Ciao! (Part 2)

Day 3 -- Sassoleone

After saying our fond farewells to Yolanda and Mario, we left Cannobio and headed west, aiming for the Adriatic coast. The region was filled with rolling hills and packed with beautiful, sprawling fruit farms. We passed apple groves, acres of wineland and hundreds of plum trees.


We spent the night at an amazing place called Ca'Monti, which is an apricot farm nestled in the hills with a view of the Santerno Valley. Matthew, Lucas, Steen and Grandpa all joined in a game of bocce ball, and while Nicholas and I cheered them on. (This is one of my favorite pictures of grandpa from the entire trip.)

At one point, the owner came out and showed us how the game is really played. Nicholas took the opportunity to have a few moments alone with his great-grandpa.


We truly enjoyed the friendly hospitality of this bed and breakfast. It is a place that I could easily imagine spending a month, writing a book as I enjoyed the cool breeze coming through my window. I will never forget the extraordinary dinner we had that night of fresh raviolis in a butter sage sauce, lamb chops and vegetables. All of this was consumed as we sat on the terrace, watching dusk fall over the hills.



Day 4 -- San Marino and Silvi

In the morning, we started off with a long scenic drive through the hills. When we reached the coast, we decided to take a bit of a detour into one of Europe's smallest countries, San Marino. San Marino is situated on the top of a mountain overlooking the sea. To get there, we drove part way up the mountain and then took a series of elevators up to the very top, where we wandered around the tiny streets, ate lunch at the same restaurant that hosts the weekly Rotary meetings...

...and marvelled at the amazing views over the cliffs.




After San Marino, we returned to Italy and cruised down the coast to Silvi, where we spent the night at Villa Rossi. This is a recently restored castle, filled with beautiful rooms and offering a very nice restaurant. After we arrived, grandpa rested in his room while we scoped out the local supermarket and took a quick trip to the beach.

I ended up eating my dinner at a small table in the hall outside our room, because Nicholas decided that sleep was the only option for him at that point.



At the mention of yet another place designed for the intake of food, I have to stress how important and fun eating was on this trip. Every meal was a new, delicious experience. I, at least, completely enjoyed the unlimited access to pasta, sweets and excellent bread. I know Steen and the boys loved the constant availability of gelato. And grandpa kept an ongoing ranking system of the many tomato sauces we tasted along the way.

If you want to please your sense of taste, Italy is the place to be.

Ciao!

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

I can't begin to express how much gratitude I feel for the people we met during our Italian journey. Spending time in Italy with family members I have never met was an amazing, heartening experience. They opened their homes to us, indulged us at mealtimes, and most importantly, shared their stories with us.

At the same time, I was lucky enough to spend this trip with my grandfather, who has taught me so much about openess, honesty and love. He climbed every hill with us as we traversed the Italian countryside, laughed at every joke, jumped into the water at nearly every beach, and shared some wonderful stories of his own. I realize how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to take this trip with him.

Of course, being with the boys (Steen, Matthew, Lucas and Nicholas) for fourteen days was a tremendous highlight. I enjoyed watching them spend time with grandpa, and I treasured every hug, every sight we shared, and every crazy game we played.

I've decided to divide my description of the trip into several posts, which I'll put online as I get the time (i.e. when Nicholas naps and I've finished all of my other duties....). However, I must stress that no words of mine can ever relay the amazement I felt during the trip or the many thoughts about it that now fill my head.

So here goes!

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Days 1 and 2 -- Cannobio, Italy
Steen, Matthew, Lucas, Nicholas and I leave the house at 4 a.m. to make a flight to Zurich that leaves just after 6. As Steen and I were up packing until 1 a.m., we are tired, but any exhaustion is washed away by excitement. Steen carries Nick onto the plane, where he sleeps in his arms for the entire trip to Zurich.

After getting our luggage, we wait for grandpa to arrive an hour later. While Lucas and I are waiting for him in the arrival hall, I find my thoughts oscillating between excitement and fear that for some reason he won't walk through the doors. But he does, smiling and surprisingly awake after his trans-continental trip.

After a great deal of fuss with the car-rental agency, we finally get our minivan, load it up, and are on our way towards the Italian Alps.

Our first stop, and our first meal with grandpa, was in a small Swiss town. The boys stuffed themselves with pizza (a recurring theme throughout the trip -- we would be spending most of our time in Italy, after all), while grandpa enjoyed a soup.

After lunch, we headed for the Italian border -- it was the first of many drives where the beauty of the scenery was outstanding. Grandpa has never seen any mountain chain except those in the eastern US, so the Alps were a new experience for him.

We spent the first two nights at the Residenza Patrizia in Cannobio, Italy, a town on the shore of Lake Maggiore. It is a beautiful, apartment-style hotel with great service, a terrific pool and amazing views.

We chose Cannobio because my grandmother's cousin, Mario, and his lovely wife, Yolanda, live there.

I have heard about Mario and Yolanda all my life, but had never met them, despite the facts that they lived in Chicago for some 20 years and that they still visit their Chicago family often. We spent two wonderful days with them, enjoying Yolanda's delicious cooking, seeing the sights, hearing many stories and sharing a good many laughs. This is the first of many new links to my Italian heritage and I think it is precious.

We're still here!

Just a quick note to let you know that we (i.e. the boys, Steen and I) did not fall off the planet.

We have, however, spent the past month doing a bunch of things... like touring Italy (meeting family, making friends, and eating, eating, eating -- all in the terrific company of Grandpa), painting our porch (this sounds simple, but it takes forever!), going to the beach, and keeping Nicholas from tearing apart every book on our bookshelves, eating every bug he happens to come across (alive or dead) and climbing the stairs.

I haven't forgotten you. The enormity of the post required to cover the Italy trip is mindboggling, but I'll try to pull it together soon.

Until then, here we are getting ready to enjoy some of the delicious Italian cuisine (we did a LOT of eating in Italy!).

Houston, we have movement!

Lock your doors. Shut your windows. Hide away the fine china and clear off everything you have on your lower bookshelves. Nothing is safe. Not anymore!

Last Friday was "Midsummer" here in Sweden, one of the highlights of the Swedish calendar. I believe it is a pagan tradition that was originally used to help ensure a fertile start to the summer. Today, it is a celebration of the year's longest day, during which Swedes gather around a flower-decked pole, sing and dance and generally have a good time. They then head off to celebrate into the wee hours of the morning, with more singing and dancing, having an even better time.

We spent Midsummer with our friends Eva and Stephen and their two lovely children.

Matthew and Lucas spent last week in tennis camp. Although neither of them had ever really played before, by the end of the week, I thought they handled the ball and their rackets well.

Last week Nicholas also had his very first swing....

Today's photo of the day truly demonstrates the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words".

Ah, the good old days...

It's official. School ended on Thursday and summer is now in full swing. You'd never know it if you only took the cold weather into account.

Matthew is now a fifth-grader and Lucas has been promoted to second grade. Matthew, in particular, is excited about his new standing. He's now a member of the school's highest grade. He has been selected to serve as a crossing guard next year, a privilege he has waited for since he started there three years ago. (You might think he wants to make a fashion statement in his flourescent orange crossing-guard jacket, but between you and me, I think he's doing it to get the free tickets to the local amusement park that come with the job....). Not a bad start for what I'm sure is going to be an impressive resumé.

Two weeks before the end of the semester, the school held an "old fashioned day". The objective was to show kids how good they've got it today, although it was put into more kid-appropriate terms like "teach respect", "understand schooling from a historical perspective", etc. At first I thought it was a silly idea. The boys had to wear clothes that school children would have worn 100 years ago, and they had to bring a lunch that was not packed in anything plastic.

Luckily, one of the other moms found a store where we could rent old-fashioned clothes. The boys were so handsome!

As for the meal, I wrapped their sandwiches in wax paper and tied them with a string. I thought this was quite original. Matthew and Lucas spent days practicing their bowing (they had to bow every time they met a teacher or another adult -- for an entire day!).

Parents were invited to join the children in the schoolyard that day and I have to say it was one of the most impressive sights I've seen at the school. Each class lined up neatly behind their teacher. Each and every student was clean. They had their hair combed and their clothes were neat. There was not one sighting of butt-showing pants, a pierced nose or purple hair. When the principal rang the bell and began his inspection round (each class was inspected), the courtyard -- filled with 400 students -- was quiet for nearly 15 minutes!

My original opinion of the project was wrong. The kids learned something about respect for their elders, about the importance of neatness, about the changes that have happened in our school systems over the past 100 years. I think at least some of that rubbed off on them as they completed their schoolwork for the year.

Perhaps it should be a full-time project for next year?

June bugs

Thought I'd just provide a quick update on baby achievements, happenings and -- of the utmost importance, I'm sure -- the dead bugs on our windowsills.


Let's see. Nicholas is now nearly eight months old. He's sitting unsupported...


...eating well...


...and rolling all over the house (why crawl when you can roll?). We don't let him roll on the stairs though.




He can do pattycake and he can shake his head "no". The boys love to use this to make him seem silly, as in "Nicholas, do you love mommy?" and then he shakes his head "no". Silly indeed!

He's got four teeth, and I think you can see some of them here. Two more will make an appearance any day now.


He's also growing like a weed. In fact, he's grown over 20 cm. since he was born (that's nearly 8 inches for those of you who are metric-challenged).


He still falls far below the curve in terms of weight. In that regard, we went to see the (infamous!?) doctor again yesterday. I took Steen with me for backup in case she started accusing me of failing to feed my baby again. Nicholas gained only around 400 grams over the past month, but the doctor was suddenly all sweet and nice. Basically, she spoke only to Steen and told him what a good job he's doing with our little boy. I guess my presence in the room seemed to be just an apparition! No matter, though, as she gave us the thumbs up and let us leave without further hassle. She doesn't want us to come back, either, a fact which I find strangely encouraging.

It is also important to note that Nicholas is going to follow in his great-grandfather's culinary footsteps (look at the pleasure on this kid's face!).





We were lucky enough to have Auntie Susanne visiting from Wednesday through Sunday last week. I truly enjoy her company, as do the boys.



Her fiancé, Jesper, joined her for the weekend, and a bunch of us headed off to an amazing Celine Dion concert while they were here. Say what you want about Celine, but she puts on amazing show. The Swedish reviewer in our daily paper said that attending her concert is as good for adults as going to the circus is for a five-year old.


Oh, the bugs. In true Scandinavian style, our house does not have screens on the windows. Hence, our house is a bug haven in the summer -- i.e. now. I am not a bug lover. In fact, I hate all forms of creepy crawlies, although I try to be brave whenever bugs are around to keep the kids from being bug-haters like myself. The bugs know I don't like them, so they fall over and die on our windowsills by the thousands, just to keep me happy. Don't you just love summer?

A state of disbelief

This week has been devastating for my family.

Sunday evening, my Aunt Lauretta passed away after fighting Alzheimers for many years. She was my grandfather's sister, and he has always told me of the happiness she brought him throughout his childhood and of the closeness they shared as adults. Memories of baseball mitts, family parties and happy days have always filled conversations about Aunt Lauretta. I remember her as she was before the Alzheimers took over -- bubbly, happy, full of life and always ready with a smile and a happy laugh.

As the family, particularly Aunt Lauretta's children Judy, Jean, Charlie and Pam, tried to deal with her loss, news of another loss came out of the blue. My Aunt Marie, my grandfather's last surviving sister, suffered a massive stroke Tuesday and passed away on Wednesday.

And this is where the words begin to fail me. I want to tell you how much Aunt Marie meant to me too -- because she meant a great deal. Always good for a chat, a letter, a note, even when we were thousands of miles away from home.

But my mind is filled with the enormity of this double loss. Two lives in four days. Two sisters gone. Two brothers who were once part of eight. Two brothers who must now deal with two deaths that come all too close together. And I think of all those who are left behind and who must continue living... children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and so on.

For continue living we must. We owe it to their memories to live, full, happy lives. As they did.