Towers of Eggplant

January 19, 2008

I don’t have a dishwasher. I am standing here washing dishes, and I am humming to music, which is quietly yet enthusiastically pumping its way out Jenn’s room, as sweet smells come from the hairproducts, soaps, lotions and perfumes all necessary to get one twenty something girl out on a Saturday night. It is 8 o’clock and there has been no perfume or lotion for me tonight. I have just ridden my bike to the Coop. I have filled my basket with dinner supplies. I am about to prepare a dinner my Dad would be proud of me for making. All the while, I have been blowing my nose several hundred times with tissues that claim they are Kleenex brand, but I know from the red irritation under my nose, they certainly are not. Where is Puff’s Plus, when you need them? But I am in Italy now, and life should be lived as an Italian. So, instead of complaining, I had scoured the grocery aisles for anything that resembled Vaseline and I head home past all the families with children, who are also staying in for the night.

I once said that a dishwasher was the best gift I ever received. I also said, it was because I hated washing dishes. As the humming in my head continued and after I had to stop the water to blow my nose once again, I stopped to look out into the air, as if I could rewind to that very moment where I had said so very clearly and so very adamantly, “Best” and “Hated” all in one neat compound sentence.

‘Really!? Really, Rebecca?’ I thought, ‘Best and hated’. Hmmmm, I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head in puzzlement and I returned to humming and washing dishes. Thinking, I would soon have a clean counter in order to start my eggplant towers. Towers that would include layers of pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella (there is no such thing as non- fresh mozzarella, in Italy, by the way) which would all be seated beautifully over a bed of pasta with marinara sauce.

Here I am, wondering about this new journey I am taking. Thinking about how different I feel here. Maybe it is because the last two years of my life were filled with such heartache that the present moment feels so much like heaven that it continues to shock me, but there has to be more. My life in Italy is so different. It is conscious, such a choice. It is neither haphazard nor easy. I do not just hop in a car and drive to the grocery store. I am not able to drive my achy, sick body home to bed after a long day of teaching. Everything has a process, everything takes time. It is not easy. Yet, I have never felt more at ease. It’s as if because life is a little harder, it also becomes a little more joyous. But harder is not the right word. Was it hard to ride my bike to school on Friday, even though my body was achy and worn from a cold I had been fighting all week? Not really. When I saw the Alps glowing pink in the distance, I felt joy. Yes, it was that simple. Yes, I was tired. Yes, I was achy. Yes, I still had to ride one handed in order to catch the running of my nose. But in that moment life was simple, a simplicity I wish I could hold on to forever.

So tonight, dishes were hand washed, and dinner was made. It was made along side a friend who laughs about facebook pages. Who graciously gave me a little lesson in Art History, that I hope I can relay to my students, on Monday. I found myself in bed by 11 o’clock finally allowing my body and my nose the rest it had so desperately been longing for.