Report from Italy: Unstamped Time

Returning to a Time Before for a weekend

Ironically this photo is actually timestamped. View of Pratomagno from the crest close to our house. I can never resist spring blooms on fruit trees. So Grimm Bros.

I was reading an article today that discussed how smartphone usage has impacted (American) generations of children. Anyone born after 2000 doesn’t remember a Time Before the Android and iPhone. GenX had play time, not phone time, as it’s cast now. What’s the impact of all these phones and screens not just on brain development, but social development and the well-being of the community as a whole? These are excellent questions - but to be fair, I think adults spend a lot of time talking about what kind of screen time kids aged 1-21 are putting in without interrogating their own compulsions, be they spurred by work or simple habit. Adults, examine thine own screen use and dependence. Personally I’m ready to buy an old-fashioned alarm clock. Get that phone out of my room so I can sleep.

Laptops are necessary, we tell our kids. Mom and dad have to work, and we do. But how much of that work is kneejerk work and not workwork? Even now, to my kids, I look like I am playing a game or something, and I say, no kids, I am writing, they’re like but look at the screen! Listen to that Lost in Translation soundtrack blaring! Half the time I have to wrest my desk back from Eleanor or forfeit it entirely in the service of her personal cinema. My desk is opposite the couch in our soggiorno, and my large screen faces the couch. Who can blame her? (She does seem to know a lot about who produces what show on Disney+ and Netflix - she assiduously watches the credits.)

Last January we closed on a house in the countryside of Pratomagno, about an hour southeast of Florence by car, down the A1 autostrada and then wiggling to the left past Montevarchi, up through Loro Ciuffena and then through approximately 50 hairpin turns (Dramamine was taken beforehand) worthy of an Audi commercial. The house when we first viewed it, in early September 2022, was filled to the ceilings with warped furniture, out of date art supplies, dusty furniture, and the odd dead bird. It’s good when you first view a house to not like it overmuch. I was an advanced age before I learned this basic tenet of bargaining. After a few more visits and a thorough review by our surveyor, we made an offer; in January, we sat at an enormous wooden table with various geometre, a notaio, a few attorneys, and us, and listened as every single word of the deed of sale was read aloud as though we were in school at storytime. (The Italian notaio plays a very different role compared to Saxon countries - they essentially verify every document and piece of information relative to the transaction, and sign off on it as legitimate.) I brought bottles of prosecco for everyone, which they all claimed was unprecedented. We were very happy with the outcome and walked out with the keys to the stone house in a remote hamlet.

It was hard at first to imagine how it might all come together. The house was precariously wired and, on the ground floor, dubiously plumbed. Dust was everywhere. It was hard to imagine how it might all come together in a clean way some day. The beds were weird, the sheets smelled dusty at best, musty at worst. We didn’t have any wood for the hearth. The enameled pots were chipped and, some said, potentially poisonous to cook in. But slowly, over that first year, we stayed in the house in all four seasons, for six weeks last summer, a weekend here and there in the autumn, a very chilly winter weekend after Christmas, and again last month and for the Easter weekend. This past weekend was especially poignant as a milestone as we had hoped to be in the house for weekends by Easter last year but our very particular Albanian contractor and his crew took their time - it was finally ready in mid-June.

After years of vacation planning, website scouring, and overnights, and massive check.out bills, it feels great - amazing! - at this point in family life (Vic and El are 12 and 9) to have a go-to destination that we all like (and which is especially pleasing to our cat, Dorian Gray, who will be two years old this summer). There’s our bed with our clean sheets and our armadi (closets) with our clean clothes and our kitchen with the non-poisonous pots with lids. We know that the top flight of stairs cats downward and can be tough on tender knee joints and that the jasmine tendrils aggressively seek the cracks in the eastern windows. The mountains loom outside when you open the shutters, right there - right there - even though that peak has to be at least 50 kilometers away. Dorian lounges on the granite flagstones of “his” piazzetta, blending in with the striations and lichen.

Last Friday morning we arose in Florence, looked out the windows and saw a grey and blanketed sky. Somethings on fire, Jason said. I wrinkled my nose, no smoke. That’s a maboob. Mom! What did you say! the kids shrieked. That’s what it’s called, I retorted. We packed our small bags and, after hours of juvenile diplomacy primarily with the younger child (an unusual occurrence, for lately it’s the older child who likes to play hardball when negotiating), we pulled away from our piazza and promptly got stuck in traffic. A once-hour trip stretched to two hours and more. Tummies got hungry. Dorian let out a plaintive yowl from time to time from the shadows of his buckled-down crate. After we finally exited the crammed autostrada, we stopped in at Canu, our favorite forno in Loro Ciuffena, for refreshment in the form of fresh pizza.

Jason confirmed it was a dust storm blowing all the sand in Algeria up the length of Italy, clear to Denmark. The sky looked positively post-eruption. Scant blue. The forest insisted on its spring green. And the sound of rushing water on all sides sang throughout the mountain.

I brought my laptop with every intent of writing and working on some short stories to send in for submissions or contests, but time slows down in Casale. I changed pillowcases and egregiously dusty sheets. I got interested in the fire, then dinner. I swept out our primo piano while Jason followed with the mop and bucket. I fed the fire more. I sat and looked at the fire. I threw stuff into the fire.

I am learning late in life that you’re a pyromaniac, Jason said.

You should have seen me when, I laughed, tossing in the desiccated sprigs of two-toned holly and crackling fir. Useless chestnuts exploded with pleasing pops in the back of the grate.

Time slowed down more. I woke up Saturday morning with a monster sore throat and a left sinus cavity on fire. Not the kind of fire I like. I snuffled through it and took some medicine. Start fire, tend fire, wonder where cat is, ask kids if they want lunch. Make coffee, make tea. Sweep kitchen floor. Greet neighbors filling bottles at fountain. Ask after neighbor cat Vito. Make tea with more honey. Read a bit of paper book. Change music on Spotify, adjust phone speaker volume, leave phone on china hutch. Take a nap.

Go to hamlet next door, San Clemente in Valle, to see how the river Ciuffena is looking there.

Investigating the Ciuffena, San Clemente in Valle. I skipped the slippery, muddy path. Verdict: looking good - full and clean.

At one point I took out my laptop but could not rouse myself to care much that the battery had completely died because I’d only put it on sleep and didn’t turn it off. I really didn’t care. I slipped it back into the backpack and returned to watching the cat watching the piazzetta from the window of the soggiorno. Victor likes to watch the fire burn down. I like to shovel out ash and embers the next morning and leave them on the terrazza to cool completely.

Hauling out last night’s ashes and embers.

We returned home under a storm cloud on Monday but we were happy that it was washing away all the sand from the sky. We stopped in at a friend’s house in Pelago and shared around the crostata alla frutta di bosco that we purchased at Canu on the way out. Dorian Gray had to stay in the car but overall seemed pretty resigned to his fate. When the kids came back he sniffed the air with interest from his crate to scrutinize the eau de dog hair originating from our friend’s two enormous beasts.

This was pretty much my whole weekend. Not timestamped. Just lifestamped. It feels like the right time to have some of this time. We are fortunate and I acknowledge that. Thanks for letting me share this magical other sort of normal time with you.