A "Little Paradise" without the hassle - Un "Petit Paradis" senza scocciature

This is pretty much how my parents' car looked like on the day we were going on our yearly summer vacation in France. The car was not a cinquecento (we owned one which we rarely used  for long trips) but the end result was the same: we were all jammed in between bags of shoes, my mother's electronic equipment and pieces of furniture which my parents were keen to take to the studio where we lived in France.

It could easily take my parents a couple of weeks of packing, cleaning and arranging before my parents would finally say: "ok, we can leave now". Their hard and meticulous preparation, to the outsider, must have looked like the ritual of initiation for a new life. Luckily, until I was thirteen, I could hide at my grandmother's place. Later, I became resigned to the idea that those beautiful French beaches, made smooth by a transparent, silver blue, Mediterranean sea, could only be reached after two weeks of hell, with my mother giving exact instructions of what to do and how. The kind of thing to make a child run away.

When we were finally ready to open the door and leave, my mother would invariably panic and say that she could not find the keys or that she could not find some useless, but suddenly necessary thing, like a handmade mermaid bought at the antique market 8 months before. Or she would have a sweet last-minute thought like, The room in the basement needs cleaning! I must do this before we leave!  At times, I almost felt as if she was making a genuine effort to find reasons to keep me in the heat of the city. I remember on more than one occasion fastening down our stuff to the car with elastic straps at two in the morning... long after my father had pronounced that we would leave not later than 9 pm to avoid the hated early morning bouchons (traffic). 

I was happy (I mean, thrilled) when I could finally see my mother in her summer shorts (instead of elegant city clothes), seated next to my father in the car, with her large cassette carrier on her lap. She was ready. Was she really? Her Celentano's songs were firing up and my ten-hour long adventure was about to start. How exciting. I could stay awake all night. From the tiny free corner of my window, I could see the stars in the sky; as a child, I was in love with the idea that the moon was following me. It was also in that moment that I was finally allowed to open my grandmother's summer gift. I remember playing with  boats and divers  in the car, while feeling so excited that I would soon be able to soak them in the French sea, together with my feet.

Then there were the stops at the Autogrill restaurants for croissants and cappuccinos. The serious looking border officers (not the Italian mammoni) suddenly speaking to me in French, my dad doing the countdown to France and the evviva (hurrah!) Ci siamo! Tre, due, uno, ecco, bienvenue en France!  (Here we are! Three, two, one, that's it, welcome to France!) 

Once over the border, the road signs were more clear and everything generally looked more orderly and cleaner (no garbage on the highways). Midway through our long journey, we would consume a four course meal, carefully prepared by my mother (with prunes and peaches bursting with colorful juice), on beautiful wooden picnic tables. I enjoyed the smell of the pine trees with a slight hint of the salt in the air, and along the road there were always boards advertising fish pies and kiosks selling gorgeous melons and tomatoes. We were in our beloved South of France. My father always called it "notre petit paradis", our little paradise.

This was my concept of summer vacation until I was about seventeen and stopped going to the South of France with my parents.

Finally, a week ago - twenty three years later - I was able to go back to beaches like those that I loved so much as a child. But this time without the hassle that used to come packaged with my childhood vacations. I was taken back in my memory. I was able to enjoy the smell of the pine trees mixed with the slight hint of  the salt in the air. I was thrilled to hear the people speak French all around me. Fresh seafood everywhere! And I cannot describe my surprise when I saw the beaches leading to the crystalline sea with waves crashing to white surf. 

Another surprise. The lobsters were huge, cost little more than sandwiches, and they were served with corn on the cob, the people around me were eating fries instead of the fresh seafood and the francophones were from Quebec.

The biggest surprise for me is that all this was in Maine. 

I had no idea that I could be transported back to my childhood vacations in France not ten hours away from home, but only one and a half hours drive from our house in Massachusetts. Just enough time to pack, load the car and eat lunch at the destination. And yes, there is something that Americans don't realize: the sea in August in Maine gets as warm as in the South of France.

I loved the beach!

I loved the cute stores and restaurants.

I loved the food (i.e. the seafood)!

I loved everything...

...even the fog!

A Stroll around my Neighborhood - Una passeggiata nel mio Quartiere

I was taking Tronk out for a stroll in my neighborhood on a beautiful Monday morning in spring, when I had the sudden feeling that comes when I see something that I like or appreciate. I am happy here, I felt like saying. I didn't feel this way in any of the neighborhoods where I previously lived here in the Boston area. At some point on that day, I dug out my Iphone from one of the pockets in my bag and took a few shots, which have been in my Iphone until now. Here they are. Meglio tardi che mai (better late than never).

 

 

 

 

 

No, I didn't take this last photo in spring. I took it in July. This is another thing I like about living here. When you think you are in the middle of a season or a holiday (e.g. summer), the local store reminds you that you are moving into the next one. Like the Ancient Greeks used to say, Panta Rhei (everything changes). And it feels good.

More on Equality - Parliamo di nuovo di Parita'

In the last two weeks or so, I have spent a significant amount of time on the phone, talking with doctors, nurses and social workers about removing my IUD. If I had been in a job, I would have had to take long breaks, in the morning, to have these long phone conversations about my uterus. If I had been in a job, by now, I would have no vacation left after this and the four days of cramps that followed the first unsuccessful attempt to remove the foreign object.  But men and woman are equal. Or could it be that some women are more equal than others?

Apparently, in less than two weeks, in order to remove my IUD, I need to have a procedure with general anesthesia (yes, they'll put me to sleep). And, I was forced to agree that I will take full responsibility for any damage that may result to my uterus and intestine from the procedure.

Everyone read "Why women still can't have it all", an article which talks about a woman who decides to give up a high-powered position to return home and take care of her children, because if she doesn't do it, who does it? There are other women (including women I know), who are forced to stay at home because, unlike others, they cannot afford expensive childcare, because they don't want their children to stop eating lunch or simply because they don't want to ask a stranger to wave at their children at the gate when they come out of school. They don't want to take shortcuts as parents.

We also hear stories about mothers with brilliant careers. "If these women have done it, we can do it too" My question is how? And please tell me, how does this affect the life of both the mother and the children? Yet, I constantly meet women who are waiting for their second child, while their first one is raised by others at daycare, or who are about to apologize for not wanting more.

The truth is that few parents have the time and energy to discipline (I DON'T MEAN SPOIL) their children. Disciplining a child is one of the hardest jobs for a parent. Probably the hardest. With an irrational toddler, it involves manual labor and it drains one's energies. Imagine, how hard it could possibly be when the person who does it has other priorities (and more than one child). I know mothers who, for this reason, are unable to teach their children to properly sit at the table, eat a meal, put their shoes on or leave a public place when it is time to go. When they get home from work, they have no desire to cook, nor to raise their voice with their children. Some of these children are malnourished and are forced to take vitamins or other supplements. Unfortunately, as research showed, these supplements cannot replace the nutrients that are contained in fresh food. 

Again, who should do this job? The babysitter? Certainly not. The daycare center? Not really. The pre-schools? They are more concerned about how to introduce algebra in their curriculum than what they should do to discipline and feed your children. The grandparents? This only works in countries like Italy, where the stay-at-home mom (la casalinga) still exists and has done this job her whole life. I am afraid to have to tell you that disciplining and feeding your child is not the job of the childcare providers. Sorry. It is a parent's job - and it is a full-time job. But again, who does it if both the woman and the man in the family dislike manual labor and want, instead, employment that can challenge them intellectually? My mother's answer: they shouldn't have had children in the first place.

Do you still think a better answer to this would be to get a highly paid job? Sorry to disappoint you but a new study has just shown that stressful jobs have cardiovascular health effects on women. Surprising? And these effects are probably going to be even higher for women with job strain and children. Also, although women as a group have made substantial gains in wages, educational attainment, and prestige over the past three decades, the economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson have shown that women are less happy today than their predecessors were forty years ago, both in absolute terms and relative to men.

So, remember. No matter how hard you'll fight to ask for equal rights and for equal respect as a woman, you will continue to deal with birth control issues and parenting priorities in addition to your work priorities, and this will not be beneficial to the people involved.

Princesses and Monsters - Principesse e Mostri

I know this will sound like a posting from 1955 but unfortunately, since then, not much has changed. I was thinking about toys, after reading a mom's comment on Facebook and after visiting a few toy stores to find a gift for Tronk's birthday. I was thinking about the long shelves filled with toys, all rigorously grouped by genre: boys here, girls there. Cars, monsters and robots for boys; dolls, dolls' houses, strollers, mini washing machines, and dolls related things for girls. Almost as if they were saying: "You, girls, the ones with the maternal instinct, take care of the children and do the house chores! You, boys, go have fun and play with the cars, machines and gadgets!". All right, all right, this sounds a bit extreme, but you know what I am trying to say. All toys are grouped by genre and are color coded to draw the attention of both parents and children to a genre specific section. I haven't really thought about this until now.

Not for Boys. Sorry.

 

Not for Girls. Sorry.

Yet, I ask myself how many of these genre specific choices are not also a bit natural. I mean, my three year old boy has played with dolls three or four times in his life; once he put a baby in a high chair and prepared dinner for him, he pushed a baby in a shopping cart a couple of times, and once I saw him intrigued by the look of a naked Barbie that came out of a pirate ship. I would have not stopped him to play with other dolls if he had chosen to do so. But he didn't. Like most boys I know and regularly meet at the playground, he naturally developed an interest for cars and trucks. Not so much for tractors and bulldozers. He has now moved onto legos (which I like much better than cars). His girlfriends? According to their mothers, they are all moving onto dolls and princesses but, as far as I know, nobody imposed this choice to them. So, tell me, what are the boundaries between what has been imposed by society and the natural disposition of both boys and girls towards genre specific toys?

An answer to this has come from the AIJU, a Spanish private, non-profit organization that promotes research on children and play. They studied 1507 children (757 boys and 750 girls). They found that princesses, fashion and personal appearance interest more than 95% of girls while boys are more attracted to sports related things and to the superheroes they watch on TV. They also found that technologies (computers, cell phones, video games and any new technology) interest both boys and girls equally. I am confident the toy companies know this. Yet, they regularly assign genre specific colors and characters to the high tech toys as well.

So, if you have a girl, unless you are willing to spend four times more for the posh version with flowers and butterflies, you are stuck with Cinderella and Snow White for long long time. If you have a boy, you should hope that Cars and Winnie The Pooh are still around, otherwise your house will be taken over by monsters.

Microburst In Our Neighborhood - Microesplosione Nel Nostro Quartiere

In Italy, America is known for having extreme weather. I have just experienced a taste of it with a microburst that ripped through our side of town! This is the second microburst that East Arlington has received since we moved here two years ago, when we discovered that our house is situated in a high flood risk zone. Crazy.

I wanted to take William on his scooter around the neighborhood on that day, but I decided to wait. The sky was filled with dark clouds. It was intimidating. After lunch, we started hearing the sinister thunder. Half an hour later, it stopped and there were no more signs of the coming storm.  

I decided to wait. Later, Tronk and I looked outside the window, hoping to see a better sky, the one that says "you can go out now". We saw instead, a leaden sky with a large dark portion which was getting darker the more we were looking at it. 

I decided to wait and bear with Tronk's repetitive question: "Dov'e' il temporale?" (Where is the storm?)  and my constant same answer:"Non so dov'e' andato!" (I don't know where it's gone!)

We were fed up with being at home. We needed some fresh air. The thunder was back but the storm was not coming. The afternoon continued with us wondering when we could finally make our way out of the door.

Finally, John came home and we all left for the mall a little before 6 pm. As soon as we left in the car, the storm started and by the time we hit the highway, I felt we were in a submarine! When we arrived at the mall, it was all nice and dry and I regretted not leaving the house with Tronk early in the afternoon.

A couple of hours later we came back to the house and found a surreal scene: trees down across roads, power lines down and tree branches everywhere. 

Below are the images I captured the day after, after much of the cleanup was already complete. I had to help Tronk push his scooter across tree branches and leaves scattered all over roads and sidewalks. If this had happened in Italy, there would  have been loads of old ladies in the street complaining, sharing their personal stories and asking questions. Here, a bunch of locals eager to take photos.

Thankfully, our house had no damage. And our inflatable swimming pool was still in the yard, lying against one side of our house, exactly the way we left it.