Anna's Week 6 (I think)

After having left midterms week for the (cough cough) relaxation of spring break, my momentum sort of got crushed (because I was thinking all the time of catching flights or trains instead of of my art). I was worried that when I got back in the studio I would have nothing to work on, but 10 minutes into the brainstorming, I stumbled upon a project that was interesting to me.

     Before I left, I was thinking about what it takes to say you 'know' somebody, or understand them. This is how it got started: one morning at breakfast I was talking to my host mom about what we like for breakfast, and we discovered that we both like il pane nero, brown bread; we prefer the cantuccio, or heel; and we prefer solo burro instead of butter *and* marmellata. (I've always loved the sweet taste that I get when I eat something with butter along with a glass of milk.)

     During midterms, I told her at dinner that I might stay at the studio until morning, so she had Leah bring me my breakfast for me. There was my bread wrapped up in tin foil, and an entire carton of milk along with it! "Even milk?" I asked Leah. "Maria insisted.

     It was such a crazy coincidence, I couldn't help but think about it. What a difference there was between the "Maria Sabino, mother, teacher, good cook" who was listed on my homestay form and the Maria who read my mind that morning. 

     So when I was came across the newspaper article titled, "Un' anziana* muore," I couldn't help but think of who that woman might be to the people who knew her. Was she someone who packed milk with her children's bread and butter for breakfast, the friend who always snorted when she laughed, the beloved grandma? How strange would it be for these people who know her like that to read about the 'anziana' who died?

     And at that point I realized that I did just lose my grandmother--I can imagine how that feels! And not only did I just lose her, but the situation was very strange, with me being here in Firenze. The way that I didn't believe it was like the way you don't believe something when you read it in the paper. It took me until I had to write a letter home to even cry about it-- I feel like there was something more real about deciding what to write home, what people were thinking there, that finally made me understand.

     So this week I've been experimenting with different ways to format and write a newspaper article to represent what it felt like to hear over the phone that my grandma was gone.

*This weekend I asked one of my new Italian orienteer friends about the word "anziana," and he said that it's more polite than saying "vecchia"--just to clarify for any anziani who might be reading.