Cinque Parole

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Last week, Susan at Bear Swamp Reflections graciously invited her readers to play a meme game—she would randomly pick five words for those interested, who would see what could be done with them. I put my hand up right away, and this is what I got. Thanks, Susan—I hope you enjoy the result!

Adventure

My daughter came to visit us two summers ago, intending to stay for a week and then take off on a whirlwind tour of Greece and Italy with one of her best friends. But some major issue intervened – lack of money or a boyfriend problem, I can’t remember which—and suddenly the friend couldn’t go. I proposed Italy for a week—the two of us—not sure how eager she’d be to go on a consolation trip with her mother, but she’s one of those people who always looks at the flip side of disappointment to see what can be salvaged.

We split up the roles.  I’m hopeless at map-reading and Anne doesn’t like to drive in strange places, so she would tell me where to go and I would get us there. Giddy with anticipation of adventure, we left the Cote d’Azur on a hot July morning and arrived in Genoa mid-afternoon with a very imprecise Google map and a reservation at a youth hostel at the very top of the city.

Built on a series of steep hills, Genoa’s maze of sinuous streets is confounding to navigate, even for locals. Anne gleaned what she could from Google, supplemented that with half-English, half-Italian directions from a long-haired, cigarette-smoking policeman and her own excellent sense of direction, and got us up to the hostel and its spectacular view. Not just once, but later that night in the dark, too!

We drove along the coast, stopping too briefly in Cinque Terre, driving through the rolling Tuscan hills to stay at a fifteenth-century farm , then on to medieval Siena where we shared our supper table with a perfectly blond, newly-wed Swedish couple who knew so much about Canada that we made them honorary citizens. Leaving Siena, we zoomed south on the autostrada, Italian pop music blasting from the radio and Anne’s bare feet propped on the dashboard.

Rome was a bit intimidating to drive in, so once we found the hostel we decided to park the car in favour of public transport. Next morning, we found the rear window broken and a pair of cheap sunglasses missing, but in the beauty salon window beside the car was an invitation to come in for a ten-euro manicure. We accepted (a first for both of us) and figured it made up for the sunglasses.

Rome enchanted us with her possibilities. We walked for kilometres, waited for hours in blazing heat to see the Sistine Chapel, gawked at the Coliseum and marvelled at the treasures that lay around every other corner. We were told off for cooling our feet in public fountains, refused entry to St Peter’s due to my bare shoulders (after having warned Anne that cleavage and navels were non grata), ate fabulously well, and could hardly sleep for the heat and humidity. Four fascinating, exhausting days later, we got back in the car and left the Eternal City feeling like we had conquered it for ourselves.



Gate

Arriving in Pisa, we thought that finding the tower would be a piece of cake, so obvious that we wouldn’t need a map or directions to find it. We drove in circles for a while without success then decided that our best bet was to park somewhere and just follow people who looked like tourists.

The street we were driving along was parallel to a very long, high wall that looked like it might have something important behind it, but no sign indicated what that might be. My eyes were glued to the traffic and Anne, having finally dug out the map, was busy trying to figure out where we were. For a split second, I shifted my gaze to the right, to a small gate in the otherwise unbroken length of wall and the hair on my neck rose instantly.

Perfectly framed by the gate was the bottom half of the tower, the angle of its graceful inclination perilously, astonishingly close to, well, the tipping point. Once inside the walls, we sat on the grass for hours staring at the tower, fascinated beyond all expectation by its defiance of gravity, but that first, startling glimpse of it is among the most amazing things I have seen.


Mediterranean

From the first moment the sea is visible from the autoroute, less than twenty minutes after leaving my home in the hills south-west of Grasse, it is rarely out of sight. Entering Italy, the road passes through a seemingly endless series of tunnels, some more than a kilometre long, and as you emerge from each tunnel onto its companion bridge, you are treated to a stunning view of the sea hundreds of metres below. Sometimes the view only lasts a few seconds before the road is swallowed up by the next cavernous, echoing tunnel, but at others you are given a minute or two to take in the beauty of the coastline and its red-roofed villages nestled beside the vast, sparkling expanse of the Mediterranean.

All along the coast between Nice and where Anne and I left the coastal road near Livorno, the sea is a constant presence. At Genoa’s busy port, its colour seems to change to an industrial grey, but further on at mystical, beautiful Cinque Terre it broods and haunts in deepest blue.

From a viewpoint near my house, only a small patch of the Mediterranean is visible, but in my mind I see not just France, but Italy, Greece and Turkey, Cyprus and Malta, the Spanish and North African coasts, Egypt and Israel. Is there another body of water anywhere with this diversity along its shores?



Reform

We’ve taught them, for sure. Our boys have learned to be respectful –at least on the outside—and they know it’s just not politically correct to cat-call, wolf-whistle, or ogle every good-looking girl they see. That’s a good thing. We girls can walk down the street and not be confronted with the lewd stares and discomfiting remarks of guys who previously didn’t know how to behave properly. That’s a good thing, right? Well, yeah—unless you’re in Rome.

In Rome, it’s all about appreciating a good pair of legs, a fall of glossy hair or an alluring cleavage. The female form draws attention just by the fact of its existence, and it’s as natural as breathing for an Italian male to comment on what pleases him.

A man lounging in the open door of his shoe shop sees us approaching, walking side-by-side along the narrow sidewalk. Anne is tall and curvaceous; with her mane of curly, sun-streaked hair she is a knock-out, and he clearly thinks so too. He gives her a slow, careful head-to-toe appraisal and as we come nearer, his smile broadens and he calls out so the whole street can hear, ‘Bella, bella!’

He has made our day. To hell with political correctness; it feels wonderful to be appreciated for how we look. I say ‘we’ because he was generous enough to include me in his smile, and because I felt I could take some of the credit for my daughter’s gorgeousness, after all.

Subtle

We talked a lot on that trip.

If you have children and a driver’s licence, you know what that’s like, how being in the car with your child invites conversation and discussion of the most interesting kind. We spent hours in the car on the trip to Italy: talking, trying to find a decent radio station, Anne singing, telling jokes, me so helpless with laughter I thought I’d drive off the road.

Sometimes the talk was serious. There had been some major, difficult issues in her life over the last few years, some of them a direct result of a decision I’d made. In the car, the lack of eye-to-eye contact and the distraction of passing scenery means there’s no imperative to keep the conversation going, and that frees you to just toss things out as they come.

She had some things to say, and some questions to ask. Some misunderstandings were cleared up, and some new perspectives were found. As we headed home from Rome, I realized that in that glorious week spent with her alone, there had been a subtle but important shift in our relationship. It would have happened eventually, I imagine, but perhaps not so clearly and decisively as it did by traveling with her, talking so openly, and having to rely on her in ways I never had before.

While she will always be my daughter and I her mother, we would not go back again to being parent and child.