Close Quarters - Due

Welcome, folks. We're going backwards in time. Our house in Italy was on the outskirts of Valproto di Quinto Vicentino (so that's a hamlet of a hamlet). Valproto had one little grocery shop that shut down soon after we arrived, one neighborhood pizzeria/restaurant that seemed to have a cold heart toward gli Americani, and one delicious, wonderful place named Dai Gelosi whose name I couldn't remember for a few minutes and that scared me. (I think the "name" drawer in my brain is full, but that's a story for another day.) Valproto had no bar (read: cafe) and no gelateria. So it was a real backwater. We had frequent sheep/tractor-related traffic jams and the cloying scent of manure floated about all summer long. Via Muttona was one of those one-lane, two-way streets lined with deep irrigation ditches running along either side. In winter the brown fringes of corn were a few inches high and you could see forever, into the foothills and into the Dolomites. (When the fog wasn't so thick that I couldn't see the house next to ours.)

View off the back balcony of Quinto Vicentino.

View out the front from the kitchen. Biggest snow we got in 3 years.

In the summer the corn towered over my head and that Veneto smog slumbered heavily above and I couldn't see squat. Going for walks on our street felt like wandering through a corn maze in a fogged-up bathroom. Sometimes I spotted European house sparrows, rats, pygmy owls, skittish moorhens, spiders, sheep with donkeys to keep them sane, and the endemic large-rifled Italian hunter

.

Donkeys + sheep = calm sheep, apparently

We had some mean spiders. Back balcony.

I don't remember much about fall. I think that because of all the corn and few trees it wasn't anything special. But spring...oh, spring!

Spring.

Spring!

Tonino, our landlord, lived next door in the same complex--it was all fenced, with a tall black electric gate at the drive. He had a wife, two kids, and of course the nonna, who was the only Italian I ever recalls saying "Ciao bella!" to me (you've seen the ubiquitous shirts, right?).

Nathan chose our apartment before we were married, but I got there as quickly as I could to start nesting. We lived on the second floor with an empty mini-apartment underneath us; the other half of the building had a nice couple living up top with their adult son on the ground floor. Unfortunately that marriage ended soon after that, they all moved out, and I didn't really get to know the woman until many months later through chapel and Bible study--turns out she's awesome! That exodus added a slight tinge of sadness to our building, I think (rather, to me, the building's main inhabitant).

All of a sudden, it was just me. All three of the other apartments were empty, Nathan was in Afghanistan, and I was living alone for the first time in my life, afraid that the gypsies were going to gas me and steal my...my...my really old laptop? The government furniture? Anyway.

Stella, in case you've forgotten.

Stella joined the family 3 days before Nathan left, so at night I would follow advice I'd been given by my Italian teacher and literally lock us in my bedroom, close and lock the shutters, and listen.

Silence.

No, silence. I've never experienced anything like the quiet of a night in the country in Italy. The house was made of concrete blocks and tile, the stairs were polished granite, the shutters and doors were real wood, and Via Muttona didn't get traffic. I grew up with four sleep-talking, snoring siblings, lived in dorms throughout college, learned to sleep through attic scratchings and a grandfather clock at my grandparents', and suddenly had to sleep in a vacuum. Not a creak, not a shudder, not another person in the building, not a rustle of leaves because the Veneto has hardly any wind, not a single drunken Italian shouting because we were in the country. It took about 2 months.

It wasn't always silent. About once a month, there would be sagra fireworks at midnight. On New Years' Eve once I could see 7 different fireworks displays on the plan from my balconies, so that gives you an idea of how many town sagras were within earshot. We also had the occasional nightingale, which is less pleasant than it sounds when it startles you awake before dawn. And our last year there, some neighbors built a beautiful white stuccoed, tile-roofed house with a deafening alarm that regularly went off at 3am. Once a gunshot right outside my window woke me up from a nap, but that's a story for another day. Via Muttona was feast or famine in the acoustic realm.

My biggest problem with the silence was knowing that if one of my crutches slipped in Stella's pee puddle and I fell down and hurt myself more than I was currently hurt, it might take days for someone to figure it out because you can't shout loud enough to be heard through 4 concrete walls and a lot of empty air.

It was a long, hard summer. Thankfully my sister-in-law visited for a few weeks. One family with a couple of small kids came to check out the other apartment and I practically begged them to move in. I think I scared them off. Finally, an awesome family with four tween & teenage girls moved in and I had some company. (Thank you, Tammy & Co!)

And that brings us here to Okinawa and our glorious piazza of brotherhood and equality.

By the way, Vicenza and other parts of northern Italy have experiences serious flooding recently. Please keep them in your prayers.