Observations on the Road

I must be recovering from my as yet unidentified illness (strep? virus? something altogether more sinister?) because I can finally sit down and face a keyboard with an ounce, albeit exactly one ounce, of enthusiasm. The boys have been whisked away to a cabin in the mountains for an evening of cool mountain air. It is just me and the laptop with our newly acquired wireless connection, which a neighbor has generously allowed us to filch.

Things I have learned/observed on this foray:

1. Do not allow your Italian hotel to do your laundry, especially without even looking at the price list. 5 euros for a pair of skivvies. Not worth it. Another 6 euros for a "sweater" i.e. a t-shirt. Lesson learned.

2. Italian woman are advised to drink one glass of wine per day after the first trimester. One woman was told that she was putting her baby at risk if she didn't drink red wine because you can't get the same health benefits from any other source. American women are forbidden to drink any alcohol.

3. If you thought you were shocked when the six-year-old gypsy boy asked for your half-eaten package of crackers, wait three minutes. In that time he will have fended off his little sister and crammed all the crackers in his mouth. Then he will return and beg for the half-consumed bottle of bodza soda. I didn't give him my soda. I was horrified. Is it acceptable to allow a child to drink from a bottle that had my germs and spit? (Every year I have relearn how to live in a city with children for whom begging for my snacks is considered acceptable--to both the child and the society that tacitly allows it.)

4. Air conditioning is good. Even though not everyone here shares this opinion (see note in number 6 regarding cold water, tiles). And in fact I abhor the abuse of stale frigid air in the States. Yet this past week and a half has been unbearably hot AND I had a fever. I have spent entire days languishing in my undies trying to catch a breeze. Air conditioning is good. All things in moderation.

5. Romanian medical care is scary for me. Okay, medical care in a foreign land is always nerve-racking. I have a throat infection of some kind. We go the doctor (I won't mention the line or the envelope of cash) who can't take a throat culture because I ate crackers. (Is that the case in the US?) Besides they only take cultures before 10:00 am and not to mention that it would then have to be transported to the hospital in the oppressive heat. In the meantime, the doctor prescribes something to soothe my throat. When L. goes to the pharmacy, the ladies say "Oh, we only give this with a doctor's prescription....use this instead." And he bought what they recommended. Note: we had a doctor's prescription. (And the lozenges are manufactured in Bombay, a city whose fantastic lack of public hygiene is central to the book I am reading, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta.)

So, the next day we go to the hospital. Downstairs there are hordes, those exiting press cotton onto their open wounds where blood was drawn, and it costs 2 lei (less than one dollar) for the test. Upstairs there is no line and it costs 13 lei (roughly four dollars). We go upstairs. I had been instructed: no food, no brushing of the teeth. After a rough night of mouth-breathing and coughing, my breath had its own zip code. It was 8 am. The woman gagged me. It is Tuesday. If negative, they will know by Wednesday. If positive for strep, it will be Thursday or Friday. Did I mention the peeling paint, the windows propped open on chairs, the dust, the crowds?


6. In Transylvania common knowledge dictates that you must NOT drink cold water or you may catch a cold or make your cold worse. (You also can't walk barefoot on tile, even in a freakish heat wave, for fear of catching a cold.) In my mothering, I was given ICE CREAM when my throat was raw and swollen. I have to bypass Grandma and the kindly neighbor lady to sneak a glass of chilled water from the fridge. Where are my saltines? Where is the 7 UP? Where is my vanilla ice cream?

7. Transylvania lacks a restaurant culture. Home cooking is supreme. (I miss salad. I miss tall, cold glasses of 2% milk.)

8. They iron underwear. It is not a fetish. It is because all the clothes are dried on the line. They dry into hard lines that must be ironed. Even the undies. (I haven't worn several items of clothing that I brought because I don't have the heart to request their ironing, which leads me to number 9....

9. Hired domestic help is not an option. We couldn't make it on our own here. The massive amounts of time it takes to shop, cook, clean, iron, and make order in the house overwhelm us. Yet I am still shy about it. Hence, the unused clothing I carted all the way here.

10. Language is personality. Or, rather, lack of language is lack of personality. I glow in English. I flounder and sulk in Hungarian. I understand most of what I hear, when I try. Now I need to produce in a second tongue.

If I had the energy to go back and reread some of my former entries while traveling in Romania, I would surely find that I repeat myself. Yet, this is part of the lessons learned. We have to relearn them.

Csikszereda

We arrived by overnight train to Csikszereda. The train seems to be leaving earlier and earlier from Budapest each year. This time we left Budapest at 3:30 pm and arrived here at roughly 4:30 am. It is pity that we arrive before the sunrise. I used to covet the last 45 minutes on the train when the view from the train was spectacular despite my sleep/caffeine deprived brain: all hills, fog, green pastures, shephard's huts, gypsy settlements, and forest.

If you have read of my travels here in Transylvania, then you may be aquainted with my tendency to succumb to the somnolent powers of the mountain air and fresh mineral waters. This Kansas girl fills her lungs with crisp, cold air (yes, even in July) and it plum tuckers me out. The naps here are first rate.

Ate stuffed peppers, drank mineral water, drank bodza, saw Bodza the dog (named after the drink), ate the local cheese, took a nap, strolled the city. I am in the husband's hometown thick of it.

I am reading Catcher in the Rye, I believe for the first time. Very caustic. And very scary when traveling with an 11 year-old boy soon to be a full fledged teen fed up with all us phonies. I finished Peace Like A River by Leif Enger while in transit and also Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, the latter being a real jewel. That Cunningham rocks my world.

Not much else to write here. But I am writing, which feels good. Although the air is rank and smoky in this internet cafe filled with gamers. Alas. No more cushy wireless internet connections for a while. If I want to go online, I must actually leave the apartment and head into the city center and hang with the local boys.

For a look into a local expat's blog perspective on this town:
http://szekely.blogspot.com/

(There are some good recent photos about town.)

Sardinia, Rome then Budapest

We are eleven days into our summer travels. I should have written much sooner. We had internet connections sporadically, but I have been lazy. It is so easy to relinquish all writerly urges to the hot summer sun. And the sun has been relentless. Yes, even I--she of the 75 spf--have a tan line now thanks to the hours spent on the beach and strolling the sunny streets of Sardinia and Rome.

We flew into Rome and immediately caught a connection to Sardinia. All three of us had separate cities of origin. Nonetheless, they managed to lose all of our luggage. Thus began some frantic shopping trips for overpriced undies and bathing suits in the town of Pula. Luckily, all of our luggage had arrived the day before we were set to return to Rome. Sardinia was beautiful and even I swam in the warm waters. (I hate being cold.) L. had a conference and was busy in the days. D. and I swam, read, ate pasta, swam, read, ate pasta, and of course developed the habit our afternoon siesta and dinner at ten pm. By the time we left Italy, we had had the art of the siesta mastered. There was one day in Rome that I required two siestas.

On last Friday we headed to Rome. I hadn't been to Rome in ten years and it had been twelve years since I lived there as a student. I was eager and nervous to see how my imagination would compare to the city of today. It was a thrill to be back on the cobblestones.

The historic center, where we stayed in the Hotel Tiziano, has exploded with stores and restaurants. As a student in Rome, I tended to stay out of shops and restaurants and so maybe I hadn't noticed their abundance before. Yet I think there are more stores than ever before--the streets were absolutely packed with people, many of whom were tourists of course. We hit all of my former haunts--Pascucci's, L'insalata Rica, Cafe San Eustachio, Cartoleria Pantheon, as well as visited the Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Vatican Museum, Saint Peter's, the Forum and the Colloseum. We ate pizza or pasta or both for just about every meal. We drank smooth frulatti for energy. And the the gelato. . . Della Palma and Giolitti, to mention the best. . . is dreamy and so much yummier in the shade on a hot summer day. Our favorite flavors: green apple, orange, creme, banana. The chocolates were good, but the fruit flavors exploded in our mouths.

Let's see, my fellow Rome program students might appreciate the following: we rode bus 64 to the Vatican (new buses, less oogy), we sank to Delfino's on Sunday in a fit of hunger and tiredness, we ate pizza at that little place near the Campo D'Fiori, many of the same faces are working at Pascucci and the Tiziano (which did give us a special rate as a former SMCer on the program), and the room we stayed in at the Tiziano was gorgeous and did not resemble our former student rooms.

These days I am caffeine and alchohol free. Hard to imagine, right? Even more of a challenge in the land of espresso and vino. I was in Italy. I indulged in one caffeinated espresso in Rome at San Eustachio. It was a chemical orgasm. The froth. The color. The texture. I inhaled deeply from L.'s red wine at dinner one night. It was a posh, cheap, and traditional place near the Spanish Steps. And yes, all three of those adjectives as suggested by a Roman friend were accurate. The wine smelled rich and vibrant. I ate pesto three times. I never did find a linguine al limone though, which is a pity.

Dani tried his first cappuccino. We picked Pascucci's for the event. He hated it of course. Never got past the foam. But he has his first cappuccino in Rome and that is pretty cool.

These are random thoughts and recollections. It is the best I can do as I squeeze in this entry from my hotel room in Budapest. Thankfully it has been rainy here an cool. We leave this afternoon on the overnight train to Transylvania, where we will spend the remainder of our summer trip at home with family. Tennis courts here I come. Home cooking and long naps and Hungarian lessons and afternoons writing and spending time with friends, here I come. Summer is good, very good. Never mind that when we return to the real world, we still need to find an apartment in a new city halfway across the country and start an entirely new era in our lives. There will be time to worry about all that after vacation.

Transition

Function: noun

1 a : passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another : CHANGE b : a movement, development, or evolution from one form, stage, or style to another

2 a : a musical modulation b : a musical passage leading from one section of a piece to another

3 : an abrupt change in energy state or level (as of an atomic nucleus or a molecule) usually accompanied by loss or gain of a single quantum of energy

This week's personal transition is a number 3 according to Merriam-Webster. Tuesday was my last day of work at my high school, where I taught English to seniors this past year. This is my fourth year at my first high school teaching job (although it was only my third year teaching due to a leave of absence last year). Teaching is a full contact sport. When summer starts, there is an abrupt change from full energy 6 am starts to days that loom with no bells to govern when to eat or move between classes. Suddenly, the abundance of time weighs me down.

My colleagues feted my resignation with flowers and short stacks at a local pancake house before we went to work and finished our packing and grades for the year. I was finished with all my tasks by noon. So I went shopping. I don't enjoy shopping as a habit. Yet it was soothing to buy our household an expensive, razor sharp 8-inch knife. I also bought an oven thermometer for our trip to Transylvania this summer, where I hope to conjure American chocolate chip cookies from a gas stove. I dropped into a salon and treated myself to an impromptu pedicure. My toes are now buffed and bearing a shade called something like "A Taste of India." Then I was home by three o'clock with NOTHING to do. My husband wouldn't be home for hours. The house was clean. Oprah was a rerun.

So I ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's and fell into a three-hour coma with the soft blare of the television on the edge of my dreamless sleep.

Currently I am still in a state of loss. One negative quantum.

I do have many tasks to accomplish: writing, editing my book, finding an apartment in Boston, cleaning my toilet, responding to all those wonderful emails I never have time to fully address, visiting the doctor to diagnose the weird lump in my arm (he told me to come back in two weeks), feeling guilty about not working out, picking up the dry cleaning, hanging my new painting, "ism" by Scott Hatt (my very first painting!), playing tennis with my husband, reading the stacks of books that have been patiently waiting for me for months, etc. It will take a gain in quantum energy to transition into this new summer self.

I have temporarily banned Ben & Jerry's from our household.

In the meantime, my new kitchen knife slices through red bell peppers and broccoli with barely a shrug of my shoulder, no wrist action needed at all. What is more risky in times of abrupt change? Ben & Jerry's or a new kitchen knife? At least I'll be getting my daily dose of fresh vegetables.

Guest Writer: Lovella Kelley

The following piece is from my first guest writer, Lovella Kelley, who also happens to be my mother. Enjoy!

SELL MY UNDERWEAR?

I recently received one of those pass-it-on surveys by way of cyberspace and one of the questions was: What are you most afraid of? (For some reason, I actually did not delete this one as I usually do with all those chain letter things) The answer to that is- I am afraid that someone will sell my underwear in an estate sale after I die. Now, with a statement like this, you need to look at the bottom line. Actually, though this seems rather surface, there is much to be said about the bottom line. The bottom line is- I don’t want to get old and die, at least not for a long time. At 64, it is always a mystery about how long that time will be.

A few years ago, we had a neighbor whom we were really fond of. She was lively, generous, and fun to be around. When she died, we had already moved from the neighborhood. Her husband lived a year or so longer and then he died and guess what? The heirs (they had no children) had an estate sale. I went. My friend was someone special. When I saw, laid out on tables, gifts that I had given her and things that meant so much to her, with an ambiguous price tag, I felt sick. Is this estate sale all that is left? Someone sorting through your life and putting a price on each item? Selling your most precious things in life on a long, narrow table with unknown greedy people picking away for the best price for what, let’s face it, is mostly junk to anyone other than the owner, was to me very sad. Not only that, when not everything sells, they run a hot sale and put all you can get in a bag for one dollar.

I look around my home and see things that are wonderful memories of living: love, travel, history, and a great life with lots of family and friends and I wonder what to do. A family member says get rid of all that stuff, you don’t need it. I actually enjoy looking at reminders of other days and other times, and I am not dead yet, which means I continue to enjoy just looking at them and remembering who gave me the blue dolphin and the Nutcracker and the old chiming clock on the mantle. Sometimes I think they are pleasurable to look at even with a layer of dust on them. That tends to remind me that I do not have to dust them any more to enjoy their presence.

And so, do I spend my last years sorting and getting rid of my JUNK that I enjoy or do I just dump it all because I don’t need it and, after all, I am going to die sometime and then who does what with what? I contend that I do need it. I do understand that there are some who don’t want or need reminders of other days sitting around the house. When (hopefully, if) I have to move from my home into a single room at some nursing care facility, it is time enough to dump. The same family member says to that, The kids will have to sort it all out. Well, maybe so, but I think that is part of giving up a loved one and moving on without them. Maybe I will sort and label and say, dump this, treasure this. At least, that will make their chore a little easier. Maybe something in my treasures that means a lot to me will also mean something to someone else in my large extended family. If my junk is sorted and labeled, I can continue to enjoy the things I treasure while I put the sorted things into boxes to save for someone else. For instance, due to enlarged knuckles and other physical ailments, I don’t use much of the jewelry I have accumulated over these many years. I have given some away already to be enjoyed. Last week, I went through it piece by piece, put it all into little bags, and stored it on a shelf for my family to enjoy picking out the things they have treasured with me- in due time, of course.. The next morning, I was in the ER with an erratic very rapid heart beat. Now, I am thinking, all that sorting and making decisions is enough to do me in for good even sooner than I ever anticipated. In which case, sorting and labeling becomes a moot issue.

If no one wants what is left after I sort, dump, and die, please just give it away or throw it in the trash. But don’t put a price tag on my memories. And do not put my underwear on a long, narrow table with a price on it. Actually, most of it probably won’t fit anyone else anyway (not to mention there may be holes in most of them) and my undies are not desirable since the modern day thong (we used that word in reference to what is now foot covering called flip-flops) undies are not part of my wardrobe. Victoria’s Secret never fit me so well. So there! You can’t sell my underwear because it is old-fashioned and if you do, I will haunt you for the rest of your shopping days! Oh, by the way, you don’t have to look in my socks or old envelopes or books or underwear drawers for hidden money or other treasures. It would have been too easy to forget where it was. I have it all in a nice bankbook that I can keep track of it and remember where I have put it, usually. And everything else is sorted and labeled! One more thing, it is forbidden to include my 1960 picture with my obit!

Back in the Back Bay

I arrived in Boston late last night and hit the road this morning on a hunt for the perfect apartment--which is determined by a combination of gut emotional response (see the elegant Japanese screen! The granite counter tops are so shiny!) and geographical calculations--proximity to T stops and grocery stores. Thus far I am a little bit in love with a place near Coolidge Corner. But I have been know to be fickle. I do like my real estate agents--can we be friends later? Or is that just awkward?

I suppose we should rent a place now that our perfect house in South Bend has sold or at least the sale is pending. Real Estate makes abstract decisions real, really real. Let's Move to Boston! becomes OH! There goes our bungalow to strangers! (who, at least, are desperately in love and she is an architect).

The school year is mostly finished--my senior English students finished two days earlier than the underclassman. We said our goodbyes. I got a few handwritten thank you notes, one or two "See ya later and oh yeah, Thanks" and one heartfelt sought-me-out to say goodbye. Mostly they checked out months ago--somewhere after prom or their senior project presentations. We have two more professional days next week with meetings and time to clean out our desks and tear down classroom posters. How do I feel about the end of my career at my first high school teaching job? Mixed. Summer is always good; knowing that I won't return is not so good. Not knowing what is next....more teaching, scholarly work, fiction writing, tiny tots.....requires deep breathing and self-permission to indulge in a berry berry muffin with my afternoon tea.

(The guy next to me in the cafe is named Suzanne and he is expounding about why zebras were never domesticated. Apparently they are quite vicious. There you go.)

Tomorrow is another day hitting the streets for an apartment. Then I fly home in time for our Saturday trip to the Farmers Market (where does the apostrophe go? they don't use one, I swear). Sunday is high school graduation. Monday back to work. Tuesday will be a half day at work. Then official summer. Time to write!

Writerly Quote of the Day

"Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."

--Colette

Read any good books?

Check out the reading recommendations for their recent favorites by these authors (see strangely disembodied floating heads above) and many more (including Stephen King and Elizabeth Gilbert among others) from the New York Times Sunday Book Review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/books/review/Survey-t.html#


Pictured above from top left, Nora Ephron, Dave Eggers,
Ursula K. Le Guin, Jonathan Safran Foer,
Edwidge Danticat, Gary Shteyngart, Kathryn Harrison, Jeffrey Eugenides.

Swan Lake

A scene from a Chinese version of "Swan Lake," by the Guangdong Military Acrobatic Troupe, featuring Wu Zhengdan and Wei Baohua.

An amazing 48 seconds.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=3f5112778b7fa7051ee5b20dd6b0aecb7164037f

15 Sentence Portrait

Starlight White

We had been sitting on the unforgiving plank seat of the picnic table for a heart-to-heart when my dad scooped me up and held me, my spindly spine drawing a neat line down his chest. The dusk light turned my fingertips faintly yellow, the color of pollen too stubborn to be washed off in the bath. My stomach was a hard chasm and my throat thick with the warm milk that was supposed to have put me to sleep. Tomorrow was the first day of school and my fingers flexed like a basketball player miming a free-throw shot, ready and nervous to press my freshly sharpened pencils into the mysterious shapes of the ABCs.

All summer I had waited, planned, and dreamed about tomorrow, but not any tomorrow, tomorrow’s tomorrow: it was the evening before my first day of kindergarten at Prairie Hills elementary school. I had to ride the bus alone. My red and black backpack was packed with Big Chief paper and a box of tissues for the classroom. I wanted to be new like my new supplies, a brand new grown up girl instead of the little girl who stayed at home with her mother while the big kids went to school.

My dad pointed toward the lights at the edge of the prairie grass. We watched the fireflies flit freely near the lawn’s limit. My Dad, who must have sat here with his other three daughters and maybe even my brother, breathed gently into my ear. The taste of mint lingered in the air as I absentmindedly ran my tongue across my freshly scrubbed teeth. The stars were cool pinpricks behind my eyes.

Dad told me, “Just scream them out.” My little-girl lips opened wide in a high pitched scream and as the butterfly wings raced toward the stars, soft traces of their wings gathered in the creases of my smile—the starlight white smile I would give the next morning for my new teacher, Mrs. Drew.

(with thanks to Ms.Nic.)