My Roman Family-Plus One More and other stories

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Meeting the first of the Roman grandchildren:
(For my food lovers, I haven’t forgotten you. My Zia, by the way, will whip up a pot roast with a rich tomato/olive sauce/sugo, or an creamy asparagus risotto within minutes. We have fresh strawberries and melon for dessert, and Alessia and Roberto bring profiterol which are puff pastries filled with a light cream and then topped with a ganash, a rich, fondente chocolate ganash!!)

This weekend I visited my Roman aunt and uncle, and was the first of our American relatives to greet baby Olivia. She is a sweet pea, quiet, receptive and already sleeping long hours undisturbed. My cousin Alessia is a natural mother, kind, calm and observant. While Roberto and Zio chatted for several hours through and after dinner about work and other business-type issues, we watched the baby, tickled her feet, fed her, burped her, rocked her, marveled at her tiny sounds and finally sat in a darkened room where she was curled up in a slumber, her tiny chest rising and falling, along with the choo-choo which she’d spat out and lay upon her cotton-striped belly.
Zia doesn’t eat dinner until after we are all done, and instead keeps full attention on her first grandchild. I’ve never seen her smile so much-and it is a new, heart-filling smile. Proud.

And not only am I lucky to see this tiny addition to my Roman family, my family, but I can’t stop thinking about my little nephew born while I have been away. In a parallel experience, I am giving loving to them both.

My days in Florence are growing shorter by the minute, and my stay in Rome went way too fast. They are becoming more and more of a joy to be with, as we cross the boundaries into familiarity and ease. I heat my own milk for café latte and ask Zia to critique my bathing suite. I know in what part of the city lives Cecilia’s boyfriend Francesco, and can recognize the way now. Zio and I snap toasted and salted pumpkin seeds while watching soccer games or black and white variety shows on the TV.



Saturday I set precedent.
With inspiration from Klajd, and the eager smile of my aunt and cousin, I don a bikini for the first time in my 29 years of sun-loving life.
Yes, after living in Italy, the country of tanned, toned, breast-baring, beautiful women, I will let it hang. My hips may hang over the elastic and my belly roll when I sit down, but it is time for the skin to see the light.
And so there it is, family, friends and followers. A bikini in blue. And I wear it at the beach too, not just in the bathroom. Cecilia, Francesco and I settle ourselves onto the soft-sanded beach, ignoring the nippy wind, and hoping to catch some sun. I am the whitest of the crew, with a gleaming stomach perhaps whiter than my teeth. I put on spf 8, in hopes that a little protection won’t impede my tanning…my tan-line hope-of-a-proof that I dared to wear the minimalist bathing suit. And true to my hopes, I tanned enough for 24 hours proof...and the next day it is gone, but my sense of satisfaction is not. I was warmly greeted by their friends and talked at long by a would-be suitor (one, I’m taken, and two, he was a little too “egoist” for me…) despite the fact that I was not the naked brazilian, but the 135 pd 5’ 2” American in… a… bikini.

So, will I have the courage of a lion that I had this weekend the next time? These beaches offer prime ground for self-critical women like me, with 50 year old mothers with higher busts and toned buttocks than me at 28, and topless Brazilians playing beach volleyball.

Hm, I say. Ask me to show you my tan lines.



An evening in Trastevere-the Greenich Village of Rome
After our day at the beach, and an afternoon with mojitos at the beach bar chatting about the difficulties of Italian grammar, Cecilia and Francesco decided to show me the typical funky scene of a weekend night in Trastevere (over the river Tevere). The owner of a popular resturant lives in the same complex as my cousin, Cecilia’s sister…so we head his way. We arrive at Cavecanem, and despite the 30 person line at the front entrance, we wait by the outdoor tables for a short 15 minutes and are led to our table.

The is true Roman pizza. Savoring for pizza di zuccha e alici (flower of the zucchini and small salty fish), I find out they are all out…must be popular! So instead, I get the mozzarella con verdura alla griglia…which is a white pizza with mozzarella and grilled vegetables. Now I must remember to describe to you that Italians don’t MIX their toppings. They order them quite regularly, and so mine consisted of 1/4th radicchio, 1/4th pepperoni (peppers), 1/2 melenzane (eggplant) all neatly sprinkled into their portion of the pie. And the taste? The crust is thin, but crunchy and a bit thicker near the edges. The toppings are fresh, however, and they use spices to brighten the flavors.
I manage 1/2 of my pizza (which is a good foot and half in diameter) and Francesco and Cecilia not only consume theirs but the other half of mine as well.

And after a short walk in the packed-piazza’s of Trastevere, past punkebestia (punks and beasts-the young street kids and their studded-collared pets), bars with rock and 80’s and lounge, book and bathing suit shops upon until midnight, the church facades of 16th century Rome our backdrops, we head to BLUE ICE.

The place is tiny, and packed. My leaders are tall and I let them do the ordering, as I barely can catch a glimpse of the goods. A women’s dog is nibbling my hair while we’re waiting, and next thing you know I have my order in my hand, and I suddenly my world revolves around this…a chocolate and coffee gelato. Is it possible to have such a substance that gets better just when you think you’ve had the best? My GOD, yes! (And me with my cone, savoring each flavor like it could be the last -NOT- Cecilia and Francesco, tall and thin, order their 3-flavor concoctions and are done within minutes! They crack me up, as Cecilia begs Francesco for one more dish of nocciola…laughing but not kidding!)


San Pietro
On Sunday, I woke up to find clouds hovering steadily over Rome, and our trip to the pool was cancelled. Eager to spend some time with my aunt, having spent the day with my cousin the day earlier, we decide to head into the center to visit a place that neither she nor I had seen in almost 15 years.

Forgetting that Sunday mass draws hundreds to the piazza of Saint Peter, we are extremely lucky to find a parking space only a few meters away. Mass is done and the crowds are heading to other sights. We enter the piazza while the gates close behind us, another grace in our favor. We join the hundreds in line to pass through what we find out are metal detectors. The place is swarming with guards. Although there seem to be hundreds of us waiting to get in to see the grand cathedral of San Pietro, we wait less than 20 minutes to enter the church.

Filled with iconography of the papacy, and small chapels dedicated to services of previous popes, Saint Peters is surprisingly grandiose but not gaudy. The marble is a rich mix of colors-pinks, oranges, whites and golds. The ceiling is gold guilded and each arch angle is decorated with mosaics. The small aisles are studded with huge marble monuments-filed silky white like the famous Pieta by Michelangelo (which is so crowded with people that I can do no more than observe from afar), and others ingeniously using various colors of marble like fabric. The huge altar, a dark wood, frames the spectacle behind, the center point of the main nave/aisle. The warm gold and yellow colored stained-glass image of the dove, with baroque-style gold sculptures turning two-dimensional to three, leading to more sculptures below in what I belive are bronze depictions of two papal figures. San Pietro is entirely decorated in a warm and uplifting manner, with obvious, but not dominating, conception of religious prosperity and power.

I also enjoy watching my aunt observe in silence. She, like me, wander with our chins lifted up, or our heads tilted, and the temptation to touch, to observe at far as well as up close. Our hour visit in the cathedral is in quasi-silence. When we leave, she marvels at it all, as well as hinting at the desire to return and actually enter Vatican City-which lies just beyond the cathedral, past the Swiss-guarded gates. We can see the old Roman walls as we walk back to the car, and she mentions that she’s really never experiences this part of Rome (with a gleam in her eye.)

I promise that we’ll be back for more. I no longer feel a tinge of being obliged, but rather excited, to be a part of the daily life of this Roman family of mine.

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