As I was putting the groceries away, part of my organized list for the day, I turned on the TV. One of my favorite movies was on. I had to sit and watch it again.
It is one of those “take-me-away” pieces that speak to something about me that needs attention.
“Under the Tuscan Sun” comes only tangentially close to the book on which it was based, but there is enough of Italy, enough of the melodrama of life in it to capture my imagination for the few hours that it runs and to assuage the unanswered anxieties that hide in the recesses of everyday life.
The film version brings a depressed female writer to Italy, hurting because of the collapse of her long-time marriage. She impulsively buys a dilapidated villa and proceeds to renovate the building and in doing so, build a new life. The snippets of that new life as it emerges play the dark against the light and, finally, if more pointedly than in real life, the music swells and it all works out well.
I asked myself why I have dismissed my list, the center of my attempt at bringing some organization to the post Christmas chaos of my house? I know that I will be faced with all of these chores in the coming week. So why the detour? Because, there is something satisfying in losing yourself in a fairy tale of redemption.
I have learned not to want too much, to accept that aspirations have to be tempered with the idea that not everything turns out the way you plan, but there are residuals to life’s little problems that, even with humor, cloy for attention. While Frances Mayes hires Polish workers to fix her villa, I am trying to find someone to paint the house this summer. As she cooks magnificent meals for her workmen, I am wondering how I can prevent melting snow and rain from turning my damp basement into a wading pool. As she cowers under her bed clothes during a raging electrical storm, I am wondering if I have done permanent damage to my knee because I forgot to glue the rug in the dining room down. I am navigating a rather tricky problem about how to help my husband as he faces his medical issues. And then there is the recurring dance with vertigo. This too long list of minor and some major challenges and family worries still occupies my mind and can, on the odd occasion, bring even more clouds than our dark winter days. They can be a furtive distraction from a positive life.
There is sun in this movie, in the Tuscan Hills, in the robust Italian customs that are so wonderfully different from ours, in the warm portrayal of the deep love of family that is so much a mark of Italian culture, in the exuberance of ancient customs that defy sensibilities, all of which capture the hearts and minds of a people.
I’ve been to Italy. It was November, very cold, gray and rainy, but the beauty of the towns, the friendliness of the people, the art and food, especially the latter, and I suspect my determination to have a good time, gave the experience its own kind of sunlight. I can remember standing in the Forum in Rome and, gimpy leg and all, breathless with the wonder that I was standing where the Caesars stood. I marveled at the fact that in Rome, the most undisciplined drivers in the world stop for you to cross the street. I ate gelato with abandon, never figuring a calorie. The Vatican Museum had too much for my senses to attend. I was freezing even with my winter coat. It didn’t matter.
We explored the countryside outside of Sorrento and found streets so narrow that you could touch walls of the houses on both sides while standing in the middle; we visited pre Roman stone tubs where women have washed their clothing for millennia. Restaurants gave you a glass of limonchello, a digestive, as a complimentary add on, a friendly way of saying thank you for patronizing their establishments. We shared a mid afternoon meal with an entire family, waiting on the children to arrive home from school. In Tuscany we sampled the wines made in an honest-to-goodness castle, had a party in the basement of another winery and marveled at the insouciance of the Italian approach to traffic control, i.e., people travel both ways on a one-way street because they haven’t decided which way is the only way. Phone service there is off and on. Shoes are exquisitely lovely but out of my pocketbook’s range, and the passagiata, the parade of townsfolk on weekend evenings was more than sublime … an evening walk to showcase themselves, to say to the surrounding world, we are well, we made it through another week. It is a gentle statement, encompassing the very old, the very young, even teens, focused on family and pride.
So, I have left the to do list for another time, savoring the movie, its salubrious enticements, the memories of an Italian vacation and the idea that sometimes I need to address the darker corners of my life and sometimes I need to let them go for a while and there is a short list where I come first. I’ll start the other list tomorrow.
