My love affair with Italy: it’s complicated lately, but I still love her – perhaps even moreso now

I suppose I fell in love with her when I was 14—that was the first time I laid eyes on her & I must say, even as an unworldly, inexperienced young adult, I was enraptured. She was interesting & colorful & joyful, perhaps she laughed a little too loud & carried on with too much crass exuberance, but I found it sweet, endearing. She was varied—so many faces & such depths to her. And the most amazing part was that every bit of her was beautiful, top to bottom, big parts & small. I kept waiting to turn a corner & find that surely-there-must-be unattractive space, but it never appeared. Fast-forward 33 years, after many two-week teasers, ‘affairs’ (aka vacations) with her, & (my family &) I decided to take our relationship with Italy to an entirely new, more permanent level…

We moved to Florence on August 27, 2019. This relocation was the culmination of years of daydreaming -- that evolved into years of planning -- that evolved into a solid year of an incessant, sometimes frustrating, sometimes confusing, sometimes utterly exhausting effort to wrap up our life in the United States & re-open it in Italy. But, I said it 7 months ago & I’ll say it again even today, every bit of work was worth it, even amidst the utter shitshow, headache & deep, deep heartache, for me & so many, that is the Coronavirus in Italy.

Being on lockdown in another country is awful; there, I said it. Being on lockdown anywhere is awful, but there’s surely deep reassurance at being ‘home’ during a time of global crisis—you’re surrounded by comforting familiarity, among friends & family &, most importantly, you have the utterly burly power of the United States protecting her own from the front lines. I’m less confident in my love, Italy. Her wild & cavalier ways, disorganization, seemingly underwhelming patriotism & regard for her fellow citizen is alarming & very well may have contributed to this problem’s mass escalation in recent weeks (stay the f’ home people & wash your g’damn hands so we can all get through this & back to our regularly scheduled, jovial, dolce vita lives).

My son virtual learning on Google Meets

Anyhow, back to lockdown. While I peruse Facebook & see all of my US friends chipper postings about their ski day or dinner out with friends or Hawaii vacation or trip to the mall or school function, take a moment to imagine what it’s like being unable to do ***ANY**** of this. Lockdown in Italy means all restaurants, every.single.one, is required to close at 6 pm (even Burger King & every autostrada quick-stop Autogrill is eerily dark at sundown). If you choose to visit one for lunch, you must sit 1 meter away from all other patrons so this means diners are arranged in an every-other-table fashion. People cannot leave their “region” (i.e. Tuscany, for us) for any reason beyond medical or an emergency & polizia are patrolling & ticketing (fines are over 200 Euros & can include 3 months in jail). We can’t go to the nearby beach, can’t go explore, we can’t go to a friend’s house for dinner or games, we can’t go to a movie, to a sporting event, to a concert, to a wedding or funeral!!, to a mall or boutique shop to pass the time. Our kids can’t go to school & are stuck on their iPads 5+ hours a day doing virtual classroom (although I wholeheartedly applaud Italy’s quick-to-action, technology-driven solution in assuring our children’s education is interrupted as minimally as possible). This, for those of us with littler littles, means we get to put on a first-time-ever homeschooling teacher hat. This, while many of us have jobs that require our effort & attention. This, while we’re trying to stay calm, not be stressed, keep the magnitude of the chaos away from our young & give them some semblance of a regular life, or a slightly joyful day beyond staring at the walls in our home.

Line outside COOP Supermarket

Yesterday we tried to go to our nearby “big COOP” supermarket, as we affectionately call it. We have a small COOP just down the street from our house & the big COOP is about 15 minutes away. We parked & before even exiting our car we saw a long line of Italians, neatly spaced approximately 1 meter apart, hunched over their shopping cart, waiting for a “turn” to be admitted into the grocery store. We decided to take our chances with our quaint, local market & while we faced no hurdles there, I noticed people looked defeated & irritated, everyone went about their business rapidly & silently – this was so sadly converse to the boisterous, warm nature typical for Italians. If you found yourself in close proximity to another in the fruit or vegi aisle folks visibly pulled back & swiveled away from each other, afraid of even the merest accidental bump of elbow or shoulder.

Our neighborhood coffee shop was open but with a sign that translated into ‘no more than 6 people at a time & everyone must be at least 1 meter apart’. This normally bustling establishment was empty beyond the 3 of us. Many shops have closed down altogether, whether they can be open limited hours or not, increasing the bleakness of the situation & landscape.

Desolate Firenze Airport March 10, 2020

I’ve had moments where I’ve felt painfully & frighteningly isolated & alone. As a newbie to this city & country, I have no close friends here, no family &, ironically, my husband left for the United States right as the virus became intense in Italy (as of this writing he is back!, thank God, but wondering if he could even get back was another big stressor). I have had moments where I thought—huh, WHAT IF I, or my son, start to develop the cough, fever & breathing difficulties? Who do we call? Will this person speak English or will I be able to cobble together enough grossly novice Italian to say that one of us may be infected & THEN could I actually understand what the person on the other line replies, instructs us to do?! What about my international health insurance? Will that work and if not, will the Italian healthcare system welcome foreigners like they do their own? The anxiety around this virus & being at one of the epicenters of the outbreak has been, at times, pretty devastating.

I can’t count the number of nights I’ve been staring at a blue screen well past midnight. My new role as daytime school teacher ensures I must use these precious, after 9 pm hours, after my precious child is asleep, to stay educated on the latest developments & understand what I can & cannot do & (previously) where the ‘red zones’ were. The Italian government tells us absolutely nothing, the US Embassy/Consulate comes in a close second telling us near nothing, sending very generic messages every 2 weeks or so. I have to Google “latest Coronavirus updates, Italy” to get my information &, as we know, so much of that is sensationalized by the media. Lovingly but stressfully, my phone & computer have been positively flooded with well-wishes, curiosities about the real, feet-on-the-ground scoop on things, inquiries on our health & safety & even a few peachy pals who’ve felt the need to forward me the most discouraging news bits or say “I don’t think your husband will be able to make it back to you”. It’s no surprise whatsoever that I’ve developed nasty insomnia in the past 2 weeks – the kind where I say a prayer of thanks once the sun comes up because I can quit futilely trying to sleep. At times, I’ve been sustaining on 1 hour of sleep per day, sleep that was had in a few 15-minute intervals before I woke & my mind spun & spun (& spun). Needless to say, I’ve become good buddies with Italy’s version of melatonin & have been blissfully teary-eyed that I had the wherewithal to bring Tylenol PM overseas.

The biggest kicker of this entire situation is that I/we CHOSE to be here. We didn’t have a job transfer, our move was purely personal & 110% conscious. As such, we’ve paid heavily (literally & figuratively) for our Italian Adventure. Our savings account is notably less than it was a half-year ago & we took a big gamble by peeling away from our well-established, full-time jobs in the 8th inning of our careers. But, we felt this time abroad & all the moments-of-a-lifetime we’d experience would be well worth it. I don’t (yet) feel that prior statement is untrue but man, I sure feel like I’ve got a big, gooey pile of egg on my face. And I do have “you’ve GOT to be kidding me” moments that of allllllll the places we could’ve chosen to relocate to, we selected here -- & the Coronavirus did too. What are the odds of that, seriously?! Peek at a map & the thousands of countries on it & bulls-eye, we dropped our bags in the current eye of the storm. But, then I get over my little pity-party & trudge on…

We now are trying to figure out what’s next, what’s best for our family. As we see it, we have 3 choices: a) we can pack it all up & go home, permanently (maybe—as Trump, as of today, has banned all flights from Europe to the US, with the exception of the UK); b) we can pack it up & go home temporarily & come back in late spring or summer, when the Coronavirus settles down (again, maybe—see above) or c) we can ride it out here. There are significant pros & cons with each option &, interestingly, when the 3 of us talk candidly about what we WANT none of us desires to go home, permanently. We, up until recently, have absolutely loved & cherished this Italian Adventure; as a matter of fact, it has exceeded every wish, hope or dream we’d had & thrown us countless delightful surprises (minus one!) along the way. But at the same time we must be smart & there’s a palatable peace in the idea of running back to the safeharbor of home.

My top trepidation with going home is the certainty that certain people in our community will shun us & worse, ostracize & discriminate against our son. Now, I know we’d love to all say “no, no that wouldn’t happen, you’d be welcomed back” but the truth is we wouldn’t, even after we self-quarantined for 14 days, which of course we would do. Some parents would vent about The Reitters returning from ITALY, some would show up on the principal’s doorstep the first day our son healthfully re-entered school demanding to know how school could let him endanger the other students, many would give us a wide berth if they ran into us at Safeway or a downtown Truckee restaurant. I know this because it happened in Italy & at my son’s international school…

As the Coronavirus became more widespread, but not nearly the urgent pandemic it is today, many children picked on the Asian students (mind you, these are Asian-Italian boys & girls!), as did a couple teachers. My son came home one day so shook up because a teacher had forced the Asian children to remove their masks & toss them into the garbage can stating “Italy is safe, you cannot wear those masks”. Ironically, we parents had received an email from the school just that day saying the school had no policy on masks & that kids were welcome to wear them, if they wished. This behavior embarrassed many individuals & there were also comments about the Coronavirus being the Asians fault & to stay away from the Asians--- it got so bad the parents of several Asian children chose to pull their babies out of school well before the nationwide closure happened. Yeah, it’s called discrimination folks & it’s a guarantee we’ll get to walk a mile in those shoes should we return to the United States, our sensitive son taking the brunt of the cruelty.

So going full circle & after all I’ve said, you must wonder how I can possibly love Italy more now that I did when she was healthy & vibrant, fun & easy. Well, that’s easy – love is unconditional.

For 33 years, off & on & whenever time & money have allowed, I’ve delighted in all of Italy’s magnificence. From the breathtaking shorelines of Como & Bellagio to the delightfully grueling all-day hike of Cinque Terre, dotted with pastel-hued stopovers -- hunks of salami & bread with a paper-bag clad bottle of cheap & delicious Chianti to fuel the journey, to the picture-perfect, seaside towns of Camogli, Pietrasanta, Livorno, Rimini, Cesenatico & Viareggio to the history, culture, art & excitement of cities like Firenze, Bologna, Ravenna & Roma, to the grandeur & splendor of quaint walled towns & hilltop villages (or republics) like San Marino, Anghiari, Lucca, Cortona, Siena, San Gimignano, Volterra, Gubbio, Deruta, to the Italian Alps exquisiteness of Cortina, to the pure magic of the canals of Venezia, to the refined relaxation of Amalfi, Positano, Ravello & Capri, to the not-sure-I’ve-ever-had-a-less-than-wonderful-glass-of-vino-rosso towns of Montepulciano, Montalcino, Greve in Chianti, Montefioralle – and don’t even get me started on the pastas, pizzas, paninos, the fine leathers, the gorgeous fashions that belong, exclusively, to Italy. And her people? These are some of the kindest, most generous souls who welcome you into their home & country as if you’re longtime family. Yes, she’s been more than good to me &, quite frankly, every other traveler who’s been lucky enough to explore her endless-as-they-are-vast beauties.

So now she struggles & her people struggle. Their country, their towns, their livelihoods, their lifestyle, their families, their freedoms! (it is an absolute first for me, as an American, to have my freedoms stripped -- & by a foreign government!) are all under attack & they can do nothing but sit at home, in isolation & quarantine & lock down, & watch, wait & wonder how – & when – this nightmare will end. And I, always having been one with an extra soft spot for the underdog, want to give her more love now & assure her it WILL be ok, someday, somehow. This difficult chapter will not tarnish my memories, or my continuing love, for this extraordinary spot on our earth.

For better or for worse my bella Italia, the love is still there & in our most challenging of times, it grows.