Once while walking down a narrow street in Florence, hemmed in by the ubiquitous 5 and 6 story buildings, I glanced down a dusky cross street and there highlighted by a dim light a beautifully dressed—as they can only be in Florence—young woman stood engrossed in a conversation on her phone.
It was a fleeting moment but in that moment I sensed a complex interaction being played out. I sensed drama. Back then cell phones were still a novelty in Chicago. We had neither the habit nor the connectivity for such a scene. I thought how do the Italians do it; how do they live with such intensity.
Of course, I grew up in an Italian household. My father’s family came from a small town in central Italy called Collodi; a hamlet that climbs up a crevice carved in a steep hill by a fast flowing river. And even though he had a nervous stomach he was calm and gregarious.
My mother’s clan was from another small town, Aragona, which overlooks the Mediterranean from its southern roost in Sicily. She was the antonym of my father. Suspicious, superstitious and quick to anger, she was a loner who dealt with the world on her terms. She brought a dramatic flair to our household. I loved my mother, but I learned early to be wary around her. One false step—and I made many—and there would be hell to pay.
She had what I like to call situational memory. A slight, whether real or perceived, would be remembered for decades. Things gone wrong did not have to be acted on quickly. They could be left to ripen. As a rich red Brunello di Montalcino wine becomes better with age, the wrong became more complex, something to cherish. I cannot tell you how many times I was blindsided by a long forgotten misstep. Once confronted, I would respond with bafflement. This only added fuel to the fire.
How could I have been so callous to forget, or worse yet not even realized the issue existed? For mom there was a balance to the universe. If it tilted one way or the other it was unbearable and needed to be righted. I know now that not every wrong can be addressed. Time and energy run out, people die, circumstances change. I think this is why, like the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s, battles become generational. If grand parents and parents fail to reek vengeance then it falls to the next generation.
This is a long introduction to my way of thinking. After a tumultuous teenager-hood I determined to keep my drama quotient to a minimum. I have had a measure of success in this, though on occasion when in the middle of one of the rowdy Great Lakes I wonder if I need to rethink my approach to recreation.
And now that I think of it, my career in medicine has lead to many dramatic moments. In the last few years I have minimize my exposure to stress by extricating myself from hospital work. The office has just enough pizazz to keep things interesting. But I am afraid that even this is becoming less tolerable.
I often think of the young woman I glanced in the shadows of that ancient city and wonder who she was talking to. I believe if I found out I would be disappointed, so I am glad not to know. It is a novel I will never finish.
For all my calm and collectiveness, deep down I know my mother was onto something. It is the spark of life: indefinable and unknowable. It is the sound of one hand clapping or of a tree falling in an empty wood. It is the ripple in the ancient pond that Basho’s frog made, it is drama!
January 2013
