Putting off little pleasures can lead to big regrets.
My wish to all in 2010, let’s take time to savor the joys that each day brings us, Italian-style.
Read John Tierney’s inspirational article in the New York Times
Story and Photographs by Melinda Rizzo
The Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence.
Florentines are accustomed to waiting.
From Michelangelo to Botticelli, DaVinci to Galileo, Florentines have cultured their passions into pearls, like a single grain of sand nestled deep inside an oyster and emerging over time to become a gem of the sea.
This year was my 30th, or Pearl, wedding anniversary.
To celebrate this milestone, my husband and I opted to take a trip to Florence, the heart and breath of Italy’s Tuscany region.
In January, we made the decision to travel to Italy at the end of November. Planning and executing this trip—one in which we’d invited a cousin and were traveling with our 12-year-old son—took time and patience. Patience, you might say, of the Florentines.
I’ve never considered myself a patient person.
Cathedrals take time to build, often centuries, still Florentines seem content to wait knowing their labors are never in vain.
The Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, commonly know as The Duomo.
As Carl Jung, a 20th century Swiss psychiatrist would contend, any work with purpose regardless of its nature, ultimately provides satisfaction and even pleasure for the worker.
Prosciutto crudo (air dried and cured pork) from Parma and arguably the pride of its area, can take as long as two years from start to finish to be ready for consumption.
Two years for a ham and cheese sandwich, but what a sandwich it makes! Prosciutto for me, and my son, is porcine transcendence.
Does anyone ordering a prosciutto focaccia pressed and toasted, consider the amount of time it took to create the ham? A moment of mastication melts these buttery mouthfuls, and they are gone.
Florentines linger over osteria menus . . . along alleyways . . . and outside the windows of leather shops.
Street performers sing operatic arias. They pump life into an accordion’s complication.
They strum a guitar or play the love theme from Florentine Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet in the Piazza Signoria, where I rented our apartment. They spend time and care honing their musicianship. For those who love music, they offer kinship without translation.
Street performers share their art in exchange for spare change dropped into a basket poised at their feet. Skilled musicians bear witness to patience and waiting.
Witnessing the patience of Florentines: to execute a 17-foot-tall statue of David in marble, paint the mythological birth of Venus over the ocean waves or slice tissue thin prosciutto from the seasoned hindquarters of a pig, taught me a thing or two about this most elusive of virtues.
Consider the amount of time it takes for someone to carve mounds of
Nutella, vanilla or tutti fruitti gelato, into tempting, irresistible towering creations
decorated with fruit slices, nuts or plump, glistening blackberries and shiny
currants.
Melissa Muldoon is a freelance graphic designer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through her firm, Melissa Design, she creates graphics for Web and print. Raised in the Midwest, she studied studio art and history at Knox College. At the University of Illinois at Champaign, she worked as a teaching assistant and earned a Masters degree in Art History. Deciding she’d rather be “doing” art rather than “talking” about art, she pursued a career as a graphic designer. She is married to Patrick Muldoon and has three boys and a beagle. Her passion for art opened the door to Italy for her. During college she participated in a study abroad program in Florence and discovered a country full of history, culture and tradition, yet overflowing with contemporary style and quirky idiosyncrasies. Her love for art brought her “home” to Italy for the first time.
Q: Living “Italian”. . . Is it a great way to live or the greatest way to live?
A: Ma dai! Non c’e’ un modo migliore! Come on! There is no better way to live!
Q: Why?
A: Let me just start off by saying I am a classic type A personality. I am impatient, competitive and a list maker. I don’t know what I like better, adding things to my “to do” list or checking them off. I’m usually up late finishing a project or starting the next. I zoom from one appointment to the next and despise sitting in traffic or wasting time at stoplights. Now, while a type A lifestyle is great for getting things accomplished and moving ahead in life, it may not be the sanest way to live.
Fortunately for me, I found Italy and discovered how to “live Italian.” Italy is my alter ego. It balances out my yin and yang. When I am in Italy, time slows down and I relax. I let go and go with the flow. My senses are reawakened and my creative side is nurtured and flourishes. I savor meals and notice things like the multi-colored marzipan pastries elegantly displayed in the panetterie and bars, or the wheels of cheese stacked up like oversized building blocks in the corner markets. I feel the cobblestones, worn and rounded by time, under my feet. I hear the clang of the church bells and the ronzare of the Vespa bikes. I meet the most interesting people, Italian locals and fellow travelers, and develop long lasting friendships.
Settimo Dalla Ricca escorts us through the Grana Padana cheese factory in Mantova.
Subscribers to Kathy McCabe’s award-winning Italy travel newsletter Dream of Italy will see Sharon’s work in the November 2009 issue. She penned a profile of “Stile Mediterraneo Cooking and Wine School” owners Cinzia and Marika Rascazzo and also a feature “Sisters Share Their Private Puglia” with the siblings’ travel recommendations for their region on the heel of Italy.
If you don’t subscribe to Dream of Italy, there’s no better holiday gift for your Inner Italian. Check it out here.
The Florentine, a bi-weekly English newspaper published in Firenze, reports that “Netizens can now Tweet from the steps of Santa Croce or upload photos to Facebook in Piazza Signoria just minutes after taking them. The Firenze Wi-Fi initiative, which began on November 11, provides free, one-hour Internet access in 12 city squares and parks.”
To read the entire story, click here.
