Silly

“Silly” a text from my son, August, after sending him a picture of Aronne’s menu. A keepsake I brought back from Orvieto when John and I visited the ancient Italian hilltop village. August and Tessa had spent a few days of their honeymoon there a week before and gave us recommendations. We toured the town’s stunning 12th century duomo, and a 2500-year-old underground city with holes carved into stone walls for pigeon nests, a staple when under siege. We got a table at Aronne for lunch and ordered a traditional local dish, “bird nest” lasagna with pecorino and honey. It became a favorite of our restaurants in Italy, too, so I brought them a tangible memory. Before heading back to Soriano, we took in the view of Tuscany from all the view points and toured St. Patrick’s well, descending 248 steps to the bottom, an engineering feat from the 12th century at 43 feet in diameter.

“Yeah” I texted back letting my mind fill with all my simple ways. “Silly” I read again, but saw “simple,” flooded with reasons this is true. My brothers half-jokingly call me Pauline, when I do things that remind them of our 8th grade educated, loving grandma. She cooed at all the babies, collected little souvenirs like sand in airplane liquor bottles, leaning into tipsy seat mates for their empties on the way to Hawaii’s green sand beach. Also, I make way too much food when they visit, again, “Pauline.” I kept digging into “simple” letting my dad join my brothers in my head, “Don’t be so simple mother.” He'd tell her, rolling his eyes as he left her presence with a full tummy, to give her something to contemplate, not noticing the Martha Washington geraniums surrounding them. Her simple pleasure.

A real charmer, he wasn’t.

Unlike him, my son is charming, kind, and has never given me something “to contemplate,” as his grandpa would, but I ran with it.

I dug into “simple” things I do. When Tessa and my daughter Austen were home, they enjoyed my new favorite, honey crystals and cinnamon on their cappuccino foam, so I filled little stainless shakers with honey crystals for them.

Whenever I see a baby, I think I would be the perfect person to care and nourish it, their parents are just too young to understand how precious they are.

Also, all the plants. I can’t just see plants and appreciate them, I must hunt it down at the nursery and make it mine, or, say, if I’m in Italy and a restaurant has a pretty vine, I might, okay this happened, ask if I could have a pinch of it. This 6-inch sprig is now setting up roots in my kitchen window, despite John’s attempt to thwart my effort. Leaving Italy, the immigration warning signs might have mentioned live plants aren’t allowed to enter the US. I consider it could just as easily be a salad since it still needed to grow a root. I lovingly wrapped it in a sturdy napkin and paper bag inside a checked bag. Can’t I appreciate the little things and not call them “simple”? There are some people I shouldn’t ask.

I wear what feels good and makes me smile. I’m usually in a dress or skirt because jeans and leggings make me feel I should be gardening or at the gym. Sneakers have permeated the culture in Portland, Oregon, with Nike campus right over there. Somehow, the Italians have allowed the sneaker culture to creep in. I wanted to imagine the locals would be dressed in all their latest fashion. Marketing had reached the masses, now sporting Nike, Addidas and Polo, also Snoopy t-shirts for some reason. I wanted Italy to be resilient, a standard keeper. All the best fitting shoes and clothes we have are Italian, I wanted to be overwhelmed with gorgeousness, not casual Friday.

I hang onto little things, so when my nephew’s little kids come over, I can’t wait to get out the Little Bear books our kids loved or any books off the shelf we would read to them over and over in great cozy memories that the next generation immediately cozies up to too.

And now, out my window, 300 feet to the road, past the gate, the rubbish truck reaches out its iron arms to embrace, rattle, and dump last week’s stinky garbage. It’s almost religious, as I thank it for taking away my ick and leaving me with a shiny blue bin.

And then, stuck in the part of my brain that holds onto pleasure, is the Italians café culture which we immersed in several times a day. Standing at the counter to order an espresso sized doppio macchiato, elbows away from a curious look and language barrier, we planned our day in search of beauty in all the little things.

“Silly” was at 11:29am

At 1:55 August called, “Mom, can I make pizza on a cookie sheet, we want to make a large one…” We chatted about the optimal, perforated pan, while I stood outside Kaiser’s mammogram waiting area. As my appointment time approached, I told him where I was, trying not to say breast, but divulged that I was waiting for a mammogram after being prescribed antibiotics for a red spot on my left breast. “It doesn’t sound like a mammogram issue.” he reassured me. He is a physician, in residency for emergency medicine, but since I’m his mom, not a patient, we might avoid “breast” with the connotation of being his source of sustenance during his first year of life.

My mom calls daily with, often, unfiltered antidotes, like her recent uptake in kale salad giving her “big, just huge, poop.” There’s more, but I’ll stop.

Hearing his voice made me want to share how I let his “Silly” (simple) text destroy all the courage I had bottled up in my amygdala during our month in Europe. A courage I considered an irreversible reset; an end to debilitating intrusions of unhelpful voices.

“Silly” left me devasted but I knew enough to choose the rehabilitating, healthy response of pulling out my silver Sensa pen with its lovely shade of green, which they could make an effort to name, instead of calling it medium green. My fountain pen’s red ink is named Writer’s Blood. But, medium green flowed onto the crisp white journal page, intervening on the European reset’s behalf, with…

“Silly, yes. Defeated, yes. Simple too, I suppose, yes. But, what else do I have besides silly? Defeated now, so easily defeated. I thought it was fun to bring the menu back for them, a sweet little memory. But it’s silly. Simple. Me. Yes.

Then the pizza crust phone call…hours later…

Before being called back for my mammogram, I admitted to August how simple I felt. He said, “No that’s not what I meant by silly, I meant it was fun, and Tessa thought it was fun too.”

“Really?” I said, “I was so worried I look like a crazy old lady to all the people close to me. I can find reasons.”

“No, mom, it was fun.”

I told all this to my tiny exposed amygdala sending it back to reset, ashamed I allowed this beautiful, unexpected peaceful reset to be demolished so easily, vowing to protect it in all the small ways.