Sophie Rose

In Greve in Chianti, at the end of Piazza Matteotti, is a small artist's studio, L'Inganno, which many people never find and therefore never know that they missed something special--a place where they just might have found a unique Italian treasure for their home. This is where Sophie Rose creates beautiful pieces of art--not the ceramiche, oils and water colors that seem to dominate purchases in Italy but exquisite Trompe L'Oeil inspirations.

Sophie's talents are known to Italians who commission her to decorate the walls in their homes or doors or furniture or wall pieces--whatever they want, Sophie is able to meet that vision.

Just about every Saturday when Ken and I reached the end of the market stalls, we would find ourselves drawn to the little shop--which was frequently closed as Sophie would be off working in the field. We would stand, looking in the window, admiring her work-- eventually deciding that we had the perfect place in our home for something of hers.

We wanted a painting for our kitchen that would integrate the designs of our Italian dishes. When we finally met with her, she asked many questions about the space where the Trompe L'Oeil would hang, the direction from which it would be viewed, the colors of our kitchen and more. We gave her photos of our dishes and wall paper. Sophie creates with purpose, specific to the client and the commission as opposed to having a ready made gallery from which to pick and choose.

Our dishes

We have been waiting for our treasure ever since we left to come back home. Sophie had other commitments to fill before starting ours. Eventually she faxed us a sketch for our approval. We knew it was perfect.

Now she has completed it and it is perfect. We are happy.

Beautiful--Isn't It?

Grazie Mille, Sophie.

Viva Viagra

What a title! Guaranteed to get a click! But it's really not what you think it might be--whatever that is. It's about none other than Casey, KZ, KC, K or what ever he has titled himself this month. And, he truly has no idea what viagra is.

The topic--TV commercials.

Since I have only one 9 year old in my life, I have no point of comparison. Hopefully someone can enlighten me as to whether ours is normal. He so often seems to be--not abnormal--but, minimally, marching to his own drummer to a beat a little off kilter.

Casey becomes mesmerized by commercials. The world stops, he enters into an unbreakable trance and this boy, who finds it near impossible to focus on anything for more than moments, becomes captive to the sights and sounds of the latest pitchman.

Did you know that you can desecrate a white shirt with chocolate, berries, and other wild concoctions and that the magic of Oxyclean will make it like new? Being quite adept at tuning out television in general and commercials in specific, I did not know this--which may be why I have white things that are not spotless. Anyway, as Casey inspected his red sweatshirt emblazoned with a large, magic marker drawn Spiderman image, he patiently gave a "did you know" explanation of the wonders of Oxyclean and that "it really is true" and that we should try it on his sweatshirt. Evidently he has grown tired of Spiderman.

Then there are "the" Green Bags for only $9.99." He not only stands transfixed each time he sees the advertisement, he impatiently tells me that I should hurry and order at that moment so that we can get 20 bags rather than just 10. At the dinner table he has educated Ken to these marvels and that gramma needs to get some. And--best of all, he can apply this knowledge to real situations, proving that he really does belong in the class for high achievers. Yesterday, or was it the day before ?, as I muttered about moldy strawberries, I was reminded, with the self-righteousness that only a 9 year old can conjure up, that this would not have happened if I had the green bags--they not only would they have saved me $'s but they would save my life.

The first time I became aware of this strange predilection was in Italy where demonstrations of a product can go on for a full half-hour or more as a pitchman and his scantily dressed female cohort extol the wonders and capabilities of the "must have" product of the day. This was when we saw Casey stand at attention for minutes at a time, absorbing the magic and wonders of the newest in toilet and drain plungers. You could have waved a bag of Skittles in front of him and he would have been oblivious. Red dye running through a transparent tubing would have blinded him to his most favorite of foods. And, of course, he was sure that we needed to have one to bring home with us to San Diego. (We didn't.)

Now--back to Viagra. The final proof of Casey's addiction to the brain mushing inflicted by Madison Avenue came the other night at bedtime. He and I usually spend a few minutes talking and playing before I am required to sing a little song--the sillier the better. All of a sudden, I hear "Viva, Viva Viagra!" After stifling my laughter, I asked him what that meant--what he thought viagra was. To my relief, he had no idea. I guess that concept is a little more difficult than green bags, Oxyclean and plungers. I don't want to even think about a recital of the advantages and results of this modern-day pharmaceutical wonder. But, I am sure that is just around the corner.

I'm a Country Boy

Sometimes, and if we listen, experience teaches us truths about ourselves. If we are wise, we let these truths help form and mold us into what we become. So, the question I have is: When a child offers insight into his soul and reveals something about who he is, what is the responsibility of the adults in his life to respond to that self-knowledge?

I ask this because Casey, with the innocence of a child who in odd moments blurts out important insights, claims that he is "a country boy--not a city boy." At nine he not only senses who he is but can verbalize it. I fear that life as it unfolds will take this knowledge from him--that it will be smothered by daily life, forcing dreams to be put aside-- crowded out by the need to adjust to the environment he is captive to.

Casey lives in a city--an urban environment with houses on either side and behind, with busy crossroads, no room to explore and the constant, common fear of danger which keeps children tethered close to home.

Our children grew up in the same house that we now live but in "those days" kids walked themselves to and from school, explored nearby canyons, easily rode bikes to homes of nearby friends and had the freedoms that we associate with youth--the same ones that I experienced as a child. That has changed. Fear has displaced spontaneity and innocence.

Now parents drive or walk their children to and from school, canyons are off limits, seldom do kids ride their bikes from one street to another and the little park across the street does not promise safety unless kids are supervised. So, Casey participates in organized activities--soccer, Little League, flag football, karate, church activities and maybe chess (his latest thought)--but, he doesn't run free, discover hidden places or wander at will to where ever his feet lead. And I am sad for him.

He loved last year and thrived on being free. He and his friends would wander up the road, finding "crystals" and then bring these treasures home to break apart, looking for the riches they were sure they would find within. Woe to me if I threw any of this away.

After dinner on the piazza, he would go out and find friends and wander and play while we sipped our coffee, enjoying the ambiance of night in our small Italian village.

He was not afraid and we had no fear for him. It was a place for children to be and he loved it. "Gramma, I'm a country boy--not a city boy." And I understand him.

Tomorrow's Corner

Is there an adult who hasn't dreamed of life in retirement? I would guess that such dreams revolve around freedom--freedom to do and be what ever way the wind blows on any given day. My revelries were of no alarm clocks, travel by the whim, minimal accountability, freedom to "be" me. Certainly the dreams did not include PTA meetings, Little League snack stands, parent conferences, children's pool parties or, most of all, parenting.

But, life, if any thing, is unpredictable. We never, ever know what lies around the corner of tomorrow--unexpected joys? undeserved trials? unexplained sorrows? unanticipated pleasures? Clearly God plans our lives and we experience its unfolding. Certainly understanding His way falls outside our limits of understandings.

So, Ken and I wonder why around our corner we found a blessing, an unexpected joy, an unanticipated pleasure. Why did God smile on us?

We retired several years earlier than we needed to, wanting to indulge our passion to travel as much of the world as we could--before our bodies would begin to fail us. Being aware of how often people wait to retire only to have tragedy strike, we hoped to beat that outcome. And...we took this goal by storm.

We treasure experiencing other cultures, having brief glimpses of life beyond the comforts of the United States and Western Europe. In our wander lust over the years, we have seen amazing sights--Cappadocia in Turkey, the Himalayas in Tibet, the pyramids of mysterious Mayan and Aztec cultures, the vestiges of Communism in Central Europe, the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, small mountain villages of Greece and, of course, the "normal" places in much of Europe. All of this accompanied by sharing life with people along the way--people different from us and yet, really, much the same. But, there remained so much more of God's world to see and marvel at and wonder how, why, when?

And so, in our first year of retirement, we gorged ourselves on this obsession, going to five continents in less that twelve months--North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. It was a wonderful year. God took care of us and let us live our dream on His timeline. He knew that around the corner of that year, He had something even grander planned for us--an unexpected journey--one we would not have chosen. But he gave us that year to indulge our wanderlust.

Then, He pulled us out of retirement--so to speak. He had a job for us to do and trusted us to do it well. He gave us Casey--our grandson who needed his grandparents to love him, raise him and tell him he is the most special boy that ever was. He needed us to start parenting all over again--hopefully with the wisdom of years and lessons learned. So--we are now on the journey into the soul of a child with all the laughter, tears, joys and hurts that reside there.

Now we do go to those parent conferences with teachers--even in Italy where we needed a translator, have pool parties where our "peer" group is the age of our children, sit through Little League games which we were so glad to put behind us years ago, listen to children, against all our rules, bouncing on the beds upstairs, wonder why taking showers is a form of punishment and try to avoid those sleep-overs which mean no-sleep.

We teach him right and wrong, kindness, respect, loving his God, how to pray, what being a friend means, why he must learn, that life is more than having fun--all those things we wish we had found more time for the first time around. We delight in his laughter and his smile. His kisses and hugs and "I love you, Grandma" in the middle of the grocery store aisle give a meaning beyond compare to these retirement years.

This has become the best corner of all. Now--God must continue what He has begun and give us a life long enough to raise this joy into manhood. I think He will.

Malls Still Scare Me

We’ve been back in sunny San Diego, the vacation capital of Southern California, for a few weeks now. It is lovely here and contrary to what I remembered while in serene and beautiful Greve in Chianti, we do have blue skies—just not the angel beds that seemed to be always present there.

Blue Skies in San Diego

Angel Beds in Greve

Ken spends hours each day working in the yard—pruning, planting, rearranging fountains, climbing shaky ladders while trimming palm tree branches, tending to the fruit trees and puttering. In Italy he read books and books and books—now he seems to have put that aside for a while—exchanging mental workouts for more laborious physical labor. He sleeps well—but, then, sleep wasn’t a problem in Greve, either.

I spend inordinate amounts of time not getting much done—or at least that’s the way it seems. Focusing is difficult, being productive escapes me. My brain shuts down at the thought of “mall time” even though I’ll be clotheless pretty soon and then won’t be able to go out at all.

What I have done is spend too much time on computer stuff which now involves unsuccessfully trying to figure out why my main computer is so slow that I clean out desk drawers while waiting for a document file to load. At this point I have taken off many programs, downsized by 90% the start up programs, run virus, spyware and registry checks, transferred most of 10,000 photos to an external drive and deleted and restalled programs which I thought might have been corrupted. And—I can now report—none of this has helped. Maybe tomorrow a flash of insight will fill me and the problem will be solved—or maybe one of the earthquakes we are having will shake it up.

When not compulsively attacking the “darn machine,” there are 4000+ photos from the last year to tackle. Fortunately, they are nicely organized, labeled and tagged so my job now is deciding which to order.

Of course, as each picture glows on the screen—looking very beautiful and triggering memories, the selection process goes sl-sl-slowly. I sometimes think I should just put the project aside but—the compulsive person that I am overrules—gotta get the scrapebook/album done for Casey’s memories.

Shutterfly, the on-line company I use, prints comments on the back of each photo so each picture must be documented. When Casey grows up he will be able to flip a picture to see why it was important or to learn something about himself. “You really liked swimming with Camilla.” “You wanted to go to the Uffizi to see this Madonna by Giotti.” "Tommi was your best friend."

Then there is-----still trying to find a tutor for him. I can tell that he is already losing some of his language; locating a karate program so that he can continue the shokotan style he had in Greve; finding a guitar teacher because he wants to learn how to play the guitar--contrary to my wanting him to play the piano; supervising homework; helping with his blog and having his friends over for play and swimming. All this makes a pretty full life, after all, for nonna here.

In Italy Casey went to school from 8:30 to 4:30 which gave us time to do things but here school is from 7:45 until 2:10 and so the day is short--no more of the late lunches while sipping glasses of Chianti, we enjoyed so much. Of course, no little trattorias around each corner here either--lots of Burger Kings and Roberto's Taco Shops. Is that an even exchange?

So-till now, I've stayed pretty close to home with the daily forage to the market--a remnant of last year. I am sure though, that the day is coming when THE mall will beckon and I will go. Maybe.