Il mare è bellissimo!

Daily life as creative nonfiction

Barbados. Photo by Tom Jur on Unsplash

The fact that I was born in Barbados never fails to delight and amuse Italians. I cannot escape it. (In another life, I might have built a contraband career on it, so distracting has it proven for customs and immigration officials.) My place of birth is neatly indicated on every single piece of official documentation here — which was not at all the case in the US, where I recall it appearing only on my permanent school record, standardized test scores, and passport.

Italians who see it invariably ask, Where is Barbados? Is it a country? Its own country? What was it like there?

For years, out of some misguided obligation to accuracy, I would deflect with the honest, sheepish version. My father was in the US military. My parents are both American. We lived there for years because of his work.

This, I have learned, does not go over well in Italy, skeptical of NATO for decades, and with scant appetite for stories of American military presence abroad. The deflection invariably landed with a thud.

This week I was at a doctor’s appointment for an extraordinary thoracic ultrasound to check on my liver, following a high cholesterol reading in December. The internist was a jolly man with silver hair and a kind bedside manner. When I sat down at his desk for the preliminary consultation, he smiled broadly.

Oh, here it comes,I thought.

I wasn’t wrong.

He said, I saw that you were born in Barbados. Wow! I have never met anyone born in Barbados before.

And instead of reaching for my usual deflection, I leaned in.

What’s it like? he prompted me.

Oh, I said breezily. The ocean. Il mare è bellissimo.

Wow! he repeated. I can’t even imagine.

It’s a very small island, I continued — un’isola piccolissima — and the economy is modest. Not like Italy, which has an admirable economy!

The doctor beamed. He was thrilled to receive this information firsthand: confirmation of both the beauty of Barbados and the might of the Italian economy.

I figured I should stop. I was, after all, present for a liver ultrasound, not to give spurious information to an older Italian professional. But at that moment, I understood that it’s okay to be a bit of a fiction writer even in everyday life. I’m no going to be fact-checked. The honest version of my origin story confused, bores or troubles Italians. The romantic version with the blue water, the small island, the Caribbean aura gives them something. It pleases them.

I don’t actually know what the beaches of Barbados look like. I left as a toddler and have never been back. But for a few minutes in a doctor’s office, I let myself imagine: the ocean impossibly blue, the island small and luminous, palm trees leaning in the direction of the wind. Mine for a moment, in a way that I was reluctant to claim before.

Also, my Barbados-born liver is healthy and functioning well.