Big Blog Of Fun

I’ve been actively avoiding television and the daily papers. It takes me all week to read the Sunday “New York Times,” and I dip into the Economist and CNN.com on what I deem to be an as-needed basis. Jon is a better citizen: he checks many sources daily and is a devotee of Pollster.com. I may become one too after he showed me the breakdown of electoral votes this morning.

I’ve been in a curiously cheerful mood for the last week and am finally realizing that it has to do with Obama’s lead. I don’t yet have the audacity to hope, though. I’m still recovering from 2004 and the awful, isolating feeling of knowing I occupy a totally different intellectual universe than most of my fellow Americans.

I did see one commercial each from Obama and McCain during the one evening of Olympic diving we actually watched. (I had zero attention span in August and it’s only slightly better now at the end of October. From what I hear, the Americans and the Chinese did well, and a guy named Phelps is a good athlete. My mind is on weightier topics such as the whereabouts of the socket wrench and trying to remember the names of my old friends in my dance class at the YMCA.)

I loved Obama’s acceptance speech at the DNC convention, although the protectionist pandering bugged me. If anyone understands that free trade works both ways, it’s Obama. What a relief to hear a smart, famous person skewer the way the right has manipulated notions of “patriotism,” and to have him name the elephants in the room that no other powerful people will name (like “if you really want to stop abortions try getting on board with birth control and comprehensive sexuality education.”)

I may be incredibly naïve (as I tend to be in election years) but I really do think he could be a unifying force. I love how intelligent and worldly he is and how, for the most part, he assumes the rest of us are intelligent and worldly as well.

I still wish it were Clinton but am keeping my eye on the ball. Jon and I shared a guffaw over McCain’s Vice Presidential choice. “WTF?” Before all the media analysis rolled in, my gut reaction was that we all owe Hillary Rodham Clinton (and Geraldine Ferraro) a debt of gratitude for making Palin’s qualifications loom larger (for me anyway) than her gender. Clinton made it normal for a woman to be on the ticket.

Saying this out loud makes me unpopular with my feminist friends but….if McCain did win, we’d at least have a silver lining in breaking through the glass ceiling. An inexperienced, corrupt, jingoistic, anti-choice silver lining is nonetheless a silver lining.

I also agree with my friend Suzi: “Liddy Dole was robbed.” If McCain wanted to capture the grudging Clinton voters, he should have gone with a brilliant, experienced, old broad. I suspect that his double-pander to women and fundies will backfire. Then again, the last three elections have proven that I have no electoral instincts whatsoever. None.

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I still haven’t finished my travel journal from London (including my awesome Jane Austen pilgrimage) but I’ll get to it.

It’s hard to feel good about yourself when your kids are unhappy. Saying goodbye to the girls’ friends was tough on all of us. Bryn and Alexandra joked in the hallway as we parents looked at each other and cried. Paige waved casually to her teacher Kerry and then burst into tears. Then Kerry burst into tears. Then I did. It was truly awful to leave knowing that we’d never see most of these people again.

We emptied out the flat gradually, but the girls did finally notice that they were down to two outfits and two toys. Jon, Bryn and Paige had an amazing trip to Paris Disney but then had to go back to London, clean the flat, and give away the rest of our stuff. That day Paige had an all-day play date with Cecile while Bryn truly helped Jon by wiping out the bottoms of closets and carrying stuff down to the giveaway shelf.

Here’s Jon’s email from their last night in London: “The only time these girls have shown anxiety about going home, really, was last night. They each HAD to sleep with me. I would get one to sleep in her own bed (Paige) and then Bryn would show up at my bedside. I let Bryn sleep with me. Paige joined us at 2:30. I kept trying to sneak out to the living room but Paige would wake up and cry for me. “Daddy, will there be swimming class in kindergarten? Daddy, when will the pirates get out of our room? (We went on Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney. Paige seemed fine with it at the time.) I finally snuck out successfully at about 4:00 a.m., but Paige joined me before I even got back to sleep. So Bryn had our bed to herself and Paige and I were on the futon. Yay.”

A few friends gathered in the lobby of our building to wave Jon and the girls goodbye. I don’t remember who he said was there and I kind of don’t want to know because then I’ll cry again.

Jon reports that the girls did well on the plane ride home. Jon slipped them both some Benadryl. Paige slept four hours, Bryn watched “Prince Caspian” for the third time with Jon. Jon’s sister JJ drove me in the minivan to the airport so that I could greet them in baggage claim. Man it felt good to hug my daughters. They both practically knocked me over. Jon looked a little rugged. I’m not sure if he was actually glad to see me or if he just appreciated the childcare while he collected their six bags.

I loved watching Bryn and Paige re-unite with Aunt JJ: big hugs and shouts all around. We’ve missed her and her family hard.

We were positive the girls would fall asleep on the drive home from the airport. Nope. They chatted and sang “Twinkle, Twinkle” the whole way. They really liked the “Welcome Home” sign from Jake and Maddie across the street. We warned them they’d have to go straight to bed (it was now 1:00 a.m.) but didn’t have the heart to make them do it. It was strange and fun to watch them run from room to room in what now seems like our HUGE house, and to rediscover their old toys. They hit the basement, dragged everything out, and played for an hour before we finally got mean and put them to bed.

The next couple of days were pretty ugly as jet lag caught up with all three of them. Jon had to sleep. The girls needed to sleep, too, but fought and whined instead. Paige ran to say hi to her buddy Mabel down the street. Sarah, Mabel’s mom, called to say, “Who is this kid with the Cockney accent?” Maddie came over immediately.

All in all, we were ready to leave London and come home to our house and “peeps.” We had a fantastic year, wrung as much as we could out of it, and made lifelong new friends.

Bryn sailed right back into her old social life and academics. She’s ahead in a lot of stuff, and likes taking piano lessons with Jon. She’s been to at least five birthday parties since she got home. When she was changing clothes for a pool party in the locker room, a little girl walked in with her mom. She and Bryn stared at each other. “Bryn?” Sophie asked. “Sophie?” shouted Bryn. They hugged for a full twenty seconds.

Being home feels wonderful and comfortable. When we planned this sabbatical, though, we underestimated how connected we would be to our life in London and how tough it would be to uproot ourselves. We all miss our School Bus friends and the amazing people we shared a building with. I could go on but don’t want to cry in the Ridgedale Public Library.

Most painful has been seeing Paige go through a truly difficult adjustment. (Okay, now I am going to cry at the Ridgedale Public Library.) She’s never had a particularly mellow temperament, but is a cheerful, confident extrovert who was a big helper at her London nursery school. She started to get naughty in London when we talked about our move home. We finally realized it was because she didn’t remember her home. We got out the photos and DVDs and learned to do our planning in private.

Paige seemed happy to be home at first, and really glad to see familiar faces. But she was so confused. We went up to the cabin a week after we got home and at one point she asked, “What house do we LIVE in? Do I live in the house with the green bedroom?” It nearly broke my heart.

We’ve seen lots of regressive behavior (whining, baby voice) and some pretty naughty stuff, too. The absolute worst, though, is the fact that she misses her best friend Cecile and her teacher Kerry to the point of tears. We email often, and called Cecile once, but you can’t get around the fact that it feels like shit to leave your friends. None of her pre-school friends from before London go to her elementary school.

It also feels like shit to have your kid ask when she’ll see her favorite people again and to have to hedge or downright lie. London might be in our five year plan, but I’m not sure Jerusalem will make the cut. The first month of kindergarten, too, was really tough. It was hard to hear from her teacher that she wasn’t participating or making friends. I couldn’t believe we were talking about the same person who looked out for the new kids at her London nursery school and chatted up all the staff.

We know that our sabbatical year was a huge gift to our children, an incredible intellectual and social education. But definitely wasn’t without some trauma on both ends.

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We woke up on our last day in Italy missing the girls. We called them, knowing they missed us as much as we missed them. They didn’t. Bryn told us briefly about her galloping social life full of slumber parties, play dates, and ice cream parlors. My big city kid told us to be sure to take the Tube to King’s Cross Station instead of Russell Square to avoid the construction.

Paige was too busy to talk. Harrumph. Mom reported that they’d each flirted with a stomach virus over the last few days. No surprises there: barfing is their standard response to us taking a trip alone. (Please see December’s “Bath and the Barf-o-Rama” entry). She and Gail had settled into a comfortable groove with the kids and the School Bus grown-ups. Mom loves Waitrose, our grocery store, and liked taking a day or two off from being a tourist.

We spent our last day in Tuscany wishing we were flying back to London so that we could scoop up our kids and get home to Minnesota already. We packed. We read. We bought some pesto for dinner in Radda, and went to bed early. We managed to find Pisa again the next day and, despite missing the girls, savored the thrill of only having to entertain ourselves on the plane.

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I can’t believe I’m still catch-up journaling from three months ago…

I woke up to find Jon gone, and myself locked in (you had to lock the door with key). I figured I could: A) remain un-caffeinated until Jon returned, B) scream, or C) wing it. I winged it by sitting on the big window sill, pushing open the shutters, leaping onto the picnic table, and going up for my cuppa joe.

At this point in our getaway we were both starting to twitch. We realized we didn’t want to get away anymore: we wanted to be with our kids and get back to the lives we’d be having to leave soon. The kiwi was good but the loud Americans at the next table seemed especially loud that morning.

We’d had trouble getting cash the day before in Castellina. The bored twenty-something at our bank told us that our debit card had expired and that it shouldn’t have even worked for us in Radda. Thanks. This meant that more of our mail had gone into the abyss somewhere between U.S. and British Customs. We called Wells Fargo Visa to get a PIN number for a cash advance. Though they’ve changed our number twice this year without telling us, they apparently think we need to communicate better with them. They wouldn’t give out PIN numbers over the phone no matter how many passwords and maiden names we produced. We fired up the laptop to get online. The battery died. We had forgotten the adapter.

On the way to our afternoon and evening in Siena we stopped back in Castellina. We needed to find a computer in order to email our bank. At the Internet café we learned that our Visa, too, was on the verge of freezing: we had two days to okay the recent “suspicious activity” in Italy. We emailed Visa back immediately, and sent a message to the bank. Siena is a good-sized city of 60,000: big enough, we figured to have a working cash machine.

Rick Steves is an idiot. “The soccer ball signs take you to the stadium parking lot.” No they don’t. They pretzel you through the whole goddamn city before leading you nowhere. We circled Siena four times before filling a meter with our last nine Euros. Then we realized we had a half hour to solve our cash flow problem: at 1:30 the banks would close for their two-hour siesta.

We tried two machines. No luck. We each stood in a different line at the bank/post office. Both clerks waved us away in Italian, and pointed to an office down the hall. Being 1:30 already, the office was empty. At this point we were starving, frustrated into monolingual silence, and near tears. We hoped, rather than knew, that the Visa would still work.

We ate bad pizza for lunch. I watched a casual drug deal go down at the next table. The meal itself was a bust, but we did discover that the Visa still liked us. Taking a deep breath we decided to self-medicate with small-scale souvenir shopping before taking on any major site-seeing. We tried the little almond cookies at a bakery. Two more pairs of cheap shoes for me and some window shopping for Jon helped us upgrade our moods from surly to merely annoyed.

We sat on El Campo, a brick paved plaza—formerly a field—at the center of the town’s civic and cultural life. We pointed and said, “Hey, there’s the Civic Museum and the City Tower.” We watched two beautiful young Italian women talking and gesturing and eating gelato.

Siena, with its pedestrian-only, winding stone streets, hills and detailed architecture, is absolutely beautiful. According to my sometime-friend Rick Steves, it was medieval Florence’s archrival, and was a major banking and trade center about seven hundred years ago. Its 60,000 people traded with all of Europe until the Black Death wiped out a third of the population. It never recovered.

“In the 1550’s, Florence, with the help of Philip II’s Spanish army, conquered the flailing city-state, forever rendering Siena a non-threatening backwater. Siena’s loss became our sightseeing gain, as its political and economic irrelevance pickled the city in a purely medieval brine.”

We were in no mood. We had no cash, and no hope of getting any on our expired cash cards even when we got back to London. Mid-July tourists crowded the streets, and the worn out service workers acted downright hostile.

Maybe some mind-blowing architecture would jolt us out of our penniless, homesick self-pity? Siena’s Duomo (Cathedral) had the same general exterior as the one in Florence, with the same striking apricot and sage green against gold leaf and white marble. Breathtaking. Inside, I liked the columns of layered back and white marble that formed four-inch stripes up to dark indigo ceilings painted with gold stars. We saw art by el Ducci, Bernini, and Donatelli; and explored tiny family chapels.

It was every bit as gorgeous as Santa Croce in Florence. We just couldn’t take it in, though, like we had two days ago.

It’s funny how your mood impacts your whole experience: I just sat there in the Duomo feeling deeply cynical about the social and political motives behind the church’s grand design: were those huge arches and dazzling colors really meant to inspire faith? Or were they meant to keep the rabble humbled while the powerful ran the church and the government? (I’ve had these same cynical thoughts in gothic Church of England churches, and in high-domed mosques in Istanbul so I don’t think I’m singling out the Catholic church for criticism. I just happened to be sitting in one on a bad day.)

We sat on the steps and again tried to salvage the day and our moods. I bought and ate some huge cherries. Jon found a Vespa magnet for his sister and her partner. We drank Diet Cokes and beers together in a café in total silence. Jon read the guidebook. I read a three-week old Economist. We got our heads screwed on.

We first located the restaurant at which we’d made a reservation, and then separated for an hour. All I wanted was a dumb American magazine and a shady place to sit. I remember thinking, “I can’t take in one more thing.” I wandered for forty-five minutes, encountering no benches or bookstores. Finally, near the steps of the Baptistry, I found and paid 17 Euros (yes, $23!) for a People and a Vanity Fair. I went to sit on the steps to vegetate for ten minutes, and found my husband in the same spot reading the international version of the New York Times. I love that guy.

Okay, Rick Steves is a genius. The Taverna San Guiseppe redeemed what was otherwise one of our worst travel days ever. Modern portraits covered the restaurant’s grotto walls, and we sat down and relaxed by candlelight. Jon tried the scallops on mashed potatoes with blueberry sauce for an appetizer. I gambled and lost on smoked goose breast with “rouge” sauce. (Note to self: “smoked” in England and Europe usually looks and feels what I call “raw.” ) I ate some with bread and had to give up. As a palate cleanser we each got a spoonful of polenta in fresh tomato sauce, and a glass of Proseco. The bottle of Merlot tasted pretty good, too. Jon had a zucchini and herb risotto served out of a hollowed out wheel of Parmesan cheese. I gambled on and won with cod tortellini in a cream sauce. It was amazing.

After our gelato, we found our way home, read our dumb magazines, and went to bed.

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The drive to Florence took us back through labyrinthine Poggibonsi. (Note to self: when staying at a villa in Tuscany, tell the proprietors in advance that you’ll need to get past the security gate at 7:00 a.m. I woke up the entire house with my door knocking. The signora emerged grim-faced but fully made-up.) We congratulated ourselves on getting to the outskirts of Florence before 8:00.

Four seconds later we found ourselves on a toll plaza to Rome. Jon swore (he does this about twice a year). He clenched his jaw. He veered left several lanes, hauled a screeching u-turn then spun a sharp right onto a vaguely familiar highway. I wore beige and kept my mouth shut. I love that man.

It’s all fun and games until you cross the Arno without knowing it. Neither I (the one with the map) nor Jon (the stressed out driver) had paid any attention. Once Jon figured out that crucial detail, I relocated us on the map. Very helpfully, I said, “Go left.” I suspect that Jon’s built-in-GPS-super-power abilities are what landed us in a parking lot near the center of town.

We meandered through a charming farmers market that was just opening for the day.

Jon seemed a little grim. He revived with a cup of coffee, a newspaper, “Earth Wind and Fire” on the café radio, and a slice of pizza; breakfast of champions.

As we walked toward Il Duomo, we realized how smart we were to get to Florence before rush hour. No longer lost in our royal blue Lanzia, we enjoyed watching commuters on their Vespas and bikes, particularly the women pedaling in pretty dresses.

Florence is ten times more beautiful than it looks in my worn-out movies.

We strolled six blocks or so towards the center of town. We agreed that standing in line with 200 tourists to see another church would be a bad idea, particularly since the line ended next to a “No Parking” sign over which someone had graffiti-ed: “Fuck Americans.” We laughed at ourselves for our tourist fatigue: after a year of consuming as much culture as possible, we’re sort of stuffed.

We stood with our mouths open in front of Il Duomo, the city’s gothic cathedral (with a Victorian-era neo-gothic, peach and green façade.) Built in 1296, it’s described as a central achievement of Renaissance architecture. “Check.”

We walked in the general direction of the Uffizi Gallery, noticing as we went that the clothes and shoes in Italy really do merit all the fuss. Everywhere we looked, a sign advertised another store’s big “saldi” (sale).

“Look, Jon! A saldi! Just think how much money I could save there on shoes!”

“Right. I’m sure you’ll save a bundle at a “saldi” in the heart of Florence’s tourist district in mid-July.” He may have had a point there.

We paid something like $40 for our Uffizi tickets. Apiece! The tickets themselves only cost about $15 each but you have to stand in line for them for hours. Buying them online triples the price. This is totally worth it. As it was, we stood in line for a half hour to sail by the crowds at our reserved time.

I wish I could remember who said, “Talking about art is like dancing about architecture.” That’s exactly it. The Uffizi dazzled us. The English translations of the curator’s text were about as accessible as a razor wire fence but we absorbed as much as we could. We learned that we have the artist Giotto to thank for elevating painting to the level of architecture, the highest form of art until the Renaissance. We saw a special Giotto exhibit. A whole, dimmed room spotlighted wall after wall-full of Botticellis. I noticed while choking down tears in front of the famous “Birth of Venus” that plenty of other people did the same thing.

I’m not interested in religious art, per se, but it was incredibly moving to see and feel the artists’ religious passion shimmering off of a canvas. We spent two hours strolling by da Vincis and Michaelangelos. You’d think it was the Italian Renaissance.

By accident we found ourselves in the Piazza della Signoria, known for its famous marble statues and beloved to me because it’s the setting of “the swoon scene” in “A Room with a View.” I made Jon take my picture in the Loggia dei Lanzi next to the Piazza where Lucy sits and tells Mr. Emerson, “Perfectly well. I’m absolutely well.”

I dragged Jon to the church of Santa Croce (because Lucy Honeychurch went there, too, of course, but also because it’s a gorgeous 13th century monastery that holds amazing art and famous dead people.) We each strolled around alone, dodging the giant tower of scaffolding in the middle. We saw several Giotto frescos as well as the graves of Michelangelo and Galileo, and a memorial to Dante.

Afterwards we headed over to Rick Steve’s recommended gelato spot. After fighting hot crowds in a hot line, we had the best gelato of the trip: coffee and rich chocolate for me, and pistachio and rice pudding flavor for Jon. Jon swears the riso gelato is one of the best things he’s ever eaten.

Revived, we split up to shop. I found a lovely Florentine paper shop and spent the whole hour there. All I could afford were tiny, paper-covered clothes pins for the girls, so I got those. Jon strolled through a few bookstores, found balsamic vinegar for Gail, and a new wallet to hold long, skinny American currency (instead of the worn out one he had for short, fat British currency).

On the outskirts of Florence we drove through speeding swarms of kamikaze motorcyclists. They’re everywhere and tend to ride the yellow lines, making it nearly impossible for cars to switch lanes. I made Jon laugh by saying, “’Start seeing motorcycles?’ How about f___n’ being seen?” He made me laugh as we pulled over—yet again—on a curving mountain road to let a local get past us, saying “I always have Mario Andretti going up my ass.”

We screeched to a stop when we saw a tiny little sign for a tiny little restaurant overlooking a valley full of vineyards and villas. We bellied up to a round, stone table, ordered the pesto, drank our Chianti, and barely said a word. It was a good kind of silence: there was too much to think about and too much to look at. Occasionally we made profound comments like, “Wow” and “Seriously.”

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After breakfast Monday morning we set out for the town of San Gimignano in north Tuscany. Our site-seeing outings had a Michael Jackson theme: on the way to San Gimignano we sang to “Man in the Mirror” on the radio. On the way to Florence we belted “ABC.”

Rick Steves says, “The epitome of a Tuscan hill town with 14 medieval towers still standing (out of an original sixty or so), San Gimignano is a perfectly preserved tourist trap.” Fine with us.

According to Steves, the feuding noble families that ran the towns in the 13th century tried to kill each other periodically from the protection of their family towers. Pointy skylines were the norm, and gated walls still surround San Gimignano to keep out the riffraff.

The town used to house religious pilgrims on their way to Sienna and Florence. At one time it had eleven shelters specifically for this purpose.

Jon and I lacked that kind of focus: we were seekers, but sought lunch, gelato, and local art. We didn’t have the juice to read up on statues and buildings. We didn’t even care.

We didn’t check out the Siennese Gothic art in Il Duomo. We took a cursory peek down the well in the Piazza della Cisterna, the center of town since the ninth century. We blew off the Sant’Agostino Church and the civic museum. We were too lazy to climb Torre Grossa, the city’s oldest tower. We bought some pasta and balsamic vinegar. We found a print of the folk-art style, local, original painting we couldn’t afford of “creepy Italian trees” in an orange Tuscan landscape. The proprietor wanted to talk about George Bush. We didn’t, but we told him we’d do our part to straighten out the U.S.A.

Jon braved the lunch line at a pizza stand. We ate our slices in what felt like a large stone room with two tiers of brick benches and one open side opposite Il Duomo (the cathedral). I learned after the fact that our plastic chairs sat in the entry area of the main door to a 10th century merchant’s tower.

Whatever. I see that stuff all the time in Minnetonka.

“In the 14th century, San Gimignano’s good times turned very bad. In the year 1300 about 13,000 lived within the walls. Then in 1348, a six-month plague decimated the population, leaving the once-mighty town with barely 4,000 alive. Once fiercely independent, now crushed and demoralized, San Gimignano came under Florence’s control and was forced to tear down its towers. Adding insult to injury, Florence redirected the vital trade route away from San Gimignano. The town never recovered, and poverty left it in a 14th century architectural time warp.” We knew none of this when we were actually there.

After lunch we synchronized our watches.

I headed back to a linen clothing boutique called Essentia. I spent an hour trying on beautiful, simple linen clothes, and came away with a blouse, a camisole, a skirt and a purse. The elegant, sixty-something saleswoman told me as she rang me up that her daughter was the designer. I hope I get to wear my new outfit soon: my splurge left me with 50 Euros ($32) for the rest of the week.

Jon explored the back alleys. Some were so narrow he could barely clear his shoulders. It’s hard to imagine real people living there, sitting on their little balconies, entering their little doors and watering their little potted plants (plus spraying a little graffiti.) Jon perused some galleries, including a cool photography studio. We met up at a gelateria that, according to our friends in Norway, has the best gelato in Italy. We thought so, too, until we found an even better place in Florence.

Our lazy strolling through San Gimignano proved so taxing that we each took a three-hour nap. We called the girls when we woke up. Paige missed me and cried. Bryn didn’t miss either of us. She reported that Grammy made “silly soup” for dinner featuring rice, beans, and mango chutney. There’s at least a 60% chance that Bryn reported this accurately: we’ve watched my mom put leftover garlic mashed potatoes into chicken soup. She serves raspberry Jell-o with guacamole.

That night we ate at a stylish pizzeria in Castellina. The Danes made all the noise this time. We sampled good pizza, great canapés, more tasteless white bread and great Chianti. We strolled down the block for gelato, and then slept for eleven hours.

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No way have we been home for six weeks. Re-entry is easier than we’d expected in some ways, and harder in others. Before I forget, though, I’m going to finish journaling on our last two weeks in Europe.

The Villa d’San Uberto in Castellina-in-Chianti was newly built in an old, elegant style. Tucked back from the road on a pine-covered hill, it overlooked a 180 degree panorama of mountains, vineyards, fields, and teeny towns.

In “Under the Tuscan Sun” Sandra Oh looks up at the tall, skinny arborvitae trees swaying in the wind and says in her frowny, skeptical voice, “They’re creepy: creepy Italian trees. It’s like they know.” Jon and I referred to them as the “creepy Italian trees” the whole time but liked their whimsical shapes. They looked like a folk-artist drew them onto the horizon.

Starving, we checked in, dropped our bags in a large, high-beamed, cool-tiled room and headed straight back into Castellina for dinner. We discovered that you park your car in the free lot on the outskirts and walk the full two blocks to the pedestrian-only town center. We ate at La Torre, inhaling hot canapés (I ate liver pate every day on this vacation) spinach cannelloni, tagliatelie with prosciutto, salad, and wine. The dry white bread did not impress us. The banana custard pastry we shared for dessert, however, did.

We strolled through town. In Castellina this takes 15 minutes. Against our better judgment we sampled some gelato; pistachio and Nutella flavors for Jon, chocolate for me. Word to the wise: in Italy you indicate “two scoops” with your pinky and your ring finger. The American sign for “two” in Italy is a naughty, naughty gesture.

Italy does old people really well. Every day for a week we saw the same old men sitting on the same benches smoking cigarettes and scratching the ears of the same dogs. No aggressively healthy-looking people in tennis whites in this part of Tuscany: the ubiquitous, tiny, wrinkled women in black dresses looked like they’d lived a little, thank-you-very-much. Many of them wore headscarves. They looked devout. They also looked like they’d as soon smack you with a sauce-covered wooden spoon as fix you a plate of cannelloni.

On Sunday, Jon headed upstairs for coffee while I read and wrote. When I joined him an hour later, we ate on the verandah with a family from Holland and a family from Manhattan. The Dutch family was charming and looked like a table full of models. The Americans were incredibly loud, and seemed confident that others wanted to hear their tedious conversation.

The hassled-looking proprietors of the bed and breakfast fed us the same unremarkable continental meal (cold cuts, cheese, fruit and dry white bread) each morning. Strong coffee provided the main attraction. We stole a couple of individual tubs of Nutella for the girls: they’re zealous converts since trying chocolate-hazelnut spread on crepes in France.

That day we did almost nothing. We read. We napped. Using sign language, we bought a few groceries at the local deli. Jon took a freezing dip in the outdoor pool.

It took two days before the authenticity of our surroundings sank in: it felt like a movie set we’d seen before. The true beauty of the place, however, was that it made no demands. In London something always seemed to shout, “Pack me! Write me! Soak me in!” Here, we’d already agreed that even in the den of Renaissance cultural heroin, we’d kick back and relax.

Here’s my best memory from the trip: rain started to sprinkle on me as I read on a bench overlooking the valley. Back inside, I propped my elbows on the wide sill of our kitchen window. I mentally prepared the blueberry recipes in Oprah magazine as I watched dark rain clouds close in on the bright grey skies overhead. You could hear the insects throbbing, see wild raspberry branches wave, and smell the juniper trees as hard rainfall soaked dry grass. Behind me Jon cooked pasta, carved a watermelon, and opened a jar of pesto.

We used the pouring rain as a good reason to read late. Before we turned off the light we did a quick review: “Jon kills the spiders, Kate catches the lizards, and any scorpions get thunked with projectiles.”

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I made it.

Air India has classy service and great food. My United flight in Chicago got cancelled. After my friend Diane took me out to dinner on Sunday she put me in a cab to the Westin Hotel where I collapsed for eight hours before catching a morning flight back to Minneapolis. I was so grateful to sleep at that point (4:00 a.m. London time) that it didn’t even feel like an inconvenience.

It’s easy to get moving in the morning when you don’t have any luggage. John Majors on the news is going grey. He greeted me with footage of terrorist violence in Istanbul (seems unfathomable, friendliest city ever); Obama’s popular trip to Germany, and Richard Branson’s space tours.

After Heathrow and Gatwick, O’Hare airport seemed clean and sunny, with ridiculously helpful signage and child-friendly bathrooms.

Minneapolis needs rain but it seems incredibly clean and spacious after London. I’ve really missed the sky. Americans seem really friendly. A woman on a shuttle bus helped me hoist on my backpack. The hotel staff seemed happy to see me.

At home, Kevin had left us a nice card and some wine (and a re-caulked bathtub and touched up paint in the bathroom), Jim and Suzi put magazines and a Target gift card on the kitchen counter, and the Days across the street greeted me with a hot pink sign and a big plant for the porch.

I was starving (why didn’t I buy lunch at the airport? Er…duh…). My options were trail mix and diet Coke. I impressed myself by remembering to put the registration stickers on the dusty minivan, pulled out of the driveway (“look at me driving!”) and got flagged down by my neighbor Suzi. Yay! Man, I’ve missed her and Jim and their kids. She fed me a corned beef and cabbage sandwich before sending me on my way to the grocery store.

The process of re-provisioning our house with food, office supplies, band-aids, etc. has been a strange mixture of happy consumerism, and equal and opposite amounts of revulsion. I had an insane amount of fun cruising the aisles at our co-op, knowing that I could buy TWO packages of toilet paper because I didn’t have to carry them home. I could even feel virtuous because I was buying earth-friendly detergents and a food scrap bucket for our new life of composting. I spent twenty minutes in the bulk-foods aisle alone. Two hours and a shocking food bill later (prices have REALLY gone up), I was all set. I kept expecting to run into someone I knew but didn’t.

I came home to a message from Paige. “Hello, Mommy. This is Paige. We’re in Peh-wis (Paris) at Disney Woy-ld.” Jon planned this trip ages ago as a brilliant diversionary tactic while I’m away. Plus, you know, our poor girls have been tragically deprived of fun and entertainment this year while living in a kid-filled, program-packed dorm in central London. Jon reports that they’ve been in a state of drug-like euphoria since the Eurostar pulled up at the Disney gates. Bryn got a hold of me later in the day and delivered a five-minute report on the key chains she’d collected, the characters she’d met, and the Little Mermaid ride.

I spent two days getting our closets and cupboards back to the way we’d had them before making room for Kevin’s things. In London we have five wine glasses and six water glasses. I nearly had a stroke when I opened the entire cupboard we have dedicated to glassware. “Who uses all this?”

Tuesday was Target day. Again, it was ridiculously fun to walk up and down every aisle. “Look at all this fun stuff! Look at all this fun stuff in the same place!” London seemed very far away. My nesting impulse kicked into high gear as I bought batteries and envelopes, toothpaste and Tylenol. I almost felt buzzed as I replaced our ancient, orphaned Tupperware lids with new storage bowls with lime green lids. I knew I’d run into someone I knew any minute (particularly as my hair stuck up and I wore the same dirty shorts and t-shirt I’d worn the day before) but I didn’t.

Neither Target nor Lakewinds the day before stocked Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream, the food I’ve pined for the most this year. Naturally, it was when I held an Oprah magazine and a quart of ice cream under each arm (with the bed head and dirty clothes) that I ran into my first “peep”: my fun neighbor Steve from across the street. He sized up my purchases, smiled, and said, “Welcome back, stranger.” He carried my case of Budweiser across the baking parking lot for me. It’s good to be home.

My mom and brother are glad to have me back in the country. John tried to talk to me about cabin maintenance. I couldn’t process a thing. Rotting eaves, shmotting sheaves.

My friend Laura called. I can’t wait to see her. VJ called. I described my Target experience to her. She said, “Man, you must feel like you’re on an anthill that sells shit.” Exactly.

The UPS guy welcomed me back. Joe, the mailman, and I chatted for ten minutes. I love Americans. We do have a class system, but we can ignore it if we choose to. It took me six months in London to get the wary building custodians to answer my greetings.

I took a walk around the ‘hood. An office building is going up on an old lot a few blocks away but otherwise it’s exactly the same: a quiet mix of old and new, big and little houses; kids and old people; and, as Suzi says, “Twenty percent too much nature.” I’ve missed the little lake and paths and ponds. I haven’t missed the mosquitoes at all.

I loved, loved, loved buying crayons, paper and play-dough for the girls, putting it in the kitchen closet, and re-creating their “club-house” in the space between the (low) top shelf and the crawl space to the attic. Their chairs and tea-set are ready to roll.

My friend Katherine had me and another buddy Amy over for drinks in St. Paul. What a relief to be with old friends who know you well and like you anyway. We fell into the usual conversations about kids, pets, politics, partners, aging, recycling. I miss my peeps in London but it’s great to be home.

Our house looks great. It feels like Windsor Palace after our dorm. I’d forgotten how much I like our colorful walls and rugs. Air-conditioning rocks. We have a dish washer! Our washing machine and dryer don’t require coins! There’s my favorite coffee mug! I have a coffee maker! It requires no adaptors, transformers or an anxious, smoke-detecting vigil!

The longer I unpack, though, the more disconcerted I am by the sheer amount of stuff we own, especially as we weeded out every unused item and every extra piece of paper before we moved to England.

I went to Ikea to get storage drawers to make more efficient use of a closet and had to leave in a near panic-attack: “What landfill is going to absorb all this crap?” Jon and I had already abandoned our plans to eventually expand our house when we lived in London. Now I can’t even abide the idea of getting Paige a new desk. I feel like I have Winston Churchill perched on my shoulder: “Make do or do without.” My father-in-law helped me move some stuff around and now Paige is all set for kindergarten academics. (Note to self: see that antique in the living room? It’s a little desk. Use it.)

Paige called me yesterday. In an ever-so-slightly less distinct English accent she reported, “We’re having fun at Disney but we’re coming home on Friday. Then we’re going to fly to America. We have to take two trains and an airplane to get to America. Kerry (nursery school teacher) when she comes to visit me will only have to take one airplane because she already lives in London.” I asked her about the hotel pool. “They have towels there but you don’t keep them.”

Bryn bought some goggles with her allowance. “Right now we’re having a bit of quiet time,” she said. Both girls have “bit” in their vocabularies. I hope it lasts. She said, “Daddy took us to the bar. I had a Shirley Temple which I haven’t had in months!”

Jon sounded like he’s having as much fun as the girls are. “The only time I feel like a single parent is at meals. All the dinners are buffet-style so by the time I get my own food, the girls are both done and Paige has to poop.” His email this morning indicated that they’d all had their fill of Disney. They planned to look for an air-conditioned movie theatre in which to park their suitcases and wait for the return train.

Our bedroom is a disaster area of heaped clothes and shoes and bedding. Every night before heading for the guest room (we have a guest room!) I unplug with a bowl of ice cream and a romantic comedy. This is good living. Kind of quiet around here, though.

I’ve resolved to fill my gas tank just once a month. I’ve been good about planning my errands so that I can do several things in the same part of town. Still, I’ve clocked almost a hundred miles on the odometer. I’ve walked about three. As much as I love the blue sky and clean air, I miss London’s density, sidewalks (!), and the comprehensive public transportation there. It’s hard to fathom that Minnesota legislators are still debating the need and cost-effectiveness of it. We’re a mass transit backwater.

Jim and Suzi had me over for Indian food. I hung out with Sara and Mabel in their kitchen for the first time in a year. Lynn came over and hugged me. I waved at Judy outside from my couch. My oldest friend in the world—Jen (Gail’s daughter)—had me over for grilled chicken and white wine last night. Her daughter Abby is almost two and a force to be reckoned with. I’ve really, really missed these people.

I’ve discovered a cure for jet lag: drugs. Brain whirling when it’s time for bed? Take a Tylenol PM. Up at 3:30 a.m. four days in a row? Take another one.

I bought a bunch of magazines because I don’t even have the attention span to read fiction. It turns out I don’t have the stomach for American magazines anymore. “Minnesota Monthly,” the public radio glossy, has more ads for wrinkle surgery and cosmetic dentistry than content (although there was a really funny article on “How to Survive the Republican Convention.”). Oprah has always bugged me but I’ve loved the writers in her magazine. Now I just notice how much pressure there is here to be “happy” and “living your best life.” I quibble with the English, but suddenly I appreciate that they don’t give a damn if you’re happy. My friend Amy’s motto could easily be made into an English national anthem: “Buck up or fuck off.” Life’s hard then you die. Get over it.

I delved into “More” magazine last night, also targeted at educated, middle-aged women. I really liked the article on Jamie Lee Curtis and her decision to walk away from the looks-based Hollywood culture. Another article followed on how to put make-up on the veins on your legs. After that I saw an ad for cellulite cream. How did I used to have the time to tolerate this crap? I have stuff to do. (Note to self: re-enter print media fast. Put me down for the Sunday New York Times, MNPost, and the Atlantic Monthly.)

It’s a point of pride for me that I still haven’t watched a single campaign ad. I watched CNN coverage of each candidate’s latest pandering. I’d blissfully forgotten American media’s adolescent, masturbatory obsession with reporting on itself. (Note to self: re-enter television media fast. Press “play” on “A Room with a View.”)

Jon’s parents Ron and Judy have been in town chaperoning our nephew Javier while Jon’s sister JJ and her partner (also Judy) have been on vacation. They brought lunch over yesterday, and then dug into a zillion projects. The girls’ rooms are put back together. Their clothes are folded. The furniture is moved. The recipe box is organized. The pots on the porch contain live flowers. The tool bench is visible. The phone works. I love them.

I’ll update this space in a week or so after I get my family back and after the piles around this house find their ways into drawers and closets. Thanks for reading.

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(I have lots more to write about Italy, and these last few weeks of sightseeing and saying goodbyes, but I leave for Heathrow, O’Hare, and Minneapolis in an hour. After catching up on some sleep, I hope to catch up on writing, too, and add to this blog for another month or so as we adjust—or not—to re-entry. Sorry about my feast or famine writing style.)

Having introduced Mom and Gail to our neighbors and school bus peeps, and having stocked the fridge with fish sticks and meat pie; Jon and I bolted to Italy.

I’ve watched the movie “A Room with A View” a bazillion times, at least a half of them with my childhood friend Nissa. I’ve memorized most of the dialogue from “Enchanted April” and “Under the Tuscan Sun.” I love fiction set in Italy, most recently “The Birth of Venus.” I’ve listened to my mom’s stories about living there in a pension for six months after graduating from college, and almost coming home with the married name of Leilani Luigisani. I’ve wanted to see Florence since forever.

We’d had this trip on the books (and the childcare arranged) for a year and a half. We couldn’t wait to share an apartment for a week (plus “wisteria and sunshine”) with our friends Jana and Steve in a small villa in Castellina-in-Chianti, Tuscany. Unfortunately, after securing our reservations and planning a whole fun week for us, Jana and Steve had to cancel their travel plans. Damn! We haven’t had Steve and Jana time in ages.

Jon and I kept the reservation but downsized our plans (less culture, more naps). We missed our pals, specifically when I shopped for cheap shoes and needed Jana’s honest opinion (and Jon didn’t care); when we sampled wines at the vineyard and needed both Steve and Jana (who actually know stuff about wines) to weigh in; when we ate at two classy restaurants with adventurous food; and when we realized in Sienna that our cash card had expired, the new one hadn’t made it to England, Siennese bankers and postal workers don’t care about panicked tourists’ problems five minutes prior to the two-hour siesta break, and Visa threatened to suspend our credit due to “suspicious activity” in Italy (possibly a veiled critique of the low-heeled magenta shoes I’d just bought). We missed our friends generally, but we really missed them when we had liquidity problems.

Goodbyes with the girls weren’t fun Mom and Gail mollified them (and us) with promises of chocolate chip cookies for breakfast.

Mostly white, well-heeled vacationers and their excited children filled our (delayed) plane. It felt like a vacation in and of itself just to sit there and read our magazines and eat a Toblerone in peace.

We planned to pick up our rental car in Pisa and swing by the Leaning Tower before driving to Chianti-in-Castellina. Blazing heat greeted us mid-afternoon. Since the Driving-In-Bergen-Debacle-of-1996, marital policy dictates that in foreign countries I drive and Jon navigates. The automatic transmission re requested (for me) turned out to be a manual. This was an okay glitch in Oslo last winter, but one-handed driving in steep, twisting mountains is a whole new universe of anxiety for both of us. We skipped the tower in favor of cranking the AC in our blue Lancia, and taking our time getting to the villa (bed and breakfast). Jon drove and I navigated with a tolerable 85% accuracy.

We ignored our printout of out-of-the-way Map Quest directions in favor of the more direct route on the Hertz map. That was stupid. Sometimes there are good reasons for indirect routes, such as the alternative two hours of hairpin turns through tiny towns with sparse, signage. Driving through Poggibonsi was like unraveling the DaVinci Code.

We impressed ourselves by keeping our Diplomatic and Cheerful hats on, and once we found our destination (between Castellina and Radda), could marvel over Italy’s rural quirks and charms. A whole week of Jon driving and me navigating—with only one modestly inconvenient mistake outside of Florence—tells us that maybe we’ve defused our bad Bergen ju-ju.

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Jon took the girls to Bryn’s summer fair at her school on Saturday (July 5). It’s too bad they never get to do anything fun. Jon’s a huge fan of the English public school system: he won a bottle of vodka in a raffle. He gave it to Bryn’s teacher.

Our friend Vanessa watched the girls and our neighbor’s son Lachlan that night so that Patrick and Katrina from Calgary and we could go to Brick Lane for some Pakistani food. We brought our own wine and ate at New Tayaab. The steam from the spicy dishes being served to nearby tables made us cough but also made us want to order “whatever they’re having.” The food was tasty, fast and cheap and the line went out the door. Thankfully, we’d made a reservation.

The four of us talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up: Patrick (a journalist researching protest and the media) and I are both waiting for an invitation to join a think tank. Katrina is an actress at heart who’s trying to earn some money in film production. Jon actually does what he wants to do when he grows up. Patrick took us on a tour of Brick Lane (lots of Indian and Pakistani restaurants, clothing shops, bakeries and graffiti). We tried some pastries, and Patrick gave us an eye-opening education on the more famous street artists in London. (Note to self: some of this “graffiti” is famous and worth thousands.)

Vanessa reported when we got home that Lachlan fell off the bed, Bryn had a bloody nose and Paige was a good nurse’s aide. She made Lachlan feel better with her Charlie and Lola ice pack.

On Sunday Jon took Paige on their first official date. “The Lion King” was a success. Paige waved to the characters when they took their bows. At the same time, Bryn, Anushay and I went to the movie “Prince Caspian.” My Map Quest map turned out to be flat wrong. The cinema had no sign at street level. I led two little girls around the same three blocks for a half an hour getting bad directions from a series of merchants before finally finding an escalator leading up to the movie. That’s the closest I’ve come to crying after a whole year of getting lost. We bought some gummy strawberries and settled in to the most violent “children’s” movie of all time.

And speaking of violence, July 7 was the three year anniversary of the four coordinated al-Quaeda bombings on London buses and Tube trains that killed fifty-two people. Jon and I wonder why this tragedy didn’t sink into our brains three years ago. It’s possible that it was because our sabbatical plans were already underway: maybe we didn’t let the news sink in. Once we got here we noticed the plaques, of course. We’ve made a point of not telling our visitors that “our” Tube stop (Russell Square) was the sight of one of these bombings. On the 7th we saw huge piles of flowers under the plaques at Russell Square and King’s Cross, and saw media coverage of Tavistock Square.

We keep reading good books: I loved “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” a young adult novel by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. I just found out that it’s coming out as a movie on October 3 and stars Michael Cera from “Juno” (yahoo!). I liked English author Dorothy Whipple’s collection of short stories, “The Closed Door.” I couldn’t get into “The Wonder Spot” by Melissa Banks. I couldn’t stay interested in P.G. Wodehouse’s “Empress of Blandings” (not surprising since I don’t “do” farce very cheerfully.) Bryn and I are finding the third book in the Narnia series—“The Horse and his Boy”–kind of slow going but we’re almost done.

Jon liked “Freakonomics” by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. I’d read it a year ago. It cracks us up that an economist would take the time to figure out why drug dealers live with their mothers (drug dealing is a pyramid scheme like Pampered Chef or Mary Kay: the big money doesn’t roll in until you’re at the top). Jon also loved “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan about the man-made disaster that was the American Dust Bowl.

Jon finished the final draft of his dissertation and turned it into the bindery. Yay! The girls and I each got Jon a new car (a mini-double decker bus, a mini-London taxi, and a mini-Aston Martin). We celebrated with Bing cherries (which remind me of my friend Suzi who loves them and gets her kids to eat fruit by saying “It’s January! January is fruit month!”) Jon’s thrilled to have this huge project behind him, and to be able to play for a few weeks without a deadline hanging over him.

He and I visited the Courtauld Museum at Somerset House, another one of those places that a million people have told us to see. It’s a teaching museum with a great collection of paintings. The people there that day were all adults, but the curator text basically speaks to children. This made the gallery that much more fun for us. We really do want to know about who these guys were and why they used a certain brush stroke. We’re less interested in heavy-handed art criticism, what my mom (an art historian at www.askart.com) calls “head shit.”

Here’s what the Web site says:

“The Courtauld Gallery is one of the finest small museums in the world. Its collection stretches from the early Renaissance into the 20th century and is particularly renowned for the unrivalled collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The Gallery also holds an outstanding collection of drawings and prints and fine example of sculpture and decorative arts.”

We were glad we caught the Cezanne exhibit, including some of his correspondence and personal theories about art. “The Courtauld Gallery holds the most important group of works by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) in Britain. This exhibition presents the entire collection for the first time with major paintings such as the iconic Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1887)and Card Players (1892-5) shown alongside rarely seen drawings and watercolours.”

My mom arrived for her third and final visit on July 9. The girls pounced on her. It’s been fun to have her here—it makes home seem a lot closer. She remarked several times how sad she is to be losing her second home in London. She’s been feeling tres cosmopolitan in her Bloomsbury neighborhood.

She came with Jon and me to Paige’s parent-teacher conference at Thomas Coram Nursery. Paige has had a great year, thanks in large part to her gifted teacher, Kerry. They have a special friendship and both cry at the thought of saying goodbye. It’s fun to learn how other people perceive your child (and annoying to hear how much better behaved they are around other people). England has national standards for children starting at age three: they’re really on the ball with early childhood education.

Mom and I took the Tube to the Natural History Museum, taking a short detour to Paul Patisserie to get our strength up. We toured the dinosaur and mammal exhibits with every single uniformed school kid in London. We loved the exhibit with its up-to-the-minute technology, but could have skipped the noise and humid heat. We bought a picnic lunch at Prêt a Manger (sandwich chain) while Jon retrieved Mom’s good friend (and ours), Gail, from Heathrow Airport.

While Gail slept off a little jet-lag; Jon, Bryn and I went to Bryn’s final parent-teacher conference. Bryn’s terrific experience at Christopher Hatton—like Paige’s—has had a lot to do with having a great teacher. Emma praised Bryn’s math progress and creative writing, and told her that having her in class had made the year better for everyone. She said Bryn’s cheerful attitude and hard work rubbed off on her classmates. We’re proud of our big girl. We celebrated good conferences and safe travels with chicken korma and strawberries.

Mom and Gail did some sightseeing on Friday as Jon and I played (at) tennis and had lunch with his advisor, Eva. She gave us both warm hugs and urged us to stay in touch. She’s off on safari to South Africa. (Europeans are serious about their August vacation time).

Our Austrian friends had a(nother) party that night for the “school bus” and a few other families. We liked introducing Mom and Gail to our friends—it makes this year seem more real when we have people from home see our lives here first-hand. We met a judge and his wife, a biographer of Sir John Soane, the architect. We ate Taiwanese appetizers, feasted on Sue’s beef Wellington, Christine’s strudel, and Con’s lasagna; and drank a few glasses of Prosecco with strawberries. Pinch me.

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