Italy: What I'll Miss...and Won't

As our departure draws near I’ve been imagining what I might miss about Italy once we’re back in New Hampshire. I want to be realistic, though, and also include what I probably won’t miss so much. Maybe I’ll think of very important other parts to add later, but it’s a start and it helps me as we prepare for our voyage back to our permanent home. What would you miss about the place you live now if you moved away? What wouldn’t you miss?

         I’ll miss waiting outside of Ingrid’s school at dismissal with other parents and grandparents while each class comes out and the teacher bends down to peer out into the crowd with each student until the parent is pointed out and eye contact is made, the child bounds down the steps for an embrace before handing off the backpack and asking if she can run a lap around the school with her friends before heading home. I won’t miss a school day that ends at 12:45. I’ll miss the strident church bells that ring for fifteen minutes a few times on Sunday mornings (I don’t sleep late enough for them to wake me otherwise this one might’ve gone to the other side). I won’t miss construction vehicles backing up (beep, beep, beep), the crane lifting loads, workers yelling at the site on the other side of our neighbor’s yard for the past five months. I’ll miss the warm aroma of fresh bread and pastries emanating from bakeries. I won’t miss the stench emitted by Vespas and various diesel vehicles that are everywhere. I’ll miss being able to walk five minutes to pick up some bread. I won’t miss the traffic and pollution. I’ll miss gelato, tasting it, of course, but also seeing it heaped up so beautifully at the gelatería. I won’t miss the milk from the grocery store that you can keep on a shelf for months before drinking. I’ll miss the pizza, thin, delicious, satisfying; I’ll miss the carrots and many other vegetables from the supermarket that are never waxed and almost always taste fresh; I’ll miss the pasta, the fresh home-made pasta but also the dry pasta bought in stores which is somehow better than what we buy back home and I’ll miss the locally grown and pressed fresh olive oil, of which we have consumed gallons. I’ll miss the barley and bean soup Eva helped us make. I won’t miss the relative uniformity of cuisine here (okay, I admit we’re pretty spoiled in the US with such a great variety). I’ll miss the fruit and vegetable markets. I’ll miss the walls which encircle the town center and are topped with a pedestrian road and lined by trees, sitting up there and watching everyone go by, jogging a loop around it, traveling by bike on it, walking up there on a Sunday afternoon with all of the families doing a post lunch passegiata. I won’t miss the enormous tour groups who walk in a large pack of forty or fifty up there or in town. I’ll miss the pleasantly warm and sunny weather of September and June. I won’t miss the long, gray winter with no snow, high humidity, temperatures in the 30s and 40s, and a cold house. I’ll miss using a bike as primary means of transportation, and being able to easily do so (flat terrain, everything located within two or three kilometers); I’ll miss seeing so many other people from all walks of life doing the same. I’ll miss being able to see world-class bike racing in person and to see live coverage of entire races on television. I won’t miss mismatched sound and lips on Italian TV, whether dubbed from another language or in Italian in the first place. I’ll miss the rattling of my bike as I ride over cobblestones in town and the occasional ding of bicycle bells from those hoping to prevent a collision. I’ll miss the 80 mph speed limits on the highway and the aggressive confidence I’ve learned to drive with to avoid getting plowed into. I won’t miss seeing ninety percent of the car colors only in black, gray, or white. I’ll miss riding back from photography class close to midnight in February or March, very cold but with no cars out, hardly any people, and lots of quiet. I won’t miss all of the lice problems in the schools this year and having the little buggers brought home to us and set up camp for three weeks. I’ll miss seeing the packs of cyclists out training, and the packs of cyclists out just as much to exercise their mouths as their legs. I’ll miss the narrow roads, the incredible climbs and switchbacks through olive groves and woods, the routes with fast down hills where the curves are plentiful but not always so acute that you need to slow down much for them, the anticipation of what will be around the next corner. I won’t miss all of the cigarette smoke or seeing middle school kids waiting for a train on a field trip smoking while their teachers stand right there with them. I won’t miss the bad dollar to euro exchange rate, $7.50/gallon gasoline and the high price of almost everything else. I’ll miss the Parole d’Oro a few kilometers to the south where we’ve gone for picnics where the kids have played hide and seek in the empty canals that lead down to the aqueduct. I won’t miss the much smaller body space bubble here, all of the crowding, cramped spaces and jostling in groups and frequent absence of lines. I will miss the trains and the train system. I won’t miss the strikes and the often seemingly endless waits at the train crossings. I’ll miss discovering, time after time, almost wherever we travel, towers poking out of a forest, a many centuries old church down a non-descript road, walled towns atop hills, cobblestones, laundry hanging out windows, forts and cathedrals. I’ll miss specialty food shops of all kinds and personal service, asking the local butcher if he can get a full turkey for us by Thanksgiving and waiting for two minutes while he calls someone and tells me he should be able to do it and to stop back in a few days. I won’t miss shopping at Esselunga, our primary grocery store (well, okay, maybe a bit). I’ll miss all of the events that take place in and near Lucca and how easy it is to get to them—Lucca Comics&Games, Settembre Lucchese, Desco at the Real Collegio, Italian 10k Road Race Championships, European U23 Cyclocross Championships, Procession of Santa Croce, Free Concerts, Lucca Summer Festival (music), and on and on. I will miss Italian. I’ll miss hearing preschool children speaking it, complaining about not wanting to go home from the playground or describing the best way to roll a toy car down the slide; I’ll miss hearing grade-school kids speaking it, asking their friends if they want to sleep over, describing how a game they’ve made up works; I’ll miss hearing teens speaking it, flirting in Piazza Grande, joking; I’ll miss hearing adults speaking it, arguing about politics, giving their opinion about how someone was dressed, describing which are their best vegetables that day, calling their dog over, giving directions, conversing with friends; I’ll miss older folks speaking it, chiding one another for a naïve move while playing dominoes at a bench table on the walls, complimenting a passing younger woman on her appearance, encouraging a grandchild learning to ride a bike. I’ll miss the challenge of speaking Italian. I’ll miss the sense of satisfaction when I can express myself a little more clearly than a couple of months earlier, when a store owner doesn’t screw up his face or try using rudimentary English in response to me. I won’t miss not being able to instantly and effortlessly communicate any idea. I won’t miss the lag time where I am understanding what a group I’m with is saying and then, in the time I prepare to say something, have the group’s conversation already moved on to something else (hey, to be honest it happens to me in English, too!). I won’t miss having a person I haven’t met before smile, amused, after I open my mouth and say a few words, realizing I’m not Italian (okay at first but after a year it gets kind of old). I will miss the more fluid sense of time, of meeting times and of saying goodbyes that go on and on. I will also not miss that. I will miss all of the people I’ve met, especially those from Lucca Italian School, my photography class, and the Shambala group I practiced with. I will miss writing a blog about a New Hampshire family’s year in Italy.