Ciao, Bella
After four trains and a wrong turn in Florence, I was in
Siena, Italy, carrying too much luggage and struggling for words I didn't know.
It was November, and I was going by myself to a city with tones so unusually
rich, a color is named for it.
The family I was to stay with, a relatively elderly mother and her
twice-my-age son, didn't speak a word of English and weren't expected to. I was
the one who was supposed to learn a language; I was to go to Italian class three
hours a day for the next month. But the day I got there, all I knew was "Non
parlo italiano," and I said it all the time.
The family was short with me at first, and I understood enough to figure out
the words for "that's the thing with Americans, they don't know how to speak."
But it would be they who would teach me most of the Italian I learned there—and
a few added lessons along the way.
I went to Siena for a few good reasons. I left Chicago for a million more. I
had just quit a job to go to graduate school, and the people there resented me
for it. I had just quit a boyfriend. And I had quit an apartment where the
landlord was a little too friendly. I was tired of quitting things; I was ready
for big, shining starts.
I picked Italy for its art, and Siena was full of it. It was just so old. The
town hall was built in the 12th century, and all the other buildings weren't
much younger. A thick high wall circled the town as if the whole thing had been
thrown like a discus into the Tuscan hills. The Duomo was made of ancient
striped marble, and St. Catherine's skull was in a church named for her, where
it's been for 600 years. Everything was medieval and preserved, and nothing
was like where I came from.
The first morning of class, my host-mother, Signora Franci, escorted me
on the bus so I wouldn't get lost. She was about 4-foot-11 to my 5-9 and she
talked continually to me in Italian, though she knew I was still oblivious.
She left me at the Dante Aleghieri language school with a tip-toed kiss and a
"Ciao, bella." I could love a country where absolutely everyone called you
beautiful.
My class was a stray collection of 21-year-old Australian girls. I took them
on as my friends; we'd circle through the city after class every day, then sit
in the town square, dodging pigeons and eating gelato.
But I suddenly wasn't good at having friends. Something from the month before
had made me shy. I wasn't very happy about people in general and it showed with
these women. I questioned when they were nice to me and bristled when they
whispered about anything. I was sure I was just weird to them, some older,
freaked-out American who trusted no one.
And my boyfriend had been tricky. Yes, we broke up before I left, but the
actual night before I got on the plane, he gave me presents and talked about
missing me. So now I missed him.
I went to Rome to look at the Sistine Chapel, and I called him from a pay
phone in front of St. Peter's to describe every detail. He screamed things back
to me: "What are you doing there without me?" "When are you coming home?" And it
rained the whole time and some guy grabbed my butt right there in Vatican City,
but I didn't care. I felt filled up with Michelangelo and a boy and bringing
worlds together.
But all that rain wasn't good for me. Back in Siena, I woke up the next
morning and I couldn't stand up. Being sick is the one thing that can make you
feel completely alone; and that was a feeling I didn't need reinforced. When I
wasn't up for school, Signora Franci came into my dark, blue room. "Io sento
malo," I told her. I felt bad. She immediately started rushing around, yelling
at her son to call the doctor. I understood that much, but events were out of my
hands. I lay in bed and she brought things to me: a hot water bottle, tea, soup.
I wondered how she could be so concerned, not knowing me, not even knowing my
words. But I was so far away from home, I never needed taking care of so badly.
I stared at that ceiling, and thought about every friend, every boyfriend, I
ever lost too soon. I could see all the people I missed now. The people who hurt
me, the people I didn't understand, just drifted away.
Hours later, Signora Franci came in again, this time with green velvet
slippers she had bought because I always walked around in socks. She said
something I equated as: Of course you're going to get sick if you have cold feet
all the time—warm them. "Mille grazie," I said. But a day later, when I was
feeling better much sooner than I thought I would, I wanted to thank her more.
It was three weeks into the trip, and she had made me realize why I came to
Italy. It wasn't just to see art—though I saw it, and it made me feel creative
and part of history and enriched. And it wasn't just to get away. What I needed,
and what I never got from sweet Australians or kind teachers, was the returned
belief in basic human kindness. Signora Franci didn't take care of me because of
anything else but basic human concern: Someone is sick, she's away from her
home, make her better. I was 25 years old, I had just started seeing more bad in
people than good—and I needed to see that kindness in action.
In my last week in Siena, I just took in the medieval walls, the green narrow
hills and the wet, wet air. My Italian class performed a terrible spoken version
of "Don Giovanni" for the whole school. I rode to other hill towns on huge buses
with my Aussie friends, and the last night we drank wine and wandered through
the streets yelling phrase-book expressions at each other.
Days before I went home, I knew I'd be ready for it. There were people to get
back to, and I knew who they were. People, in general, could be terrible and
wonderful. Sad that I had to go to Italy to realize that. Amazing that I
could.
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