White bliss

When I was a little girl I could not wait to have my first holy comunion. Not for the ceremony itself, of course, and certainly not for the meaning of the holy bread - the "particula" - turning into God himself. No, no. How could a nine year old  care about those trifles that so much concerned mothers and aunts? No, no. The only reason why I yearned to taste the body of Christ was that  I would wear, for the occasion, the long white dress,  that my older sister had on many years before and that waited, paitently, in its plastic coat, for me to turn into a newborn christian.It hung quietly in a wardrobe of my mother's closet, counting the hours for its ribirth....
The day arrived at last, as sunny as my beautiful dress that tolled its new beginning, and I stood, as white as snow, in the middle of my schoolfriends first and in the big, green  Ponti garden soon after. All around me, cousins and aunts and friends. The afternoon washed away, and so did my enthusiasm for the white dress. Now that I was wearing it, I found it had no sugar nor spice nor anything nice...

All of a sudden, my memory switches on and I run backwards to another sunny day, that of my older sister's holy comunion when little me, dressed in a pale blue skirt and flowery blouse, had eyes and heart for my white tulle beauty, gleaming in the sun.  The dress seemed to smile  at me, singing one day I will be yours... Here I am, in a snap, standing on the cotto terrace, with my brothers end sister, models  for my father's pictures of the great day. Oh, the longing in my little keen eyes, oh, the bliss of the white fabric dream,  shining in the light, right there, beside me: the dream I cherished in my heart!  Now I know: Christmas  eves are far better than Christmas days!     

The happy Pope

When I attended  the Mater Dei convent school, tied up in a noble palazzo, dressed in  pale yellow, that sat at the bottom of the San Senbastianello slope, at a stone throw from Piazza di Spagna, it was a honour and a medal to have a Pope in the family. It may sound a laugh, nowadays - I gather - but in those lost times, some thirty years ago  it was an ever so serious business... Not everyone, of course, had a Sixtus ex ex or a Pius so and so. Francesco C. had two Popes in his pedigree and the same number belonged - I could not figure out how it could have happened ... - to a curly, dark haired, not so pretty girl called Fanny. But all these Popes, in their red robes and all, were only dusty pictures in a hall and had lost, in the galloping of years, their flare and smash and the fisher's ring...

Not so with my little friend Q. He was as small and blond as a little prince and nothing less than the nephew of the Pope in person, blood and bones, the one who actually was sitting on the seat of Saint Peter, he was the man who represented God in this topsy turvey world.

One day, this little elf of  a boy, went with his family to see his uncle, the Pope. The women of the family, mother and aunts and sisters and close friends, dressed in black, wore dark scarves and sullen faces, he, the little one (no matter how trained  he had been for long afternoons...) was as brisk and merry as a parrot in Brasil: a child going to the park...

At last they came to a silent room, ceiling and walls in prayer. The Pope left his noble seat to welcome his family and what do you think little Q. did? You guessed: he sat on the Pope's chair, under the awed eyes of the vatican crew. The Pope turned around, spotted him and said: "Little Q., I suppose that chair belongs to me...". And everybody laughed under dark scarves and solemn moustaches...   

Dimitto auricolas

Ten years ago, when I was still a journalist and not a ronin, when I had a paper to write articles for, a salary and my own dear little table, a computer of my own and a mail address that married my name to that of the paper, and collegues with whom to discuss this and that, the euro popped in and killed straight away our own dear lira and, after a while, with the crysis of Euroland and all, chopped me out of my job. Oh how happy italians were, when the euro cried its first baby cry, to welcome this new brand of notes all coloured in orange and green and purple. Flowers blooming in the sky. The colours of doom, to me. Oh how many times did I ask this and that if they were happy to buy milk at double the price of before, but, lo, in euros... Nobody listened. The party had begun, italians were no more italians, but europeans. Michelangelo and Raffaello and all our Roman past seemed to be forgotten as we melted in the gray,  european pot, that has and had no soul or heart, but lots of numbers and famelic bureaucrats...
I felt angry and betrayed and dispossessed of my country, that had given so much to the whole world. Beauty and art and grace dwell in this little boot that sleeps in the middle of sweet waters.... The euro, to me, a dictator, a foreigner, a new conqueror. Oh how I missed my dear old lira bank notes, with the dear faces of the artists I had always cherished: Michelangelo and Verdi and Caravaggio and even Mrs Montessori with her white hair of clouds and snow!

I said all this and much more to a friend the other day in a cafè that is nose to nose with the Colosseum. And when my Salomon speech was over I opened my bennibag to pay the low bill and found out that someone, who knows who, had given me, instead of the round two euro coin, an old Cinquecento lire - a twin coin, but worthless, to the euro - for change. And my friend, with round eyes and a little smile on her lips: "Well, now, you should be happy, you have got your lire back!". As the saying in latin goes: Dimitto auricolas...

From Rome with love

My mother, Regina, was born in Friuli, in the north east of Italy, a Region that had mountains as a crown and the sea as a grey scarf tied around its sandy neck. She lived in an old pink villa - that had a big green garden and a big green gate open to fields and vineyards - together with her mother, my grandma -  Stella, a star, as I am Ester, same name in babylonese.. - and with an old lady that cooked and cleaned and that was called like the first woman on earth: Eve. My mother hated house and all as much as she adored her father, who was an officer and a gentleman and had died in a prison up in some little village in Germany. He had died, as an italian prisoner from Albania, when she was only sixteen and since then little Regina, who was tall and dark and shy, had decided that she would leave for good the pink house, her mother and old Eve...

Her dreams came true on a summer's day when she spotted my father on the sandy beach that bore the poetic name of Lignano Goldsand (sabbiadoro). She was there with an aunt of hers who had a basket of kids; also my father was guest in an aunt's house, but she had no kids at all. She saw him and he saw her and they fell in love. September danced in the line with its bags of  rain and  clouds. My father back to Rome, my mother to the pink house. The months flew on Pegasus back. My father sent my mother a thin postcard. She did not even reply. I do not know if her silence spoke to him or if love had done it all, I only know that, one day, he knocked on the door of the pink house and that was that...
Many years after, my mother showed me his postcard. On one side the white meringue that tickles the skyes on top of Borromini's Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, on the other only this sentence: "Be happy". The  love song of a lawyer...

Pink ballerina

As a little girl, I was the mildest lamb ever: goodmanners and smiles were my daily bread. Not enough for the sisters at my convent school, which opened its greedy "portone" on the timid slope of Saint Sebastianello, opposite - in philosophy and shape - to the grand staircases of Piazza di Spagna, that were at a stonethrow, yet as near as heaven to hell...
Sister Saint Thomas, a silvery beauty, with haunted black eyes that never smiled, was the principal. She tamed us, the pupils, in misery and humility and kept the school going thanks to her firm grip. I never liked her cold ways, her boxing looks, and even her bautiful face and smart, slim body, scorned me. All the opposite, in my memory, Sister Francis: she was round and white and sweet and had pockets that sung in mistery. I would have given two bars of chocolate to my worst enemy, the Strada girl, to know what was in those dingling, dangling, dancing holes, silver bells hidden under the black and blue habit... Sister Francis tought us english. Long poems, and never ending bits of pure shakesperian poetry. She fought against the italian way of saying "de" instead of "the" and "dis" instead of "This" and had eyes only for one of us who had had her father, long before, in the school and had left his shadow in her heart.

When Sister Saint Thomas entered the classroom, we all stood up and firm and said: "Goodmorning sister!", as chorus line girls. One day, she opened the door, came in, everybody except me (I was lost in my bumble bee thoughts...), jumped on the seat and up in the sky. She glanced around, spotted  me and said, pointing and index finger that stang: "You are superb!". That day I went home crying. My mother had no ears for me. her stern glance told me that life was hard and one had to survive and no crying please. Only my brother Marco asked me what had happened. I burst into tears and said: "What does superb mean?" But he too did not know.

My little white Christmas

There was no  Christmas tree dressed in lights and gold, in the Ponti family, no jingle bells to sing in the snow, and above all, certainly, no red nosed, plumpy, Father Christmas, flowing in his white beard, to come down from the unexistent chimney of our household! Not at all. My mother, who was married to pure style, considered an armful of ill mannered and consumistic junk all the bric a brac shopping of the 25th of december which was, to her,  nothing else but the day, as clear as water, the Child was born. So, in our house, only the crib sat, from the eight of december, full of shepheds and sheep on a dark table. A candle shone bright in front of the Virgin and her spouse, but the manger stood empty for many a days to come. At night, when I was about to go to bed, I could see, from a distance, the little flickering fire drawing shadows on the good and on the evil and I do not know why I felt cold and shivered...
Because we did not have our polar present express, of course it was baby Jesus in blood and bones who came down from heaven only to bestow on us, the lucky ones (God knows why...) his holy gifts: a doll for little me, a pack of Airfix soldiers for my brother Marco and who knows what else for the rest of the family. To thank the dear baby for taking a trip to earth, we left in exchange (but I do not reckon it was convenient for hime...) some nuts (with no nut cracker which made me wonder) and a glass of hot milk which was to become icy cold as the night ate up her dancing hours. On Christmas eve the family gathered around the crib and I had the honor to put the baby in his poor throne and to set the table (nuts and milk) for his nightly supper.

On the 25th of on of these crib Christmas, I woke up with the white fingers of dawn creeping through my shutters. I was up in a dash and silently crept downstairs to see if  baby Jesus had eaten his nuts and drunk his milk. All I saw was my mother, busy in front of the crib, putting away milk and nuts...

The little mermaid

English, to me, had the sunny face of Jane. She arrived, straight from Sydney, on a silver winter morning. I loved her red fluffy hair and her milk white skin spread with golden freckles. Jane, a mother to me. English, my mother tongue...

Together with Jane, another australian girl, her name wa Sheila, came overseas. From Oz with love, and landed in my cousins home, where my uncle - who was a satyr and a doctor -  chased her ruby beauty from one room to the other during long sleepless evenings. She stayed for a couple of months, I don't know what happened between her and him, I only know that, one day, she packed her bags and went, in between the sobs of my cousin Betta. She then returned to her dear homeland and to  her loving mother who only loved her dead son... Her mother had no place in her wounded heart for the wounded girl that Sheila was. So Sheila, without the deep roots of maternal love, started afresh a new life. A life that she made up day by day, in rain or shine. A life that she could boast about with indifferent strangers. Every year she got the chance to chit and chat on her lovable  life during a cruise that skimmed truth and waves. She had two kids, the pigeon couple, she had a lovely husband, did someone want to see the pics? Here is Rosie and John, isn't he just gorgeous? She said she was a psycologist and a mother and a wife. But she was only a lonely woman. When the cruise was over, she was back in the sepulcral flare of her dark mother. "You are back", the old woman would say. And then the days rolled  on like clouds galopping in a winter sky. One day, during her cruise, Sheila, with a smile on her face, threw herself in the waters. No more lies. A woman said that she had turned into a mermaid...