Italy Roundtable: Country Mouse, City Mouse
We are in the second year of the monthly Italy Blogging Roundtable, a project organized by travel writing powerhouse Jessica Spiegel, and including professional travel writer Melanie Renzulli (on temporary leave), art historian and general brainiac Alexandra Korey, Tuscan uber-blogger Gloria, and me. (If you missed the previous months, take a look here.) Please, pull up a chair to our Roundtable, pop a piece of Bazooka Joe in your mouth, and join in on the conversation.
Children
My children have recently decided that they want to relocate to America.
Now, before we waste a bunch of time and energy parsing the psychology behind this decision, or the economics behind this decision, or the sociology behind this decision, let me clarify that they regard the United States as the land of milk and honey based exclusively on the following:
- There is no school. (Or so they think. We always go during the holidays, so they have surmised that there must be no mandatory school in America as their cousins never seem to be attending one when we visit.).
- Bedtimes, discipline, and vegetables are all negotiable. (See above.).
- There are really cool flavors of chewing gum.
Now, when you are eight and eleven, these are more than sufficient reasons to make a big move. Come to think of it, I’ve known mature adults who have relocated based entirely on ephemera like weather or a promise of a job or a weekend fling, so I guess my kids are more rational than I give them credit for. That said, I posit that their life here in Italy is much richer and fuller and, ultimately, happier than what it would be if we were living in America.
Of course, this an impossible thesis to demonstrate with any amount of scientific credibility. I’m a big fan of chaos theory, sliding doors, and parallel universes…I realize that in a world where the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Burkina Faso may influence the corn crop six months later in Iowa, there are simply too many variables to control when comparing a theoretical life in the US with a very real one in Italy, and a couple of theoretical kids in the US with the two very real nature and nurture cocktails that call me Mom here in Italy.
That said, there are a couple of really wonderful aspects to raising kids in the Italian countryside that I have a hard time imagining ever being able to replicate in an alternative life in the US, which would have almost certainly played out in an urban area. This is because though my children have been raised as country mice, and I am a city mouse. I live in the country now and have fallen in love with the rural lifestyle in many ways, but I remain a city mouse at heart. I would have never chosen this life path had I not had a farm essentially fall into my lap—believe me, I have days when I still wonder about the great karma wheel which dropped me here—and the circumstance of ending up with a farm to run in the US seems almost unthinkably improbable.
My country mouse sons will have a chance to pick up all the fun city mouse stuff that I so identify with in the future…the dynamism, the culture, the contact with all sorts of humans different from themselves. But in the meantime they are busy cultivating a foundation that I believe will be invaluable for them in the future, as mice or men, country or city.
A relationship with food
I have become quietly more and more messianic about food and farming with time. If rural Italy has taught me one thing, it’s the important—no, vital–connection between ourselves, our food, and our planet. Part of this is because Italy is such a food (as opposed to foodie) culture, part of this is because when you run a farm you inevitably become very well versed in agropolitics, and part of this is because the more I see of the world the more I value what I have in my own backyard. I have taken care to pass these lessons on to my sons (though, honestly, it has been part and parcel of living in Umbria). They have a very immediate relationship with the food they eat, the work that is involved in raising that food, and the difference between local, fresh food and imported, commercial food. This is such an important framework on which to build a more general philosophy of environmental sensibility, healthy nutrition, and cultural conservation and I feel fortunate that they’ve been raised in a place so conducive to developing these values.
Survival skills
Ok, I’m actually not a subscriber to the apocalyptic peak oil social disintegration scenario. Mostly because that just scares the bejesus out of me. I’d like to think that we are going to miraculously pull ourselves out of this tailspin of economic and social disfunction and, worse case scenario, end up with a world something like a Jane Austen novel: no fossil fuels but horses and crackling fires and strings of hares brought in the flagstoned kitchen by strapping young men.
And guess what. My kids can be just those men. They know how to do stuff. They know how to fix stuff. They know how to make stuff. All this because they have grown up on a farm in the country, where much time and effort each day is spent doing, fixing, and making stuff. They’re not very hip, I’ll admit. They are just starting to get interested in pop culture, video games, slang, and coolness in general. But if push comes to shove, the turtlenecked iPod-listening hipsters of Brooklyn are going to be pretty much screwed while my kids will be busy bringing home the bacon (after having raised, butchered, and cured it). Anyway, I’m cool enough for the three of us.
Genius loci
I have a visceral love for Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop to most of my first 20 years on this earth, but I don’t any real connection to a specific place there. My grandmother sold her big, rambling Victorian a few years back for a modern condo, soul-less but without a roof that needed replacing and radon in the basement. None of my other relatives live in houses that are part of my past. When I go back to the city, I feel both at home and a stranger. I have no roots there.
My kids are incredibly rooted here. I will be doing my best come their 19th year to kick them out of Italy for at least a period of higher education and career development, but they will always have that elusive yet centering sense of belonging to a place that I sometimes long for. Their home is Brigolante, just like their father, their grandfather, their great-grandfather, and at least five or six generations before him. In hard times, rough waters, job loss, break-ups, sickness, suffering, solitude…they can always come home again. Not many people in our roiling, boiling, mobile America can say that—I certainly can’t–and I suspect that it gives one’s wings just that little extra bit of lift knowing that there will always be a nest to come back to.
So my sons can continue to dream of the New World and the better life they envision there. But I’ve seen the grass on both sides of the fence, and for the moment it’s greener right here where we are.
Curious to hear what Alexandra, Gloria, and Jessica had to say about this month’s topic? Check out their blog posts, and leave your comments.
- andiamo – Italy Roundtable: The Kids Are All Right
- ArtTrav – Florence museums and activities for kids
- At Home in Tuscany – Is Tuscany child-friendly?
I loved this post! I understand it so perfectly. I have a really hard time understanding the lack of roots that most NorthAmericans have. My family has been in the village for centuries, and that is HOME. At the same time though, I want Liam to feel at home both here and in Canada (and I am myself counting the days to his 19th birthday to kick him out of the house – only 18 more years and 2 months to go…).
And by the way, should the apocalyptic stuff happen, I will make sure to be one of those who come marching on Brigolante to claim it as their own. I can myself take care of that pig. 😉
You sure they don’t want to move onto a houseboat in Sausalito?
Children is such a simple title and vast subject. we mixed culture families indeed give our children so much. Indeed I agree with Rebecca in her wonderful article that food, so important in italian life gives our children a base in so many areas of life. The Italian family meal lost in so many countries is the social centre of family life.
Loved reading this Rebecca! eloquent, well-said and entertaining as always. When *are* you going to write a book?? 🙂
Yes, when are you going to write a book? Enough material from these blogs to do so! The reasons you have just laid out are the foundation for my obsession with Italy, very envious. Beata te!