The take away

The back area of all my pants hang loose, and the knees bag when I stand, forming a kind of second-knee that puffs out. It is not some miraculous Mediterranean lifestyle diet that has left all my clothes baggy: I will not, upon returning to America, be 10 pounds lighter and, with a dismissive wave,  give away secrets of Italian women and their lovely figures, and whisper about how Italians simply know how to eat, darling, and one just walks everywhere in Europe, dear, so who needs to exercise. For, while the exercise and eating part are  mostly true, my wine, ice cream, and pasta diet [not in that order] seems to even out the walk-everywhere cardio program, at least for me. No, my pants are baggy and ill shaped simply because I wear the same clothes every day.

The clothes are washed, of course, but due to the high cost of energy and just a general reluctance from Italians to embrace The Drier, I dry our clothes on two huge clothing racks, perpetually stretched out to their full holding capacity in the upstairs sleeping space shared by my three oldest children. Lots of people have waxed poetic to me about the fresh smell of outside hang-dried clothes, but I don't have the possibility of hanging up clothes outside from this apartment, and anyway, the air in Mantova wouldn't exactly leave a fresh scent most days. Once a week I fold over our rugs and duvets over the window banisters, and "air" them out as best as I can; I am not sure it does much, but I feel really Italian doing it, and I like feeling Italian.

Anyway, the clothes go on the rack after the curiously long two-and-a-half hour wash cycle, and they dry, like little ghosts in the form of our bodies, until stiff to the touch, about a day later. After that, almost everything requires a quick ironing to soften-up and look generally presentable.  All of this rigamarole means that, before something gets washed, it must really and truly be dirty. "Can't you wear that again? "  is an oft-repeated phrase in our house, and, to my delight, most children agree. My two middle children have been known to wear the same outfit for a whole week running, without ridicule or comment by fellow students [for the other students, too, often wear the same outfit or pants for a whole week running].  As might be imagined, perfume becomes not only welcome but almost necessary with all of these same-clothes wearing days, and even my littlest, at two and a half, has a fresh Italian made-for-toddler, organic "scent" she can use after her shower, and [of course] on her clothes.   
 
An easy solution, of course, would be to buy some new clothes; space out the washing and give some of these tired outfits a break.  I have a good case for it: in one of those seems-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time moments of packing to live in Italy for a year, I only brought three pair of pants for the year. All mid-waist, normal-filling jeans and pants, one black, that could be dressed up or down.  Having seen the heights of Italian shoes for women, I decided to fill my suitcase with  more shoes than clothes, figuring that I could certainly buy clothes in Italy, but finding a pair of shoes that I could walk around in might be a different story. As I was with so many of my certainties about living in Italy, I was wrong; it turns out there are plenty of attractive walking shoes, with rhinestones and pretty colors, sure, but comfortable none-the-less. But, finding a decent pair of jeans for under 150 Euro is a whole other matter. Recently, I ducked into Benetton for a pair of mid-priced spring pants and somehow came out with probably not flattering, robin-egg blue, very tight, low waist stretch jeans, that create a serious quandary as to what I can wear them with [and to what the heck was I thinking], every time I want to wear them.  My one-off Benetton purchase aside, I am too cheap to buy the jeans in the stores here, and too snobby to try out the Chinese-made knock-offs sold at the Thursday outdoor market. Hence, my worn out jeans.

Now, of course, it has become a sort of badge of honor, these clothes that have survived [an almost] year of Italian washing. My husband and I get near-giddy when thinking about throwing out all of our clothes from this year. We talk about never having to wear "this" outfit again, or "those" pants; how we will "not ever, for one moment, miss"  the grey sweater with odd buttons or the t-shirt stretched to tent-size. And what will we do with the room in our suitcase, without these old clothes and worn shoes?  What will we pack away to take back to Montana, in hopes of bringing back some of the magic--and there has been lots of magic, for sure--of this year here? Why, of course we will stuff our bags: we will pack pictures, cards, school notebooks and old tickets in zip-lock bags, fill up every compartment with food, wrap bottles of Italian wine in tea-towel gifts and still-O.K. kids' jackets and then push them down to make room for more.  We will pack in hopes that when we take out the cards and the crackers, the wine and the oil, the chocolate wafers and the Italian books, we will share it all and remember it right, our year here, together.

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