A little while back on Facebook, I lamented that I had broken the lid to my sugar bowl and couldn’t find another with a slot for the spoon.
Diana of Creative Structures and the Baur B&B in Piemonte, one of my dearest friends made virtually, responded by making and sending me a sugar bowl — and throwing in an antique spoon and handmade candlestick holder and candle for good measure.
Anyone who has hung around the blogosphere has likely experienced the joy of finding a kindred spirit, someone who always manages to say the right thing when you need it, a person who inspires you by just living her life and letting you share a little a piece of it virtually, and perhaps even in person if time and money allow.
I’ve been extra lucky. I’ve found several such people, and I think of them whenever I read that Internet friendships aren’t real or as valuable as “real life” relationships.
Please.
Friendships are what *you* make of them whether you see the other person every day, once a year, or never. It is up to us how much we let others into our hearts; the physical distance between us doesn’t get a say.
One of the best parts about being back in America was that I got to spend time not only with my childhood friends, but also with some of their children. You know, their mini-mes — the ones who look just as you remember your friend looking at that age.
What an amazing experience, especially when the last time I was home some of them didn’t even exist…and now they’re actual people!
My friend Nicole and her husband Nathan (high school sweethearts!) have two daughters, Emma (8 in a couple weeks) and Ava (4), and new baby boy Colton. All ridiculously adorable, I assure you, and at least one of them is a writer/blogger in the making….
Yes, I got a little note on my Facebook page the other day that Emma noticed this in her Pasta Roni:
As many of you know, I was back in the US from mid-November to late December. This was my first trip “home” since February 2004.
Yes I write it in quotes; as much fun as I had there, you see, I was also extremely excited and happy to get back to P, the pooches,
and the three kids (who, incidentally, we believe may all be pregnant!).
Stateside, I spent lots of time with family and friends, visited Philadelphia, New York City (where I met two online friends for the first time and met up with an old college friend–none of whom are shown in the photo below!)
and Washington DC,
helped my mom make cookies (which she sells for Christmas),
and shopped. A lot. The Christmastime prices in American malls? Worth the price of the airline ticket, quite frankly.
For instance, P was amazed that I could get him a pair of Levi’s for $30 (€21) when they cost, oh five times that here. My other spectacular purchases for myself include a new iPod Touch (to make it easier to read English language books, mainly) and a new external hard drive.
NB: Anything technological/electronic costs *way* less in America than it does in Italy.
My biggest culture shock actually came very early on in the trip when I couldn’t. stop. speaking. Italian. It was the weirdest thing! On the plane over, no matter what language the person addressing me was speaking, I would answer in Italian…and only sometimes catch that I had done it–once purely by the blank look on a fellow passenger’s face.
The two hardest things to stop saying were “Ciao!,” “Grazie!,” and “Sì!” So I imagine I just looked like a really pretentious American for at least the first few days of the trip. Oh well.
The other thing that was hard to get used to? Things being open in the afternoon. So strange to be able to go shopping or *gasp* get something to eat between one and four! Lovely.
I still have lots of photos to go through and post on Flickr (and possibly here), and probably a lot of mental processing of the whole experience. Soon I’ll be publishing my “Top 10 Realizations After Being “Home” for the First Time in Nearly Six Years” so please check back!
Starting today and continuing until Friday, July 10, we’re celebrating the fact that lil’ ole Calabria *finally* has a fabulous guidebook dedicated to her:
All this week, Lara will be here answering my questions and sharing Terry’s and her gorgeous photos of bella Calabria.
If you want to start getting acquainted with this dynamic duo now:
Lara describes herself as a “perpetual globetrotter (60+countries) travel writer (40+books, 100s stories for world’s best publishers) living out of a suitcase since Jan 06″ on Twitter (follow @laradunston) and blogs at Cool Travel Guide.
Terry is “a travel and editorial photographer and travel writer. He literally lives out of a suitcase accompanied by a couple of bags of photography gear.” Follow him @terencecarter on Twitter and read his blog at Wide angles, wine and wanderlust.
And you don’t want to miss a single day of the Q and A with Travel Writer Lara Dunston. Why not?
Because I will be giving away a copy of Travellers Calabria every day–that’s FIVE copies total.
Comment once on each post from Monday to Friday to be entered in the drawings; I will pick one winner from Monday’s comments, one from Tuesday’s, etc., and I will announce all the winners next Saturday. All comments must be entered by midnight CET on Friday, July 10.
For extra entries (one per day per person except as below), tweet or post about the contest on Facebook with a link to any one of the contest posts (although preferably this one since it will be the only one with all the rules) AND EMAIL ME TO LET ME KNOW at:
michellefabio5 (at) gmail (dot) com
I will enter your extra entry in the day in which you tweet/post appears, except for today; any tweets/posts today will be entered in the drawing that ends up with the fewest number of entries–which means you can get six extra entries if you tweet/post today and every day of the contest.
In the event you’re lucky enough to win two (or more) copies, you will have the choice of accepting all your winnings or having me pick another winner.
Any questions–feel free to ask!
And what’s a party without music?
Kicking things off is a new CD by my friend Mimmo’s band, Marasà. You may remember Mimmo from our New Year’s Eve celebration and discussion of the chitarra battente.
Well his band is back with their second CD, Sentéri:
This is Calabrese folk music with a twist–a famous Italian rock star (who happens to have a house in Badolato Superiore) even guests on the CD.
The songs are sung in local dialect, but the liner notes have the lyrics in both Italian and Calabrese; if you’re interested in a copy of the lyrics, let me know, and I’ll send you the PDF.
Curious as to what it sounds like?
Head over to Offma, where you can also buy your own copy for 12 euros, or to Marasà’s MySpace page, where you can listen to samples and also, for those of you who will be in southern Italy over next couple months, where you can catch them live in concert–they’re kicking the summer tour off tonight right here in Badolato Superiore. Lucky us!
And, aw heck, since I’m feeling generous, I’ll even give away a copy of the new Marasà CD to a lucky commenter. To be eligible, comment on THIS post by midnight CET on Friday, July 10.
William the Englishman (or l’Inglese as he was called in the village) had a house in Badolato with an “orgasmic view” of the Ionian Sea, as he called it. He came to stay here every year from April to October.
*
During the early years (we both arrived in the village around 2003), we were the only two English speakers, so we’d meet for cappuccino in the piazza before William took the bus down to the beach. Along the way he’d stop to chat with just about everyone, trying out his ever-improving Italian, helped by the years he had spent as a bar owner in Spain.
William always joked that everyone knew him, but he most certainly didn’t know everyone. The young children on the bus especially enjoyed him as they relished the chance to practice their school-learned English.
I always felt like a surrogate daughter for William, whose own precious girl was about my age back in London. When William’s house needed “a woman’s touch” as he put it, I helped him pick out dishes and other little accents. Every couple weeks, I’d set up his cell phone ring tones, phonebook, and other settings he’d somehow managed to change. Paolo and I even had him over for a very impromptu Easter dinner one year.
William called me “the Unamerican American” because I had what he considered a rare curiosity about the world and desire to live abroad–Unamerican for an American, according to William. And he never did quite understand how I was able to work via Internet in this mountaintop village and actually make a living; I must have tried to explain it a hundred times.
Lest you think he was anti-American, though, William always rang me on Thanksgiving and was always sure to pay for my cappuccino on the 4th of July.
*
Soon after William bought his house here in Badolato, he was the victim of a hit-and-run back in London, and although he survived, he did so just barely. He suddenly had a long physical and emotional road to recovery ahead of him–not made any easier by all the steep hills and steps in Badolato.
And so, William considered selling his beloved casa with its “orgasmic view,” but I got the feeling that was never going to happen. He just loved his piccolo paradiso (little paradise), as he called it, too much.
*
In 2008, William died in a house fire in his flat in London. Paolo had gotten word when I was away on a trip, but he waited until I got back to tell me.
At that moment, on my balcony looking out at that same orgasmic view of the Ionian (my house was on the same side of the mountain as William’s, only higher up), all the memories of William came flooding back, bringing mostly smiles and, admittedly, also quite a few tears.
Then came an overwhelming sadness with the realization that not only would we never have cappuccino again, but also our connection was completely gone. Even though I had heard many stories about William’s family back in England, I had no contact information for anyone in his English life.
But then one day a few months ago, I opened up my email and saw what I knew to be his daughter’s name in my inbox. She had found me through this blog, not even realizing that I knew her father, only that I was an English speaker who lived in this mysterious medieval village that William had loved so much.
*
I met William’s daughter in person last week for the first time when she and her fiancé came to Badolato. She looks so much like her father and has precisely the same English sense of humor, or “humour” I suppose.
I know she was pleased to find out how many people enjoyed the company of l’Inglese, and that he didn’t simply come here to live as a hermit. I introduced her to quite of few of William’s acquaintances, each one saying he was “bravo” or “un grande amico” or something similar.
After initial thoughts of selling the house, she and her family have decided to keep it, rent it out, and otherwise offer it as a place of refuge from the real world for family and friends–much as her father used it when he was alive.
And I like to think that somewhere, William is smiling. His orgasmic view has been passed on to a new generation–and so have some of his friendships.
For William, “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton, the man he called his “God”:
Michelle Fabio, an American writer and attorney leaves the Anthracite Coal Region of Pennsylvania for her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy, falls in love, adopts two dogs and three kids (baby goats), tends to chickens, rabbits, ducks, and a growing garden, writes to her heart's content, and begins bleeding espresso. No, really.
