Business cards, euro coins, an action figure, bottles of wine from Greece, a packet of dill seeds from Finland, a photo of a baby grinning, dog roses, notes, chocolates from Poland, dandelions, votive candles, rocks, a hand-embroidered tablecloth from Romania, a leather bracelet, long letters, wild fennel fronds, a rose cutting from a Hungarian grandmother’s garden, Christmas ornaments—I find these gifts in the Madonnina, shrine to the Madonna, at the entrance to Bramasole.
Years ago, there were only flowers, left by the old man who walked the mazy roads and stopped to meditate for a few minutes every day. One summer, he was gone, and by then my books had been published and translated, and a film had been made. The house became a magnet.
When walkers, buses, vans, bicycles, and cars began to arrive, I had to wonder what pulled them here. One note claimed, “We are Bramasolists.” A neighbor said we had more visitors than Santa Margherita, the revered thirteenth-century saint who lies in a glass coffin in the church of her name. Another said, “What does it feel like to live in a tourist attraction?” (At least she didn’t say “trap.”)
When mementos began to accumulate in our shrine, I thought of what anthropologists call “threshold gifts,” those that mark change. That may be passage from one state of mind, a way out, or a transition from one place to another. A child is born, a marriage takes place, a degree conferred—or you go on a quest. Moments of change inspire gifts. You might think constant visitors would be annoying, but instead, those who come and leave these tokens symbolize something that magnifies why I’ve stayed in Tuscany for more than thirty years.
I was not expecting to be the quasi-Italian I became. Even now, my family keeps expecting me to pack up and come back. But I’m staying. If anything, Ed is more rooted than I. “I’m happy,” he says often. “I’m happy to see this view every day.” “I’m happy because the days are unpredictable.” We’ve lived in Tuscany—and in airline seats—longer than anywhere else.
What the somewhat innocent abroad that I was would learn: Living in a beautiful landscape changes you. When simple, everyday life feels like a gift, you respond in surprising ways.
The gift exchange runs rampant through my days. Not just notes and rose cuttings from strangers, which I love, but the constant generosity and thoughtfulness among those who always live here.
A bag of fresh ricotta hanging on the gate, a bottle of new wine, a basket of Claudio’s eggs, a bucket full of zinnias, jars of tomatoes. “I thought of you when I saw these notepads.” Figs, melons, duck ragù. “Try my new oil.” More wine, always wine. The workers on our building project go home to their villages in the south and return with marvelous loaves of bread for us. (They scorn the unsalted Tuscan bread.) They grill at lunch and spread the table with sausages, steak, ribs, and veal chops. They organize dinners at restaurants for us and the whole crew. I’m the only woman with twenty guys.
In town, “Oh, Roberto has paid for your coffee.” Purchases of sweaters, jackets, stationery, jewelry, usually include a sconto, a nice discount. In your bag of vegetables, you’ll find a gift—parsley, basil, a stalk of celery and a carrot, odori, the basis of soffritto, the little flavors to sauté for pasta sauces.
These daily gifts, freely given with no expectation of return, go the distance in creating a close sense of community. The expats who move here pick up on the local customs quickly after arrival. Soon they’re receiving the bag of persimmons and the slab of pecorino and the single big porcino mushroom, presented with a big grin. Then the expats are arriving at dinners with jars of apricot preserves, pensieri, little thoughts, from their travels—scarves, soaps, candles, books. It’s catching. Electric. You pay it forward. The giving—it’s a transformative proposition because when you give, something opens inside you, too. For my part, these gifts give me a chance to feel at home in the world.
I signed stacks of papers in the notary office that day long ago when the house became mine, never thinking beyond a few summers into the future. If the notary had said, “Three decades from now, you’ll still own this house,” I would have looked at her with wonder or alarm. I thought I would return mainly to write, travel with Ed, and to restore the house and garden. My university job was demanding. My real life was elsewhere. This new life seemed almost extraterrestrial. Bramasole was to be a summer haven, a background to expanses of time for friends, books, love, and art.
Why stay? Seasons and years passed and still I never think of leaving. I love my third-floor study. Two desks, and books, books, books. My neighbors are family. Chiara was a teenager when we came; her six-year-old daughter now brings me baskets of foraged leaves, chestnuts, grasses, and sticks. Winter falls hard; the twilight starts at four, and the table is set for long dinners. Music plays in the kitchen and boiling pasta water steams the windows. We’ve built grape pergolas out where the view is widest. Will has a desk full of Italian homework sheets, models of Vespas and sailboats in the drawers. My daughter keeps a pink bathrobe and slippers in an armadio. But all that isn’t unique to this place.
Let’s just sit out on the wall with a glass of wine, joking and watching the blue moon rise out of the hills. Let’s think about this. Why stay?
From the first day, I should have realized: The house is not background. It lives a life on this hillside that affirms the sunrise, that placemarks the Etruscan wall, anchors the olive terraces, and oversees views of valleys and hills. We, on the other hand, are passing through.
Certainly, we’ve left markers—thank you very much: We have secured the structure at huge expense. This charmed little villa will stand ages hence. Was it waiting all along for the person who would care the most? The place made my books, and my books made the place. Or—did the house write back to its author? A “house of continuance,” Yeats wanted. This is one.
Forgive the personification, easy to fall into when a house simmers with life. Of course, the house does not write back. I’ll just say I stay because gifts accumulate. Gifts, those of the natural life of this hillside. And of others. Through letters and book signings and just meeting people in the piazza, my life expanded. I connected with people from New Haven to New Delhi. I became a confidant to strangers who often felt like friends I would have if I lived where they live. One wrote, “I knew, walking down that aisle, that I didn’t love him enough.” I read “I’m giving up law to study Italian cooking.” Many were concerned over my lack of traditional faith, sending religious books. Others left woven dishcloths, an embroidered tablecloth, a painting of the house.
All this complements what was already the way of living I fell into, easy as a canoe nudging into the stream.
From where did this constant exchange arise? Here, I’ll make a leap. From the arts. According to UNESCO, Italy owns 60 percent of the world’s most important art. A confounding fact, given that Italy is close to the size of Arizona. Some say half of that art is in Florence. But don’t forget the Fra Angelico Annunciation in Cortona, the Signorelli Judgment Day fresco cycle in Orvieto, and the thousands of other works in small places all over Italy. In Troia, residents have looked up at the duomo’s magnificent lacy stone rose window every day since 1039. In Monterchi, no one needs reminding that the majestic Madonna del Parto resides there because it was the home of Piero della Francesca’s mother. The Madonna, shown pregnant, still gives local women a place to pray, a natural tie to the sublime. I could go on for infinite pages. Art, a shower of gifts.
I first came to Italy for the art. I wanted to see all the paintings and sculptures I’d seen on slides in art history classes. I was not wrong. From the Uffizi in Florence to the smallest country chapels, I’ve thrived on the surprises of art. Living where art is everywhere and is taken as part of normal life pushes me to extrapolate on my foray into the joys and meaning of living in a gift culture. What if the fabulous generosity of Italian life evolves from the heritage of art? I experience the plethora of art as gifts. Grazie Bronzino, Pontormo, Lippi, Masaccio, grazie mille. Their immense talents were gifts to them, and the art they created are gifts showered onto us.
I used to teach my graduate creative writing students a book called The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde. We started the semester with this book because Hyde wrote about the meanings of gifts, how gifts work in art, in tribal cultures, and in folklore. Art is catching. There’s a simpatico circulation, and who knows where the concentric rings of an artistic gift end? Hyde says: “…a circulation of gifts nourishes those parts of our spirit that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, the group, the race, or the gods.”
What I value most in his book are the ideas I thought crucial to anyone setting out to be a writer, composer, dancer, painter, sculptor. The desire to make art is itself a gift you are given. He quotes D. H. Lawrence’s acknowledgment of this: “Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me.” To produce a book or cello concerto, aria, or portrait becomes a de facto gift to others, not only the gift of pleasures and enlightenment received but also the inspiration for other art.
Giving any gift, he teaches, “creates that empty place into which new energy may flow.” The recipient is awarded, and the one who gives is spiritually replenished. This works at the level of Leonardo da Vinci and the one who leaves a basket of figs. At age eleven, wandering the shelves of the Carnegie Library in Fitzgerald, I thought, This is the best thing you can be—a writer. Even a novice who feels the urge toward creativity already imagines the gift.
I have to think that the girls’ group from Warsaw who began singing their national anthem at the gate, and the entwined couple roaring up on the Moto Guzzi, and the artist sketching by the road are all pondering change, choice, taking a small chance, or a radical leap toward home. Where do you eat in Verona? How do you write a novel? Where do you start? As Dante’s The Divine Comedy begins, you reach impenetrable woods. Where do you go?
A Wednesday morning alone in the Galleria Borghese, and thinking for the first time of each sculpture and painting as a gift, today, just for me. How intimate the works become. Ghirlandaio’s Leda, his Lucretia. The often-reproduced Roman boy pulling a thorn from his foot. How can you refrain from running your hand over the pellucid marble Sleeping Hermaphroditus?
Perugino. Raffaello. Seemingly everyone who lifted a brush. I walk out into the dusty park like one in love. And how common this experience. To be soaked and stirred and revived. Whatever gods, or powers, or forces, the blessings of art were poured over Italy. We’re the lucky recipients. What will we, who are immersed in this culture, who live as if at home, give back?
Today, coffee from Torino. Books. A manuscript sent for comment. Emails—“I’m starting my own catering business.” “I was the TA in a Shakespeare class you took. Can I visit?” The motif of all: how to change; how to choose, yes, but bottom line: the spontaneous sharing. I made these potholders in rehab. I went because…
Only connect, E. M. Forster wrote. Make good choices, I whisper.