July Newsletter

The Italian Journey of a Renaissance Woman

Rimini, Spiaggia del Grand Hotel, July 2024

Hi everyone,

I hope you are having a good summer!

When I left Los Angeles, on June 26th, headed to Italy, I was afraid of this journey and didn’t know why; where was the fear rooted? Why did it keep coming back, every summer, when the time to visit my home country came?

July happened fast, hot and intense, and with two weeks left in Italy, I know more about that fear.

July started with a week-long visit from my brother, who lives in Germany. July also started with witnessing some of the beauty of Italy that I miss: food, slow, simple life with less focus on success, more on the savoring of living. As a family, we went to the beautiful seaside town of Savona, to visit Bagni Savona, the beach club my mom used to go to, as a young girl. We also visited Milano, and spent time in my hometown until July 10th, when Ben, Catherine and I travelled to Rimini for our traditional week by the sea.

The five-hour drive from Piemonte to the Romagna riviera — the central eastern coast of the country, where Rimini is — required a stop for lunch. We couldn’t wait to have a meal at Autogrill, the most famous Italian highway rest stop, offering gourmet foods, perfect espressos, regional delicacies, and that inspired the Cappuccino flavor of The Italian Cookie cookie mixes.

Look at this food!

I said to Ben.

He sat across the table from me, and had chosen salmon, roasted potatoes and rice. My chicken tagliata was juicy, perfectly grilled, and healthy, served with a simple salad of fresh arugula and ripe cherry tomatoes. Catherine had finished her pasta with fresh tomato sauce before I had even gotten to the salad.

The menu may not sound like much, but remember we are taking about a highway rest stop!

I keep finding things I could come back to Italy for, but then I also see all that I have in Los Angeles, that you and Catherine have, and that we couldn’t possibly get here,

I said.

I can’t choose.

This conversation, that took place at the Stradella Autogrill, not far from the city of Pavia, is what sparked the theme of this month’s newsletter, and that has permeated almost the entirety of my Italian vacation: deceiving sense of having to make choice, and fear of making the wrong one.

I started asking myself.

I have been working very hard on removing societal labels from the construction of my sense of identity, and making choices to fit into a specific box, especially when we are not asked or required to, is as limiting as the act of labelling ourselves.

Aosta Valley, London, Aosta Valley, a scene in my hometown (don't worry, wine isn't mine)

Back in September of last year, my friend Giammario (who lives between Los Angeles and Rimini) came over for coffee, one afternoon. I remember asking about his background, how he had gotten into food and wine, and where his impressive historical knowledge came from.

As he talked about his life, he mentioned the concept of Renaissance man, from the Renaissance ideal that, expressed in the words of architect, writer, humanist and mathematician Leon Battista Alberti: “a man can do all things, if he will.” A Renaissance man was a cultured one who mastered a wide range of skills, passions, jobs, twists of life, areas of expertise.

Giammario is a modern example of Renaissance man, and I remember finding that very inspiring.

September went by fast, and winter brought a whole different kind of journey, for my family; so in the midsts of hardship, I quickly forgot the Renaissance ideal and went on to inadvertently jumping into yet another box I thought would help others define who I was, and where I stood in society.

But it’s the end of July, and things have changed.

On our second day at the beach, I found myself peacefully alone in the water, facing the horizon; I looked at the waves, and I looked for words that could describe what I felt in that moment. But words didn’t come. What came instead, was the realization that while I looked for words, while I tried to label the way I felt, I was not looking at the waves.

Waves were gorgeous, on that second day at the beach.

When I got out of the water, I laid down on my chaise longue, closed my eyes, and listened to the people around me talking about their summer, work, boyfriend, psychiatrist, gelato, dinner plans, sick parents, new bathing suits.

It was quite entertaining, and it made me think of how we all feel and believe our experiences are the true north, that what we know as right is right: what we eat and when, the amount of sun we expose ourselves to, how early we put our kids to bed, which fitness practice is the best, where we go after we die.

How many stories can be right at the same time?

How many realities can coexist as true? How many minutes of sun exposures are healthy before they are not? Am I right? Is the woman next to me right? Or the righteous one is the man two umbrellas ahead of ours, number 64? Does my hometown have a negative energy? Do I have to get caught into the narrative in my head and judge?

Are we all right, or none of us is?

Can I just allow the possibility that none of us has to be?

With Cei and her beautiful daughter Georgie, Aperitif for Catherine at my parents's house, the mountains in the Aosta Valley, the London sky

On July 20th, at 6:00 am, as the sun rose above the Italian Alps, I flew over Torino, on my way to London, via Amsterdam. As I looked over Catherine’s shoulder, to my right, I recognized a familiar sense of guilt-stained melancholy for being about to leave, yet again, where I am from, where my roots will always be, leave my aging parents, and the cemetery where my grandparents are buried.

Since I left Italy, 14 years ago, I incessantly sought a definite living choice: Italian or American, as if by making such choice I would find an unquestionable and permanent identity.

I am not sure why I have mentioned the Amsterdam layover, but I think it’s because the idea of pause, of a space between the origin and the destination, made me realize that in-betweens are okay.

They are more than okay; they make us who we are.

What makes me who I am isn’t where I live. What makes me who I am isn’t where I was born. My idea of what I think is right, in this specific moment, doesn’t have to be the ultimate truth.

What makes me who I am is the journey between countries, the journey between mindsets and beliefs, between careers, in the sharing of traditions and recipes, rather than in their mere notion.

What makes me who I am today is the freedom of not having to choose and wrap myself in a label so that people have a clearer idea of where to place me: Italian, American, writer, businesswoman, stay-at-home mom, mother, wife, successful, mediocre.

I “only” have to be, in gratitude for having access to both worlds, Italy and America, in the capacity of taking the best of both and making something meaningful with it, grateful that I get to keep doing what I love, building career paths, while also raising a beautiful daughter, and being a loving partner in my marriage.

Maybe, I am a renaissance woman, just like my friend Giammario.

With Giammario, in Rimini, after an evening with his beautifully wife Brandi and their amazing daughter.

I know that this newsletter is longer than usual. But I have talked about Rimini, Milano, Savona, and London, and an important week of this Italian summer was missing: Pilaz, the mountain village where I would spend every August, since I was six months old.

As I walked along the pine grove from Pilaz to Champoluc (the bigger village a few miles north), earlier today, I noticed how different my experience was, this time: more open, free from the compulsive act of clinging in order to force-feel some kind of nostalgic pain, like I did in my twenties, when I’d cut my arms in order to force-feel, in order to hang onto the happenings of life.

In a book I recently finished, How We Live is How We Die, Pema Chödrön talks about the uniqueness of every moment. Lunch with a friend, an accident on a busy intersection, a day of shopping, picking wild blueberries, or reading a book late at night wearing a blue pajama and hair up in a ponytail, a walk around the block — that exact moment will never happen again in the same way. We can try to recreate every detail of it, but it will never be the same.

We may just be an hour older than the time before, with a stain on our pajama, the sun hitting our face just a bit differently while we eat with our friend, the leaf of the blueberry plant slightly moved by the wind in a slightly different direction.

Every year that we visit the village where I spent every summer since I was six months old, I cling onto every experience, every step, every blueberry picked, every trail, every bite of polenta, every smell, hug, or souvenir in order to recreate my experience of the past. I hold on to it so tight, so compulsively, so selfishly, that it disappears like a bubble of soap, only leaving behind a disappointing sense of loss and failure.

As we walked along the pine grove, earlier today, I noticed how different my experience was, this time.

At first, I feared no longer caring for the place and what it represented, but shortly after, I realized I cared so much that I was setting my memories free.

It felt good. It felt almost as good as it did when I was a child, but I was just a little older, and the sun hit my face just a little differently.

See you in August,

Love,

Alice