A Love Affair With Italy

Italy remains one of the world’s top tourist destinations for a reason. Maybe it’s the wine, the incredible food, the rich history or treasure trove of art and culture. Maybe it’s everything.

For us, Italy offers all that we find beautiful in life. And then some.

I share here an article I wrote for a Canadian magazine back in 2010. It explains better than I can today, how and why we fell in love with Italy.

It was during this sweet year back in 2008 that we escaped to a small stone cottage in Umbria and were transformed. The seeds of our future life, the one we are living today, were planted during this very special time in our lives.

For us, there was simply no turning back…

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We are a culture fascinated by makeovers. If you have any doubt just tune into prime time television anywhere in North America. You can channel surf between women making over every aspect of their lives: hair, makeup, wardrobe, bodies, kitchens, love lives. We are getting the message. We should not accept the status quo. Change is not only good; it’s essential in the quest to get all we can out of this life. Just look at our collective obsession with all things pretty and perky.

We are a culture that worships at the altar of perpetual youth. We want to banish wrinkles, expanding waistlines, the very thought that we will one day be old and gray. And in this never ending race to hold back time and keep up with the demands of home and career, we keep telling ourselves we can “have it all”.

We cling to this widely accepted mantra and in doing so we still the quiet voice buried deep beneath the layers of self-doubt. The one that is dying to shout back, “Is this what I really want?! Is this it?”

Best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert shared her own exploration of this fundamental question in her blockbuster-hit novel, “Eat, Pray, Love”. Gilbert rose from a cathartic crying jag on her bathroom floor to scour three continents in the search for an answer she could live with.

Women around the globe responded to Gilbert’s spiritual globetrotting. Many lived vicariously through her tale of awakening. Some found her decision to give up a husband and a well-formed life to roam the world for one year extraordinarily self-indulgent.

But what if you could have your own “Eat, Pray, Love”? What would you do? Where would you go? And what would be your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

At the age of 44, I decided to find out. I packed up my house, my bags and my boyfriend Peter and headed for la dolce vita, “the sweet life” in rural Italy. After all, If you can’t find yourself in the land of love and lust you can at least get fat eating heavenly pasta and drinking some of the world’s best wines.

We had one year. One year to makeover our lives; to check out of the familiar in Canada and explore a new life – a different life. Along the way, I would learn profound lessons from observing how Italians live their lives. There would be disappointments and setbacks but there would also be moments of such extraordinary bliss and beauty that I would be forever changed. And change is good, right?

My house in Umbria

It’s a glorious day in late May as we drive down the windy country road or strada bianca to what will be our home for the next year. We’ve chosen to live on the outskirts of the medieval hill town of Panicale, a short drive from the Tuscany border. I resist the urge to pinch myself. I can’t believe we are finally here. We round the last steep downhill curve and the 200-year-old stone mill house that’s existed only on my computer screen for the past five months comes into view. The house is smaller than I thought; more like a cottage but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in charm. I have dreamed of long, lingering lunches under a lush vine covered pergola, surrounded by terra cotta pots bursting with rich red flowers and here it is: my own fantasy terrace.

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There’s even a meditation pond filled with big golden fish and an herb garden. Okay, I can’t tell the difference between oregano and thyme just by looking at them – yet. But I vow I will. I’m going to slow down, put my life on simmer and really savour the moment.  And I’m going to cook. A lot.

As I sit drinking wine and excitedly planning with Peter, I realize what a gift I’ve been given. To open the book of my life to a new chapter and see a blank page waiting to be filled. But for now, we have this first night complete with a soft, lavender scented breeze, flickering candlelight and the unmistakable song of a nightingale.

A love affair with food

I’m introduced very early on to the importance of food to Italians. Hang around any local bar or travel on a commuter train to Rome and the most common topic of conversation is inevitably what they just ate or are about to eat that day. Italians are passionate about their food. And they’ll bend over backwards to help you grow an appreciation for it as well. On my shopping list one day is rosemary needed to roast a chicken for dinner. I use my rudimentary Italian to ask the store clerk for the fragrant herb only to be met with a puzzled look and a yell to the clerk’s teenage son to run out back and grab me some from the bush behind the shop.

Apparently, rosemary grows wild throughout Umbria including, I discovered later, all over our luscious garden.

Weeks later, we are invited to a ‘festa’ (celebration) in the picturesque 14th century village of Paciano. Long tables are set up alongside the steep, cobblestone streets and villagers mingle with tourists under the scorching sun. There’s a colourful village choir with a menagerie of members ranging from age nine to 90 singing their hearts out, jugs of wine and course after course of some of the best food I have ever tasted including creamy gnocchi with shaved truffles and succulent cinghale (local wild boar). I take it all in. The laughter, the singing, the smell of the sunbaked stone and feel happier than I have in a very long time. And it has little to do with the wine.

By the time Canadian Thanksgiving rolls around, I have mastered my herb garden. My little country kitchen is churning out two, three course meals a day that Peter and I slowly savour on our vine-covered terrace. Italians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so it’s a bit of a challenge to find a whole turkey. It has to be special ordered by the local butcher. The day dawns unseasonably warm. I set up the table a la fresca on the terrace. Under a clear blue sky, we gather our friends and share a day of celebration. As I watch Peter carve our skinny Italian turkey, I take a moment to give thanks for the lightness I’m starting to feel, despite the pounds I’m gaining.  And it is on the subject of food that I learn my first valuable lesson.

Life lesson:  Every meal is a celebration of life and love and must never be rushed.

An Italian love story

The comforting smell of wood smoke now hangs in the air; a sure sign that winter is just around the corner. Like most houses in the Italian countryside, our little cottage is heated only by wood stove. It took Peter eight hours to stack our order of wood. By December, we’ve already made a good dent in it. Despite the chill, we bundle up and continue our daily one-hour walk through the hills and olive groves.

We’ve adopted a little black and white Jack Russell mix breed dog named Rocco. It was love at first sight when Peter first stumbled across the scraggly mutt while on a solo walk. Rocco’s family was too poor to pay any attention to him so he was left tied up on a four foot rope alone in a field. They gladly handed him over to us and we have opened our hearts to a new kind of puppy love.

Our walks with Rocco take us past the little hamlet of Migliaolo, a tiny village of 20 residents from the very old to the very young. These people have spent their whole lives in what amounts to a cluster of ten or so houses, gathering every summer night in the little square to sit, laugh and watch the world go by. The highlight of their year is the annual festa to honor their patron saint who we are told is the patron saint of rabies.

The hamlet matriarch, a diminutive red-haired grandmother named Natalina, is also the gatekeeper of all the comings and going in our little community. We are touched by the way the residents of Migliaolo stop what they’re doing when we drive or walk by to smile, wave and shout, “Bonjourno”. From the butcher to the patron of our local bar, we are embraced everywhere we go in this enchanting countryside. Italians always have time to say hello, to stop and ask how you are and to offer a hand. They truly understand the meaning of family and community. I feel ashamed for all the times I tucked my head down and rushed about my life in Toronto thinking I didn’t have time to smile at a stranger, never mind say hello to a neighbour. How sad that we can live in an urban metropolis of millions of people and find such loneliness around us.

I begin to hold my head up, to smile, to say good day to everyone I come into contact with. In essence, my resistance to connect starts to thaw and I see the power and beauty of opening your heart wider and drawing more of the world in.

I am moved by the way a 5 ft. Italian senior with thick bottle glasses, puts on a bow-tie and his best jacket to visit Natalina every day. He comes with flowers or a pie and always with a smile from ear to ear when she opens the door to greet him. I find out through a local that Natalina and Sandrino grew up together in Migliaolo and were in love as teenagers. In a part of the story not shared, they were separated, married others and then both lost their spouses a few years ago. Now 70-year-old Sandrino is courting the woman he loved so long ago. And it is while marveling over their enduring love, and sharing a meal we most certainly did not rush, that after 15 years of being friends – and on and off again lovers – Peter and I look deeply into each other’s eyes, see beyond the fear born of past hurts and decide to get married. And it is on the subject of love that I learn my second valuable lesson.

Life lesson:  Where there is passion, there is life. Don’t hold on to your love. Give it away.

A Venetian fairy tale

Through planning the wedding and dealing with the mountain of paperwork needed to marry as a foreigner in Italy, I discover Italians have a strange love of stamping documents. Every paper must be officially signed and stamped and then the official signature must be verified at another location miles away and stamped again.

Patience had never been a virtue of mine and what little I have is stretched almost to the breaking point. I swear to Peter that if I’m asked for one more stamp we are throwing away the idea of our dream wedding in Venice and eloping once we’re back in Canada. He manages to calm me down with a chocolate filled croissant and a glass of prosecco.

A gray dawn mist hovers over the Grand Canal in Venice the morning of May 6, 2009. I sit on the huge windowsill of our apartment on the Canal listening to classical music and watching the world’s most fascinating city wake from its slumber. This is our wedding day and despite the fact that I have a wicked cold and my nose is red and raw, I am calm. I sit until the odd working boat drifting by beneath me turns into a flotilla of buzzing activity. I reflect on the amazing year we have just shared together. I have watched myself grow into a calmer, more appreciative person; a woman who now understands that life is messy and chaotic and can never be fully contained within the lines. I have finally stopped wanting more. I see beauty in a simple life. And I am certain I know Peter better now through the days and months we have been side by side creating our own la dolce vita.

So I stroll arm in arm with my father through the narrow cobblestone streets of Venice, wearing an Italian gown chosen to match the unique pearly gray waters of this ancient floating city. And like countless brides in the centuries before me, I board a gondola to the sound of locals clapping and shouts of,'”Viva la Sposa!” (long live the bride).

I take Peter’s hand and we float away. And it is on the subject of marriage that I learn the most valuable lesson of all.

That life is made all the sweeter when shared with the one you love.

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