As I removed the dvd from the player and returned it to its case, Mom studied her watch.
“Is it really 7:45?” she gasped. “Where does the day go?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘dago’ too quickly in these parts,” I muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Yes, it is 7:45,” I said louder. “The rest of Italy is just getting dressed to go out for dinner.”
“Well, those Italians can do what they want,” said Mom with the vigor of someone rallying the troops before a battle.
“Because we Canadians are going to bed!”
And with that, she hauled herself upright, paused to get her balance, and then inched her way toward her bedroom. The click of her cane on the terra-cotta tiles was the last I heard of her for the night.
After three days of this I had had all I could stand.
“I’m going out,” I announced to Mom between naps one afternoon. “Will you be OK without me?”
“You’re going out in the rain?”
“It’s let up a bit. Do you need me to pick up anything?”
“Where are you going?” she asked. “And why are you going?
The interrogation had begun.
“Just into Alberobello. I’m getting cabin fever. I shouldn’t be long.”
“But we were there the other day. Why are you going?”
“I need a bit of air and a change of scenery,” I said evenly, holding back an urge to explode into a weeping tirade of how utterly bored I had become. Bored, in Italy! I had dreamed of Italy for about forty years, had pined for everything Italian— the music, the language, the architecture, the art of the great masters. During my university days I had taken courses in conversational Italian and in art history in an attempt to forge a deeper connection to the Italy of my dreams. In those days I sought out Italian men in the hopes that I could become their girlfriend and they would whisk me off to their parents’ villa and introduce me to a large and boisterous family of apple-cheeked aunts and swarthy cousins. I never did find an Italian boyfriend, but that didn’t stop me from craving all things Italian. I frequented small Italian grocery stores, pausing to eavesdrop on Italian conversations, and gravitated toward Italian recipes. I gave clothing with a “Made in Italy” label top priority in the dressing room and in purchasing decisions. Without having stepped on Italian soil, I could close my eyes and summon smells and sensations connected to Italy—the thrashing sea against the coast, the aroma of homemade tomato sauce, the notes of an uncorked bottle of wine, a smoky café; or even the haughty indifference of a Milanese store clerk. With such a vast repertoire to explore, how was it possible that I was already bored in Italy? As I saw it, precious time was being wasted holed up in a cute but remote home with Ms. Lazy Bones.
I unlocked and opened up the solid wooden front door of the trullo, struggled to find the right key to unlock the double wrought-iron screen doors beyond it—getting in and out of the place was like coming and going from Fort Knox—and then sprinted to the car, splashing through puddles that had accumulated on the pale stone patio.
Safely in the car, I was about to turn the key in the ignition when I was seized by panic. I was about to go for a drive with only the vaguest idea of my destination. Once there, would I be able to find my way back? What if the car broke down? What if I had an accident? I spoke no Italian. I had no cell phone. No map of the region. If I made a wrong turn it could catapult me to the far reaches of Apulia and beyond, and I might never find my way back. Despite the few forays Mom and I had made in and around Alberobello since our arrival, I did not feel confident venturing out on my own.
When I encounter situations in which it is clear that I have bitten off more than I can chew, my mind defaults to an intense longing for home and familiarity. Six weeks in Italy no longer sounded as idyllic as it had during the six months in which I planned the trip and spoke excitedly of it to friends. Now it sounded daunting and reckless.
I’m the type of person who gives herself over to suggestibility and impulse. When an idea launches in my brain I am off to the races, and there is no stopping me. I am propelled by my own enthusiasm. I become a one-person cheering section while those around me aren’t sure whether to humor me and wish me well or alert the nearest mental institution. It was the sort of reaction that greeted me when I took up rollerblading in my forties and when I decided to sell almost everything I owned and move to small, remote Pelee Island, Ontario, one winter to embrace the simple life.
So it was one day about six months earlier when Frank, the Italian owner of a café I frequent in my hometown, suggested I go to Italy. I don’t know whether it was the way he said it, with tears glistening in his eyes—he had emigrated from Italy to Canada about fifty years before and had never been back—or whether I had worn myself out with unfulfilled promises to visit Italy. Whatever. As soon as I realized that there was no logical reason preventing me from going to Italy I began packing my bags. It seemed like the most sensible course of action.
I have intermittent bouts of confidence. I give the impression of being a blithe and brave spirit when it comes to travelling, but there is a part of me that is a total scaredy-cat. Rationality flies out the window—not in the planning stages, but only when my two feet are firmly planted at my destination. In other words, at the point of no return. There I stand, stock-still and dumbfounded, as the tap of common sense suddenly turns on and begins to course through me. The question that should have been asked much, much earlier sputters to life in my right brain: “What the hell were you thinking when you came up with this bright idea?” Like the time I stood at the base of the Pyrenees and realized I was going to spend the next eight hours of my life climbing them. God, that was hard. Oddly enough, I continue to put myself in the same predicament time and time again.
The thought of returning to Mom’s bedside and telling her I was too frightened to go out on my own was simply out of the question. So I did the only logical thing: I turned the key in the ignition.
I drove tentatively down the long steep driveway and then carefully up the insanely steep road opposite the trullo, stalling the car half a dozen times in the process. I inched my way along a lane that was no more than six inches wider than my car and oppressively bordered by stone fences and trulli whose walls abutted the road. I took a deep breath, foolishly thinking that by inhaling I might somehow shrink the width of the car by an inch or two and make the passage easier.
Upon reaching the main road, with the rolling Apulia countryside stretching out on either side of me, I turned left and steered the car toward Alberobello.
The steady sweep-and-thump of the windshield wipers and the low rumble of distant thunder provided an ominous soundtrack. Fog drifted like wispy ghosts in front of my car and encircled the twisted, gnarled trunks of the olive trees with their weary branches stretched out like Christ on the cross.
“At least there’s no snow,” I murmured to myself, trying to find the bright side in the soggy scene and buoy my resolve.
Distant brush fires burned and smoldered on a couple of farms. A tradition occurs around mid-March in southern Italy when vines, limbs of olive trees, and other bits of vegetation from the previous harvest are collected, piled into huge mounds, and lit as a sign of rebirth and renewal for the coming season.
Yes, rebirth and renewal: Wasn’t that the reason for this trip to Italy? At least I’m in sync with the spirit of the season, I told myself, desperately clutching at any straw that might make sense of my being here.
I pressed the accelerator pedal down a bit more firmly. The forces of coincidence or happenstance are, for me, like stars aligning, and when this occurs a feeling of confidence returns. I began to feel more like an adventurer and less like an impulsive idiot.
Low, ivy-draped drystone walls built from the abundant local tufo stone were everywhere. They were weathered to an ancient patina, but in spots you could