You Can’t Go Home Again…Or Can You?
It has been six long years and a pandemic later since I visited my beloved Italy, home of my birth. What will be sorely missed this time, though, is our ancestral home; the place I laid my head for every return visit since the day I left there for good, 64 years ago. The house belonged to my grandparents. My father and his brother inherited it, each getting two of the four apartments it eventually became. After the death of my parents, my siblings and I held on to it as long as we could. The cost of renovations, along with the difficulty of that many people owning anything in common, saw the sale of both of our apartments during the last several years. The small two room attic apartment went first, followed a year later by the larger, main two-bedroom abode. As I planned this trip, it weighed heavy on my heart that I no longer had my own place to go to. The memories of all those summers spent there, both with my parents and alone after their passing, would float across my mind at times, along with a nagging apprehension as to what life would be like there without my base. The house is perfectly positioned right in the center of town attached to the Cooperativa, the main grocery store. It is just a few yards from Bar Serafina, my go-to morning cappuccino and toast and grappa mirtillo nightcap place. Our apartment was on the second floor of the house. The view from leaning out of the kitchen window and watching the people stroll by against those breathtaking Dolomite mountains was my joy spot in that apartment for O so many years.
One day in August, as the desire to return outweighed the cost of the loss, I began the trip planning in earnest. I wondered wistfully where I would stay. My sister, who lived two towns over in Giustino, offered me her home, but did I want to be several miles away from my beloved Carisolo for the entire time? Another sister in the USA had her own place in town, but an impending remodel ruled out staying there. I wondered if some Carisolo property owners were technologically evolved enough now to use sites like AirBnB. Could I perhaps find a small studio apartment to rent, thus solving the problems of staying in my town and having bad knees which have taken a complete dislike to stairs? I started with VRBO vacation rental website. As expected, the more popular and larger town of Pinzolo next to Carisolo had quite a few listings. Only a few came up for Carisolo. I skimmed the thumbnail photo that came up under each listing and I was positively gobsmacked. Right there in front of me was our old kitchen. Granted, it wasn’t Architectural Digest that my parents used to remodel the house over 40 years ago, so I thought this kitchen could have just belonged to someone else. I popped open the rest of the photos and now I’m mesmerized. IT IS OUR HOUSE!!! A few things are different, like the kitchen table and the sofa, but there’s no mistaking that window where I spent countless peaceful days gazing out at the beauty of our majestic mountain peaks and down the Val Rendena, the valley our towns are nestled in.
I tell my younger son about my find. We have to stay there, I said, as he was still contemplating accompanying me. He agrees. The cost was a bit steep, so the plan was to just stay a few nights to revel briefly in leaning out that window once more. A week or so later, I looked for it again on VRBO and it was gone. It had to be a trick of the mind, an apparition of the longing to be in our home once more. I remembered that it was listed by a property management company and went to their site. Oddly, the listing was there, but they were no longer renting it at all. Well, that’s that, I thought. Some things are just not meant to be, or are they?
A few weeks later, when the formulation of the airfare and the dates were taking hold, I thought again about the house. It just would not let go of me. I felt the eerie presence of my parents nudging me in that direction. I knew from having rented lots of places online, that most hosts list both on VRBO and AirBnB. On a hunch, I looked for it on AirBnB. Lo and behold, there it was! This time it was not listed by a property manager, but rather by the owner herself. I didn’t know much about the owner at the time we sold it, as the details were handled by the sister in residence in Italy. I knew it was not someone local who bought it, but rather one of the Southern Italians who purchase places in our valley to use as summer homes. The host information for Rosalba said she was an attorney who lived in Sicily and was from Rome. This sounded familiar. At the time, the price was about what it was on VRBO. My son decided not to make the trip, diminishing some of the luster of staying there. That and the fact that it was on the second floor and there would be no one to fetch me up should my knees misbehave, gave me pause. About a week later I checked it out again. The price was lower, but there was a six-night minimum policy now. The cost again wrestled with the desire to be in that house once more. Drawn like the proverbial moth to the flame, I went back to the listing again a few days later. This time it had gone down by a third of the price. The delight now handily defeated the price, as well it always should. I was so excited, so thrilled, so “thank you Mommy and Daddy” that I sent her this message before booking:
Dear Rosalba, we have never met, but I’m sure you know me. It was with great joy that I saw your listing. Your condo is the place of my birth. I haven’t been back to Italy since before we sold it. I absolutely love what you did with the place and I would be so honored to stay here on my trip this time. Thank you again for taking such good care of our ancestral home.
And she replied in translated English:
Hi Maddalena, what a pleasure what you wrote. I immediately fell in love with the house and tried to respect it in everything. I’m so glad you’re coming. Welcome home!
And with those words, I confirmed my booking. I told a few close friends about my find and a relative or two who I knew would feel the same gladness at finding our home again. No one else, as I wanted to surprise my sister, who had lived in that house when she first was married and also to avoid the ones whose wallets outweigh their sense of wonder.
I arrived at the house after four days in Tuscany. A wave of pure delight mixed with a few tears washed over me as I entered the hall. The blend of old and new was just perfect. An inconvenient bathroom with a huge tub and a tiny shower that required contortionist skills to enter gave way to a beautifully remodeled new bathroom with a large shower but with no tub in site. The most exquisite spa water tower I had ever used completed the splendor with an overhead rain shower, a body height shower panel and a handheld sprayer. There was a pretty new vanity sink on the wall and a new washing machine. It was just lovely. And then there were the remnants of our old apartment that she kept; my mother’s furniture in both bedrooms, from the hall valet with coat hooks right down to my mother’s silver tray and flowered organizer box and even her red fly swatters. The kitchen had a new and very IKEA modern plastic table and chairs which wasn’t my favorite update. The tiny two-seater sofa was replaced with a most comfortable large sofa that doubled as bed if needed. I had many a restful nap on it. The old linoleum floors were traded for pretty wood planks and a new flat screen TV sat on the wall now. Best of all? WIFI!! No more leaning out that window trying to find cell reception! The one addition that was foreign to me was the new pellet stove that provides the heat in so many houses in our mountain towns. I saw these bins of tiny, rectangular shaped brown things near it and asked, tongue in cheek, if I was expected to feed the birds with it. Turns out this thing gives heat if you keep scooping pans full of the stuff into its bin. I never trusted that it wouldn’t get too low, so the running joke was that it had become my pet and I didn’t miss my dog so much as I kept feeding this thing several times a day, whether it needed it or not.
We established WHATSAPP contact upon my arrival, Rosalba and I. She was terrific to deal with. She sent prompt responses about turning my pellet pet on and off and the like, and she was as tickled as I was that I was staying here again. So much so, that when I asked if I could stay for two more nights rather than move to my sister’s house for such a short stint, she graciously threw them in gratis! And then there were the dinners and lunches cooked here with my sister Rosalie and niece and nephew and some cousins. Rosalie, cleaner extraordinaire that she is, even reorganized the cupboards more to our dear departed mother’s liking! It became a sort of tour stop for some of our nearest and dearest, including my mother’s cousin and best friend Renata, who teared up upon entering the home my mother made. The house had given them so many wonderful memories of love, laughter, camaraderie and, of course, cooking. Rosalba commented that the moment she toured the home before buying it, she could sense the immense love that was held within these 12-inch thick, concrete walls! When Rosalba and I exchanged the obligatory AirBnB reviews and arrivedercis, I smiled at her reply of “I’ll welcome you again with open arms!” A more perfect buyer, we could not have found. I revel in the knowledge now that this home is in good hands and that I can be a part of it whenever I visit my homeland again. Perhaps, you can go home again!
