Christmas Tree Chopping

Christmas tree shopping is one of my favorite parts of the season. It’s something of a kickoff for the holidays and a fun family adventure. The past few years, however, have been less of a walk down Memory Lane in a Winter Wonderland. No simple shopping trip for the Stiths. None of the wandering excitedly through the tree lot, smelling the wonderful Frasier fir smell and judging height and fullness—we’ve done it enough times already. We picked our tree(s) out of the yard and chopped it down then and there. Not that the experience was traditional; even the Stith’s clichés tend towards the unorthodox.
All of us traipsed down across our muddy driveway in the damp drizzle to take a look at the Virginia pines that line the edges of our saturated soccer field. Each twisted, short, blue-green needle had a bead of water that glinted silver under the gray sky—ready to fall off en mass to drench any curious tree hunter armed with murderous intentions and a saw. The growth pattern of Virginia pines in their natural habitat is anything but regular, unfortunately, and we found ourselves faced with the disappointment trees that looked full and beautiful in the pine grove and lopsidedly scrawny out of context.
We compensated by choosing a few young trees with the intention of somehow tying them together. Rather than pulling them home on a sled over lovely fields of snow, the boys picked them up like battering rams and charged towards the house over the mud puddles in our sloppy yard.



Next followed our yearly hunt for the tree stand. This is one tradition that we are perfectly consistent in our observance of—somehow the rickety, many-times-repaired, fourlegged red and green apparatus always disappears into the great unknown of the basement storage and turns up in some dusty, unexpected corner. My mother is the only one who ever seems to be able to find it…she says it’s one of those special gifts that come with being a mom, like having an uncanny ability to know what's going on behind your back and knowing how to make the best hot chocolate around.
Our lovely Moravian star gave a bit of unforeseen trouble. We’d carelessly replaced the light bulb last year, partially melted our tree topper and nearly burned the house down. I’d forgotten all about this incident—fire safety in our house tends to center on controlling flying sparks from the wood stove and keeping Tiffany away from candles and matches. While I repaired the yellowed (and, in some cases, blackened) points of the star and found a bulb with less pyromaniacal tendencies, Daddy and the boys pulled out their drills to try and screw our tree trinity together. Currently, it’s wired to the wall to keep if from falling on anyone, which would be nothing short of a catastrophe…because that triple tree is tall. I’m guessing fourteen feet. The vaulted ceiling in the living room offered little restriction, so we went for dramatic. I had thought we’d made a rather conservative choice, but everything always looks smaller when it’s outside. Every time I walk into the living room, I feel like I ought to throw my ballet slipper at the Mouse King and dance off with the Nutcracker through swirling snowflakes.



Decorating it proved to be another challenge. Many of our Christmas parties over the years have included some element of ornament making. It’s truly amazing what people will come up with, given pipe cleaners, styrofoam balls, felt, and sequins. Actually, some of them are quite lovely, but some of them are more than a little ridiculous. There’s the Peace Tank, Michael Jordan (complete with pinhead eyeballs and festive green hairdo), the NY Yankees (made by a Yankee friend and always relegated to the place of shame in the back of the tree), Mr. Heat Miser and Mr. Snow Miser (if you don’t know, don’t ask), the Roofcrafters Snowman (complete with caulk gun and tool belt), the Christmas Tree Eyeballs (my favorites), and many, many others. None of your tinsel and popcorn strings; I get to put up the helicopter this year! Factor in the rickety ornament hook attachments and the height of our tree, and you got quite an adventure on your hands. We used ladders and broom handles, but even so occasionally had to resort to the most exciting ornament hanging technique of all: toss and cross your fingers. Fortunately styrofoam and felt don’t shatter (usually) when they hit the floor from fifteen feet.



After our labors, we drank hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles and watched It’s A Wonderful Life.

Basketball Culture Shock

It’s now been two days back in NC. Today I ventured out of the house for the first time since getting in from RDU. I was expecting to be bowled over by the differences between Italians and Americans, but nothing doing. Either three months in Italy isn’t enough time to give some perspective on twenty years of America and I just need to pay more attention, or they really aren’t all that different anyway. Right now, I’m inclined to go with the latter. Watch the referees…they talk with their hands. Listen to the crowd…they are just as noisy as the 2 am passagiata crowd on the weekends. People are people, are they not?
One would think that a high school basketball game in Alamance county would be about as un-Italian as it gets. Really, though, lots of homeschool families screaming together in the gym of a Baptist church isn’t exactly something that I encountered much in Tuscany. However, I ended up being more surprised by the similarities of the experiences rather than the differences. Listen to the names…they’re surprisingly similar. Practically everybody in Italy is named after a saint: Francescas, Micheles, Chiaras, Andreas…the list goes on. Homeschool kids have to compensate for a preponderance of biblical names: there were two Micahs, three Jacobs, a Christian, a Daniel, and a smattering of Matthews, Marks, Lukes, and Johns on the court. Sitting next to me on the bleachers—Mary and Elizabeth.
Now, none of this is to say that Italy and North Carolina are the same. Nothing of the kind. For one thing, seeing one, two, or at most three children in one family for months isn’t good preparation for homeschool clans of five, six, seven, or even ten. One of the things I love best about such large, tightly knit families is seeing the sibling interaction. Watching a baby sister imitating the team’s warm-up stretches or a little boy high-fiving his teenaged big brother every time he jogs around the court is sweet, but it’s even more meaningful to see that the big brother doesn’t roll his eyes or brush off the reverential attentions of his little siblings. While the Italians excel at intergenerational interaction, it’s tough to beat these Alamance Eagles kids when it comes to brother-sister relationships.
Of course, here’s where I start over-thinking...but I’ve spent an entire semester desperately trying to pick up on cultural clues, to understand the unwritten rulebook of Italy. As far as watching basketball games goes, I’m out of practice. The controversial calls mystified me, the language of the court and the bleachers fell on unaccustomed ears, the etiquette of good sportsmanship seemed elaborate and puzzling. I suppose you could say I was going through basketball culture shock.
I’d love to be able to give you a funny, insightful laundry list of all the unusual things Americans do. I’m afraid, however, that won’t be happening anytime soon. I can, on the other hand, call things as I see them, but you’ll have to be patient with me. This whole reverse-culture-shock thing is almost as complicated as it was cracked up to be. But hey, I’m glad to be back in a country where they sell index cards.

Coming Home

Tuscany Girl is no longer in Tuscany, and is not sure whether to laugh or cry about it. When we landed in Washington I was perfectly ready to hop on a plane heading back across the Atlantic (as much to avoid customs as to get back to Italy). Once I got off the plane in RDU, however, I discovered the joys that the familiar always hold, even in an airport. I just about waltzed up to the big flat-screen TV to give Greg Fishel a hug, I was so happy to see his quizzical face behind those round glasses. I also have a new appreciation for the good old South. Strangers smiled, people held doors open, and two guys offered to help me with my luggage. And of course, the accents. Just about everybody has one!
Christian nearly had his head squeezed off when he found me with my forlorn pile of luggage. On the way home it was hard to imagine that I’d been away for more than a week or so. We got home to the end of a riotous Christmas party (which was supposed to be over by the time I got there, but thanks to standby I made it to NC at a reasonable hour). I don’t believe I’ve ever hugged so many people in such a short time in my life. Everybody vanished fairly quickly, for which I must admit I was grateful. I hadn’t slept in a bed for forty hours, more or less, and was beyond frazzled. After that I had a little time to digest how much was different. The living room was painted a gorgeous golden color, the library furniture rearranged, the floors refinished. I’m still discerning how my family has changed…all that’s obvious right now is that Curt has grown a few more inches and that Tiffany has become outrageously articulate for a three-year-old. Suddenly I felt as if I’d been gone for three years instead of three months. Nothing has changed, but everything is different.
The next day I began to really appreciate home. We ate a marvelous breakfast of pancakes and sausages and eggs, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I love feeling the warmth of the wood stove on my back with my cat on my lap, listening to the rain drumming on the green tin roof, or singing along while other people play music. So much of home I didn’t even realize that I missed!
After living so long out of a single suitcase, the abundance of everything astounds me. I literally fell over laughing when I opened my closet. I couldn’t have been happier had I been given an entire department store. And our library! The shelves are crammed with books in English! All my favorites are still there waiting for when my system adjusts to the time change and I am awake enough to spend my evenings by the fire with Jane Eyre or Jean Valjean or—as the days count down until Christmas—Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchit.
I’m expecting to have a bit more trouble with reverse culture shock when I actually get out of the house, but for now, the Stith home is a great place for a little cultural decompression—and soul food!

Packing List

It’s that time of year…and it’s beginning to look a lot like chaos. The oft repeated refrain “you can buy it over there” is sounding less astute than formerly. This calls for strategic planning, for a swift and decisive course of action that will include whatever Ziplock bags I still have and lots of shoving.
This is my packing list. I don’t think much of this will fit in my suitcase, but I intend to carry it with me anyway.
I’m taking an awful lot of memories. There’s a few less not-so-pleasant ones in the mix, but I’m keeping them for a while. I suspect they, like wine or cheese, will taste better with a little time. I also think they will be much easier to get through customs.
I’m taking a new appreciation for my own country. Really, the US is a wonderful place to live.
I’m taking a laundry list of vocabulary and a good start in a new language.
I’m taking recipes for pasta, techniques for olive harvesting, and a delight in blogging.
I’m taking along a taste for new olive oil and for sweet sparkling white wine (which I’ll have to keep packed up for a while once I’m home).
I’m taking habits that are going to be hard to break, such as having a long, leisurely practice after lunch, kissing both cheeks to say goodbye, waving my hands around, and automatic use of “si,” “va bene,” and “ho capito.”
I’m taking a lot of questions about myself. The older I get, the harder they seem to answer. Study abroad has only made things more difficult.
I’m taking some side-splitting stories. And I can wait to tell them…

I’m leaving my naïve, romantic expectations of Italy behind. They took up far too much space on the way over, and I can’t fit them in with my new appreciation for Italia.
I’m leaving many friends. Several of them are two years old and some of them are in their sixties and seventies and most are somewhere in between, but none of them fit in my suitcase (in spite of the teasing of my host family, my piano teacher has expressed no interest in stowing away in my luggage.)
I’m leaving two high school classrooms full of kids who know more English than before I came and whose faces I know will light up with a smile if I ever see them again.
I’m also leaving about five inches of my hair…don’t be too shocked.
I’m leaving my fear of independent travel. It was too heavy to carry and got lost somewhere in one of the many Trenitalia stations I passed through.
I’m leaving a list of places that I wished I could have gone to. They’ll still be here when I come back.

Alright, everyone. I'll be home soon. Thanks for following along on my Italian adventure, and thanks to the wonderful people of Sansepolcro who welcomed me with open arms! I'm off to say my goodbyes and to see how much more I can fit into my suitcase...