Roma Cappocia

I may have mentioned yesterday that my birthday is coming up - in seventeen days, actually. I used to celebrate my birthday with a vengeance. I was making up for what I considered to be years of neglect on the behalf of my mother and father. I got lost in the shuffle of all the brothers and sisters and birthdays were no big deal in our home. So, as I got older and was able to craft my own celebration, I certainly did. Oddly, this year my birthday approaches and I have no real desire to do anything outrageous or special. I look forward to a quiet evening at home or out with friends - something truly celebratory but in a quiet and lovely way.

However, this isn't to say that I don't want presents. Everybody loves to get presents. I refuse to believe those people who say that you aren't supposed to bring a gift to a birthday party. It's usually those people (myself included) who really mean that if you actually show up empty handed you will be talked about and ridiculed for days and days. So, I was thinking today about what I want for my birthday. My wishlist includes a million dollars, a home in San Francisco, a brand new car, another million dollars, etc. But that's all fantasy and fantasy is a good thing - or at least I think so. But one can dream at birthdays and at Christmas and since this is my birthday I will fantasize all I like.

So, here's what I would ask if I could really have anything at all for my birthday. For those of you who don't deal with cheese, move onto another website. Consider this a cheese alert - orange level.

The picture up and over to the right is a photo of my grandmother and grandfather that was taken in the late 1920s in Rome. I have asked my mother and aunts if they can determine where the photo was taken but it just isn't clear enough - I like to think it is near the walls near the Villa Borghese, just on the side of the Via Veneto. I like to think of them having been out on a summer night and having had a gelato or a coffee together, stealing a few moments away from the house that was full of young girls. I imagine them being approached by the photographer - there used to be photographers on the streets of Rome who would just stop you and take your photo and you would pay him and in a few days you would receive a photo in the mail - isn't that lovely - and laughing a little between themselves and then agreeing to take the photo. I am so grateful that they did.

I never had the pleasure of knowing either of my grandparents. My nonna died in 1960 and my nonno died in 1972 - one before I was born and one I was too little to have known. They died far away from Cleveland, from me and from my mother. All I have ever had is this photo, along with others, to fill the void where their presence should have been. I have dreamt of them many times in my life. I have heard stories about them and tried to imagine them as they must have been to have produced not only my mother but my crazy aunts as well. This sounds a little biased, but I don't think a finer bunch of dames has ever existed than my aunts in Rome. They had to have come from only the best of partents. I wonder, too, what my life would have been like if I had the chance to run from my mother and father into the all loving and forgiving arms of my grandparents. What it would have been like to have all of that love and affection - all those hugs and kisses that were never mine. I don't really lament it, truthfully. I think I feel it more for my mother thand I do for myself. One day I will chronicle the story of my mom and dad - it's pretty wild and totally compelling. But for this moment, this melancholy moment on the edge of a night of a very hot but beautifully happy day, I wish that for one day I could be seated across from these two kids and just have a nice, long chat. I'd tell them all the tings I would want them to know about me and for me, I would love to be kissed just once by each of them - I think I could live on that the rest of my life.

Is it odd to miss people whom you have never known? Is it normal to long for something that you never had - I mean, really, what do I know about it. I guess the image I have in my mind of them is stronger than any reality could ever have been. They, for me, have escaped the ravages of age and time and remain this charming couple on a charming street in the most charming city in the world. I feel, too, that by loving them and wishing for them as I do, I keep them alive - and in some small way, I think they are indeed with me even though that sounds crazy.

So, for my birthday, I think I will allow myself a solitary hour or two where I fill my head with pretty images of Italian grandmas and grandpas fussing over me, pinching my cheeks and buying me gelato behind my mother's back. It's a simple gift - and what the hell, it's free.