Moving to Sicily « baroquesicily.com - Sicily Stories and Travel Tips from Jann Huizenga

Settling in Sicily: A Long Decision, Part 3

May 17, 2012

In Italy I find myself whispering—for I haven’t stopped talking to my mother—”Are you living this too, madre mia?”

It feels as if I’m picking up where she left off. A leitmotif of my life has been actually doing the things she talked about doing but didn’t because she was saddled with four kids. My mother deposited her dreams into me, like moms always do to daughters.

Gradually the house has become a home. The decision was long, and so far it seems right. Je ne regrette rien. Non mi pento di nulla.

Here are snippets from my new world (yes, I have a thing about green):

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Settling in Sicily: A Long Decision, Part 1

May 5, 2012

It took me years–decades actually–to settle in Europe. An adolescent daydream turned into a young woman’s pipe dream, then a middle-aged reverie.

Time flowed fast as a mountain river in spring.

It took my mother’s death to make me really get it. Time is a Thief.

Do you know what I read to her on her deathbed? Under the Tuscan Sun. A book she’d picked out. As her life ebbed away, mine came strangely into focus. A mother’s last gift to a daughter.

Soon afterward I mustered a little courage, went against my cautious nature, and discovered Southeast Sicily.

Never mind that it took me another five years to find the house with the fat green doors. Find it I did.

Cui camina licca, cui sedi sicca.

Who walks gains, who sits withers.

(Old Sicilian proverb)

***

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Addio Roma, Hello Rubber Shoes

May 22, 2011

Not long ago she lived in trendy Trastevere among wine bars and super-chic Romans. She wore stilettos and took her coffee on Piazza Santa Maria.

Now Roberta wears rubber shoes and lives among cows and pigs, horses and dogs, carobs and rocks. Gnarled olives sway in yellow skies; she’s landed in a Van Gogh canvas come to life. Out in the direction of Africa, there’s the distant glint of the sea.

“I’m not a country girl,” she insisted a few years ago when she bought the tumble-down Sicilian farm house.

I watch now as she saws the lettuce root off with a knife. She rinses the leaves in an outdoor sink, tucks them into a tea towel, and spins her arm around like a windmill.

“Is that a Sicilian farmer’s technique?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I did the same thing hanging out my window in Rome.”

How virtuous it feels to eat lettuce just five minutes out of the ground, seasoned with a just-plucked lemon and Sicilian sea salt.

Salad in Sicily, copyright Jann Huizenga

Note how Italians slice their lettuce into ribbons thin as fettuccine.

We also eat a salad of carrots, provolone cheese, basil, and almonds.

And the traditional Sicilian cucuzza soup. Cucuzza is the baseball bat-size zucchini that’s in all the markets now.

***

Roberta Corradin is the author of Taste and Tradition: A Culinary Journey Through Northern and Central Italy. (Yup, I helped.)

Pazienza, a Sicilian Mantra

January 30, 2010

I hire a team of architects.

I fire a team of architects.

I leave my husband in New Mexico and take a job in Rome in order to be “close” to Sicily.

And, oh, what a job it is (why don’t I have any luck with Italian bosses?).

The whammies start to add up.

I hire a project manager (the handsomest of men) with a swagger, cool sunglasses, a Range Rover, a mop of curls, an Etna-like temper and—how best to put this?—a hands-off management style. Which I only learn later. His mantras are Non sono d’accordo and Non e possibile.

My Roman job swallows me whole, but on rare occasions I sneak down to Sicily to prod, cajole, wring my hands, and gnash my teeth. I prowl around the damp house—it’s twice as cold inside as outside—and wonder how it’ll ever be livable. Why in the world is the building permit taking so long?

Pazienza, Sicilians tell me. I’m not a patient person, but I’m beginning to suspect I’ll need some endurance to get the life I want to lead.

What is the life I want to lead, anyway?

A stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off life, a turn-back-the-clock-a-century life. A new life. A second life.

A friend forwards an email from a British guy who is temporarily living in Italy: “Anyone buying any kind of property in Italy needs counseling. I send my deepest sympathies to the lady in Sicily…”

New Roman friends respond with audible gasps, like in a comic book, when I tell them I’m renovating a house in Sicily. They call me coraggiosa and then laugh themselves silly.

My husband remains reluctant, though not opposed.

Lo and behold, 8 months after I buy the damp old house and after endless phone calls, faxes, and DHLs (my project manager avoids email), I am in possession of a building permit. The legitimacy of my existence is confirmed.

“It’s your Christmas present,” says my best friend on the island, an expat Sicilian-American upon whom I lean like a crutch.

Never mind that the dollar is at an all-time low. Or that our retirement nest egg is about to dissolve like salt in water. Or that I feel I’m flying off a cliff.

Let the work begin.

Settling in Sicily: A Long Decision, Part 3

Settling in Sicily: A Long Decision, Part 1

Addio Roma, Hello Rubber Shoes

Pazienza, a Sicilian Mantra

Shoot Sicily With Me

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