It's been a year....

As of the 21st of June, we have been in Rome for one year. The time hasn't flown by.  It has BLITZED past us.  So it's time for a review.

On top of Hotel Minerva, June 16, 2017, looking out over the Pantheon.  Day 360.

Our twilight view.

Below is a shot from Day 1. Bleary-eyed, unshaven and jet-lagged, we walked to the thing that we had named for each other as a reminder of our aspirations when we were at various breaking points, utterly sick of sorting through belongings and agonizing over decisions regarding what to store, ship, sell or give away after finally combining households (for 5 years, we had maintained two - with each one near our respective jobs in two different cities).  For four months leading up to this day, we had been finalizing all the kinds of things you finalize before moving out of the country, abandoning work offices, scrambling to fit in one more doctor's appointment, obtaining bulk prescriptions, planning the move with two elderly cats in tow, sleeping very little and worrying so, so, so much.

We arrived to our apartment, barely furnished with Ikea furniture that the embassy supplied for us until our things arrived.  We hovered over two confused, exhausted old cats, and quickly learned that they were spooked by the loud sounds caused by, well, everything in a space that had no rugs or other similar items to absorb sound. But we'd made room in our luggage for bedding for them, so they at least had a soft place to be.

I haven't really spoken much about Smokey, pictured on the right, sporting her last 'lion cut' of the previous summer. She is about 15, and enjoying her current time as a single pet because, as you can see, Sal never cared for sharing anything - the sofa, bed, a bowl, a house, an address, humans - with any other four-footed creature.  

My memory of this time is colored by struggles with persistent jet lag and Roman summer heat (the way to keep your place cool is to keep the windows shuttered during the hottest parts of the day, which is fine except that you have no daylight to work with, and hence, no sense of time...and cool dark spaces make me want to take naps), pretending to cook with a highly limited set of embassy-furnished tools, worrying about the big old kitty, occasionally watching some shows on our laptops, confused foreign grocery store wanderings, numerous evening explorations of this wild neighborhood, and having zero prospects for meaningful work in my new adopted city - a simultaneously exhilarating and uneasy scenario. 

When we could, we went out to a couple of little casual soirees last summer, intended to celebrate an American holiday or welcoming the new crop of ex-pats:

Fourth of July party at an ambassador's house.  The air was as sultry as it is today. Lesson learned: go to the tops of buildings or land masses to catch a breeze if there is one to be had, or sit and stew in the airless bowl of July in Rome.

A few weeks later, a newcomers' welcome at a villa...We match (middle aged brain asks: did we plan that? I can't remember) and he still looks happy to be with his severely shorn spouse.  This was a great haircut that was kind of wasted on me, since I never intended to have my hair cut that short.  But I still have to give props to the stylist who did it, because he truly did what he could with a preceding, lousy cut that I could not live with. 

We had objectives, which mostly involved various masteries of the more challenging aspects of being in a city that has been continuously inhabited - and by more than its fair share of aliens and ex-pats - for well over 2000 years.

And how are we doing, one year later?

As you will recall, our stuff arrived two months later, and we have not obtained much else in the way of stuff...save for wine and a few books.  

We can watch a show on a television screen, which is a little larger than a laptop screen. 

What shows are available for us, of course, is controlled by access regulations for American programming available to European audiences (translation: we see about 50% of what our friends and family can see at home).  

We've never arranged to get cable, so unless I go back to the States, I don't watch 24 hour news, channel surf or see commercials (unless they're on Youtube). 

These things are blessings.

The grocery stores are no longer mysterious. I now know that I cannot go to two locations of the same corporate name and expect to find the same products - because that kind of predictability is not a feature of Italian living - so each is valued for different things. 

I also understand that this place generally operates on an economy of scarcity.  More on that in a later post.

My vegetable vendor, fishmonger, chicken man and butcher help round things out nicely. I am a known face at their places.

I can cook now (although wanting to in this heat is a tall order sometimes, because the circuitry of a kitchen here can only accommodate the appliances that keep your food cool or make it hot...the cook gets a fan, at best). This is the season for expanding my repertoire of salads. 

How about a little dessert? Peaches and shortcake. 

  I have a pretty solid mental map of the neighborhood. The new challenge is making my way somewhere while entirely dodging direct sunlight. Yes, I am a vampire.

I can navigate the mass transit systems (this occupies a fairly large portion of my brain capacity because, as they say, questo Roma).

There are four of these signs at one (rather pivotal) bus stop, each bearing as many as 5 different bus lines.  To navigate, one must be adept at using Google Maps, the Roma ProBus app, and telepathy. If you learn anything from me, then this should be it:  never take bus 64, which is jammed with tourists on the way to and from the Vatican, and therefore also enhanced by seasoned pickpockets.

We all know what happened to the big old kitty. 

This translates to our feeling sad more often than either of us probably admit.

The space he occupies in my heart will never be filled. I now understand how others can feel this same way and live with that feeling.

And when I see this big guy on the top of the Janiculum hill on a semi-regular walk I've taken, my heart hurts. To be clear:  I don't worry about him.  His clipped ear tip (left side) tells me that he's a part of the TRAP (trap and release) program to keep Roman feral cat populations under control.  He looks healthy, and while he frankly regards me at close proximity, he's probably disinclined to let me get any closer.  But he's almost Sal's doppleganger.  Almost.

But...happiness? What about happiness?

We have made new friends. Good new friends.

We know some of our neighbors.

I can generally take a stab at speaking some faulty Italian, and I can understand a great deal more of it in written or spoken form. I am accepting the fact that I am not a quick study of language, even when immersed in a place. A foreign tongue is like algebra to me, and those who knew me in the 8th grade will remember that I simply took an extra year to master that math (because the early year of it was pretty abysmal). I expect much of myself, and so I'm struggling to get to a peaceful place with this reality. 

Primed to take advantage of the gift of proximity, we have either travelled to new destinations or have plans to travel to new destinations.

We have revisited destinations we knew we liked the first time (you'll see more about all of this later).

Rome's rose garden.

Florence for a birthday - San Lorenzo cloister.

Piazza Navona for a 3D light show

Assisi in January - coldest I've been in Italy, hands down!

Paris in the Spring(?) - with scarf and jacket in the shade, 

 And those prospects for meaningful work? What have I been doing?

Assuming that my anticipations were correct - that I wouldn't be able to work much or at all in a town where you can't throw a rock without hitting an artist or art historian...what have I been doing instead? 

I've been allowing red-leaved trees to grow out of my head while drinking prosecco.  Clearly, that's what I've been doing.

Have I been sitting at various outdoor cafes in quaint little Roman neighborhoods, twirling a perfect forkful of spaghetti with basil (a la Eat, Pray, Love)?

Have I been reading selections from my shelf of 'to-be-read' books while tourists do the 'Caesar shuffle' (which means, I'm told, rushing around to see the top 5 or 10 sites in mere hours) past me at one of any number of splashing, picturesque fountains? 

Have I been window shopping and spending my spouse's money on snazzy Italian designer labels?

Have I been standing cheek-by-jowl with Romans in various coffee shops, complaining about the latest traffic strike? 

In that order, some answers:

A few times, yes. (Some pasta has been more perfect than other pasta, though.)

Yes to reading - a little.  No to reading at fountains.  (I learned long ago that Italy isn't interested in providing people with many - or in lots of cases, ANY - free places to sit.)  

Yes to window shopping, because it's a true art form here. No to spending money on Italian clothing. (Almost everything here is made for tiny people with little feet. But I have gotten a leather backpack, because the size of that, relative to me, is irrelevant) 

No. I quit coffee years ago (a tragic development, by any Italian's assessment). The traffic strikes are complaint-worthy, but it's such a routine occurrence that you really have to spend your energies on figuring out another way to get somewhere.

Here's a big surprise:  I have actually been working.

In my fields.

With mostly, but not all, American students.

In Rome!

Roman Art and Architecture class selfie before heading into the Borghese Gallery. Couldn't have asked for a better first group of students to take around Rome.  Virtually every day, we had class in a different location (or cluster of locations). I take pride in knowing that they learned some things, like where to get good craft beer and burgers, how important breakfast is before a three hour stint in the Vatican and St. Peter's...oh, and some stuff about Roman art and architecture.  Good times.

Much more inclusive shot of the whole group and their dedicated faculty member (and his family - although it is fair to say that college students are getting younger and younger, so you could mistake the stroller occupant as a prodigy), taken one crisp morning by a fellow student, Tony Martinez

The beginnings of a portrait demo for painting students at the American University in Rome.  The subject: my lovely class assistant, who had just graduated the semester before. 

Blurry painting class selfie.  Great group of people with whom to work, Americans and Romans.

Student visitor to our class exhibition.

 Newcomers or covert returnees for an elective credit (talked out of majoring in art by someone or by society, of course) to painting, they all still worked diligently. 

The very careful and helpful maintenance team of AUR, installing a senior studio major's capstone work while she supervises.

Proud senior.

Just recently, I delivered a guest lecture to a summer program for American students.  We visited some of the highlights of the Trastevere neighborhood.

Here, we are in the nun's choir of the church of St. Cecilia (which you have already 'visited' with me in a previous post).  The importance of visiting this particular space - which entails ringing the buzzer of the Benedictine convent next door to the church, paying a small fee, and being escorted by a sweet elderly nun named  --what else, Sister Cecilia - up in an elevator in small groups - is the chance to see this important discovery:  a 12th century fresco by a contemporary of Giotto di Bondone (the 'Father of the Renaissance') named Pietro Cavallini.  These fragments of this Last Judgment fresco testify that the Early Renaissance painters of Italy did not just work in Tuscany, despite the fact that many more examples of their work are visible in that part of the country. 

I also recently staged an educational 'micro'-game with some Classical Summer School participants at the American Academy of Rome, which launched a discussion of Reacting to the Past game usage in history and language classes in both collegiate and high school settings:

Here, a Classical Summer School student at the American Academy of Rome plays a role in my one-session game about choices between art and life.  She is advocating that other role players vote to save the art.

I feel extraordinarily fortunate.  I was grateful at the start of this wild ride, and I'm even more grateful now. This coming year, I will be able to continue much of this kind of work.

Among all of my speculations about this experience, I was absolutely correct on this one thing:  I could not have been more ready for this any sooner than now.  My body tells me that it would like to have had a shot at walking these hard and uneven Roman roads (and climbing the stairs!) about 10 to 15 years ago - and I hear it often, creaking and complaining - but my mind and my heart tell me that this kind of fulfillment had to happen just when it has happened, and no earlier.

I have ideas about future posts involving things like 'what I've learned,' and recaps of adventures I haven't yet shared, but this is what I'll close this post with, for now:

It's been a year.  No regrets.