That week it rained every day. I have satellite TV with over 360 channels, many, many from Arab countries. It took me over an hour to go through them and find 3 full time English speaking channels (news), 2 occasional English channels (news), 1 non-English, but full-time tennis channel, and one full-time movie channel that is in English 80% of the time. And I couldn’t even count how many were selling phone sex and ‘whatever’ with very naughty pictures, much of it to Arabs. So please do not let the Muslims tell you all that immoral sex stuff is coming from the West, as I saw it on their TV stations. Well, I didn’t see it; (I promise) I saw it advertised.
One night I was watching a movie during a particularly wild thunderstorm and the lights kept going out. Very spooky. I’m all alone up on a cliff above the ocean and I peek out my window and see all the other lights of the village are also out. It was only about 7:30, I didn’t have any candles and I’m trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the evening. A little glow was coming from my bedroom so I stumbled in there to see what it was and I found an emergency light glowing on the wall. I had noticed those in all the rooms, but didn’t know how they worked. Bright enough to find your way about the room, but still not bright enough to read by, and the one in my living room didn’t seem to be working. Finally the lights came back on, and then, after about 4 more outages, stayed on. A few days later I asked Adriana, and she showed me a switch in each room to turn on the emergency lights in case of an outage. Isn’t that brilliant? Every house has that – no candles needed.
Even in the rain the views are wonderful and ever-changing. I never felt the least bit stir crazy with the storms as the mountains, cliffs, clouds and water were constantly providing shifting and entrancing entertainment. I went down the stairs each night for mass as daily mass is in the evening, and huffed and puffed my way back up in the dark. Thankfully, the stairs are lit, but I could still hide in the shadows every 20 steps or so while the burn receded and my breath calmed a bit. I’ve learned to check behind me and see if anyone is following and if so, I suddenly need to fix my shoe, or check in my purse for keys, or look at my phone which I don’t know how to use anyway. This way I can stop for a break and I don’t look like a total wuss. And if I’m carrying shopping bags I just have to set them down and slowly change them from one hand to the other. Very valid for us European shoppers. And there is one spot on the stairs where the wall comes down far enough for me to look over the ledge, into the garden and beyond to the sea. So of course I have to stop there – it’s my favorite spot, like a peek at heaven.
I went to my market on Thursday. It was closed. Fine, that must be a Praiano thing. Went again on Friday. Closed. Went again on Saturday. Closed! And of course closed on Sunday. I was out of milk for my coffee and cereal. I saw signs on some of the doors and tried to read them but I just couldn’t make out what they said. I thought maybe it had something to do with the start of Lent and the 40 Hours Vigil the church was doing. Finally I ran into Adriana and she said the woman relative of the market owner had died, the sister of the man I had met, and all the stores around that store closed as a show of respect. Monday everything would be opened. The words on the sign I was trying to translate turned out to be the woman’s name. Oops.
The first night I went to mass alone, the priest was saying the rosary with the little old women. He saw me and told me where to sit, gave me a sheet to follow along and then interrupted the rosary to tell everyone who I was. At least I think that’s what he said, he doesn’t speak English. He kept walking back and forth, in and out of the front of the church and booming a prayer and then fading away. Suddenly he would jump in behind me in a loud voice and then he would trail away again. It’s a real experience to go to church here. Don Pio is directing everything while he is also trying to get everything prepped and ready for mass. So he is all around, in and out and always wearing a little grey beanie. I think his head is cold as no church in all of Italy is heated and I am always freezing at mass. Nothing starts on time, which is obvious as the church bells ring every quarter hour. If you are a server or reader for mass that means you get there at the time mass is supposed to start and then begin preparing. On Sundays a crowd of chidren does the serving with absolutely no practice or thought given to order or tasks. Occasionally Don Pio moves the antiquated microphone away from his mouth and scolds one or more of the servers, or pushes their leaning arm off the altar. The choir consists of a couple women and sometimes a man who do all the singing in a loud, Italian sort of nasal twang. On weekdays we have to fend for ourselves and absolutely no one is on the same word at the same time. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Everyone also seems to sit, kneel and stand whenever they want and again, never all at the same time. When children are present on weekends, insanity reigns in the pews. Luckily there are side aisles as parents and children use this area like a playground, and no one thinks twice about getting up and walking right in front of the altar in the middle of mass. I have moved beyond distraction and judgment to pure astonishment. This bears no resemblances to the masses I am accustomed to at home. Not only is it in Italian, it’s pure Italian chaos.
But to look at the people in church, especially the old people, is to look at history. Here are the faces of ancient Rome, Greece and all her conquerors. These people are not the chic and spiffed up Romans, Venetians or Milanese. These are ITALIANS: short, dark haired, olive and wrinkled skin that has seen years of sea-bright sun as they worked the terraced farms and hills and fished these waters; sturdy, hardy and stockily built to climb the steps and face the brutal sea winds. They wear mostly drab and dull clothes, nothing flashy, just practical. The women’s hair is gray or badly dyed a flat black or brown. The men’s hair, if any, is gray. Many are hunched over with age and infirmities and I can’t believe they can make their way to mass with all the stairs and cobblestones. They bear the noses of Italy in all its’ shapes, and their brown eyes move almost as quickly as their tongues. Age has no affect on an Italians ability to speak with alarming speed and intensity. And they can shrug like no other people on earth. A shrug is worth a thousand words in Italy.
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| The gardens outside my window |
The young Italians here are more like those in the big cities. They dress a bit more fashionably and their hair is a little nicer. But, and this is a big difference, everyone here smiles and says hello. Everyone tries to be nice. Families stay together. Everyone is related to half their neighbors and the gardens are the prized possessions of each family. As you grow older you may have to move lower in town and away from your garden, but you never, ever give up your garden. When the weather warms and the arthritic joints limber up, the old ones climb back up to the sunny gardens and bend and toil in the terraces hewn into the cliffs of these family gardens. One day I glanced out my kitchen window because I heard voices, and there in the garden beside my house was an old man, a younger man, and a little boy, all setting about the business of early spring gardening. Aren’t you jealous? Isn’t this the way life was really meant to be?
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