the bells
a love letter to my little corner of italy
(and Martina)
Similar to everywhere else in Italy, the little comune we call home is built around a centrally located la chiesa (eng: church). Nestled in the hills that wind up from the nearby larger cities on two-lane roads (that by American standards are about one car length wide), our church is small and humble. A memorial in front of her remembers the men from our town who fought in the first and second World Wars. A park is located behind her where we take our daughter to play and chase after the local kids’ soccer ball.
“You didn’t need a clock to tell time in Viareggio; you lived by the bells and the baker.” (Adriana Trigiani, The Good Left Undone).
Also just like every other church, she rings for us. Seven days a week, starting at sunrise until long after sunset. Once for every hour at the top of the hour. Once at the half hour. Chimes at 8:15am every Sunday to celebrate the start of a new service. Figaro echoes off the elevations every Thursday afternoon at half past four. Holidays and holy days, and not just the major ones, have a special song all their own.
Upon first living here they wake you up at 6:30am. It’s jarring and you can’t help but notice them all day long. It was unusual at first, but now they blend into our day. Each time they ring our daughter stops whatever she is doing, smiles, “Bong! Bing bong!” she’ll say. After a lifetime of living in places and cities where churches are so taboo and so exclusive, her song has now melted into the seams of my soul so deep I can’t imagine living without the bells ever again.
Behind the church is a walking path that ends at the cimitero (eng: cemetery), where most headstones are clustered in large groups sharing the same last names. Families who have called this little corner of Italy home for generations. It’s on this path that I’ve taken my daughter on our first walks of her life, had her first picnics with her mom and dad. It’s where we’ve had our first encounters with the local nuns in their white habits all piled into a way-too-small-for-four-people Fiat. It’s where my c-section scar healed with each step. It’s where I’ve shed so many tears holding my daughter tightly in my arms, walking through our neighbor’s vineyard, wishing this beautiful place could be strong enough to heal the vicious depression that postpartum left me with. And it did over time. It has.
I didn’t grow up going to church. My parents were both brought up in very Episcopalian and strict Catholic households, with my dad attending Catholic school (in the 1950s… if you know what I mean). They raised my brother and I under the Golden Rule and a lot of respect for nature, the outdoors. I’m pretty sure one of us was baptized in a waterfall near Asheville, NC on our way to visit my mom’s family because my dad’s mom, Mary, was convinced we’d end up in Hell otherwise.
So moving to a country so devout, so holy, as Italy has been an eye-opening experience. The Catholic church is everywhere here, Mary is everywhere. Jesus on the cross is marked along the roads, highways. You’ll find him in the middle of a hike deep in the woods. You’ll find her in the lock screen of man’s iPhone sitting next to you at lunch. And just when you feel like you’re too far out of reach, under the shadow away from it all, the clock will turn and the bells will chime and remind you where to look. Something about this has become such a comfort for me here, so far away from my own home country which seems to be in such turmoil in recent years. And while I was in turmoil as a new mom, redefining my own core. There is a center here, and you feel it in the structure around which every town is built.
“Dono di Dio! Bambina! Amore! Dono di Dio!”
Along that same walking path behind the church, you’ll often find my favorite neighbor Martina.
Martina, somewhere around her mid-80s, has lived here her whole life. In the summer you’ll see her in a white plastic lawn chair sitting out front of her pink apartment watching the peloton of cyclists zoom by. That first summer after Rylee Lou was born, I started taking the walk to the church once I was healed enough (I’m not kidding about how steep the hills are here). Martina, despite knowing I was American and could barely speak Italian, couldn’t help but send my baby so much love. “Dono di Dio! Bambina! Amore! Dono di Dio!”
We see her often, no matter the time of year, she takes her passeggiata each day. I love her with all of my heart. She speaks no English and my Italian is cosi cosi at best, but we can hold a full conversation each time we see each other through nothing but smiles and hand gestures. Everyone knows her here, she’s another central structure in the middle of the twists and turns of the road that connects us between the cities to the north and south.
Just like the bells, a constant in our little corner of Italy.
Ciao ciaociaociao.
Martina sharing a snack with my daughter on a recent walk with her Nonna