Twenty-Six Years Ago, An 800 Number, and A Love That Still Remains

Did you know that you can’t dial an 800 number from Europe?  I didn’t.  It took me an hour to figure out an access number from Italy twenty-six years ago today.  All I wanted to do was call my parents to let them know that I had made it.  This was before cell phones.  Email was still relatively new to most people, and my parents were definitely not in the computer age yet (someday, I will tell those stories, but not today.).  I had a prepaid AT&T calling card that I could use to call home… if only I could figure out how. 

I had always dreamed of going to Italy.  When I was twenty-five, the Navy gave me the chance.  I set off on the adventure of a lifetime and landed in Naples.  I was jet-lagged and tired after the long flight over on whatever third-rate carrier the military had contracted back then.  I was excited too.  I met my sponsor, the person assigned to help me with my transition and show me around, and we proceeded to leave the safety of the military terminal for the hour drive to my new home. 

As he drove me through Naples on a highway that he called “The Tange” (Americanized name for the Tangenziale, a highway that runs through the heart of Naples), I remember being struck by all the high-rise apartments with laundry hanging from every balcony it seemed.  The buildings all seemed so old, with crumbling outer walls painted the pea green and burnt orange that were such popular colors in the United States thirty years before.  I was reminded of driving through The Bronx on the Cross-Bronx Expressway.  Everything was crowded, dirty, and old.  It made me think of a ghetto.  As we began to reach the outer edges of the city proper, I remember noticing the hillsides, divided into stepped stone terraces, and I began to feel a sense of wonder come over me.  All the while, the driving was frenetic, lawless, and completely random, or so it seemed to my tired, American eyes.

As we continued on our journey, we ended up on a small highway, if you will, that cut straight through the center of a little town with a big reputation as a resort for some of the higher ups in the organized crime families.  There were small, dark-skinned boys, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, who would wash your windshield with a dirty squeegee and a bottle of water, all for just a few lire, as you were stopped at the light in the center of the town.  I didn’t like the town from the start, though over the years, I became comfortable there, even considering living there at one point. 

We were over halfway to Gaeta, our destination, and the driving might have been even more frenetic, if only because the road that we’d been on from the airport had gone from a six-lane divided interstate to a two-lane road, where custom seemed to dictate that one must flash their lights at cars as they approached from the rear in order to pass.  Not only that, but every few kilometers there were one or two, sometimes three, scantily clad, heavily made-up African women standing around an oil drum.  I was informed that they were called “Campfire Girls” and they were from Nigeria.  Even I didn’t need to be told what they were doing standing there on the side of the road!

Finally, we came into Gaeta, and my sense of excitement became quite acute.  I was taken to my hotel, right on the beach, and I was the only American staying there at the time.  Now, it was time to call home and tell my parents that I had arrived safely.  After an hour of trying and failing, I finally thought to ask the desk clerk, who promptly gave me the information I needed.  I was all alone, five thousand miles from home, and I ended up sobbing as I left a barely decipherable message on the answering machine.  I decided to stop crying and go exploring.  After all, I had wanted this, it was a dream come true, and I would be okay! 

It was while I walked down a tiny alley made of tufa stones that I fell in love.  Beneath my feet, the stones were still damp from the afternoon rain, while the sky was clear and dark above me, serving as the canvas on which to paint my love affair.  I immediately loved the throngs of people, some bustling along as though late for some important date, others shuffling along at a snail’s pace, all with a liveliness the likes of which I had never seen before.  The noise of the shouts from the balconies above to the street below, the tall apartment buildings on either side of the alley with laundry still hanging off of many balconies, the constant motion about me!  I loved it all!  The smells, oh!  The smells!  Fresh fish, just caught that afternoon, garlic and basil in the tomato sauces as they simmered on the stoves in the kitchens I passed.  Entire families gathered around the tables, talking animatedly to one another, from the little olive-skinned children, squealing as they ran around chasing each other, to their weathered grandparents, laughing at the joy of youth.  The strange, lyrical language, spoken with a sing-song rhythm, accented by hand gestures and facial expressions, the kind which convey their own meaning, with no need for words — it was a musical score written entirely by improvisation, by accident.  Everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by life, by a love for the day to day, by a passion that until that time had been reserved for only the most intimate loves.  This was a passion for everyday life, for the family, the friends, the food, the drink.  What an amazing and contagious feeling! 

I remember feeling a lightness in my step, a giddiness that I had not allowed myself to feel since I was a child, instead being “responsible” and “mature” and “adult”.  I wanted to laugh with the exuberance of my feeling, and I remember finding myself smiling as I walked that evening.  Perhaps it was just jetlag, that profound sense of tiredness that is marked by sheer silliness and giggles.  If it was, I have suffered from it for over twenty-five years now, even through a dark and foggy time in my own life.  Instead, I believe that in that hour long stroll, I fell in love with Italy, and all that she has to offer.  She showed herself to me, while she grabbed a piece of my heart — one that she has never relinquished — and she claimed it as her own.