La Dolce Vita

In two weeks Tord and I are going to Italy--again. I am not complaining--I love Italy, I could easily imagine Tord and I selling everything we own, waving goodbye to all our friends and settling down in some hilltown in Italy. I have been dreaming of living there since I was a kid. All things Italian spark my interest--food, design, art, music (well, not so much Eurodisco--ick!), but you name it--I love Italy. I guess you could call me an Italophile--if that is even a word.

So why are we going to Italy? Tord wants to celebrate his birthday someplace where he can savor pasta with white truffle sauce--and that is not something we can do in Stockholm. I think he's also hankering for a change of scenery. We usually take weekend trips during the spring but we haven't gone anywhere since we returned from the US in February. We talked about going to Ireland but never found any airline tickets at a good price, ditto Belgium. For a while, we tossed around the idea of going to France, but that evaporated. Besides, we always have a great time in Italy and last year's train adventure through Umbria and Tuscany was a huge success. This year will be something of a repeat--we're going to Rome and then Umbria, but skipping Tuscany. So far, we have decided we'll visit Spoleto, Norcia and Assisi. I think we are going to Perugia as well.

Next summer, I want to rent a house in Italy and stay there at least two weeks. I have this dream of finding some lovely town with a train station (great for excursions + returning to the airport), a trattoria that serves the best food, and a little house where Tord and I can be lazy and soak up the sun and eat loads of ice cream. If we don't feel like cooking, we can walk (or ride our bikes) to the trattoria or osteria. We can fill our baskets with salsiccia, parmesan cheese, tomatoes, smoked mozzarella, proscuitto....oh boy....now I'm getting hungry...and the sun will kiss our skin and make us feel alive.

Everyone in Sweden says summer is the best time to be in Stockholm and they wonder why we go away for ten days every summer. Well, it's like this--Swedish summer weather is fickle. You never know what you're going to get. One summer can be warm and beautiful and make you think you're in the tropics. The next summer can be damp, cold and rainy and you'll go weeks without ever seeing the sun.

One summer in particular stands out in my mind: it started out swimmingly--May was lovely and warm, then June arrived and with it came clouds that didn't seem to disappear until the end of August. That summer it rained nearly every day. There were very few days when the temperature was above 16C. I was miserable. I didn't wear shorts that entire summer. I was still wearing winter sweaters in July. My sandals went unworn because the ground was far too wet. My hair was in a permanent state of frizziness. I'd never been so depressed before in my entire life. I understood then the old stereotype of suicidal Swedes. That summer I hated Sweden and everything Swedish. And all because there was no sun, just big fat droplets of rain, rain and more rain.

If the weather is good this summer, I will make the most of it. If today is anything to go by, then we're in for a good summer in Stockholm. But who knows what tomorrow will bring... it's rained nearly every day this week and they say there's more rain on the way either Sunday or Monday. I hope they're wrong.

But now I am going to sit on my balcony and soak up some sun. Even though I was born with a perfect tan, I still like to turn into a sun worshipper every now and then.

Changes...


On Saturday, I had lunch with some of my girlfriends and it occurred to me how much we've changed over the years. Sara is in medical school and has a nine-month-old son named Levy who is adorable--even when he has an ear infection. Nadia is now married and pregnant with her first child. Fia is married, has a lovely son named Ville and is pregnant with her second child. I am married and will be celebrating my eighth anniversary soon, no kids and waiting to hear from a literary agent who is reading the first four chapters of my novel. Missing from the group was Maitechu, who is in Saudi Arabia with her husband and two-year-old son until July.

At some point, we talked about how things have changed, though we didn't really use ourselves as examples. We talked about some of our male friends and how their lives have changed. Fredrik married Ulrika and they are awaiting the birth of their first child (a boy they will probably name Sixten). Chris and Julie had a baby girl named Holly, left Södermalm and moved to Gröndal. (And we thought Chris would never ever leave Södermalm, but Gröndal is still close to Södermalm...) And Brian has sold his apartment and will be moving to the UK at the end of the month to live with his girlfriend.

There was a time when we all used to see each other on an almost daily basis. We'd have brunch on Sundays, coffee on Saturday, drink far too much beer at Lion Bar--at least during the summer--on Fridays. Monday through Thursday anything could happen. We might end up at the cafe in Kulturhuset or the espresso bar on Horsngatan. Or, more often than not, we were at Blåbär on Upplandsgatan consuming salads and cheesecake and copious cups of coffee.

These days, we're all so busy with other things, or maybe we just don't take the time to meet as often as we used to for various reasons. One thing is certain, we're all getting older--some are more adverse to this than others.

I started noticing gray hairs around my 29th birthday. I don't remember if this bothered me very much though it probably did--at least for a few minutes. Tord has had gray hair since we met--though we like to joke that I am the cause of his loss of his blond hair. Neither of us seems bothered by the fact that we are getting older. The only thing I really miss from being younger is the ability to bounce back quickly from just about anything.

Drank too much last night? No problem...you're twenty-one, you eat a huge breakfast and take a shower and--voila!--you're as fresh as a daisy.

Do the same when you are thirty-seven and you still feel like a zombie two days later.

So I don't care that more gray hairs are sprouting out of my scalp. If it ever bothers me, I'll go to Roddy (who usually cuts my hair when I remember to make an appointment) and ask him to color it for me. But I do miss the energy and the enthusiasm for just about anything that I used to have. And I miss the unbridled optimism I had when I was a teenager. There are moments now when I still have it, but usually I find myself looking for cons when I should be concentrating on pros.

But the inner-child in me is alive and well. She makes an appearance when I least expect it. And even if my appearance is not what it used to be, I am happy.

And that's what matters most.