Category Archives: Italy

India, Italy

Seeing Beauty

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Even in Places Not Famous for It (Like Milan)

Rossella started high school last week, she’s going to liceo artistico (art high school). Monday was the first day of regular classes, so they’re moving through the timetable and meeting their teachers one by one. For religion class they have a Catholic priest, who nonetheless explained that his class would not be catechism: “I’m not here to convert anybody.” He asked the class why they had chosen liceo artistico; someone must have mentioned creating beautiful things, because the conversation then moved on to how to define beauty. Ross tried to express something about beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Her example was: “My mother loves India and sees beauty in it; my father can’t understand how anyone could see beauty in a place of such poverty and squalor.”

I was struck by this, because I haven’t often talked or written about India in terms of beauty (partly because I don’t have much gift for physical description). Ross is right, I do see beauty in India, and in most other places I’ve visited. Where I can’t find beauty, I can usually at least find humor and interest. I guess that is my particular, peculiar gift.

There is beauty almost everywhere, if you are open to it. Take Milan, for example. At first glance it’s drab and dingy, and not considered much of a tourist destination. As an industrial center, Milan was heavily bombed during WWII, and afterwards rebuilt hastily – and often tastelessly. The few impressive pieces of architecture left are too over the top to be called beautiful: the world’s most Gothic cathedral (unfinished – after 600 years they’re still adding frills), and a huge marble railway station, the very epitome of Fascist architecture.

But, if you’re willing to look, you can find fascinating things. One of my favorites is an apartment building in via Vivaio, done in heavy stonework to look rather like a castle, adorned with huge cherubs near the roof. Peer into the entryway and admire the interplay of red brick, polished gray stone, and golden tiles. Weirdly, you might hear a peacock’s harsh call. This is from across the street. That place is owned by a wealthy retired couple, who obtained permission from the Milan city government to knock down the adjacent building and create a huge garden for themselves, by willing the entire property to the city after their deaths. In the meantime, they have filled the garden with peacocks and flamingoes.

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living in Italy

Living in Italy Isn’t Everything

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Many people would consider me to have the best of all possible worlds: I live in Italy, after all.

In 1995, Adaptec bought Incat Systems, the small Italian software company I was working for, and I was part of the package. I wanted to become a regular employee of Adaptec, though at a distance, since I was by then working from home with quarterly trips to the US office. The idea was radical (for Adaptec at that time, anyway), and they refused; as long as I remained in Italy, they would hire me only as a consultant at an hourly rate. It was a high rate, no complaints there, but I wasn’t a regular employee.

I happened to be at the US office when the sale was completed, so I was able to lose this fight in person, at least. We were all called in for a meeting with Adaptec HR people to explain the company benefits etc., none of which applied to me. After the official presentations, I was chatting with one of the HR people. I mentioned, wistfully, that I would have preferred to be a regular employee. “But this way you get to live in Italy,” she said. Well, yes, but it would be nice to have regular employee benefits (paid vacation, sick leave). “But you get to live in Italy!” she said.

Clearly, she dreamed of living in Italy. Many people do. Funny thing is, I never did. Until I met Enrico, I had barely even visited Europe, and never Italy. It just wasn’t on my radar screen; if I thought about my future at all, I assumed that I would somehow end up in Asia – seemed logical, given my personal history and my college degree in Asian Studies. Had I been actively seeking a husband, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to look for an Italian mathematician.

But there he was, and here we are. He claims that we could have ended up in the US: he could have looked for teaching positions there after graduate school, had the job market been better. I don’t remember ever expecting to stay in the US; perhaps I knew earlier than he did that it was inevitable we would live in Italy. When I bought my first (and only) car, I bought it with a manual transmission, knowing that almost all cars in Italy are manual, and assuming that I should keep in practice against the day.

In any event, Enrico landed a teaching position in Italy while still finishing his PhD, and any ideas of moving back to the States (for more than a sabbatical year or so) never went beyond the discussion stage. Nowadays it’s no longer even discussed; we’re here for the duration.

I don’t miss the US; didn’t have strong ties to it to begin with. Being a third-culture kid, I find it easier to live overseas, where I am “out” as an immigrant, than in the US, where people assume that I’m a native, then are baffled and resentful when I don’t behave quite the way they expect me to.

Italy for me is a happy medium, with all the comforts of developed countries (and then some), but just enough chaos, history, and cultural depth, to keep my interest. Italians are even quite like Indians in some ways, though many Italians would be horrified to hear me say so.

Zod knows there’s little to hate about living in Italy. I write (extensively) about the follies and foibles of life here, but, overall, it’s a damn comfortable life. Thanks to my husband and his family, I live in a very nice home and have few financial worries (though I do need to find some paying work…). I can concentrate on raising a daughter – a complex, demanding, and fascinating task, and the most important one of my life. I look out my windows and see mountains. I go into my huge new kitchen and cook wonderful food. We go on trips, we have friends, life is beautiful.

So what’s missing?

Italy is gorgeous and wonderful and all that, wouldn’t trade it for the world. But it isn’t the world. There’s a whole world of other countries out there, most of them equally full of interesting people, cultures, history, foods, etc. Why limit myself to just one? There are so many places I still want to visit (Australia, New Zealand), and others, especially India, that I want to visit some more. I’ve been able to do some non-US travelling in recent years, just enough to keep my feet from itching too much. When you’ve spent your formative years all over the place, settling down anywhere, no matter how wonderful, is very hard.

So I don’t expect this settled phase to last much beyond my daughter’s reaching adulthood. I’ll keep Italy as a home base, but I’ll need to get out, way out, sometimes.

Funny thing is, my daughter, who has had a very stable home life in Milan for 12 years (we’ve just moved 50 km to Lecco), also can’t wait to get out. “I’m not staying in Italy when I’m grown up,” she says. “It’s boring.”

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Changing Names: Italian Women Keep Their Own Upon Marriage

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Women in Italy don’t change their names when they marry. In the US this is the norm; most women when they marry change their surname to their husband’s, and there are simple, routine procedures in place for them to do so. It’s so usual that Americans are confused if you don’t do it. Years ago I asked the Adaptec travel service to reserve airline tickets for myself and my family, and ended up with tickets for “Mr. and Mrs. Straughan.”

Some American women don’t change their names, often for professional reasons, sometimes for political ones. Some couples hyphenate their two last names and give that as a last name to the kids. I always wondered what would happen if two such children decided to marry: would they create a quadruple surname?

In Italy, as far as I know, there is no legal procedure by which a woman could change her surname to her husband’s, even if she wanted to. In every context except the family, you’re still known by your own name, which saves headaches and maintains continuity on the professional front. Every doorbell has both names on it. On the other hand, the kids almost always get their father’s name, and it’s perfectly natural and normal to be called “Mrs. So-and-so” in some settings, such as your child’s school (perhaps simply because it’s easier for the teacher to remember).

Enrico and I got married in the US, but I never got around to changing my name, and neither of us gave it much thought. To the extent that I thought about it, I had spent so many hours of my life explaining both my names that I was perversely reluctant to give up the struggle.

I didn’t initially realize that women don’t change their names in Italy. When I began publishing articles in Italian magazines, I thought that my husband’s name might be easier for Italians to deal with. However, his great-grandfather was Swiss, so his name is neither Italian nor entirely easy, and I ended up spending almost as much time explaining that one as Straughan. And I didn’t like the look of it alongside Deirdré in print. So I switched back to Straughan, and have articles published under both names. The book was published under my own name (and Fabrizio’s).

Jan 10, 2004

The above sparked some responses. It seems that American women (and even one man friend of mine) change their names so that the whole family will have the same last name, though this desire is often complicated by multiple marriages with kids from various pairings. One friend told me about a couple she knows who wanted to share a last name in an equitable fashion, so they made one up, combining elements of each of their original surnames.

I’ve also known cases where women were glad upon marriage to give up an unappealing surname, and I had several responses were about that:

Sally: “I can think of lots of English names I would want to change. .. like Bosomworth, Ramsbottom, Drain. One girl I know refused to marry Ted unless he changed his name from Tiplady.”

And Judith: “I would change my name IF I thought my new husband’s surname better than my current one. One English girlfriend gave up ‘Loutit’ on marriage for the much more glamourous French ‘Dubresson’ – she was thrilled!”

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Italian education, Ross

Another Rite of Passage Completed

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Italian Middle School Exams

The Italian education system is big on exams. Ross did pass her middle school exam, with a grade of Buono (on a scale of Ottimo, Distinto, Buono, Sufficiente, Insufficiente – outstanding, distinguished, good, sufficient, insufficient). This was better than I’d expected, since most of her grades this year have been merely sufficiente. But she worked the system brilliantly.

Her results on the written tests were a mix. The test of written Italian was simply to write an essay, which Ross does well (even better when she takes a little time to concentrate on her spelling and punctuation). Math she only did half of, and probably that half badly; English was a joke for her, and French seems to have gone well. On average, a passing grade, I guess (we were not given the individual test grades).

Then she had about ten days to study for the oral. I was in a panic; I’d been told that the panel of teachers could ask almost anything that had been covered throughout the year. But her math tutor advised her to go and watch some of her friends’ orals. This she did, and also talked with some other kids. One told her he had prepared mini-essays on the specific topics he wanted to talk about, and the teachers seemed pleased to be given these before he started. Then he gave his prepared presentations, and managed to steer the exam to the topics where he felt best prepared.

While watching her friends, Ross observed that her beloved music teacher was slumped in his chair, feeling left out. After all the major subjects had been covered, he would forlornly ask a question or two, and be met with blank looks. “Did you even bring your music notebook?” he would ask in desperation. No one had.

So Ross sat down and wrote an essay about jazz, specifically on swing music during WWII (inspired by Jazz : A Film By Ken Burns – the accompanying booklet came in very handy). She chose her topics in other subjects to match: WWII for history, the atomic bomb for science. She also took in advice from her (very supportive) art teacher: “Talk about your artwork, and for god’s sake, don’t burst into tears! I expect better from you.” Not that Ross was likely to do so, but several of her classmates had sobbed through their orals.

When Ross’ exam began, she handed out her essays, then the teachers asked her what she wanted to talk about first. “I’d like to talk about jazz,” she said. The French teacher elbowed the music teacher: “Hey! It’s your subject!” He sat up and got very enthusiastic, and they had a long conversation about jazz. Then Ross spoke about the other subjects, except the atomic bomb – many kids had already talked about this, and the math/science teacher was bored of hearing it. So she picked a topic that Ross hadn’t studied and didn’t remember much about. Oh, well.

Ross had put her art pieces into a presentation binder, and spoke about each one, explaining what famous painting it was inspired by (or copied from), with some biography of the original artist. She came home quite confident that she had passed; we all heaved a sigh of relief.

Part of the exam ritual is to go and see the grades as soon as they are posted outside the school, for all to see. Ross and I were pleasantly surprised by the buono, which put her at or above the average for the class. Her Italian teacher came by on her way to a meeting, and we thanked her for the year’s work. I said I was pleased with the exam result. “There was some negotiation over that,” she replied, with a significant lift of the eyebrow. Ah, yes, the math teacher, who didn’t like Ross’ attitude or lack of math ability (“How is it possible when your father’s a math professor…?” Poor Ross has been hearing that all her life.)

I just smiled; I had a pretty good idea who had negotiated vigorously on Ross’ behalf. Half an hour later, I was standing in line to pick up Ross’ exit papers, and the music teacher ran by, late for the staff meeting. He saw me, and gave me a huge grin.

As I also mentioned earlier, cheating is widespread in Italian schools. I was writing that piece while Ross was doing her English written exam, which for her was simple and soon over.

She came home and said casually: “I’ve found a way to earn some money: I wrote Martino’s English test for him.” We were, of course, aghast. He hadn’t actually paid her, had simply asked her to do it – and, much to my disgust, she did.

After half an hour of hearing from two very angry parents a host of reasons as to why this wasn’t a good thing, she probably won’t be doing it again… or at least next time she won’t tell us!

In response to that original article, an Italian friend wrote me that, during an exam in electronics technical school, his whole class cheated together, with the assistance of their teacher. This was because one of the exam questions was on something so obscure and bizarre that you would never do it in real life, and it required the cooperation of the whole group searching through the library to find the answer. I guess the question succeeded brilliantly as a test of teamwork.

next: high school

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Naming a Multicultural Baby

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Having been saddled all my life with a name that no one can spell or pronounce, I am always curious about how people get their names – especially, of course, the unusual ones. In July, 2003, the New York Times ran an article about what people are naming their kids, based on the Social Security Administration’s data on popular baby names; the writer, expecting her own child, used this as the basis for research on what not to name her baby.

The upside of having an unusual name is that you’ll probably be the only person of that name in any given group. At UC Santa Cruz, I learned that a girl in my college was called Deidre, which she pronounced “Day-dree” (I’m Deirdré pronounced “Dear-druh”) – close enough for me to get excited about it, though she wasn’t impressed. Things got very weird when we ended up sharing a house the following summer, along with a third woman (named Mary). Since no one could spell or pronounce either of us, poor Mary never knew who the phone messages were for.

If you’re Italian, you most likely know someone else with the same name as you. According to my friend at Zoomata.com (and my own observations), most Italians have traditional names out of the calendar of Catholic saints, though they may get them by way of a grandparent or other relative. (The exceptions to the saints are classical Roman names such as Olivia, Livia, Lavinia, Massimo.) This gives parents a very limited pool of names to choose from, and non-standard names are rare.

The result is that, for any given name, you probably know a bunch of people who have it. Enrico and I can never refer to “Paola” without having to qualify which of several Paolas we’re talking about. Enrico himself is in the fortunate category of names which are easily recognized and not considered weird, but uncommon enough that you probably don’t know more than one. Well, maybe two.

When we had to choose a name for our own baby, we had several criteria to consider. We didn’t know that we were having a girl (we had asked not to be told, and when people asked us “What are you having?” we answered: “A baby.”); nonetheless, by some instinct, we put a lot more thought into a girl’s name than a boy’s. We wanted a name that would be easily spelled and pronounced by both sides of the family, and that might somehow signify the baby’s multiculturalness. Among others, I considered one of my favorite Indian names, Gayatri, but Enrico was afraid that would be too weird for Italy, though I argued that it’s similar to a classic Latin name, Gaia.

I initially wanted to choose a “Rose” based name, to honor my beloved aunt Rosie (Roselyn), who had been a friend as much as a relative, and an important influence on my personality and attitude. But Enrico didn’t like the Italian names Rosalia or Rosalinda – he said they sounded old-maidish. (Perhaps they were more southern Italian and/or old-fashioned).

We were reading Gone with the Wind at the time; we used to read together, alternating chapters so that Enrico could hear my English pronounciation, and practice his own with corrections from me. Yes, hang on, this is relevant. When the film “Gone with the Wind” reached Italy just after WWII, the heroine’s name was translated as Rossella O’Hara. The name Rossella, meaning “little red” (originally applied to redheads) already existed in Italy, but was extremely rare until the film came along. Then it suddenly became popular, so there is a generation of Rossellas, just over 50 years old now.

“Rossella” seemed like a good name for several reasons: being best known as the Italian translation of a very American character, and that character being a strong, resourceful woman (though she certainly has her flaws). I thought it would be fairly easily spelled and pronounced by Americans, though that has proven not to be true; everyone wants to spell it with only one S, and pronounce it accordingly: Rozella. It’s a long O and a soft S: Rohss-ella (don’t forget to roll the R!). Rossella herself generally tells English-speakers to call her Ross (rhymes with “Boss”).

The name, after a period of popularity in Italy, went into decline again and isn’t used much these days, so we thought our Rossella wasn’t likely to be confused with any other Rossella in her age group. This, too, proved not to be true: there was another Rossella in her elementary class.

But we didn’t know these things when she was born. As I held my beautiful new baby in my arms, the labor nurse asked me: “What are you going to name her?”

“Rossella.”

“Oh, that’s beautiful. And thank god it isn’t Morgan or Brittany.”

 

^ top: 1989, the year of our daughter’s birth, was the 50th anniversary of the releases of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz; these commemorative stamps were issued in the US.

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