Tag: Essay

Tel Aviv, Tel Avivians and Us – One Month In

We arrived in Tel Aviv from Rome exactly one month ago today, on an all too easy 3.5 hour flight down the Mediterranean. In hindsight, the straightforward nature of the travel logistics did not align in any way with the otherwise almost complete life overhaul between these two relatively close cities and countries (if not necessarily cultures).

All that to say, waking up in our apartment in Rome, with newborn and toddler one day, and falling asleep in a new home in Tel Aviv the same evening made for some serious sensory whiplash.

Alas, all is going well – or somehow better than I had honestly anticipated given those circumstances. Aleksander has started French school and mostly integrated without a hitch (on espère); Elia continues to grow, sleep, nurse, and has even begun to smile and coo; Dalia is making the most of her second go-round of maternity leave, walking the boys on the boulevards with iced coffee in hand and making activity dates with school moms; and I’ve begun my new job (same job, different place) and have found lunch, coffee and grocery spots as needed. The basics seem to be mostly covered.

Tel Aviv is a bit hard to describe. In parts, completely dilapidated, hipsterly-so, and in others, modern skyscrapers and construction cranes, à la Dubai. Kensington Market one moment and Bay Street the next. Plus, add a beach.

I’ve never had the pleasure of living in a proper beach town and I used to joke that I never trusted people who did because ending your day in flip flops and a sandy wavey sunset just doesn’t feel real enough real life.

In any case, the beach is about a 25 min walk from our home and we may have already caught a few sublime sunsets while buskers sing radiohead tunes, people do agressive calisthenics or play beach volleyball (strangely enough, just as often with their feet), and Aleksander climbs world class play structures while getting covered in dust-fine sand. Like I said, not really real life stuff; pretend temporary life indulgences.

Otherwise, the city is not very readily classifiable. Tel Avivians like to compare it to Miami but I’d say they’re overshooting on that one. There’s definitely more American street culture here than any other subset: burgers, beaches, lattes, longboards, athletic wear, etc. But, of course, this is not the U.S. I can’t say that we feel it’s particularly European either, somehow too casual for that, and certainly on an entirely different wavelength than Rome: smaller, younger, beachier. So, Tel Aviv is Tel Aviv, maybe at best it’s the Mediterranean lovechild of Montreal and Barcelona, that was then immediately estranged from its parents.

Tel Avivians appear to be the type of people drawn to such a place: keen to live in a (mostly) Jewish beach paradise.

There are lots of 20 somethings (and older wannabes), patios and tattoo shops. There are also loads of families (or maybe that’s mostly who we notice in the AI inspired playgrounds). And then others: Orthodox Jews zipping by on e-bikes; Russian grocery store clerks; Eritrean line cooks; Filipino nannies; almost middle-aged tech looking bros; aspiring cross-fit champions on every square metre of the kilometres-long beach boardwalk; 19 year old Israelis in their military training camo, at the coffee shop, automatic weapon in one hand, current love interest in the other; grannies on quiet park benches.

Regardless of all that, we’re pretty occupied just doing us, surviving, settling, adapting, starting to look ahead from a novel perspective. Life with two kids under three is full. So far we’re thankfully approaching it with some serenity: soaking in as much of Elia’s newborn vibes as we can, smelling his little baby head and kissing his squishy cheeks a million times a day.

School dropoffs aren’t proving to be as romantic and laid back as in Rome. The price of absolutely everything is so astonishingly high as to almost be physically painful. And, of course, we’ve gone from two plus years of actively integrating into Roman life – the language, gestures, food, rhythms, piazzas, countryside, olive oil and gelato and mozzarella. To doing a full cultural reboot in less time than it takes to watch The Godfather trilogy. Hummus, Hebrew, Rosh Hashanah. And that’s all without effectively leaving this city. The beach bubble of Tel Aviv. The beach bubble within an Iron Dome.

We still don’t entirely know what to expect here over the next three years but so far it’s comfortable living and often feels like a city built primarily with children in mind, so in that sense, we’re off to a positive start. And we look forward to see what this place and its people have in store for us.

– Yom Kippur, 2023

ArrivederLa Roma! Che Grande Piacere It Has Been

Here I am again in Santa Marinella, probably the fifth time this year and tenth time since we arrived in Rome over two years ago. This beach town has pulled ahead of the other beach towns near Rome, accessible by train, as our preferred spot to get out of town and dip our toes in the mesmerizing turquoise blue of the Mediterranean. Aleksander is asleep after a short walk in his stroller, having taken the same boardwalk route I took with him the first time we came here and never since.

Elia is home with mommy because even as a three week old Roman born baby, he’s still not quite ready for the midday August beach heat. I’m snacking on a calamari fry, sipping on an aperol spritz in the fifth row of the beach club, two to the left of the overpriced one I really like, reflecting, about to impossibly write about the impossibly wonderful time we’ve spent in Italy. Since, by all indications, in about two weeks we’ll be heading to our next home, country, posting, in the Middle East.

There are literally a thousand possible different starting points to this essay but maybe I’ll start at the realest recent one. A few days ago, Dalia’s mom stayed home with the kids and sent us on our fourth date in the past three years. Thanks to general newborn parent exhaustion and a few other Roman contributing factors (i.e. it being a Sunday in August), we ended up at a neighbourhood pizzeria that I somewhat adore and Dalia barely cares for. Over a truly weak salami and cheese spread and decent half-litre of the house red, we haphazardly surveyed a handful of big, pressing, sometimes competing feelings.

When I described some of my recent long city walks during Aleksander’s naps, where I’ve uncharacteristically decided against podcasts or music for the benefit of strictly city soundscape listening and maximum Rome vibe absorbing, where we’ve meandered according only to a nostalgic heart’s desire and where I’ve actively leaned into the acknowledgement that Roman life, for us, is but a passing reality, soon to become an epic dream, I teared up.

I am (very, very) tired and entirely emotionally overwhelmed by the beauty, blessing and privilege of taking mundane daily walks on the ancient uncomfortable cobblestones of this epic place. Of looking up at buildings that are intricately beautiful in a way that just may never be in fashion again.

That we have one child forever born in Rome and another who’s Italian (mama mia daddy) makes us feel, well, like children.

That Dalia and I used to walk to the Colosseum so much that we eventually got bored of it.

That Aleksander kicked his soccer balls in St. Peter’s Square like it was the local schoolyard.

That we saw the Trevi fountain with only 15 people there.

That we have at least eight gelato spots citywide when the urge hits.

That our families, from top to bottom, got to visit this incredible place with us, maybe even because of us.

Same goes for some few dozen friends.

That we’ve been able to travel to, eat in, sleep restfully in at least ten of Italy’s finest cities (of a possible approximate 50 – the beauty knows no end in this country…).

Sperlonga
Matera
Verona
Lake Garda
Milan
Assisi
Ischia
Florence
Orvieto
Taormina
Venice
Cagliari
Polignano a Mare
Positano

That I’ve had enough amatriciana, Dalia enough carbonara and the both of us enough cicoria to last for three future generations.

That I now leave Italy and complain that coffee is far too big and weak and expensive.

That I talk with my hands when my foolish Italian runs out and that’s almost always been enough.

That I arrived with a mostly negative impression of ‘the Italians’ and now I feel almost exactly the opposite.

That my colleagues have been the most caring, balanced and complete people that I’ve ever met. That the Canadian Ambassador to Italy knows my name and occasionally laughs at my jokes.

That our Sri Lankan doorman has seen Aleksander’s growth from infant to toddler more regularly and consistently than anyone but us (and preciously trained him to bellow: ciao bello! whenever they part).

That our neighbour and stand-in nonna, Lola, cries every time she mentions our departure.

That we live across the street from a convent and when I’m catching the morning or evening light from our balcony, I occasionally see nuns ironing their habits or sweeping their rooms.

That this place exists; has for the better part of human civilization, existed; and while this planet is still inhabitable and worth inhabiting, will continue to exist. And then our little family’s story co-existed here from Easter Friday, 2021, until the end of August, 2023. It already doesn’t feel real and I’m still here.

Rome is the best, deepest, oldest, alivest, beautifulest type of place and the fact that Rome has been our normal everyday Home for two plus years will never not astonish, delight and humble me.

Due anni italiani

I’m writing this reflection on the winding steps of a cozy airbnb apartment on a rainy Spring Saturday morning in Sorrento, the opposite of the weather one imagines for an Easter long weekend in the Amalfi. Aleksander is napping early because he woke up too early. Dalia is taking a moment to breathe, five months along with our next child. And Dalia’s sister, Christina, who joined us yesterday from Barcelona, as the last of our family members to visit Italy, is asleep since Aleksander started yelling about bananas at 6am to plunge her directly into toddler-auntie life.

We arrived on the coast yesterday, Holy Friday, stopping in Naples for a pizza before taking the ferry instead of the train to Sorrento, our first ever visit to this famous seaside city. It was on Holy Friday two years ago that we landed in Rome, moved into our apartment and began this wonderful Italian adventure that we’ve been squeezing into limoncello ever since.

As these things do, that arrival feels both a blink and an eon ago. Moving to Rome with an infant during a once in a century global pandemic has a way of locking itself into your memory banks. I can still feel the isolation and chaos of the flight here and the tint and glow of the morning blooms on and from our balcony once we arrived.

Aleksander has grown up here. Taken his first steps, spoken his first words, kicked his first few hundred soccer balls, casually, in or around Rome. We have grown as parents, as humans, not linearly and not without struggle, but always somehow finding a caffe, gelato or prosecco as needed. We’ve been able to share glimpses to weeks of our lives here with visitors, all inspired in some way by the beauty, history and dynamism of the Eternal City.

Occasionally people ask the most banal and profound question: so how is Rome? How is Italy? As time has gone on, I’ve developed an unusual timidity answering this, mostly because I don’t want to appear as gloating, but I’ve eventually landed on: there’s almost no downside (that’s too troublesome) about living in Rome/Italy. The weather is great, the food quality is divine, the people are incredibly lovely, the neighbourhood architecture has no business being as unnecessarily awe-inspiring as it is. Coffee costs a dollar, people say hi and thank you to eachother, and nonnas fawn openly and sincerely over our biondino. If I really need to reach, living in a beautiful place and paying for life in euros can pinch; 8pm dinner time nationwide is not particularly baby-friendly; and then another back-handed complaint, Italy has too many worthwhile and amazing things to see and do, and the fact is now obvious that we won’t be able to see and do them all before we leave.

The nature of my job and our lifestyle is rotation and change. Last September, we submitted our top five list for our next posting and early this year, were offered the third choice. At the time, we were considering lobbying for an additional year in Italy, but when our next post was floated over a video call, our backs straightened up and we elbowed and kicked eachother under the screen with excitement. Needless to say, leaving here won’t be easy, but we’re not disappointed with where we’ll go next.

There was a point last Fall, where for the first time since maybe my early teen years in Toronto, that I felt like I was in my forever home. The feeling quietly materialized out of nowhere over a series of weeks. After about a year of Italian lessons, I could manage most linguistic scenarios I found myself in, occasionally even with some charm. Aleksander was loving his daycare life, double cheek kissing his teachers, and bouncing home in the evening mumbling about his pals Ricardo, Margherita and Valerio. Dalia was working regular hours at the Embassy, seemingly in the treasured sweet spot of work-life-mom-wife-woman-adult-human balance. We had hosted a steady stream of visitors who left more full than they arrived. The pasticceria staff knew my daily order in the morning. We had the menu hilights memorized for a half-dozen favourite neighbourhood restaurants. And generally, we moved comfortably and unhurriedly through our moments, days and weeks. Aleksander had a birthday party with his friends when he turned two, we spent a magical weekend in Assisi for my birthday a week later, and my mom and brother joined us for their second Christmas in Italy soon after that. I thought, clearly, I could keep doing this, in this place, until the end. A real, honest and unforeseen rarity for me.

Then. In the New Year. For an equally unapparent reason, perhaps weather related, we felt bored. Limited. Serrendipitously underinspired by the those same exact, endlessly satisfying routines of a few months earlier. Maybe it was our subconsciouses preparing us for the inevitable, slowly encroaching reality, that almost all of our probable future roads will lead decidedly away from Rome.

So two years have come and gone, forever ours. And now we’re counting down to our departure in months. Beginning to take on a thousand and one administrative steps as our end date approaches weeks, days and hours, before we wistfully close our Roman time capsule and throw it in with antiquity. With the millions of others, over dozens of centuries, who have passed through the roads and piazzas of this incredible place, some leaving a mark, most others eternally glad to carry a piece of Rome in their souls for the rest of their days.

Humbly, gratefully, like us.

From Khartoum With Love

In another of one of life’s unpredictably magical twists of fate, my employer sent me to Khartoum, Sudan, for two weeks. It’s the city where my wife was born, spent the first handful of years of her life and about which I’ve heard dozens of mythical stories since we first met almost a decade ago. Not exactly knowing what to expect, I excitedly took the flight from Rome, via Addis, and proceeded to fill in my parts of my life that I didn’t even know previously existed.

After a few days settling into the city, hunting desperately for shade and launching into work, I was able to arrange a lunch date with two of Dalia’s aunts, a couple cousins and another mysterious relative to act as an informal interpreter.

I ran to the lobby of the hotel, still tucking in my hurriedly ironed shirt, to meet my extended family via marriage, at 11am on the first day of the weekend. Fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty minutes scurried by. I closed my eyes while holding my chin on my hands. Messages were sent to Rome, to Toronto, back to the family in Khartoum: Peter is waiting in the lobby for an hour and a half!

I was eventually met by aunt Souna and her grand-niece Marleen. We greeted eachother warmly and took a picture together standing next to a plant. They helped me with two bags of vitamins and documents sent to me from Canada, four bags of gifts prepared by my wife and my fanny pack. We exchanged partially translated pleasantries on the way to my wife’s childhood Church, where by happenstance, exiting the gate as we entered, in a wheelchair, was the Coptic priest who baptized her. I was introduced to several other people by the family that I had just been introduced to, and we took pictures with all of them. I watched kids playing soccer in the courtyard, of a similar age to what my wife would have been the last time she was here, and lit a candle for the sheer unlikely awesomeness of what I was experiencing.

We continued in the broiling car to the cemetery where Dalia’s grandparents are buried. I was guided, with one false positive, to the grave of my son’s great grandmother. Auntie Souna broke down for a few seconds while I said hello, in my heart, to the mother of my wife’s father. She died at 93, about eight years ago, 40 or so years after her husband. Under one of the few shade-offering trees in the dusty lot, I brushed off the dried leaves from the tomb of Dalia’s older sister, who passed away in infancy. I took a picture, awkwardly but sincerely, to document the moment, both Friday afternoon ordinary and entirely overwhelming.

23 year old Marleen complained about the heat so we took our leave from the rows of uneven headstones, for the first and probably last time in my life. The final stop before lunch was to pass by Dalia’s childhood home. Souna tried to explain that the street-side facade was not the home, and maybe it was down a locked alleyway adjacent, and my father-in-law’s electronics repair shop, named after his oldest son, and where my wife used to fondly frolic amidst the wires, speakers and screens, was also, in a previous life, right there. I took a video to share with my in-laws back home and Souna took a video of me taking my video.

The 25 second clip sent the family WhatsApp group into a joyous frenzy. Memories, questions and anecdotes started to pour forth from Dalia’s siblings and mom. That wasn’t the front door (X), it used to be here (->). Once, Robert pushed Christina into a small rubbish fire out front vs. Robert saved Christina’s life from a blazing inferno on the front porch. Either way, she surely still has the scar on her foot. I watched the messages fly, relayed questions in real time, and smiled.

Souna stopped to pick up pita bread for lunch and we entered her home’s gate, passed the lush plant life and cages singing birds.

I then sat in the same spot, on a different chair, for the second 90 minute stint of the day. Food was being prepared; I wasn’t allowed to help and was politely asked if I needed to charge my phone. No one particularly asked what exactly I was doing there, which is good because I was mostly trying to figure out the answer to that question myself. We small talked, they talked amongst themselves, people stared at their screens, and we video-called Dalia and Lily, my mother-in-law, where I held the phone silently as they exuberantly recalled long ago threads of common memories and mostly just laughed.

Eventually, aunt Selwa, the family matriarch arrived and within 20 seconds, introduced herself to me, said she was the oldest of the siblings, and then made a frank comment to one of her nieces. I was struck by how much her face and mannerisms mirrored my father-in-law’s, how she projected such a casual gravitas, and how this was just a normal afternoon in in her life, sitting on her sister’s couch in Khartoum.

The lunch feast could have fed 15, even though I learned that only three of the six people present weren’t fasting. I did my best to try every last offering on the table and mostly chewed silently while the family, my family, bantered indecipherably in Sudanese Arabic. I felt completely welcome and also fully in the dark. I heard my father-in-law’s name every few minutes but didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the conversation, ask them to explain decades of nuance in their interactions, all while I slopped heaps of freshly mixed hummus onto delicious home-made falafels.

I ate to capacity. Then had a cream soda, and dessert, and tea, and a watermelon. And sat back down in my previous spot, 30% more deeply than before.

Dalia’s grandfather watching to make sure we all ate enough!

The evening started to creep in and I was cognizant that I would have to return to my hotel before too long. Having no sense of how much time was appropriate to wait after dinner before asking for a ride home, let alone what time even meant anymore on this sublime Sudanese afternoon, I fumbled my way through an indecisively Canadian request to go home.

Four people I hadn’t known five hours earlier packed into a well worn car to drive me through the bumpy, breezy back alleys of Khartoum. I got an invite to Selwa’s for tea in the next few days and then for eggs benedict on any other evening I was free during the week. How could I say no?

This was family after all.

Follow up tea spread with Selwa and cousin Walid

Babcia and Uncle Pauly come back for Roman Christmas #2

Earlier in the year, when I suggested to my brother that we may come back to Canada for Christmas, he said: Do what you gotta do bro, but I wouldn’t be mad about coming back to Rome for another Christmas!

Rome is not a hard sell at any time of year but during Christmas it really sparkles. We welcomed my mom and brother for their second Christmas here and my mom’s third visit since our arrival.

After a day or two shedding as much jet lag as possible, we visited the temporary Christmas World mini-theme park in Villa Borghese, walked to the Christmas market at Piazza Navona and generally hung out with a sick Aleksander and played with all the toys.

My mom thankfully brought all the ingredients and know-how required to pull off another Polish Christmas meal, despite the challenges here in Italy. Aleksander welcomed his gift haul of sports gear and cars from Santa and, overall, everyone had enough time decompressing from all the concerns of the rest of the year.

Christmas Day was a real beauty and we spent some time at the playground at nearby Villa Ada and although we didn’t quite make it to the Vatican as we did last year, we shared a peaceful and wonderful family oriented afternoon and evening.

Having finally recovered from Aleksander’s week-long fever, we headed to Milan on Boxing Day for a short stay. Returning from Milan, with only two nights left in mom and Paul’s visit, we relaxed and squeezed in one more Christmas lights display at Rome’s Orto Botanico.

Closing this year off with family nearby was a real blessing. We’re always grateful to live in Rome, but maybe never more than when we’re able to share our life here with our closest friends and family. Aleksander is finally at an age where he can interact independently, form his own little relationships and make memories with the people he’s around. It was heartwarming to see nonna and zio learning about Aleksander’s tender, warm and engaging personality.

It’s always hard to say goodbye but this time it was particularly tough knowing that the next visit won’t be for a few months at the earliest. It’s one of the big trade offs of living overseas, the distance from loved ones.

The New Year is just around the corner and for us, big pending news about where our next posting will be post-summer 2023. It’s not something we’ve dwelled on particularly much but a reality that we’ll see be facing down. Upwards and onwards either way!