As I continue on with my late-summer East Coast travels – which will soon turn into my early-fall Italy travels – I’m barreling on with my vlog production, hoping to bring at least one of these to you per week. This particular vlog is near and dear to my heart: it documents a special weekend trip to a family mountain home in the Catskills that has been an annual occasion for more than ten years. But decades before this group made the tradition, it was the summer home of my friend’s great-grandparents, who were the matriarch and patriarch of a great family and legends in their own right.
I felt fortunate to be included this year with this group of friends, many who have known each other since childhood. Some of them see each other regularly throughout the year, and some become reacquainted just once a year here in Callicoon. I came to get to know them through a close friend from graduate school and his husband at the annual get-together this past Labor Day, and I felt both totally included and like an observer all at once. Which makes for better vlogging, in the end. Hope you enjoy our trip through Labor Day in the Catskills.
This is my summer of re-love. I have returned to the United States for a mere two months, as I have done each summer since I relocated to Bologna, Italy three years ago. And I have been gifted a unique opportunity to be a tourist in my own country in the places that I once took for granted – places that I visited often for my whole life, and places that I lived. New York, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and Southern California to be exact.
My father always told me that if I wanted to understand my relationship with a place I lived or a place I loved, I need to leave that place for some time before I can really have a good perspective on that place. Boy, was he right. Every year that I have returned to America I have had a new perspective on it. But this summer is different. This summer is the summer that I have finally understood and accepted these places into my heart and how my connection to these places is forever embedded into my hard-wiring. And I am returning and truly appreciating everything, even the bad.
My first stop since arriving in America this summer is New York. My father’s side of the family immigrated to New York in the early 1900’s and lived in Brooklyn. My godmother and godfather moved out of the city decades ago to a tiny city along the Hudson River called Ossining.
The snapshot above is my favorite on my trip this far. Taken on the bank of the Hudson river, I am at left with my godmother Suzanne on the right, who is a second mother to me. In the picture below, thirty-three years ago, my godmother is holding me in almost the exact same spot where we are standing above on the bank of the Hudson River.
Me and my godmother enjoying the Hudson sunset in 1980.
To think of everything that has happened in the 33 years since this picture was taken is pretty overwhelming. But this beautiful place is the same as it has always been, to me at least. Just an hour’s train ride from Grand Central Terminal, this other world of rolling hills and majestic lake views is sometimes easier to get to than Brooklyn. I realize I am lucky to have this beautifulness in my life, a place my dad has gone back to for decades, and a place my godmother still calls home. But I think we all have these beautiful places in our memories and in our hearts that are part of what makes us who we are. Sometimes it just takes some time to re-love them again.
Italy has taught me how to love my home again. After thirty years in Southern California, and many summers and holidays in New York, I felt like I didn’t know how to have fun in my own country anymore. Nothing seemed new and exciting. I came to Italy in search of that warm fuzzy feeling again, and I found it. But of course, as Murphy’s Law would have it, now that I am in Italy I miss the United States terribly. A complex combination of “the grass is always greener,” legitimate cravings for food, friends, and family (not necessarily in that order), and a renewed thirst for traveling, my longing to explore America runs deep these days.
I share this new-found enthusiasm with the people who fill my life here in Italy. From the bus to my English classes to my roommates and my favorite café, my days are spent meeting countless curious Italians, trying desperately to understand why I would leave such a beautiful place as San Diego to come to Bologna. Their opinions of America are those rose-colored glasses I needed to begin a new love affair with America. Stories of their impressions of and adventures in the United States always whet my appetite (again) for a trip home.
One of my favorite stories about Italians adventuring in America has come from one of my best English students, a very established Bolognese marketing professional, who knows more about American politics than I do. He wrote this story about his first trip to the United States, when he went alone several decades ago before he was even twenty years old. The first time he read it to me, I died laughing. Hope you enjoy it nearly as much as I did.
My impressions about my journey in the United States.
By Paolo, October 2012
I was in Mexico at the end of February during a journey that I had begun two months before, and as you are probably aware, it was warm over there. Suddenly I decided to go to New York, but in New York it was winter. I left Bologna, Italy only with summer clothes because I had planned to go to the USA on another trip late in spring. Well just a few days later I left Mexico and I touched down at J.F. Kennedy airport when I was under twenty years-old, without knowing English, without a hotel reservation and during the winter dressed in summer clothes. It didn’t seem too bad!
I remember that at the gate of the airport I wore an alpaca overcoat that I had bought in Peru… but only as a present for a friend of mine. But my friend was a skinny girl! So imagine, I arrived at customs, dressed like a hippy, with long hair and wearing this weird overcoat, Jimi Hendrix style. They frisked me!
I found a taxi who drove me to Manhattan. I got out of the taxi, right in front of a hotel. I took my suitcases which were very heavy because I had bought some stone objects, and I went into the hotel. It was fully booked! I found myself in the middle of a street not knowing exactly where I was, without an idea of where I could go. In addition it was getting dark and mean characters were coming towards me. I was getting scared about the situation. I tried three or four other hotels and eventually I found a room. The receptionist understood my position and smiled at me. I went in the room and I had a warm bath. After my bath I stopped me in front of a window and I looked at the roofs covered by the snow and …I was in Manhattan!
My English students in Italy often ask me to explain the difference between “home” and “house.” I usually stumble through my answer. The best I have ever managed to muster up is that a house is a building, whereas a home is your place to be.
This is by no means a textbook definition, and I could definitely do with some good input in a major way. How do you define a home?
Our subway stop.
I am really interested to know. As I rambled about in a previous blog entry, my travels through the United States this summer have uncovered the depth of my ongoing quest to answer this very question on a personal level – what is my home?
Predictably, the answer hasn’t come easily. Welcome complications have arisen from recent life adventures that sent me from my long-time home in San Diego, CA to a new beginning in Pittsburgh, PA, followed by Bologna, Italy, where I am now. I’ve spent this August on a break from work gallivanting around the eastern United States with old friends, family, and coworkers. My most recent stop was Park Slope, Brooklyn, a sort of homecoming after being away for many years. My visit incubated a little voice that has been nagging me, and has become annoyingly loud over the last few days. Park Slope, always a “taken for granted” second home for me, might actually be home.
Park Slope, Brooklyn is, at face value, a lively, diverse, and wealthy community in Brooklyn, NY. Sporting every imaginable cuisine within a ten minute walk, ornate churches, overpriced boutiques (is that redundant?), and the most diverse families I’ve seen in the US, some scoff at the sky-high real estate and the gentrification of the area. But don’t judge a book by its cover. This community has an identity that most certainly is more than meets the eye. The history and complexity of Park Slope could fill a thesis or two, and there are tons of people that can explain it better than I.
Ironically, Park Slope was my first home in the US after my family moved me from my birthplace in Lomé, Togo across the ocean to my father’s childhood home, a beautiful brownstone (although not made of brownstone), in the heart of the Slope on 4th street and 7th avenue.
My grandma. 🙂
It is this very history, and the history of families like mine in the neighborhood, that has made this community feel like home. As even with the Starbucks and the boutiques that have crept into 7th avenue over the years, the community’s rich past is still evident in staples like Pino’s Pizzeria,
mentioned in an earlier post as the best pizza I have eaten outside Italy. While easy to overlook, this food culture is a steadfast part of the immigrant population of the area.
My family’s home of 50 years in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I was lucky enough to be born into US citizenship, but I am fiercely proud to share something in common with the thousands of immigrants of every imaginable origin whose parallel paths finally crossed when they found their home in this community, binding cultures that rarely overlapped outside of the US. Like many new immigrants, my great grandparents on my dad’s side, from Ireland, settled in Brooklyn. My grandparents moved my dad and my uncle to 4th street after purchasing their brownstone in 1955, which stayed in our family nearly fifty years. At that time the neighborhood was affordable – my grandpa sold subway tokens and taught my dad the ins and outs of riding the subway as if he were one of the architects of the subways, details that my dad has tried to pass on to me, but now seem insignificant as this once coveted information has been replaced by your latest iPhone app.
4th street and 7th avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
It is hard to separate my dad from his roots in Park Slope, crossing 4th street every night to have his second dinner at his best friend Michael’s house, who was a second generation Italian American and the oldest of seven brothers. He later became my godfather. And although my dad has lived in California for much of his adult life, every time he says “faarest” instead of “forest,” I am reminded of stories of his days playing ball on 4th street with Michael and the other guys that are still his best friends.
My dad and his buddies, a long time ago. 🙂
Park Slope still feels like home because of its magical, enduring ability to remain constant in its dynamic identity where people from other places, and people who don’t know where their homes are, find their homes here.
This is a place filled with people searching for – or finding – a home. People like my fabu friend, Steph, proudly representing a new generation in Park Slope, after making the big move from DC to start her new job at the NYC Department of Education last week.
Lunch with Steph.
And just last night I crashed a wedding rehearsal dinner on the roof of a new apartment complex in Park Slope, recently purchased by a fabulous lesbian couple that are friends of my childhood neighbor.
View from the rooftop.
All at once it feels surreal and perfectly normal to be surrounded by these people – the new pioneers in Park Slope, whose grandchildren may one day be writing a blog entry on this very topic.
For me, no matter how many deluxe baby carriages, Starbucks, and purebred dogs currently fill the streets of Park Slope, the democracy of its roots are unmistakable.
The people who made this history and the people who are only now discovering the Slope are crossing paths, just as the immigrants of my dad’s generation dad, to add to its identity and make this place incredible.
And maybe now I can do justice explaining the Slope to my english students the next time they ask me the difference between “house” and “home.” Not a house, but a home – this home, this place, is Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I’ve put together some of my favorite shots from my last trip to Park Slope, as most of our pics are on film and are buried in closets. One of these days, I will dig them out. I did include a few old pics of Park Slope taken my dad and other family members.
Today I experienced that moment – that unmistakable moment – when my sunny carefree Sunday suddenly got kicked up a notch. The sky overloaded with giant, moving grey clouds, the wind began to kick my hair around, and that hot, sticky world that normally consumes me the second I leave home or work suddenly went away and what came instead was a chill and an unmistakable sense of foreboding.
But somehow, I didn’t mind. Just like all the other people at the Boat House restaurant in Ossining, NY, didn’t mind. Why not? What is so magical about a summer storm? The unexpectedness of the experience? The visual drama? The weather?
We could barely see through the raindrops on the window to the storm just on the other side.
In my former corner of the world in the south of California, summer storms are nearly non-existent. So my fond memories of these experiences all come from my summers spent in New York City. To me, summer rain IS New York City. The drama, the smell, and the temporary urgency fleetingly catapult me back in time fifteen years to walking to acting class on the lower west side of Manhattan in July and racing for cover under the nearest overhang, only to discover four construction workers doing the exact same thing who subsequently became my new best friends.
A study in contrasts, a summer storm is all at once overbearingly dramatic, yet not in the slightest bit threatening. The torrential wind and downpour is dramatic but warm, and somehow, not dangerous. There is a universal understanding that this storm will be over soon, and life will go on as before. In fact, life will even be a little more bearable with that slight breeze in the air, a cleaner city, and humidity washed away with the storm.
My aunt, Suzanne DeChillo, snapped this photo of me taking pictures just after the storm.
Today I experienced the magic of the summer storm from a perfect vantage point – front row seats at the picture window facing the Croton Bay at the Boat House restaurant in Ossining, NY. Guests sitting just outside the window on the patio ran inside for cover in a fit of temporary hysteria – hair flying, makeup running, food drenched. But my family and I sat inside, dry and entertained, and relished the beauty of the moment. These moments that I cherish, that I rarely experienced in my life in the west.
The ocean is deceptively calm.
These photos are of the end and the aftermath of the storm. And what a reward it was to discover the bay like this. Just a short train ride from Grand Central Station, this place instead feels worlds apart from the bustle of the city. The perfect place to relish a summer storm.
