Mamma Mia
Often when my brain is spilling over with panic-inducing information and pressing tasks, I'll turn to something repetitive and methodical that I can do, no matter how long it takes, while listening to podcasts because it feels good to use my hands and body to accomplish things and the physical movement plus entertainment in my earholes quiets my mind. (Clearly I haven't been turning to writing as my last newsletter was uhhhh six weeks ago. I do love to think about it every day and feel shame, hope that's relatable.) I have rudimentary knitting skills, in that I can make a rectangle of any length and width, so I've made about as many scarves as two people and one cat could ever need.
Freshman year of college I was taught by the RA of my dorm. It was September 2001 and 9/11 happened a couple weeks after school began when I was newly in the Midwest after a lifetime in the shadow of Manhattan. Surrounded by corn and soy fields, frequent tornado warnings, and the beginning of the end of American progress, I took comfort in the colorful, fragrant character of my RA who warmly invited all of us, her new charges, to join her at the local coffee shop on Monday evenings to knit and watch live bluegrass. She offered to teach anyone interested and I took her up on it, intrigued by her unfettered proliferation of body hair and mystifying bouquet of nag champa and patchouli despite adhering to the prohibition of incense and candles in dorm rooms.
A year and a half later I was supposed to go to Italy for spring break. I'd been studying Italian and actually retaining and enjoying it, which was a far cry from my constitutional aversion to middle school French and mixed results with high school Latin. Learning the language by triangulating history, geography, and culture made my ding dong brain fire on all cylinders. My best friend at the time was spending the spring semester in Verona and I'd be able to stay with her for free and had scored dirt cheap student airfare. Then on March 20, 2003 Bush declared war in Iraq just a few weeks before spring break and my entire family became hysterical, demanding that I cancel.
What, you may ask, did our misguided "war on terror" have to do with Verona, Italy? I don't remember the specifics of my parents', aunts', uncles', and grandparents' fears, but in the spirit of generosity I'll grant that 9/11 caused a sudden, cataclysmic shattering of America's illusion of safety as the preeminent, untouchable world power. But in fairness to me, my folks at one point said, "what if you get stuck in Italy!?!?!?!?" I wasn't keeping a physical journal at the time - I used Livejournal religiously and if anybody out there knows how to access an account from back then for the love of god tell me - so can't say for sure how I responded, but knowing me, I probably told them to say that again out loud and listen to themselves. It wasn't about the safety of air travel, as I'd been flying back and forth between Illinois and New Jersey since as soon after 9/11 as Thanksgiving 2001, and it wasn't about money as I mentioned the free accommodations. Nevertheless they persisted, and I relented and cancelled.
Between 2003 and now, a bunch of life happened and I've still never been to Italy. Hopped from menial job to menial job to afford rent in NYC, did administrative work for a couple years, worked at Trader Joe's as I decided to go to beauty school, did a 2 year apprenticeship at the salon where I'd spend 9 years working before moving to LA for 6 years, and now Maine, and none of that time was conducive either financially or logistically to major travel. Until now!
Last summer my mom and I started tossing around the idea of going together, just the two of us, to Italy. She'd been doing a good deal of work tracing our ancestral roots around a few southeastern hamlets that could be incorporated into a more tourist-friendly visit to Rome and Naples and the Amalfi coast. I suggested she watch season 2 of White Lotus for the abundance of Italian and also to deter her from trying to meet any locals who might share our last name or, god forbid, imagining we ought to show up on the doorstep of an address listed on her late Grandma Nozza's birth records or something. For my part I've spent many years intensively overcoming some tremendous travel anxiety that ruined almost every trip I took since 2017 (I might have overcome it sooner had I not also been afraid to try medicinal anxiety remedies, certain that I would experience the worst adverse outcomes up to and including death).
So I'm living a mile from my parents, for the first time in my adult life I've got total control over my work schedule and don't need to clear days off, I've amassed enough business that I can afford it, and I've got a stash of Xanax and several trips under my belt where I didn't have a panic attack and hurl...and the day after Mom and I had a lovely call with Federica - a travel agent so comically Italian her chef's kiss hand gestures punched my face through the phone - planes started falling out of the dang sky.
Listen I know "people" are still flying all over the place. Ironically all of the family members who prevented my 2003 Italy trip are the same ones now trying to convince me to go. In 2003 it was HAIR ON FIRE WHAT IF WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST IMMEDIATELY DOES SPRING BREAK WITH ROMEO AND JULIET and in 2025 it's FUCKIN YOLO. Which makes me feel insane! And also wonder if I'm misremembing how others viewed overseas travel in 2003. I mean, my pal certainly still went to Verona and had a great time, in fact the son of her childhood pastor visited her there and proposed and then she got married in the summer and moved to Florida and now has four gigantic blonde sons, which is not an outcome I'd have hoped for myself but g'bless.
Where I land (sorry) is feeling that just because every factor in my personal little life has finally fallen into place to allow me not just to visit Italy, but to have that special trip and memories with my mom, doesn't mean that I'm owed it considering the broader reality, all of which logically steers me toward not going. Statistics change as data changes! Air travel is objectively less safe than it was like 3 weeks ago! Had we already booked the trip I'd probably YOLO myself into going, but since we hadn't booked anything yet I bailed. I know my mom is disappointed, and I'm extremely disappointed and mad. If you know me then you know I've yapped about this to almost every client I've had in my chair and every friend in my phone, and since the FAA got DOGE'd nobody has reacted like I'm totally nuts in my decision, which is validating, but my cramped knitting fingers tell the truth of inner turmoil I can't entirely quiet.
Wendy has us watching "Paradise" and I just finished my latest re-reading of Parable of the Sower. We're immersed in instructive near-future post-apocalyptic fiction and we're taking notes. Then we soothe ourselves with The Traitors/SouthernCharm/Summer House, and I just did a rewatch of "Broad City" which was a great move. Volunteering and otherwise supporting local service orgs is the best, and here are two of my faves: https://www.maineneeds.org/ and https://mainelockerproject.org/.
Tell me what you're watching and reading and listening to, and what crafts you're doing, and what community actions you're involved in!
Love, Caroline
Submit advice questions here: https://www.carolinemitgang.com/about