 4 years later, he is in Sicily, going to school, understanding (for the most part) a thick Sicilian dialect, playing with guns and swords and now castles. He is making up stories with us, new characters, super powers, good guys and bad guys, loves reading books, eating ice cream and lollipops. Oh, he grew 2 inches since February. A kid, a boy, our little boy.

And, what else.. yes we are so unabashedly proud of him. 

       

April 25, Finally

Sunday, April 25 was a day that, as it unspooled, I kept thinking, "Ooh, I can't wait to write about this!" Then a little later, "This is great, I can't forget about this." But then the day kept going, hour on top of hour, moment on top of memorable moment, and now I'm feeling intimidated. So I'll just begin.

April 25 is Italy's independence day, a big holiday. We were invited by some friends--parents of kids from Elio's school--to join them in the "campagna" for lunch. The campagna turned out to be about five minutes outside of Vallelunga, but in a beautiful spot perched above the town, with olive trees (of course) all around. There were 16 of us: Maria Concetta and Franco, and their two kids Cesare and Giuseppe, Giusi and Giovanni, and their son Antonio, Mary and Salvatore, and their daughters Rosella and Rita, plus Mary's mother and Maria Concetta's mother, whose house it was. Plus us, the ol' clueless Americans.

We got to the house around 11 am, for what we thought would be lunch, leisurely to be sure, but 12 hours later we stumbled home, giddy, overstimulated, every centimeter of our bodies stuffed with food, exhausted by trying to keep up with conversations in Italian/Sicilian for that long. The day, in its entirety, reminded us of a Fellini film--joy, food, color, relationships, punctuated by moments of chaos or silences or dancing, and, of course, confusion on our parts.

The day centered on food. First, the antipasti, which I helped the women set out: marinated eggplant, roasted olives, vinegary peppers, salami, creamy triangles of pecorino. Meanwhile, the men were out manning the fire. Then we started preparing the artichokes, much like Giovanna did for Pasquetta this year: smashing them open on a rock and then pouring olive oil inside, sprinkling them with salt and nestling them into the coals.

It was one of those Sicilian days--bright and sunny and very windy, so you were constantly beckoned outside by the sun but once there you were buffeted around and sort of left panting, both hot and cold and windblown and sunburned, squinting with your hair in your eyes. That's sort of how I feel about Sicily in fact, just all these elements charging your body at once. Anyways. It was a relief to all sit down together inside to share antipasti, especially with a fire going in the corner fireplace. Then we had lasagne, with tomato sauce and ricotta and bits of wild fennel. Then back outside, while Salvatore grilled the lamb ribs, and the kids screamed around and the moms and I practiced our dances.

Elio kept switching his allegiances with the kids, initially playing with Cesare and Antonio, whom he knows the best because he goes to school with them, but the three-year-old boy energy would get too intense, and then he'd spin off and start drawing with the big kids, Giuseppe and Rita, until finally, later in the day, he settled down with sweet Rosella, making up their own strange games.

Once the lamb was done cooking, it was taken inside in a big orange pot, but when it became clear that everyone was too busy dancing and playing soccer outside, out it came again, and we all continued to dance or play, but with a salty, fatty rib in hand. Perfect. Eventually we went inside to eat the artichokes and sausages that had also been grilled. (Sidenote: Guy and I want so badly to love these artichokes, but they never seem cooked long enough to us. It's a shame.) And now here's where I just have to start making a list. After lunch, we had fruit salad of kiwis and strawberries. Then a little while later, we all had giant slices of tiramisu. Then a bit later, Salvatore cut a few pineapples into rather elaborate boat shapes and we ate those. And then I thought, really, I am done. Truly done. But then we spied Giusi making dough in a bowl, and that was our hint that while we might be done, the day certainly was not.

While the dough rose, the men suddenly got up and said they were going into town for a caffe (though we'd already had some of that, too). This was about 5 pm. Guy was saying that he didn't want any more coffee, but I hissed at him that it wasn't about drinking coffee, it was about hanging out with the men. So off they went and disappeared for over an hour. During which time, the women and kids sat around and paged through old Italian women's magazines from the early 90s (Princess Diana! Claudia Schiffer! Fabio!) and ate bananas. Truly. Because we were feeling peckish? I don't know. When the men came back, Giusi checked on the dough and deemed it ready to fry. The oil was heated, the dough was patted into rounds, and soon we were all nibbling hot fried dough coated in sugar. Guy said these (I think they called them "frittedda"?) were exactly like the doughboys that his Grandma Rachel and Aunt Eloise used to make. They were delicious, and I ate three.

 

And then I thought, really, we are all done. You can't eat any more after you eat fried dough. That's the limit. But then it was almost nine o'clock and I was bundled into the car with Maria Concetta and Mary and Salvatore and we were driving to Mary's house to get their karaoke machine. While we were rumbling down the dark, rutted roads, the sky filled with stars, and I gave up trying to understand what everyone was saying and just looked out the window, I felt suddenly like I was back in high school again, hanging out with a bunch of people I both knew and didn't know, going somewhere I wasn't quite sure where, just going along for the ride, feeling the thrill and the uncertainty of it. And then we were back with the karaoke machine, and it was time to make dinner: focaccia from Mary and Salvatore's pizzeria stuffed with the leftover antipasti, cold artichokes, sausage. Pastina mixed with soft cheese for the kids. I heard Mary's mom mutter "povre mangiata" when I turned down a second artichoke.

From there, things spiraled downhill. The parents focused on karaoke, and the kids' bodies finally hit the exhaustion point even if their brains wouldn't admit it. We ended the night with Elio curled up on my lap, at the end of his rope. What a day, in so many ways.