Don't Think of a Parade

 But now that you did, what came to mind? Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade being my only previous experience with parades on a grand scale, memories of a much too early departure for the event (I was in college at the time), chilly extremities, being sardined into the fencing which prevented my friends and me and the thousands of others lining up against it from improper egress into Garfield-the-Very-Very-Big-Cat’s path, shining trumpets and trombones blasting, long legs kicking in sync, and more and more enormous ballooned cartoon figures floating ponderously above all briefly flashed through my mind when I started thinking about Carnevale and the parade we hoped to see in Viareggio.

     Carnevale celebrations happen all over the world but this would be my first experienced live—and Italy’s eight-hundred seventy-fifth, or something like that. I will not expound on the history of Carnevale other than to say that its culmination in Martedì Grasso, “Fat Tuesday”, the last day to let go of inhibitions and to drink and eat with abandon before the forty days of solemnity, abstinence and fasting of Lent, would be our day to see the parade (it also happens the three weekends before and two after) and so, wanting to participate fully, I began stocking up on spirits, greasy victuals and soliciting…okay, okay, truth be told, while I could take a pass on gross inebriation and shattering my marital vows, the fried, sugary Cenci and Capricci di Arlequino were too much to withstand, so I bought a few packs. Thinking exclusively of the kids, of course.

Mario Monti draining Italy's lifeblood with his 'Draconian' liberalization measures

            

    Carnevale in Venice has its fancy costumes, masked balls, canals, and visitors from all over the world, but Viareggio is Italy’s other most famous Carnevale, supported by a more local contingent and featuring in prominence the parade we were about to see. As we headed from the train station towards its route a kilometer away the air became salty, unintelligible words crackled through loudspeakers louder and louder, and then, almost predictably, Niko decided he wouldn’t walk any farther.

    Ingrid loves a parade, whether it be her own version traipsing through the house or something more official, and she wasn’t about to miss any of it so, putting aside any past perceived injustices perpetrated by her little brother, she squatted down and had the little monkey jump on her back. “I’ll take you, Niko,” she said, “…at least some of the way.”

     With the wire, wood, metal and papier-mâché floats taking a year to design and build expenses are incurred and local government only helps so much, necessitating moderately pricey entrance fees on five of the six parades dates. But, to allow as many to enjoy it as possible despite any financial hardships, the parade today, on Martedì Grasso, was free. Getting there early helped, too, allowing us to squeeze into the free seats, the bleachers no different than those next to us costing fifteen euros a head and providing enough altitude for even nine-year-olds and five-year-olds to see with unobstructed sightlines a bare-chested Silvio Berlusconi surrounded in his tub by a trio of bare-breasted mermaids fawning over him and his guise of eternal youth.  Steadily rolling, his wide grin not faltering a bit, Il Cavaliere made his way towards us.

     Maybe that would have been enough to scare you away from the party. Not us. We steeled ourselves to a stare-down match with the ex Italian Premier while hoping to distract the young ones’ attention to the large snarling dog coming up in the float behind him but then had our own attention distracted by Mario Monti and Angela Merkl each straddling their respective canons and wearing nothing but the slightest S&M leather, forgot about distracting Ingrid and Niko and then just sat back to enjoy the show along with thousands upon thousands of others, the minority in the stands, the majority down in the streets all around the floats, intermingling effortlessly, nobody keeping anyone blocked off from anywhere, a mass of humanity, some sporting a mask or a wig to join in the spirit, others shooting silly string and throwing confetti. It was Carnevale.

Out came our masks, into our tummies 

went the little fried pastries, and, in Italian all-together-with-the-beat style applause, clap-clap went our hands. It was a parade where we could easily see everything, be above the crowd and with it at the same time, feel the beat rumble through us from each float’s theme song and then walk on the beach afterwards and instantly detox on hyper visual and audio stimulation by staring out to the horizon and sparkling ripples of light while water lapped up on the shore and, already feeling nostalgic and wanting a little more, turn back towards the parade’s route, see Nicholas Sarkozy à la Napoleon in front of the Arc de Triomphe with the Alpi Alpuane mountains as a backdrop, and have a whole new archetype, a greatly expanded repertoire of smells, sounds, sensations, tastes and sights that will come to mind the next time we happen to be thinking about parades (or trying not to). 

            

Listen to these Rhymes

At Passo Lavaze in the Dolomites in January

One afternoon not long ago Ingrid had been behind closed doors in our dining room longer than usual, and without making any noise, somewhat of an anomaly for her. Besides using the spot for eating dinner, it serves as her workspace for calculating long division problems, identifying parts of speech, reading about the Sumerians, figuring out metric conversions, and writing that what she would call that picture in the English workbook is pants, not trousers, and that it really is okay to spell color without the ‘u’ (little did we imagine that this year she would also become proficient in a second ‘foreign’ language). Homework is getting easier but there are usually still the calls for someone to “…come help me NOW….PLEASE!”, or the screams of distress “NIKO!!!”AGHHHHH!!! NIKO!!!!” when her brother has infiltrated her office to see in what new way he could get his sister’s goat (current rate of success on all methods is one hundred percent). Of course the room also houses our TV, a mid 1980s German model that amazingly succeeded in communicating with the new decoder box it united with in November when most of Italy finally switched to digital signals. So I was figuring a sure bet was to find my daughter curled up in one of the well-worn orange leather chairs watching the triplets whine about someone’s make-up in Spanish and hearing the mismatched dubbing of the corresponding Italian voices on the teen soap opera broadcast on RAI GULP, television for not quite adolescents. It’s probably a good thing I’ve never been much of a gambler.

            The door burst open and Ingrid’s eyes were alight. Now I did another quick calculation and guessed that whatever it was, she probably hadn’t just finished the worksheet instructing her to, thirty times over, figure complex fractions of large numbers quickly, and in her head. The odds were in my favor this time. Her mouth was moving, but I didn’t hear any quattro, cinque or sei.

            “Sui campi, sulle strade,

            silenziosa e lieve,

            volteggiando, la neve

            cade…”

            The words continued to pour from her mouth after she consulted a sheet of paper, walking speedily toward the kitchen where Lauren was preparing some pollo al limone (a lemon and chicken recipe she’d learned back in August). I was right on her heels.

            “Mom, I have this poem to learn for tomorrow,” she said excitedly (or was it nervously?), “we have to recite it in front of the class. We have to memorize it.”

            Lauren took a look at the poem. It was called La Nevicata by Ada Nagri. Its theme? A snowfall...and what good timing! The forecast called for some of our own, a rarity in Lucca.“That’s great Ingie, do you want to pr--” she began, but was cut off by Ingrid hopping around the small kitchen, snatching a look at the poem before continuing to recite. Lauren and I later agreed that there’s nothing like a good challenge where a student will be held accountable by her peers to motivate studying and practicing without intervention—demands, ultimatums, cajoling (just kidding… really!)—from her parents.

            Danza la falda Bianca,

            nel’ampio ciel scherzosa

            poi sul terreno si posa,

            stanca.

            It turns out she didn’t get a chance to recite the next day because there were too many kids and not enough time. Some had learned the poem and others hadn’t and the teacher said they could try the next day. But they still couldn't make it through all of the students the next day either. “More time to practice,” I told Ingrid. “Maybe I’ll just have to say it to her at her desk since I’m American,” she said. “Maybe,” I said, wondering if perhaps the teacher wouldn’t even have her recite it at all. I suddenly felt under whelmed by the whole experience.

            In mille immote forme

            sui tetti e sui camini,

            sui cippi e sui giardini,

            dorme

            The next day I picked Ingrid up from school and nothing seemed any different in her reaction as she pointed me out to her teacher and was allowed to go down the stairs and meet me by her bicycle. I didn’t beat around the bush. “Did you say it today?”

            “Say what, Dad?”

            I tried to appear more casual. “The poem, Ingrid, did you say the poem for your teacher?”

            We were not quite out of the school gates yet; maybe her friends were watching. So, rather nonchalantly, she answered, “Oh, the poem, no. Actually I said it in front of the class. We had enough time today.” Then she saddled up and rolled down the sidewalk, leaving me excited for her and with many questions which would have to wait until she’d had lunch and was willing to say more.

            Tutto d’interno è pace;

            chiuso in oblio profondo,

            indifferente, il mondo           

            tace.

            Once Ingrid's go-to sandwich, fresh mozzarella on pane casalinga, was safely on its way to her stomach, she was bubbly and recounted the experience with significantly more animation. “For everyone else they were just like this,” she said, mimicking faces held up by hands propped against a desk, eyes droopy, “but for me they were like this,” and now she was sitting up straight, smiling, slowly nodding her head in approval, “and at the end they clapped for me but not for anyone else.” I didn’t worry for a second about all of this going to her head even though it was happily going to mine. I ate up her retelling, but, a step ahead of what she thought we might say, Ingrid qualified it. “Because for them it’s easy, but I’m an American. They know it was hard for me.” Although the girls in her class don’t lovingly pinch her cheeks or her tummy as much anymore, they are still very aware of her differences from them and they’ve been supportive of her in every way.

            So this proud papa thought he’d share not only this story but also the memorized poem itself, recited by memory here (audio only) by the girl of the hour, our daughter, nine year old Ingrid.

I guess next time I better start giving her more credit when she’s shut herself up in a room. (But just for the record, that resolution stops once she’s a teen if she starts having boys over who need “help with their homework.”) 

Dancing on Quakes and under Flakes

The door to my room opened just enough for a nine year old face to quietly peek in.

            “I think I felt an earthquake,” Ingrid’s friend reported softly. They had been dancing across the hall on the side of the house closest to the construction site fifty yards away.

            “Oh, don’t worry about it,” I told her, “those big trucks and earth movers can create a lot of vibration. Sometimes we feel it. Let the dancing continue!”

            She didn’t seem convinced. After a second or two, though, Syria slid her stocking feet back across the hallway to the music and fun.

            Fifteen minutes later the telephone rang. It was her mother, checking to make sure we were all right after the. . . terremoto and saying she’d be there soon to pick up her daughter.

            I should’ve given the native Italian kid a little more credibility when talking seismic activity. Although apparently it’s occurred in New Hampshire I’ve never felt it myself. I remembered my brother’s story of last year how they’d had a quake outside D.C. in Virginia that lasted long enough for them to grab their two little girls and run outside. In our case—luckily—the shaking hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds and we didn’t have any noticeable aftershocks. Everything seemed fine. Although I still like to blame it on the daily construction nearby, maybe more truthfully it was just my naïveté that prevented panic and any initiation of proper safety procedure.

      When Syria’s mother arrived the scene she painted was a little different. She’d been working in an elementary school well outside of Lucca and they’d all felt the quake and gone down under their desks initially before evacuating outside, many of the children crying in fear and confusion (I later read that many people here in town also evacuated into the streets from office buildings, restaurants, stores and homes. They got jostled out of their typical late afternoon activities and, when all seemed clear, found those familiar routines a little harder to jump back into). She wondered if the school buildings were safe in Lucca. Could they withstand a slightly stronger quake (undoubtedly the 2002 Molise Earthquake weighed heavily in her worries. An elementary school in San Giuliano di Puglia collapsed, killing half of the school’s student population of 51)? After processing the event with us for an hour or so she and Syria headed for home. That evening we got three calls in a row, two from mothers of Ingrid’s classmates and the last from the commune (local county) reporting that there would be no school the next day due to the earthquake.

            The next morning I read that although the event registered fairly high on the Richter scale (5.4, which is considered a moderate earthquake) its origin was so deep (60 kilometers) that major damage would probably not have occurred. Wanting to be sure, however, so technicians could come in and check, schools would be closed. And, as we found out the next morning after biking into town to return some books and a couple of DVDs unsuccessfully to the library, so too would be town buildings and churches. Although these structures have stood for between four hundred and a thousand years any tremor could lead to a crack that could multiply and grow and potentially lead to destruction. Every year Italy experiences numerous earthquakes and while many adults may be familiar with them (though probably not used to them) they want to be as careful as they can, the L’Aquila Earthquake of 2009 in the region of Abruzzo (5.8 on the Richter scale but only 7 kilometers deep) a fresh and tragic reminder of their power. I definitely felt thankful that my first experience with an earthquake had come and gone relatively peacefully.

            The same cannot be said for the cold snap that hit much of Europe the beginning of the month and has not yet left. When I arrived in Paris and stepped off OrlyBus at Denfert-Rochereau before walking to my accommodations I noticed the cold but welcomed it, a dry and refreshing energizer after spending the day in busses, a plane and the metro. When I found an Internet connection the night before returning to Lucca I saw that my wife had sent a message along with pictures of the kids and a new member of the family who was rather heavy, very, very white and sported a hairstyle that strongly reminded me of pasta. 

School had been canceled on Wednesday, only five days after the earthquake, due to a snowstorm! She wondered if my flight would be okay while I wondered if enough would stick around for me to break out my skis and slide around the grassy fields just outside the walls (yes, no).  Meanwhile, however, other sections of Italy were getting hit hard by the snow. Florence was covered. “Rome in Chaos” one newspaper printed in huge letters of the front page. Directly east of Tuscany lies Umbria and east of Umbria one finds Le Marche. Reporting from Urbino, a small UNESCO university hill town not far from the coast, a tv correspondant relayed that three meters (close to ten feet!) of snow had fallen. Reports of cold schools have been a regular feature in the papers, as has the call to lower the heat at home. While this may seem strange at first glance during a major cold snap, running out of fuel is a major concern for local officials. And, unfortunately, at least fifty people have died in the country as a result of the huge quantity of snow and colder than normal temperatures.

            The weather warmed for a day but now the forecast calls for the weather to get colder again and for snow to return today and tomorrow. Long johns are on and snow chains wait in the back of the car if for some crazy reason I feel a need to test my skill manoevering through a bunch of already aggressive drivers, drivers who have maybe driven once or twice in their lives in snow. The weatherman says central regions like Emilia Romagna and Abruzzo will be hardest hit and that this system will be worse than the last bout of snow and cold. 

We don’t have a shovel, but this is Tuscany. It couldn’t snow that much, right? Everyone told us that snow is extremely rare here, that they were all surprised last year and the year before when it snowed once. Meanwhile back home in New England (and in Minnesota) they’ve been experiencing record low snowfalls for the season, cross-country ski racers relying more and more on artificially made snow to train and compete.

            Now if we could just get better at predicting earthquakes, send out those telephone calls to keep everyone home before they happen so we’re ready to head outside when we feel the beginning of the slightest tremor. Or I could try listening better. And that’s one of many lessons I’ve learned here.  At least as far as earthquakes go, never brush aside the observations of a nine year old Tuscan girl.