The Aly

Buongiourno Firenze!

I did it.  I’m here.

What started with a big heap of dirty laundry on my floor ended with a carefully planned wardrobe read: fledgling fashionista from Cape Cod meets modern day Italian woman aspirant, nicely hung (and cleaned) in my walk-in closet with a bona fide beaded curtain, in a spacious apartment within spitting distance (although you would never try) of the Duomo.

I’ve come to live with my Mom for six weeks while she is an artist in residence at the Santa Reparata School in Florence, Italy for three months.  She’s been here over a month, knows the ropes, knows when to bat off the Italian boys when they prey on her not-quite-got-her-sea-legs-yet daughter.

I didn’t think about actually being here until I was actually here.  I was packing, tying up loose ends, chipping away at my “task list for life,” shopping for more electronics, saying goodbye to friends and vacuuming my house; perhaps the same things I would do had I been given one week to live.  But I was so not about Italy; I was about the list, even on my flight to Zurich when they handed out Toblerone bars.  I was not in Swiss chocolate heaven, I was crunching numbers: did I save enough money for this?  Could I have gotten a lower APR rate on my credit card?  Should I have brought the 4” heals instead of the 3” heals?  If the Euro keeps going down and our economy continues to crumble will I be able to afford eating gelato every day?  What is my weight in metric?  My mind was racing.

We flew on a puddle jumper to Florence, which meant cramming on a hot bus and driving to the plane.  I had always wondered what happened when the weather was bad; did you still have to walk out on the tarmac and climb up the stairs or did they have a special underground elevator that would transport you onto the plane, completely evading the elements?  Turns out, NO.  It was snowing and windy and our bus driver made sure everyone was off the bus before he sped away so we could all stand there, in the frigid cold, while one by one passengers climbed the stairs.  But herding cattle through the gate is no quick thing and yes, I might as well have been last because by the time I got on the plane my faux fur collar of my vest was not looking as euro as I had intended.  Drowned cat was not the look I had envisioned stepping off the plane in Florence.

I got my first dose of “I’m not in America anymore” when I tried to ask the man sitting next to me if I could get out to use the restroom.  There were some odd hand movements and facial expressions that I didn’t follow and then he gave me a look of total sympathy…and then he leaned in, handing me the barf bag.  And as he did that, the lady next to him freaked out, grabbed all of her belongings and booked it to another seat.  Oh, how a little miscommunication can go a long way.  And this is why I LOVE to travel.

I took a cab to my Mom’s apartment and after a lovely lunch and half a bottle of wine we headed out on the town.  We walked around the city and it all started to come back to me.  The sites, the smells, the gyro joint I used to frequent at 4am.  Our dinner was right out of an Italian guide book:  and if you go down that little ally off the beaten track, ask for a guy named Luigi and he WILL take care of you.  We had our own version, Chef Marco, a cheery, well-fed man who used to work on the corner of 77th and Columbus in NYC.  He doted on us the entire meal and then sat down with a bottle of port and poured the three of us an after dinner drink while we talked about the journey that led us all to meeting each other on that particular night.  Oh, I love Italy.

The moment when I had the realization of, I’m really in Florence, was when we stopped to get some waters at a little shop.  We floundered while we counted out 2.30 in euro coins while the shopkeeper had the hugest grin on his face.  He couldn’t keep it in, “Madre, Figlia?” And then, “Mother, Daughter!  Mother, Daughter!”  We had been discovered.

But the best moment of the night, the validation for all the work I had to do to get to this point, the moment where I thought, I could go home right now and it would have all been worth it was when, about 15 minutes later my Mom and I were walking back to the apartment and we heard a little toot, toot from a bicycle horn and then, “Mother, Daughter!  Mother, Daughter!”  As the little shop-keeper, with one arm waving in the air and one arm navigating his bike down the narrow alley, totally pleased with his new discovery, announced to the city that we were in fact: Mother and Daughter.

After discovery