I leaned in and peered more closely at the lone photo on the rough wall, hastily mounted in a cheap plastic frame. The grainy black and white photo was of two women in front of a stone house. Before them, posing stiffly were three children, two with bows in their hair. One of the women was smiling with her hands on her hips…ready to go back to work or was she laughing at the photographer? The yard was packed dirt, but tidy, with farm tools leaning neatly against the house. I did not think it was Augusta’s house, but was one of the children Augusta? Or was she the flirt? Given the fact that, to me, many houses and people look the same in the 1960’s as they did at the turn of the century in Italy, I am often deceived by the age of photos.

Luciano and Giancarlo had already followed the contractor up the crooked front stairs of Augusta’s house to the rooms upstairs. I stood alone in what used to be the living room, before it being turned into her bedroom in her later years, and before her daughter took her away last summer. Now we were inspecting her empty home, contemplating buying it.

“Luciano, there are many possibilities for that house, the main one being that in this way, our family will own the entire building. We could fix it up and rent it…we could fix it up and live in it and rent our hous…”
“Serena, the house is a tearer-downer, not a fixer upper.”
“Ok, fine. But the land alone is incredible. I would go nuts with a garden.”
“We have to think it over. The contractor is coming next week.”

Giving a final glance at the faux tortoiseshell bed frame filling the small room, I followed the sounds of the men quietly talking. Negotiating the narrow crooked stairs, I slid my hand along the thick plaster wall for support. Anna Maria’s kitchen was on the other side of that wall. There didn’t seem to be a single right angle in the entire building. I was feeling slightly queasy as I joined G and L who were scrutinizing the fissures in the walls and the sagging ceilings. The contractor jumped up and down to demonstrate the floor was sound, but that seemed to be about the end of the good news. In fact Augusta’s husband Gino had been quite the pragmatist and, faced with a growing family, just kept slapping more rooms onto what had once been a single floor two-room house with an attached stable and a detached outhouse. With a little creative carpentry he had expanded it to include a bathroom and three bedrooms, none up to code I imagine. And none of it was aging well.

“Luciano, I think we should offer half of what they are asking.”
“Hmmm, really? Do you think they will go for that? And do you really want to take on that headache?”
“Look, the house is wrapped around your parent’s house. They will need tweezers to separate the two buildings. No one is going to want that hassle. And yes, I am prepared for the headache. Look at these drawings of my ideas for the space… “

In fact, Augusta’s children never acknowledged our offer. I suppose that was to be expected and I was prepared to wait them out. But one year later quite suddenly, while we were in California, a young family bought the house. It took a few weeks for this news to settle in. I had to turn the new reality over in my head for, as often happens, I had already visualized my garden with roses brimming over the fence and the beautiful garage for Topo (my car) constructed in the footprint of Augusta’s house. The small, but lovely apartment above the garage was already rented to a very quiet and wealthy lady who had no interest in gardening, but loved dogs and while she did not really want one of her own, was happy to take care of ours when we were away…Yeah, I had gone into some detail…in my head.

The new owner is a tall, slim man with unusually large hands. He is very focused on his house and arrived with his head down, prepared for work. In short time he had removed an interior wall, pulled up a tree, torn down a shed in the back yard and dug a deep sharply cut trench to finally bring gas into the house. Gino had refused such a service, preferring to periodically fill a huge tank buried in the garden. For months our new neighbor labored, toiling with his large hands and broad shoulders as his young daughter played in the garden and his wife planted raspberry bushes where the chickens used to scratch in the dust, keeping Augusta company. After six months of sweat, he came to a realization: It could not be done. The house was not restorable. It had to be torn down.

Within weeks there was scaffolding wrapped around the house and workmen with chisels began the delicate work of disentangling the two houses that had been joined from birth, like surgeons separating Siamese twins. Who gets the lung and where shall we divide the kidney? Anna Maria and Giancarlo, determined to remain unflustered, sat in their kitchen reading and sewing as if there were not a riotous pounding inches from their heads. The house next door was being removed and they did not flinch. Until of course, a hammer came through their kitchen wall, presumably with the workman still attached to it, and then things got really raucous. I went next door to see and found Anna Maria still sewing, albeit a little jumpy, but Giancarlo sat; arms crossed, closely watching a nervous worker in their kitchen, patching the wall. At this point Anna Maria and Giancarlo elected to leave every day for a road trip, preferring to be away in case the roof came down.

Two days later, with daylight showing between the houses and a hastily installed fence, a large tractor with shovel arm lumbered down our little street and took position in the front garden. That huge mechanical arm reached up against the grey sky and then, with delicate but powerful nudges, flicked at the stone walls of the now thoroughly blank, soulless building. I truly had thought I would feel a tug of sadness; those rooms had once been filled with life, children, and memories. But as the plaster and stucco of the upper floors turned into dust that filled the air, I felt only awe at the power of that arm and the expertise of the driver. With a deafening roar the roof came down, collapsing into the most resistant part of the house, the original stone house and stable. This too gave up, violently torn open to the sky for the first time in over a hundred years. I glanced over at Luciano. He must certainly be sad…he grew up with that house too, but his face was inscrutable as usual…I would check in later.
A light rain had started to fall making the scene all too depressing, so I went inside our house as the other went through its final throes. I stood for a moment in our dining room. It was quiet and a little dark in the pre-storm gloom. The silver coffee pot, a wedding gift from my mother, gleamed softly in the cupboard, the flowers on the table trembled slightly from the nearby destruction and I could hear the clock ticking. In the quiet I could feel our fully-alive house breathe, hum and draw me in protectively.

In Italian there is no word for home. While there are several words to express different kinds of love, the word “house” or casa is used for everything. In English a “home” is not a building; it is an emotion. In baseball you run home. Wherever you lay your hat is your home. Luciano is my home. Augusta’s house had become a house. And our new neighbor, standing in the middle of his suddenly blank slate with those big hands on his hips, could now plow forward, head down, prepared for work, building his home.

Meanwhile, perhaps Anna Maria and Giancarlo should invest in little hard hats.

It’s official. No turkey this year; at least not this weekend. Anna Maria and Giancarlo just cannot face all that food and Luciano’s godparents Assunta and Checco who are the traditional guests had not yet been contacted. I asked Luciano if he even talked to them.
“Well, I spoke some more with others who were invited. There was some discussion, some hesitation and doubts… and then I just ran out of energy. Besides I am having trouble with my phone.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I am unable to make calls and talk to people.”
“How are we going to fix this?”
“I dunno…but in any case, no Thanksgiving.”

And with that, the whole event disappeared from my horizon. Truth be told, it did so quite easily and I have now set my sites on Christmas. Thanksgiving just doesn’t exist in Italy and so why force it? Recently I saw an article on line about the “hard to find foods” when travelling abroad. Besides all the obvious ones like Moon Pies and Fat Tire Amber Ale, the writer included the classic most elusive trophy: the whole turkey.

Yawn. Not really, as we all know. And what is all the fuss?

After all Thanksgiving has become a bookend for the Christmas shopping season, even getting shouldered out of the way in favor of camping out in front of Walmart. With sadness I read of mobs rushing the doors, injuries and mad spending. Especially here, in the hills of the Veneto where the only Thanksgiving celebrated for miles around happened right downstairs in our dining room and which, I am sorry to say, only seemed to spark discourse among the cousins fighting for an invite to the only turkey in town. More fighting? What does it all mean?

Luciano and I went for a walk on Sunday morning. We visited all our dog friends in their yards, admired the yellows and oranges of this seemingly endless fall and laughed again at the strange construction decision of a Mareno bus stop. As we passed the Soffratta church, Mass was just ending and I watched as a throng of people spilled through the door, led by the priest who I did not recognize.
“Who is that?” I asked. The identity of the priest here is often a hot topic. But I was immediately distracted by what the priest was doing. Standing before a tractor-big, red, dirt-encrusted- that stood by the church door, he raised his arms “Wait, what is he doing?” I asked.
“He is blessing the tractor. It is Thanksgiving, Serena.”

Before the church, set up on folding tables was a collection of samples of the Mareno harvest: pomegranates, persimmons, pumpkins and chestnuts, Bottles of grappa and Malbeck lay against freshly killed pheasants and ducks and a heap of apples and hazelnuts.
“See Serena? That’s it.”
On that table, set up in the gravel in front of the church where we were married, were the symbols of what was really important. But not just on the table. Kids chased each other around the tractor and parents mingled in the November sun. Once again Italy brings it home. And not a cash register or turkey in sight. There must be these kinds of scenes going on in the US, but here it is the ways things are…not the way it used to be or a charming human interest story for the end of the news broadcast.

I realize in fact that I have a lot to be thankful for without having a dinner to celebrate it. I am thankful that the owners of the scruffy field across the street decided to put in a crop of winter wheat. A massive tractor arrived one morning, and passing back and forth across the field without stopping, and plowed the entire thing in one day in a relentless agricultural marathon. The earth, which for eight years had been untouched but for the occasional flock of sheep and our tossed apple cores, was pulled open to the sky, steaming in the early morning. Two days later it was already sown with seed and now it is covered with rows of delicate green, punctuated by mole hills.

I am grateful that my car Topo starts and goes; a streak of peppy blue across the farmland as I motor to Treviso. Ok, sometimes she is capricious as she was on Monday when I put the key in the ignition and got nothing but a whirrrr and a few clicks. It did not make sense, but I had a class to teach so I left her parked downtown and set off, prepared to deal with this later. As I said to Carlo my student, I did not really have to be anywhere for another four hours. He commented that I could be in Rome in another four hours and offered to call the mechanic.
“No, I am going to try again after the lesson. Maybe she will start after she has a rest.”
“Serena, your car is not a cow.”
“This is true, but first I want to check.”
Sure enough after an hour and a half to think about things, she started right up. After I let his office know and without any more discussion, Topo and I headed home. I got a text from Carlo: “I was informed that your car is a cow. Good for you!”

I am thankful that the Italian government is such that one madcap leader can walk out the door and go home to dinner, and just like that there is a new Prime Minister. No campaigning, no chad checking, no drawn out discussion. We woke up this morning to a leader who is so sedate, intelligent and proper he may be run out of town for his lack of flamboyance.

I am grateful for the fact that the tractor which passed just our front door did not drop any of its suspiciously steaming load on the street.

I am grateful for Luciano who greets me at the door each evening with an embrace that melts away the stress of the day and notices that I sometimes touch him lightly in the night to be sure he is really there.

I am grateful for Anna Maria and Giancarlo. Today she carefully placed the salt and pepper on the table and hid the cheese spoon under a napkin so that we could not guess what she had prepared for lunch until she burst through the door carrying the plates of lasagna. She said she didn’t like to be predictable and so had thought up this clever ruse. I had no idea this was weighing on her. When I told her that now I knew she was trying to hoodwink us, I would need to be extra cunning in the future. She said, “I will change it next time.” Giancarlo grinned from his chair. What fun.

And honestly, secretly, I am thankful that I don’t have to cook a Thanksgiving dinner. I will roast the rich orange-red pumpkin, juice the pomegranates that our neighbors brought us from their trees and pour myself a glass of wine that I picked up on my bicycle from the winery down the street….and say thank you to Italy for once again putting things into perspective.

Years ago, in a moment of excessive propriety, I explained to Anna Maria that there was a more delicate way to announce one’s need to er, fare caca. Americans use euphemisms such as “I need to powder my nose” or “I have to read” I said. The last one I made up, but she liked that the most and it has stuck. Perhaps for its comedic potential;

“Yesterday I was reading an interesting article…”

“Serena, were you reading or reading?”

Or

“Look Serena, I think that sculpture is of a woman reading…but not reading.”

~~~

The sheep are on the move. As Luciano tells me, they have to get to the mountains before the 25th of April or they are stuck here in the lowlands like all the rest of us. For some reason, they walk up there. Loading sheep into a truck and driving up the mountain would take an afternoon. Yet, they walk, meandering their way across miles of fields, gardens and unwatched roads dodging traffic and angry homeowners for weeks to finally arrive in the promise land of cool breezes and green grass.

I have learned however, that there is a reason for the meandering route up to the hills. These flocks are one big maternity ward. Recently I looked up from my computer…bells, barking, a few shouts. Sheep were arriving! I think Giancarlo had made it painfully clear that no sheep could set hoof on our street with their pooping destructive ways, but our campo, the field across the road, was another matter. The group swelled and undulated across the scruffy grass and ruts left by the recent roadwork project. The sheep found nourishment there somehow and called to each other in plaintive oddly human sounding bleats. The serious sheepdogs floated across the bitter grass to gather them up and bounce the group off the back fence, for fun it seemed.

I noticed however that there were many babies, trotting on tip toe, some with umbilical cords still dangling, after nonchalant mothers. Their coats were white compared to the matted mud-crusted coats of the adults. Stoic donkeys punctuated the herd, standing quietly as the dogs trotted around them. After a few hours of this the scruffy shepherds pulled out a roll of netting and started to set up a fence around the enormous herd.

“They are staying a while it seems.”

“Yeah, I am giving them until tomorrow and I am calling the police.”

“Come on, they are not on our street and they seem to be keeping them away from the rosemary and Giancarlo’s grapes”.

Indeed, Giancarlo had given one of the shepherds a bottle of wine as they passed through town last year. He stomped out across the field with a bottle of cabernet franc and we have not seen them on our street since. I am not even sure if it is the same group of shepherds bedding down across the way, but this is how it works.

“Yeah, whatever.”

A few hours later I noticed more babies.

“I think babies are being born, Ciano.”

“That could explain a few things, but I am still calling the cops.”

Those sheep stayed all night and at dawn, stirred, and with bells, bleating, barking, and moved on. The net fence disappeared into a banged up truck and the sheep flowed like water before the snapping teeth of the dogs. The herd was a little bit bigger with the newborns that arrived during the night stuffed into pouches slung over the backs of the bored donkeys as the new mothers shuffled a little faster to keep up.

A week later a large circle of dead grass matted down with an oversupply of newly installed manure still remains. It looks as if a UFO landed, leaving a crop circle in our campo, which honestly makes our shabby field more interesting. And now I understand that these herds linger because babies are being born and this should happen in an open field instead of in a truck on the highway…at least in my idealistic frame of mind..

The last time those sheep appeared actually on our street in fact I was not here. Having seen it before I was happy to have been gone and when I got home the street was clean, pristine even. I could only imagine Giancarlo’s rage as he swept up the detritus. Anna Maria filled me in.

“Serena, there were thousands of them. What a disaster, donkeys, dogs, everything. Even a pony. I am surprised the grapes are still standing. What a mess; and you know Serena, those sheep read a lot!”

~~~

Now they are moving crap from one end of Mareno to the other. Literally. Lumbering tractors chug down our little street pulling massive trailers filled to the brim with shit. As I sit here in the library I can see the top of the pile go by the second story window a few seconds after I smell it. I asked Anna Maria where it comes from…well, I knew where it came from, but just exactly what was the plan? Why this conveyance of cow pie from point A to point B?
“There are a bunch of bulls down at the far end the street and so they are moving it.”

I wanted to teach her, “That’s bullshit!” I think she could handle it. After all, she is the one who invented the word “crash”, a combination of crap and trash. Maybe later. She was keeping an eye on Giancarlo, who was keeping an eye on the tractors. And the tractor drivers all had a wary eye out for Giancarlo who, armed with a broom and a watering can, waves his arms and yells at the drivers who go too fast. Every bounce from those crash-encrusted wheels catapults a bit of merda onto the street and Giancarlo is on it, angrily scraping and rinsing away every trace. They seemed to have learned to slow down in from of our house…I can hear the shifting of gears as they approach the corner.

Now, I want to know why all this work? Why can’t they just move the producers to the wherever all this shit is going and eliminate the middle man? I must ask at lunch tomorrow. This is exactly the kind of question Anna Maria likes to field: previously unconsidered, very practical, a bit scatological and just a little ridiculous.