Who we are
We are a long-married couple living in a restructured farmhouse equidistant from the Mediterranean Sea and the city of Torino. The Maritime Alps wrap around to our south and west and the sea is 60 km to our east, so we have mountain views and can easily go to lunch at the sea and be home for supper. We are no longer young and mostly retired, born in the United States and residents of Italy since 2012.
We are romantics, drawn to older homes and natural landscapes, medieval towns and imperial cities, candlelight, firelight, starlight. We first came to Italy in 1983, young and in love, and we fell hard for just about everything—the outdoor markets, majestic piazzas and humble churches, beauties great and small around every corner. It was all so different from our suburban childhoods, from our adult lives in New York City. The Old World awakened something in us, we recognized ourselves in this foreign country, felt comfortable and welcomed and at ease even when we took the wrong bus or couldn’t speak more than a few words of the language.
We’ve lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn; in a suburb of Columbus, OH and in Washington DC; also small towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio. It has been our privilege to travel, most often for work, to some of the most exotic and fascinating places on Earth. Now we choose to live in the small city of Mondovì. We are immigrants, holders of elective residence visas and of permessi di soggiorno (permits to stay), which we renew bi-annually, and Italian identity cards. Presently we are working toward Italian citizenship, studying to improve our language skills. Classes are practically free, one of the ways Italy integrates legal immigrants quickly and smoothly.
We are active participants in the community and local culture, shopping the mercato contadino (farmers’ market) for seasonal food grown and produced nearby and Mondovì’s commercial district for other necessities. We like joining seasonal traditions like Carnevale, two weeks of parades and revelry that precede the sober season of Lent, and Tutti i Santi (All Saints’ Day) when Italians visit and care for the tombs of their forebears. In the Jewish portion of Mondovì cemetery we discovered the neglected tomb of a once-prominent member of the local community; we’ve adopted him as an honorary ancestor and care for his tomb every year. This gives us a sense of synchrony with our neighbors and friends and connects us to local history and the Jewish community of Mondovì, now defunct. Recently we are watching more Italian TV, which is good for language skills and cultural integration.
We are home. When we began the project of turning an unimproved, long-empty farmhouse into a home we didn’t understand the scope of the commitment we were making. We thought we’d renovate, enjoy expat life for 15 -20 years and then return to USA, end our days closer to family. Now we can’t imagine living anywhere else. Our life is rich yet simple; by turns fascinating and unremarkable; challenging and uncomplicated; exciting and tranquil. We can never be Italian, even should we become citizens, but we’re not exactly American anymore, either. We’ve gained a sense of belonging in this place, even though its long history, folklore, its traditions, religious and secular, can never be our own. Most of all we’re grateful every day for the culture of civility and respect, kindness and generosity that we find here.
