Summer in the City and Vacation Envy

Is it me or are people vacationing more than they used to? When I was a kid,we spent a week at a beach somewhere and we were lucky, lucky dogs, super privileged to be able to do that. Maybe it's  the Facebook effect -- other people' vacations are not just mentioned in passing ala 1982 but hyper-documented -- all the minutia photographed and shared -- with every photo fomenting toxic envy. Maybe it's the fact that I live in a fancier neighborhood than my parents did when I was a kid, so my neighbors rally are taking off for two months at a time. Whatever the reason, it feels like everyone i know is spending all summer frolicking in dazzling turquoise oceans or jumping into serene lakes or eating ice cream in front of the Eiffel Tower/ Leaning Tower/ London Tower.  

All of which is to say, I am experiencing a higher-than-usual dose of vacation envy. It doesn't help that at the start of this week, Brooklyn was approximately five hundred degrees, in the shade. I started to understand why people in the 80s used to wear sweatbands. What a helpful accessory.

It is summer in the city and it is hot and muggy and all the not-hot, not-muggy places are so incredibly unthinkably, nauseatingly overcrowded - Pier 6, anyone? Feel like having a nervous collapse today?

All the non-hot, not-muggy places which are NOT crowded are expensive, too expensive, as in "If I could afford this, I'd be ON VACATION AND NOT IN THIS CITY"

It gets a girl cranky. Clearly.

And then yesterday evening, at about 6pm, we were waiting for David to get home from work at my grandmother's house -- she'd made spaghetti ala carbonara for dinner -- and I said to Seconda, "I'll take you to shoot some hoops." We're not a hoop-shooting or ball-batting or goal-getting sort, as you may have gleaned but she likes to dribble and it was a lovely evening so why not?

Ten seconds after she started dribbling, a little girl named Charity who we didn't know came i to the courts with her dad and stepmom. The dad introduced himself and asked if Seconda wanted someone to play with. She sure did. So Charity and Seconda played b ball (the onus falling on Charity to do so, Seconda being mainly clueless) and the  dad was rebound guy (which is, apparently a thing one does). I leaned on the fence and talked to Charity's stepmom, and we watched the dad give them shooting tips and the girls give each other high fives and we talked about having kids and living in New York and not having kids and living in Atlanta. The breeze was perfect and the sound of the ball hitting the pavement was a delightful metronome not the migraine-inducing cacophany it usually is. Then my grandmother called and said: "YOU BETTA GET HERE RIGHT NOW 'CAUSE DA PASTA'S GETTIN' COLD!" and I laughed and said, "OK"

As we walked back to my grandmother's apartment, I looked at my beautiful golden-haired kid in the beautiful golden light and I thought, "Summer in the city really isn't so bad."

And the pasta was still hot.

City Kids

We took the kids to the country this weekend and I learned something: I've got me some bona-fide city kids. The which is to say, we need more country time.

It wasn't like we went into the deep country or anything, just drove an hour up to the Bear Mountain area where my high school friend Miriam and her husband have a little house. Still, it had a screen door which as far as I can tell, legitimizes any country domicile. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard that creeeak! of a screen door; makes me feel like I'm in a Eudora Welty novel.

What got the kids' attention was the diversity of bug life. Here in NYC we have roaches, flies, mosquitoes, ants and the occasional spider. In the spring you'll see butterflies every so often and the sight of them blows my kids' minds: "OH MY GOD IT'S A BUTTERFLY! LOOK!"

On Saturday, no sooner had the stepped out of the car then we were inundated with bugs. Thankfully, the kids didn't wimp out on me and get all bug-a-phobic: in fact, it was the opposite.

"WOW! Mommy! LOOK! It's a Gran' Daddy Longlegs!" Seconda gasped.

I don't know where she learned that term. Must be her Tennessee gene which afforded her the ability to identify various kinds of hopping insects.

"Can I pick it up?" she asked.

"Sure, I guess." I wouldn't know a Gran' Daddy Long Legs from a Venus Flytrap but it sounded friendly enough.

"Oooh! there's another!" shrieked Primo.

"And here's another one! And another!" Seconda chimed in.

"Yes, kids, I think the country is full of them."

In their investigations in the dirt they found all sorts of bugs, all of which were impossible for me to identify but which David determined were millipedes, beetles, roly polies and "potato bugs."

"Can I touch them?" Seconda asked.

"Yeah," I guessed, hoping none of the bugs in question were black widow spiders,  "Knock yourself out."

Then came the worms.

In community gardens here in Brooklyn, the kids look for worms and we can spend an hour digging in the dirt and find one, maybe two. These worms are priceless. You'd think, from the jubilation which breaks out when one is spotted, that we've stumbled upon a nugget of gold.

As it turns out, in the country, there are worms everywhere. And not tiny, pathetic half-dead worms which barely a wiggle left in them; thick, beefy, nasty-as-all-hell-get-out, are-you-sure-that-isn't-a-snake? 3-inch-long worms.  The kids were dumbfounded. In particular, Seconda.

"We need a way to COLLECT THEM!" she yelled. I knew she was already planning on bringing some back to Brooklyn, to repopulate the worm world here.

Miriam's husband brought her a coffee can to collect the worms. An actual tin Folger's coffee can with a plastic lid that we poked holes into.

"That is so old-school," I noted appreciatively.

Then he said, "Once you're done collecting, we can go fishing with me."

Now, I defy you to find any activity more country than fishing with worms in a tin can.  I mean, I don't know from personal experience, but I've read a lot of books about this sort of thing and let me tell you, watching the kids drop the worms into that can, I felt like I was reading The Adventures of Tom Freaking Sawyer.

They did paddle out in the lake and catch fish (I stayed behind at the house while the baby slept) and afterwards, we all took a dip in the "swimming hole." You can not imagine my delight at being able to use that term. Being a city kid myself, I seriously fetishize this shit. That there were fish in the water in which we swam blew Seconda away; she spent a good fifteen minutes trying to catch one with her bare hands.

When we got home that night, the kids sacked out like a bunch of drunks, my dream come true. And I saw to David, "We need to get to the country more often."

The children do chemistry

The kids are back to school now, thankfully, but last week, in the days before school started up, we hit the end of summer slump. You know it’s the last week of break when your six and four-year-old are doing chemistry experiments unsupervised in the kitchen.

The snippets of conversation coming form the kitchen are pretty troubling and were it any other time of year, and not the last of a marathon stretch of weeks with no child care, I’d gotten off the couch to inquire. But, as it was, I just stayed alert for burning smells and the cries of panic which accompany a chemical explosion.

“And THAT,” explains Primo triumphantly, “is how you make carbon dioxide!”

“Ooooh,” murmurs Seconda, “Its really bubbly.”

In fact, I can hear the vigorous bubbling and see cloudy mists rising from a Tupperware, when I lean forward to peer into the kitchen doorway.

“Ah, carbon dioxide is harmless,” I figure, “Isn’t it? It’s the carbon MONOXIDE I have to worry about. I hope they’re not making that. But if they d, we have an alarm, the kind where the batteries never run out. That was good thinking.”

Back to my laptop.

Later, I hear, “WOW! These polyacrimide crystals are great!”

THAT’S how long the kids have been doing chemistry in the kitchen – long enough to get familiar with the term “polyacrimide” -- just rolls of his tongue like it ain’t no big thing – he doesn’t even stumble over it.

I don’t know what in the hell polyacrimide crystals are but

Its just a beginner’s chemistry set and everything looked non-toxic so I’m assuming its probably OK, as long as its not ingested. Which, upon further thought, might need clarifying.

“SECOOOOOONDA!” I yell. She runs in, a white powder all over her nude torso.

“Listen to Mommy. Do not eat any of the chemistry ingredients. You understand?”

She nods but I am not convinced. This bears repeating.

“DO NOT EAT ANY of the ingredients. Not the polyacrimide crystals or the carbon dioxide potionor ANYTHING. Got it?”

She nods and runs back into the kitchen, far too eager to resume the experiment for my comfort level. But then again, it’s the last week before school starts and I. Just. Can’t. This week, I take a vacation from helicopter mothering and go all free-range.

A few minutes later, my ears perk up because I hear whispers.

“Oooooh Priiiimo!” murmurs Sec, “You made a biiiiiiig mess! Mommy’s gonna be –“

“Just be QUIET! I’m PICKING it UP!”

“Uhhhhhhooooooh.”

“Just get the vacuum cleaner!”

Clearly, my children’s science experiment, as well as my own free-range experiment had come to an end. I sighed loudly, extremely annoyed at having to get off the couch and interrupt an already non-productive work session to care for my young children.

As I entered the kitchen, my sigh broke off into a choked gasp.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” went my brain, and possibly my mouth.

I don’t know what image I had in my mind of my six and four-year olds chemistry set-up. I don’t know if I imagined lab coats and an eye wash station and surgical gloves with an antiseptic countertop or what, but I definitely did not expect the Greatest Mess on Earth.

The y hadn’t bothered to move any of the crap which live son our kitchen tale out of the way before beginning the experiments so piles of mail and boxes of tissues of stickers, Sharpies and CD cases, fruits snacks and miscellaneous hardware items were now stuck t the tablecloth which was covered in a purple sea of stickiness. I The various bags of chemistry ingredients were strewn amidst the purple sea, most of them open and half-spilt onto the table. But this wasn’t even the “mess” Primo and Seconda were referring t. That was just ordinary working conditions. The “mess” was a pile of coarse white powder that had spilled off the table onto the floor. Primo clearly didn’t notice for a while because he’d been tracking it all over the kitchen so that the whole floor was coated in a thin white sticky paste. You could lie on your belly, rub your face it in and get a great exfoliation scrub.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, in my super-calm-totally-about-to-lose-it voice.

“Don’t panic Mommy,” said Primo. Its never a good sign when he says that.

“Its just citric acid,” he went on.

No I know citric acid is harmless because as you may recall, the maniac kid had me making DIY bath bombs a few years back so I got up close an personal with citric acid. But still, harmless or not, I don’t want it ALL OVER MY KITCHEN.

“I’m cleaning it up!” he pointed out. And he was, pinching little pinches of it in his fingers BACK into the bag. So he could use it ANOTHER day. To RECREATE this mess.

“This is too much,” I said, clearly revving up my lecture engine,” This is too much even for us. I mean, look at this kitchen! It’s not even a mess it’s a disaster area. There are chemicals ALL OVER THE PLACE!”

I shooed Seconda away and delegated some small cleaning tasks to Primo while I tackled the floor . Thankfully, my grandmother had insisted on buying me one of those vinyl tablecloths from the 99 cent store (not the $40 drop cloths sold in my neighborhood, but their older, more affordable relatives) so the purple mess hadn’t leaked through onto the table, which may have cost $150 from Ikea but is still beloved by us. I was able to toss almost all of the chemistry ingredients though the polyacrimide crystals will live to see another round of experiments. Then I took the whole Ziploc bag of chemistry stuff and the waterlogged, stained set of instructions which looks like a pirates treasure map at this point and I stowed it on a high shelf where it would be out of sight, out of mind.

At the end of the day, I’m just not the free-range type.

Hunter

In North Carolina, my daughter learned how to catch animals and eat them. Sea creatures, primarily. She had an absolute LARK of a time fishing for blue crabs, watching us shake them into our coooler of doom, where they would freeze to death, and then asking when she could slurp them up. The next day, we did, indeed, steam the suckers and she cracked off their legs and sucked them into her gullet. Eating crabs has never seemed so violent. Then it was all about the oysters.

"I'm going to crack open their shells and slurp them up!" She could hardly wait.

While playing on the beach, she found a ton f teeny tiny crbas, each the size of a quarter, which she promptly captured for a later meal. When we told her they were too small to eat, she decided the next best thing would be to keep them as a pet. And how she loved those dwarf crabs, for a whole fifteen to twenty minutes.

I am a little concerned that her hunting zeal with continue now that we're back in the Big Apple. I half expect her to come to me with a dead rat or cockroach that she'd like to broil for supper. Its tough to acclimate to city living again after the great outdoors.

Feels like 115

Once you get into the triple digits of temperature, its a bit over-the-top but "feels like 115" is just insanity. This is New York, people, not Death Valley. I half expect to pass rat skulls and the skeletal remains of other street creatures when I exit the house to walk the kids to summer camp. Within a block or two, we're all panting like dogs and ducking into supermarkets, gasping for air, the more processed, the better. Making matters worse, Primo's camp is au naturale, no AC, which was all very well and good for the past couple of weeks when the temperature hovered in the mid 90s but now that that the weatherman's begun issuing advisories and putting us on the equivalent of Orange Alert, I've grown concerned. In a panic, I emailed the counselor at Primo's camp, who made the terrible mistake of giving me her contact info, and asked her what were their plans for keeping the kids cool. She didn't write back, the which I take to mean: "My plan is to watch your fucking kid, thus doing my job, rather than to respond to overbearing neurotics. That OK by you?"

Got the message loud and clear.

I remember the days when I was in my early twenties, before I had the money for an AC, when I would take an icy cold shower at night, run into my bed and be sweating like a pig within five minutes. I remember waiting to break up with this guy til the end of August because he had a great, heavily-air-conditioned apartment in Manhattan. Those were the good old days I guess but I'm glad they are behind me. Now, I plan to sit my fat ass down in front of a pimped out AC unit and blast my old face with freezing blasts of air until I have goddamned icicles hanging from my eyelashes from the TEARS OF JOY I am weeping. Its me and my AC from now til the wheels come off. Or Con Ed turns off the electricity. Whichever comes first.

The Coliseum brings out the worst in people

School's started and summer is becoming what it works best as -- a memory. But if you thought I was done with the Italy stories, you were wrong. I've yet to relate the lowest point of our Italian adventure, and what kind of a mom amok would I be, if I kept my parenting failures to myself?

A few days before we left Italy, David's sister flew in from California to join us. All of us were delighted to see her and since she’d never been to Italy, I put myself in charge of showing her around the town.

“I’ve saved all the big stuff to do with you,” I told her before she came, “St. Peter’s, Galleria Borghese, and, of course, the Coliseum.”

Looking back with a clear mind, one not deranged by international travel, I see this was akin to telling her “I got you a root canal for you birthday!!!” Who the hell wants to go to the Coliseum at high noon in August?

I had, though, been priming Primo for the trip to the Forum and the Coliseum, having read half a dozen books about ancient Rome. We knew that the Romans ate stuffed jellyfish and camel’s heels and we knew all the names for the various rooms of the public baths (frigidarium, caldarium, tepidarium) and that Roman pater familiases could sell their children into slavery. We were ready for the moderlode of ancient Rome. We were ready for the vomitorium.

Since we never got up and running in Rome ‘til about the crack of noon, we arrived at the Coliseum by 1pm, the absolute peak of heat and crowds. The line to get in was beyond insane. Even more insane was the level of whining and complaining coming from the kids.

“I DON’T WANT TO GO TO THE COLISEUM!” Sec yelled over and over again, “I WANT TO GO HOME!”

“This is boring!” Primo whined, “I’m bored. I’m hot. I’m thirsty, My legs are tired. I need to be carried. I’m hungry. This is boring.”

When he saw the line, it was, “Are we going to have to wait on that LONG LINE????”

“No,” I said, Ingenious, resourceful Momgeuvyer that I am, “We are definitely not. No way.”

I'd done some research on avoiding lines at the Coliseum, and though I was not willing, under any circumstances, to give up any sleep to get there earlier, I was ready for some shortcuts. I’d read that as your tickets always includes both the Coliseum and the Forum, a good trick is to walk a few blocks to the Roman Forum ticket counter, where there’s hardly ever a line, buy the ticket there and proceed directly to the front of the line at the Coliseum. We did this, and it worked marvelously. Only problem was, we opted to actually go into the Roman Forum and take a look around, seeing as we were already there and had the ticket and all.

I knew this was a bad idea. I’ve NEVER had a pleasurable time at the Forum and I’ve been many, many times. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all a big hoax engineered by SPQR centuries ago to generate some buzz and tourist traffic. Unlike the Coliseum or the Pantheon, which are both pretty much intact structures with irrefutable grandeur – the kinds of places that give you goosebumps -- the Forum is a collection of rubble. I’m not trying to be mean, and I know there are those who’d disagree, but let’s be honest here. You’ve got a bunch of broken-down columns and lots and lots of piles of broken rock: it could be ANYTHING. No one, not even those with electrifying imaginations, could possibly imagine any of it as anything other than well-placed rubble. It is impossible to ever discern what any of the rubble used to be because for some reason no one has ever bothered to erect any signs. If there was a large placard which read “Curia” or “Senate” then that’d be a start,

But as it is, everyone just trips along the uneven stone ground and stares at the columns and stuff and says

“Ohhhh. Wow,” like they’re moved or amazed when they’re all thinking the same thing as me which is, “Are you shitting me? I paid 12 Euros for this?”

This trip to the Forum was just as disappointing as the others except that we were carting around two tired, hot bored kids around and I felt compelled to educate them on the place because we’d read so much about ancient Rome, and this, we heard, was the very heart of it.

So I basically stood there in the middle of the Forum, shouting in no particular direction, “What is this I’m looking at?” and sometimes another tourist would make a stab at a guess and then I’d make up some shit about Julius Casear. After a half hour of this, everyone was worn out. We all wanted to go home. But this was just a warm-up to the Coliseum. So we walked BACK over there, in the heat, dragging now, really depleted of energy and goodwill.

But then something amazing happened. Once we were finally in the Coliseum, and once I’d secured a book from the gift shop with plastic overlays that showed what the Coliseum used to look like, inside and out, Primo was jazzed up and totally engaged. He sat on a bench and started sketching in his travel journal.

“This, right there, is what we do it for,” I was thinking.

Then David said, “OK, let’s go.”

“What?” I said, “He’s finally into it. We’re sitting down in the shade. Give him some time to sketch/”

“Well that’s great that HE’S into it,” he said, “but the rest of us are totally over it. Your daughter hasn’t wanted

to be here from the get-go and she won’t shut up about it/”

It was true. She was lying on the ground, crying and kicking her feet, a full-on tantrum.

“We’re going NOW,” he said.

“Well, I am enjoying myself,” I said, “And I don’t FEEL like GOING yet.”

“There are more people here than just you!” he came back.

“I KNOW THAT!” I yelled,

David’s sister was looking agonized, between Seconda’s never-ending tantrum and our shouting match.

“We should just go SEPARATE WAYS!” David exclaimed.

“GOOD!” I yelled back.

Then it occurred to me that it really was a good idea. “We should,” I said, “We should divide and conquer. Why didn’t we think of that sooner? You guys go get some food and I’ll stay here and sit while Primo sketches/”

Which is precisely what we did. And the day started looking up. It was clear that after nearly two weeks of constantly being together, we needed a break, particularly the kids, from each other. Both of them transformed from awful brutes to sweet, agreeable dears: David said Sec even APOLOGIZED for being such a pain, as soon as the strolled away from the Coliseum. Primo and I walked all over the city that afternoon – to Piazza Venezia, the Campidoglio, Torre Argentina, the little-known rooms of Saint Ignatius where there are three-dimensional angels from the sixteenth century on the walls. When we reconvened in a few hours, we all felt better and happy to be together again. Then David, his sister and I went out to dinner while my aunt and cousin watched the rugrats.

Togetherness is a wonderful thing but you know what they say about two much of a good thing. It freaking sucks.

Labor Day: or someone save me from these maniacs I birthed

I’ll be honest and share that not only have I no flipping idea what Labor Day commemorates, but I’m so uninterested that I’m not even going to google it now.

I’ll continue being honest and say that I DO, however, understand what Labor is, and have, ever since I went through the most literal definition of it five and a half years ago. That labor took about nineteen hours, and at the end of it, I had one stunning, spectacular specimen of boyhood. If necessary – and let’s thank God its not – I’d totally endure an hour or two of that labor every day to have my boy and girl with me, snuggled tight for bedtime stories. Hell, I’d even go through transition daily if necessary, as long as I could have an epidural with it. These kids are worth it.

But, I’ll pursue this honesty policy further and tell you that the work it takes to mother them literally boggles my mind. I’m not precisely certain what it means to ”boggle” a mind but if it entails shooting pain in the brain between the eyes and a throbbing in the lobes, well, that’s what I’ve got these last two weeks of summer.

Summer was NEVER this long when I was a kid. No friggin’ way. These summers get more and more endless every year, and more intense, The kids get bigger, the apartment gets smaller, the temperature gets hotter and the kids get bored-er and whiny-er than ever before in history.

My kids have been out of school for only two and a half months but since camp ended at the beginning of August, every day has felt like a week. Since we got back from Italy, every day has seemed like a friggin’ month. I can only guess that tomorrow and the Thursday and Friday which we have off for the Jewish Holidays will feel like a year. A really cranky year.

And I know it’s not just me. Every mother I’ve run into this past week has echoed these sentiments exactly, even the ones who are exquisitely composed and never lose it with their kids. I have a friend who is a psychologist and has three kids whom she treats with the utmost respect, even when she’s disciplining them. After I see her and her kids, I think to myself, “Why can’t I be more like THAT?” One time, her phone accidentally called my phone and left a super-long message which was just the sound of footsteps and her sweet voice talking to the kids as they walked to somebody’s birthday party. And I listened to the WHOLE thing, for almost 10 minutes, hoping that I’d catch this mom screaming bloody murder or calling the kids “shitty little brats” or something, anything, which would make me feel better. She was impeccable, the whole time. It was wildly demoralizing.

But over the weekend, I ran into her in the playground and she said to me, “I am gonna kill these kids! They’ve been like animals. I can’t wait til they go back to school.”

I have loved having whole days with the kids so we can go to the museum, and check out the new fancy playground on the Lower East Side and get bento boxes for lunch. It’s been swell. But I’ll tell you one thing: this Wednesday, it will be with a heart full of joy that I escort Primo to his first day of school. Kids need to learn. And parents need a freaking break.

Happy Labor Day, and even happier End-of-Labors Wedneday.

In the piazzas

We have tons of good stuff here in the old US of A, like buses which run on time and Target and shower curtains, but we don't have anything like the piazza. The kids loved running amok over the cobblestones of the piazzas. Behold:

A very special birthday

Ferragosto is a huge national holiday in Italy which you’ve likely never heard of. Officially, it’s the day to celebrate the Assumption – the day the Virgin Mary’s soul ascended into heaven. I’m not sure the thousands of drunken youth having sex on the beach know that’s what their celebrating, though. In practice, Ferragosto means a day off (not that the Italians need it, since they’ve got the whole month of August off). And in the beach town of Terracina, where I (and hundreds of other braniacs) go to celebrate, it means a huge, blow-out bash on the beach culminating in fireworks and a midnight dip in the ocean.

Besides all of this, there is one particular reason our family loves Ferragosto. The big bash always takes place on Ferragosto Eve, August 14th which also happens to be my husband’s birthday. Before we had the kids, I took him to Terracina for Ferragosto and the two of us swam into the ocean at midnight – me, probably topless – and watched the fireworks explode overhead as we swayed in the black Tierian Sea. It was a pretty incomparable birthday celebration. So when I realized that we had happened to book our travel to Italy over Ferragosto, I was thrilled to repeat the experience and to bring the kids into the festivities.

We started the celebration at 6:30 on the piazza, watching some very trusted churchgoers carry the Santa Maria della Assunzione – a huge icon – down the stone steps of the ancient church onto the street, where they loaded her onto a pick-up truck to get the procession started. I’ve walked in the procession with my grandmother, years ago, and it was an incredible experience, even if I was the youngest person in attendance by oh, 50 years. My mother likes to joke that my grandmother can’t walk across the street but if she has a procession to go to, she can walk for miles without complaint. So me and about a hundred old Italian ladies walked up and down the hills of the town, singing hymns and, when it got dark, bearing candles. I pitched it to the kids this year and they were totally gung ho, for about five steps. We hadn’t even made it out the piazza before they were over it. It’s walking and singing. Got it, Now we can go get a gelato?

So we headed back to my aunt’s apartment for a little party she threw in honor of David’s birthday – spaghetti alla vongole veraci, mille foglie cake and plenty of red wine. With all that wine, by 10pm, I was lying in bed, nodding off as I read King Arthur to Primo. Seconda was already asleep in the other room.

“Mommy, Mommy, wake up!” he yelled, “Aren’t we going for a midnight swim?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, looking over at David, “Is that still happening?”

“I don’t mind if we skip it.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m exhausted,” I said, “Primo, do you want to just stay home and read?”

”No, I want to go!” he said.

“Really? Because it’s a long walk to the beach and then a long walk home, up the huge hill.”

“It’s OK.”

“Are you sure? Because if you don’t want to go, we can just stay home.”

“I want to go.”

David and I exchanged the “Do-we-really-have-to?-I’m-freaking-fried” look. We wearily got up and put on our swimsuits. We wearily walked the 20 minutes to the beach.

When we got there, it was like New Year’s Eve. In fact, in this beach town, Ferragosto is bigger than New Year’s Eve, because no one there’s on Jan 1st but in the middle of August, it’s where everyone is. Every club on the beach was blaring house music and all the Casanovas were out with their shirts unbuttoned, hanging on the ladies with their gladiator sandals and bikini tops.

The three of us sat in beach chairs by the water. Primo was so overcome with excitement to be part of something so special and adult, that he kneeled on the sand and told me he was saying a prayer. We began to feel peppier after that. Soon it was minutes away from midnight and we took off our over-things and shoes and watches and held hands by the shore. Then we heard shouts and whoops and fireworks and we knew it was time. Holding hands, we ran into the dark water, which was cool, but not cold, and jumped the waves and laughed.

Then we wrapped ourselves up in towels and looked up because directly overhead, and I do mean right over our heads, fireworks were booming. I’d never seen fireworks so close up and it did occur to me that we might end up burned to a crisp in a freak Italian fireworks accident. But we stayed anyway and held our breaths and watched the sky explode with color. It was a moment I’ll never forget. It was a moment you squeeze into a tiny. neat bundle and stick somewhere inside of you to remember later. It was sublime.

“I’m glad we didn’t stay home tonight.” I said, “Thanks Primo, for giving us a reason to come.”

He just smiled, stars in his eyes.

And that’s why, despite the jet lag, and the crowded quarters, and the heat, we had one helluva time on our Roman holiday.

Why I am an octogenarian, on the inside

My cousin’s friends came to visit her while we were all at Terracina, a little beach town about an hour south of Rome. They are all early twenty-somethings, single and totally unencumbered.

We were having coffee the morning after they came, and the girls wandered into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, and smelling of smoke.

“What’d you guys do last night?” I asked, ever the interested cousin.

“We went for a swim,” said the dark-haired one.

“Oh, cool,” I replied. I took a sip of coffee and continued to show my interest in their lives: “Did you go in your clothes?”

“No,” the blonde said.

“Oh, so you wore your bathing suits?” I persisted, for some reason very interested in the logistics of this late-night dip.

“No,” said my cousin.

“Oh,” I replied, my head dense as a block of Parmesean cheese, “But if you didn’t go in your clothes or in your swimsuits then what . . . . “

The girls looked at each other and smiled, exactly as if they were talking to their very obtuse grandmother and debating whether or not they should really explain the concept of the skinny dip to her.

“Oooohhhh,” I said, mortified, “I get it now. Right”

What am I, a Mormon? Am I a hundred years old? Has it been THAT long since I ran into the ocean buck naked?

Man, oh man, two kids in two years does age a girl. No doubt.

"Vacation"

In the day or two since I’ve been back from Rome, a bunch of people have asked, thoughtfully, “How was your vacation?”

Not an absurd question by any means. But I do feel compelled to disabuse them of the notion that ours was a vacation in the conventional sense. If you’ve traveled internationally with a 3 and 5 year-old, you will already understand what I mean. But ours was not just a “family” vacation because we took our kids with us: we had additional family members with us, since we were crashing at my aunt’s apartment in Rome.

My aunt has a gorgeous apartment, with little balconies that overlook narrow cobblestone streets, located in the centro storico, where you can walk to the Pantheon and St. Peter’s and the Roman Forum, all in under ten minutes. If we hadn’t been able to stay at her place, we’d never have been able to make the trip, there’s no way we could afford it. None of this, however, changes the fact that her apartment is a one-bedroom. And there were six of us staying there.

This means that every night, there were three or four of us to a bed or fold-out couch, often with someone lying horizontally at the foot of the bed, getting kicked all night long. I’m not saying it was tenement conditions, and it certainly wasn’t the most crowded vacation I’ve been on with my family (once my father lined up three suitcases and slept on those for the entire stay) but it was tight. Particularly since sleeping with my children is about as restful as sleeping with two aggressive gorillas. It’s not so much that they kick me – my nerves are already deadened to this – but that every time they make a sleep sound I am ripped from my sleep into a totally alert panic mode. This is just PTSD from the infant years but I can’t get over it. To get into deep sleep, I need a wall between me and the children, the thicker the better,

I’d braced myself for the crowded-bed situation and considering that my aunt and cousin were incredibly cool about letting the kids sleep with them, we managed quite nicely. But I hadn’t braced myself for the other problem with sleeping at my aunt’s place. This problem I discovered at 7:45am on our first morning there.

We’d had a horrific time going to sleep the night before. After a sleepless red-eye flight, I was destroyed by 10pm and, if their behavior was any indication, so were the kids. I put them in my aunt’s bed and they conned her into laying with them and telling them stories til they fell asleep, which I assumed would be imminently, since they’d been up for two days and a night. David and I collapsed into the fold-out bed and surrendered to a sweet delicious sleep, for precisely one hour. Then I was woken by the children yelling like maniacs. Not only had they not fallen asleep since I’d left them with my aunt, Primo was raring to go, still on New York time, and inspired by the sleeplessness of the night before to generally forgo sleep. After a half hour it was clear that this would take more or less all night so I sent my aunt and cousin to freedom on the fold-out couch and commenced begging, threatening, bribing and pulling my hair out. At 1am, Seconda surrendered and by 2am, Primo did as well. I, however, was then wide friggin’ awake, thanks to agida and jet lag. I don’t know what time it was when I finally fell asleep, but I can tell you I was so desperate I took out the only Ipod we had – Primo’s -- and listened to the soundtrack from James and the Giant Peach, to facilitate my relaxation.

At 7:45 am the next morning however, I woke to the sound of a demolition crew knocking the house down. Yes, the only people who were not closed for ferie in Rome were the members of the construction crew renovating the apartment upstairs. And they were making up for all the other Romans on holiday. They were banging with a vigor that was literally mind-boggling. Over and over again they smashed on the ceiling directly overhead until I picked the kids up and moved them into fold-out couch with my aunt and cousin. I lay on the cushions nearby. The living room, though, had its own set of noise problems. On the street below the window, people were already awake, and, I have learned, when Italians are awake, they are loud.

“HEY, MARCO!! WANT A CAFE???”

“YOU OLD SON-OF-A-BITCH, HOW ARE YOU?”

Then the garbage truck rolled in, making such an infernal racket I thought my ears would bleed.

What, in the name of all that is holy, is wrong with these maniacs? You can’t get anyone to do anything between the hours of 1 and 5pm but by 7:30am, everything’s totally up and running, full steam ahead?

To have a vacation, in my humble opinion, one must sleep. So I wouldn’t call it a vacation. But yeah, the trip, the trip was great.

The Fountains of Rome

The kids' favorite part of Rome was, no question, the fountains that you find around every corner and which stream icy cold ancient aqueduct water non stop. Every time they saw one, they'd run over like we were traversing the Sahara and we'd stumbled upon an oasis. They got pretty good at drinking from them:

Closed for Ferie

So, Rome. Here’s what you need to know about Rome in August. There are no Italians there.

You know how in America, everything’s closed on Christmas and New Years? This is what Rome is like for the entire month of August. Italian take off the whole month and blow out of town for ferie. I don’t know how this started. Maybe some bar owner was like, “Hey, it’s really freaking hot in this city. I’m going to the beach ‘til it’s not so hot.” And then the bar owner down the via was like, “Well, if he’s blowing off work, I am too.” At a certain point, so many people had left town that the businesses still in operation followed suit simply because with everyone gone, who the hell would patronize them?

I’ll tell you who, Tourists. There may not be any Romans in town but the city is teeming with tourists. Seriously, after a few days, Primo actually told me he was disappointed because he hadn’t heard anybody talking Italian.
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The few Romans that remain to hold down the fort, to serve the cafe and make the pizza for the tourists, are not happy campers. I don’t blame them – all their paesanos are out greasing up on the beach or breathing in the fresh mountain air, and they’re stuck reminding dumb Americans for the hundredth time that they have to pay at the register BEFORE they get their cappuccino. Only trouble is, I’m not a dumb American. I’m a savvy American with pretty good Italian, manners and a sunny demeanor, And I didn’t love being lumped in a group with the tour groups wearing matching T shirts and fanny packs. My far-from-impeccable but still respectable Italian was not greeted with smiles but with annoyed phrases in English: “Do you wont SHUGAR in you COOFFEE?” David and I got to feeling apologetic when handing over our Euro, like we were sorry we had tainted the currency with our greasy American hands. Aggravating.

Besides making the Romans sick of tourists, the other unappealing thing about everyone being gone for ferie was that we had about as much choice about establishments to patronize as the pioneers did when they rolled into the prairie in their covered wagons. I had the misfortune of getting my period as soon as the plane landed in Rome -- not just my period by my first-day-of-your-period agonizing cramps -- and I’d neglected to bring Motrin along, assuming incorrectly that if I needed something like Motrin, surely I could find it in one of the biggest cities in the world. Not true, at least not in August. I tried three Farmacias before giving up.

“I hope I don’t break a bone or come down with cholera or need actual medical care,” I told David, “Because I’d just be screwed.”

As my aunt continually reminded us, all the good restaurants, all the good bars and salumerie and pasticcerie were closed. Basically we were dining at the Rome equivalent of Bubba Gump.

Thankfully the best pizzeria in the known world, Forno, was still fighting the good fight and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say we bought so much pizza there that we probably paid their bills for the month of August. Seriously, it was an embarassing amount of pizza. We’d wake at about 10 or 11am, after having gone to bed at 2, and then since it was already lunchtime but we wanted to get on the road and see shit rather than sit down for an overpriced lunch, we opted for the perfect breakfast/ lunch option – pizza. There is a thing in Italy called breakfast pizza, and this, I think, is reason enough to love the city. Breakfast pizza is just pizza rossa, with red sauce, hold the mozzarella. Pizza rossa is good hot and good cold, it is good after being left in the sun on the top of the stroller for five hours, and good the next morning. There are no circumstances under which breakfast pizza is not good. I discovered this when I stashed some in the stroller basket on day, then folded up the stroller with the pizza still in there, and took it out hours later, when I was starving and remembered about it. It did gross me out to pull out the gnarled lump of dough and sauce but I overcame the disgust and took a bite and it was absolutely divine.

Every day we ambled over to Forno, got pizza rossa, pizza Bianca, pizza con la mozzarella and a wild card pizza (with potatoes and rosemary or mushrooms or zucchini flowers). We’d eat our fill and then carry the rest with us as we traversed the city, seeing the sights. When we got hungry, we’d eat the pizza some more. The next morning, we started it all over again.

After three days of this, Primo said to me, “Mommy, I am getting SICK of pizza!”

To which I replied, “Well get UN-sick of it, because it’s cheap and its perfect and its all we’ve got in this empty city.”


Yeah, Forno saved the day, every day, ferie be damned.

And we’re back!

Yes, after two weeks of Roman Holiday, we have returned to New York -- sun-tanned, stuffed full of gelato and totally, utterly wiped the hell out. What a time was had. We came. We saw. We conquered jet lag. Or, I should say, we conquered the going to Italy jet lag: I am now in the process of having my ass handed to me by the coming back jet lag, which has the kids waking at 3 am. But still, we did it and we live to tell the tale. And tell the tale I will, dear readers, have no fear. Gird your loins. But what I am thinking about right now is how freaking good it is to be back home.

Perhaps the very best part of going away -- using up all the miles you’ve accrued for the past seven years and cleaning out your bank account -- is the sweet realization that home is precisely where you want to be. I wish I could bottle the flood or gratitude and relief and sheer, total peace of mind I felt when I stepped foot into our tiny little apartment yesterday. I walked through the place, discovering how much I loved each of our possessions:

“The bunk beds! I LOVE these beds! Aren’t they comfortable?

Look at how GORGEOUS our windows are!

I forgot how convenient it is to have this sink so low to the ground!

Our ice cubes are always the perfect size!

OH MY GOD WE HAVE A DISHWASHER!!!!!Remember the dishwasher?”

When I went to the bagel place this morning and ordered an Everything bagel, I literally teared up. For joy. I’m not even exaggerating. I never realized how lovely the Brooklyn accent of the man who works at the bagel shop is, or how beautiful the color green is used to make American dollars or how convenient it is to understand every single word that everyone says to you immediately. When the bagel man said, "Have a nice day," I was arrested by the kindness of the sentiment and had to stop myself from saying: "Thanks so much for saying that. The very same to you, sir -- have a nice day and a SPECTACULAR tomorrow!!!!"

I wasn’t even annoyed that it was pouring rain all day today -- I was too busy appreciating how wide the sidewalks are and how thoughtful it was of the city to build little sloped ramps into the curbs so that pushing my stroller around is a little bit easier.

I was talking to Primo about this phenomenon of having newfound gratitude for your home and

I asked him, “Is there anything about New York that you took for granted before but are now really grateful for?”

He said, “Yes, I am so happy that here in New York you can get many different ice creams from all over the world, like Hawaiian shave ice, and kulfi and gelato and regular ice cream.”

“So true,” I replied, “I’d forgotten how great that is.”

Not that we didn’t love Italy. But Brooklyn rocks my friggin’ face off.

A conversation at the Galleria Borghese

La Galleria Borghese is a classy place. Fancy. Complicated. You have to book your tickets in advance and get there a half hour earlier and then you STILL have to wait on a really long line. It houses the Caravaggio masterpieces as well as the show stopping Greek mythology sculptures of Bernini, so you sort of just have to cope with the fancy complicated-ness of it because it is most definitely worth it to see The Rape of Persephone and the way Bernini's made Hades' fingers actually press into Persephone's leg, as if it were made of real flesh and not of stone.

Seconda wasn't terribly bowled over by Bernini but she was fascinated by a painting of Jesus being taken down off the cross, the kind of painting you get so used to seeing in Rome, that you almost don't look twice anymore.

Seconda: Oh does that man have a booboo?

Me: Yes, do you know who that is? Its Jesus.

Seconda: Oh my GOD!! Look at his BOOBOO!

Me: Do you know what happened to Jesus?

Sec: Yes. Once upon a time there was a little baby named Jesus and Mary was his mother. And one day he was running and running and running TOO Fast and then splat! he fell on the floor and got BLOODY.

Primo: That is not the story of Jesus at all. Don't you know Christmas?

Do you know how I imagine Napoli?

Day Five, Rome Trip:

Tomorrow we head out over to Terracina, the charming beachside town about an hour south of Rome, near where my mother was born. Kids are wildly excited, not just for the beach, but for the bombas, which I can only approximate in words as a donut stuffed with Italian creme or Nutella, and served piping hot and dusted with sugar. Imagine eating that while high and that is the experience of eating the bomba, even when sober. The drugs are in the bomba.

Point is, we're headed to Terracina, which is halfway between Roma and Napoli. Today we've been talking about Napoli and tonight Primo told me, when he was going sleep,

"Do you know how I imagine Napoli?"

"No, tell me."

"Like MON-opoly."

He is right. Only with more pickpockets and better pizza.

Rome in pictures

A picture speaks a thousand words. Which is convenient when you don't have the time to write but ten yourself since you're too busy stuffing your face with gelato and trying to cure your children of jet lag.

Behold . . . ROME!

Red-Eye Flight

We have made it through the Red-Eye Flight. We are in Rome.

What can I say about the red-eye flight? I think they should give it a name more befitting of its horrendousness. Red-Eye-Popping-Out-Of-Your-Skull-from-Exhuastion Flight. That's be more accurate.

Not for the singles out there. Those people had it DOWN. There were a few rows of empty seats in the back of the airplane which I scouted out early, and was planning to take over when the flight took off. Except that somehow the singles beat me. By the time the seatbelt sign turned off, the singles were already lying down over all three seats, covered by blankets and wearing actual SLEEP MASKS. Shit, the people don't screw around. And around halfway through the flight, I started to regret that I'd dropped the ball. The sleeping did not go well.

First off, I had this totally erroneous thought that because we took off at 5pm and arrived at 8am, that we'd have a whole long night to sleep, so it wouldn't be a big deal if the kids waited til midnight to fall asleep. Once on the plane, however, I realized that we took off in NY time and arrived in Italy time, and we were actually totally being robbed of a night's sleep. This is when I started getting serious about shut eye. We divided and conquered - David took charge of Seconda in the two seats in front and I was in charge on Primo in the two seats behind.

We tried everything. Putting Primo's feet on top of the trays and his head on my lap. Putting his head on the trays and his feet on my lap. Giving him both our seats while I hovered in the aisle. Finally, with 3 hours left til touchdown, I hissed, "If you don't go to sleep right now you're going to be up all night and then want to sleep when its morning time and I won't let you! I'll pinch you awake!" Which made him cry and shriek, "DON'T PINCH ME MOMMY!" waking all the other people who had been asleep for hours. Penitent, I decided to try one last thing -- laying the blankets down on the floor of the aircraft between our seats and David and Seconda's seats in front of us, and Primo lay down there, diagnoally with his head at my feet and his feet at David's feet. That did the trick and I managed to get a whole two and a half hours of sleep. TOTALLY enough for me to manage a crazy 3 and 5 year old who've been up all night, in a foreign country.

But now we're here and thanks to the jet lag, my kids are both going to bed at 2am local time every night. You know what they say - when in Rome . . .

Summer vacation, here we come

I’m outta here, folks. Taking a real, bona-fide vacation, the first one in many moons. Where to?

To the mother country!!

Roma, bella Roma!

Lots of memories in Rome, the most recent being the conception of my darling daughter. Yeah, I’m bringing some pretty powerful prophylactics this time around because we don’t need a Terzo in the picture at present. All that red wine, and rolling rs, and gelato con panna, it can make a couple do crazy things.

So Primo’s been to Rome when he was about a year and a half old, but this will be Seconda’s first time AND Rome’s first time meeting Sec. There is no way that the eternal city is ready for this little firecracker.

We’ve been brushing up on our Italian in preparation for the trip and today she informed me:

“‘Grazie’ is how you say grits in Italian, so if you’re hungry for grits, you have to say GRAZIE!”

Here’s what the kids are looking forward to about Italy:

Eating gelatos every day topped with free panna (whipped cream).

Eating bombas with massive amounts of crema packed inside.

Staying up later than remotely reasonable.

Scratchy alley cats.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to:

Eating gelatos every day topped with free panna (whipped cream).

Eating bombas with massive amounts of crema packed inside.

Eating pizza with paper-thin crust and crusted carciofini on top.

Drinking the only perfect cappuccino in the world.

Villa Borghese with the kids, standing in the center of the Pantheon, lighting a candle and saying a prayer at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, going for a midnight dip at the beach on Ferragosto, and basically everything else except the jet lag and having to chase Sec around while Vespas and Smart Cars dart past.

Here’s what David’s looking forward to:

The gelatos, the bombas, the pizza and the cappuccino.

Having adventures as a family.

Drinking Nastra Azzurro.

(“And the BJs” he just said, sitting next to me on the couch).

So for the next two weeks or so, you’ll be hearing a lot of radio silence over here, interrupted maybe by the occasional dispatch from Rome.

Wish us luck!

Country Time

We've just returned from a week in the country. Summertime in Tennessee sure is sweet. I now know how Huck Finn felt. I mean, we found a TURTLE, a living box turtle just hanging out in the woods near my father-in-law's house. The kids didn't really care that much, but I was over the MOON. I was like, "Guys! This is some Bambi shit. We found a PET, a bona fide pet, not a water bug, just walking home." Then my father-in-law said, "Yeah, we eat turtles here. They taste good. Course we don't eat the littleuns like this; not enough meat on their bones."

We also spotted an owl that day. Are you getting this? Sec said, "Mommy, there's an owl." and I was like, "OK, honey, sure. I'll play, I see a Tyrannosauras Rex!" And DAvid was like, "There is a owl, up there in the tree." Insane.

The other thing we stumbled across, considerably less cute was a RATTLESNAKE. Man, can you imagine me coming across such a thing? While we were swimming in the river? Thankfully, I didn't see it and David and his sister didn't tell me about it til after they'd speedily ushered us out of the river. So, I guess that's what you get with nature - one day its a cute little turtle you encounter, the next a venonomous viper. Its why I try never to stray too far frm asphalt.

But, that's behind us now. Here's some highlights from our country holiday.

Catching tadpoles and feeding catfish in the pond:


Making elf houses:

For the record, 'twas I who made this house, not Primo and not Seconda, though they did scout for sticks and stones. I say this to point out how difficult elf-house-construction is. Or maybe I'm just a lousy naturalist. I mean, I never made a gnome home in my childhood. I read books and played Barbies all summer long. Have you done this shit before? It is freaking complicated.

What's NOT complicated is picking red ripe raspberries by the side of the road. Tasty little suckers. Sec went Blueberries-for-Sal style and ate all the berries up before they could land in her bag.



Playing with the garden hose. I know this doesn't sound thrilling to you but keep in mind that the only hose we have in our hose is the panty variety. Instant sprinkler!