Termoli, San Giacomo, Venice and Padua!

 From Rome to Termoli with its view of the Adriatic,

we drove “just over the hill” to San Giacomo degli Schiavoni, the town with the long name and only three streets. The town with a population (today) of less than 1500, where my father lived between the ages of three and eighteen. We went to find the house he built in the Sixties.

Afterward, we drove to Venice. 

I didn't like Venice. I didn't like the canal. It was just a body of water, and I'd seen better bodies of water in Paris six years earlier, and in Switzerland as we drove passed the mountain lakes near Luzerne. 

But then we went to the old part of the city, to that part of the city that had no water and no tourists either. To that part of Venice (called Mestre) where I ate smoked salmon and (would you believe) Philadelphia cream cheese on a croissant, and where I bought a blue dress I fell (quite literally, but didn't get hurt!) in love with.

Then we went to Padua because I wanted to pray in the church dedicated to my patron, Saint Anthony. 

And finally, we started the long drive back to Darmstadt!

   

Arrivederci Roma!

 We have spent our five days in Rome and have just arrived at a seaside city close to the town my father grew up in. It is heavenly here, much nicer than it was in Rome.

Oh, Rome has all the sights, all of what Irving Stone once called “the agony and the ecstasy.” It has the Vatican:

The Trevi Fountain: 

a view from the top of the Spanish Steps:

 And, of course, the Colosseum:

But Rome was hot,  hot, hot - which is why all my photos were taken at night- and this little city, called Termoli, has little more than a beautiful view of the Adriatic, and a delicious sea breeze!     

Florence!

My pictures say it all! 

Basilica di Santa Croce
(Basilica of the Holy Cross)

 

Michelangelo's Tomb
(inside the Basilica)

The River Arno at night

a typical street

The River Arno again

the view from our front door

a wider street

Dante!

Am I Crazy?

It's almost that time again, almost the end of the school year when I will have to back my school bus into its parking space for the last time, when I'll have to face 11 weeks of summer (eighty-two days to be exact) and I'm scared. I can just hear the rest of you saying, Is she crazy? Doesn't she know how lucky she is?

Well maybe, but idle time scares me. What was it the nuns used to tell us when I was little? That idleness is the devil's workshop. (I wish!)

Anyway, the reason I'm scared is that I have no plans, no trips to the South or to Europe like I've had in previous years. So frightened was I that I picked up my journal two nights ago to see what I did last summer and, from what I read, I found that even without plans I managed to relax and enjoy myself doing what I always enjoy doing with my free time - reading, writing, walking, and meditating.

And this summer I have one more thing to add to that list: exercising. It's been a couple of months now since my actor/model/fitness coach grandson took me to the gym and taught me how to use the exercise equipment and I loved it, loved the way it took me out of my head and into my body. I loved it so much I started going to the gym every day walking three miles either on a treadmill, or out in the park, or some combination of the two.

Those of you who know me, or who have read my books, know that I see a therapist bi-weekly. (I can just hear the rest of you saying: She is crazy.) Anyway, my therapist has been away for the past two months (just when it seems I've needed her most), but she will be back next week and I'm hoping to see her throughout the summer.

And who knows, maybe I'll start that book I've been dreaming of writing for years, the one whose title is a line from one of my favorite songs. The song is Macarthur Park and the line is-. Wait! I'm not telling you that because, well, because you know I'm not really crazy.

Anyway, Happy Summer Everyone. For you, no matter what you're doing, I hope it's both productive and relaxing.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

Au Revoir #Paris!

Soon we will be closing the window in our hotel room in order to begin our journey out of France and back to Germany. Through this window the sounds of Paris rushed toward us - the relentless shrill of traffic which began anew each time the light below turned green, the intermittent ringing of church bells, the hammerings of men working in the church across the street, and the voices of humans calling out to one another.

For me, Paris has been brutish. In two days we climbed the heights of the Basillica of the Sacred Heart; witnessed the graceful lines of Arc de Triomphe, the splendor of Versailles, the incomparable grandeur of the Lourve and the beauty of Notre Dame. We ate somewhere along the Champ Elysees. We sailed along the river Seine and walked across its bridges. We rode buses and subways and trains. But most of all we walked.

For miles we walked until my feet felt both swollen and deformed. We walked until my side and my chest hurt so much it became too difficult to breathe, and I thought I would die here in this beautiful, ancient city which seemed at times to be angry with its residents and with its hordes of invading tourists who take so much and leave so little.

But now it is time for us to leave. Au revoir Paris. I salute you, if for nothing else, for your ability to endure and to keep moving forward - through time and war, passed the capriciousness and greed of humans and through the sometimes illogical and seemingly inconsistent love of the God or gods who conceived you. It is time for us to leave. Au revoir Pari, until we will meet again.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

In Celle

I am in Germany. This is probably my fifth or sixth trip to Germany and I am happy to say that for me it has lost all of its “foreignness.” I love it here. I am, after all, both visiting my son (who lives here) and on vacation.

Today we are in Celle, a tiny town north of Hanover. At this moment I am sitting on a park bench outside the castle where King George I of England (from the House of Hanover) exiled his beautiful wife, Sophie Dorothea, because she was having an affair with (a really good looking) count named von Konigsmarck. In reality however, Sophie Dorothea did not initiate her affair until after her husband abandoned her.

Celle is such a beautiful old town. Much of its history and many of its half-timbered architectural style buildings date back more than 700 years. PS. That's me standing in the middle of the picture.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

At the Beach

It's summertime and the living is easy. Or, at least, it is as long as you are inside with air conditioning or at the shore. Which is where I spent two days last week (and took this pic).

On the beach, I looked down to see the sand between my toes and up to see a perfectly blue cloudless sky. It was easy to fall into a light sleep there, listening to the crescendo of waves until the sound of a child’s voice calling “Mommy, mommy,” woke me. Later I slept again, then awoke to find that I had been resting somewhere between contentment and bliss. 

When I opened my eyes, I saw a woman on crutches standing at the water’s edge.  How did she get there? I wondered. A toddler went running away from his mother as another, slightly older child, in a neon pink bathing suit ran in the opposite direction, away from the same mother. 

Later, in the evening, I dined on seafood and walked the boards, eating fried Oreos and watching the tide come in. Back at the hotel, fattened and content, I laid my head on a pillow and dreamt of another tomorrow.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

The Place Poem

When I was given an assignment to write a “place poem” in November, I thought it would be an easy poem to write.  It turned out to be the most difficult.  I thought about all the places I’ve visited: Rome, Berlin, Paris (sort of – which is yet another story). 

I thought too, of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont and of one of my very favorite places on earth – the Blue Ridge Mountains from where I looked down through the clouds at the breathtakingly beautiful Shenandoah Valley.  But no place seemed quite right for this assignment until I thought of the place I return to year after year.  Close to home, it is somewhere along the

Jersey Shore 

 

I’ve come here every summer

since I was a child

to take  in a breath of salty air
at the base of the Ninth Street bridge.

I’ve come here every summer

to salute the Ferris wheels
that stand like sentinels
against the rising tide of my life. 

I’ve come to remember the hootenannies
I sang to in ‘63, the boy I met
and might have married,
the Frisbees I tossed but never caught.

I come to soak up the sun,
to walk the boards,
eat lunch at Chatterbox
and for yet another ornament to decorate my tree.

I come here as often as possible
to gaze upon the sea
until, at last, it diminishes me 
and all the things I’ve come here to forget.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

Flip-flops

   

     Flip-flops!    The name says it all.

     Did you know that flip-flops have been around since 4000 BC?  (Weren’t they the footwear of choice those decadent Romans wore with their togas?) Did you know that soldiers returning from Japan brought modern flip-flops to this country? That was in the 1940’s, but flip-flops didn’t become popular here until the 1960’s. (That’s because nobody in their right mind would have worn them in the Forties and Fifties. Flip-flops are casual wear and nobody understood casual before 1964 when the Beatles grew their hair long just for the hell of it.) 

     Did you know any of this?  Of course, you didn’t and neither did I. In addition, I just didn’t give a damn. Until recently, I was too blissfully content in my ignorance. Having grown up in the Fifties, I had never even worn a pair of flip-flops. 

     Then along came that June day when both my daughter and I finished working at our respective school districts. It was a beautiful summer day - one of those glorious days when it was hot, but not humid. There we were with our first full day of freedom. 

Naturally, we decided to spend the day doing absolutely nothing - with a little bit of shopping thrown in for fun. We had just left one store in the mall when my daughter, upon seeing a pair of flip-flops in another store window, exclaimed, “Let’s get pedicures!”

     “Why?’ I asked. 

     “Because it’s summer and you need a pedicure to go with your flip-flops.”

      “I don’t wear flip-flops.”

      “But you need them to wear while you get your pedicure?”

     “What?” but she was already sailing through the front door of the shoe store, expecting me to follow. 

     “Mom, look at these,” she said pointing to a pair of hot pink flip-flops with soles thicker than the ones on my sneakers.  “Try these on.”

      “I can’t,” I said.  “I only wore flip-flops once and that little do-dad thing in the middle drove me nuts.”

     “But you need them,” she insisted.  “Besides this pair won’t hurt.  They’re good ones.”

    
      “How much are these?” I asked a salesman thinking maybe I could squeeze out a ten dollar bill for them. 

    
        “Sixty,” he said blithely. 

     “Dollars?” I shouted wondering how something that almost did not even exist could cost so much.  Everyone in the store had turned to look at me as half a dozen emotions including shock, incredulity, and amazement appeared on my face.  Embarrassed, I turned to join my daughter who had already broken into gales of uncontrollable laughter that propelled both of us out of the store, into our car and up the highway to a discount department store. 

     But after purchasing an inexpensive and bland pair of flip-flops and getting a pedicure, my mind kept returning to the sixty dollar pair that would have looked perfect with my hot pink, perfectly painted toenails.

    
     “Hmmm….” I said looking down and wiggling my toes, “maybe those Romans weren’t so decadent after all!”

      

                                       

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE