Thanksgiving in Venice

Thanksgiving is always hard for us. The holiday does not mean that much to me--I wasn't raised with Thanksgiving, and the menu is too full of things sweet and mashed for my taste. Moreover, we have no extended family to speak of that we could share it with. Most of my family is abroad, George's parents are dead, and his older kids have tended to spend it with their mom. Now that they are all grown-up, they often visit the families of their significant others, American families that have strong Thanksgiving traditions.

So years ago we figured out that the end of November was a perfect time to go abroad. The flights are at their rock-bottom cheapest, and you can bargain if you are renting an apartment. Again and again we plan to go to some new place in the world, and invariably we end up, again, in Venice, taking a place far away from the hoopla of tourists. For a week, or more, we come and on a very tight budget pretend we live here, belong here, are Venezians. We play the game so well that by now, although we speak almost no Italian, tourists stop to ask as for directions.

Above: This is building in which we rent a small two bedroom.

Left: This is the courtyard you enter once you have opened the main portico with a huge key. It's very quiet.

Below: After using another big key on a door off the courtyard, you get to "our" little house. We have a small wintry courtyard of our own. "Our" little place occupies a couple of rooms on the first two floors. Did I mention it's very quiet?

Why Venice? It's the most beautiful place on earth--for me. It's so very old. It has survived fires, plagues, endless wars, rising winter tides. There is so much to see, to think about, to feel. The city is--improbably--built on water. Improbably, it resists destruction. Wandering for days around its alleys and passages, through its churches and museums, I tend to perceive marble seeping into my spine. I feel stong, invincible. If Venice can hang in there, so can I. One's own silly troubles seem just that--silly. It helps that there is fresh and bountiful food of beckoning colors to be bought at open-air markets where the vendors are friendly, and that the wine is cheap, and that the air smells of salt and frozen seaweed and is full of the warm sound of churchbells. Here, I'm always, first and foremost, happy.

For Simon the trip is not all joy thus far. He says he is homesick for all things American: his friends, his home, his toys, the Florida sunshine, Burger King. He's a bit like the American tourist from hell. Back in Florida the supermarkets are bigger, he says, as are the refrigerators, washing-machines, bathrooms, restaurants, roads, etc. And, of course, the TV sucks. If he hears English spoken by anyone, he hits upon them all smiles: "Where do you come from? I'm from Miami. My name is Simon." At a restuarant in Murano, he said to the waiter, "You look just like Millard Fillmore, do you know that?" Simon was right--he did. I found myself struggling to explain in a mix of English and Spanish to the confused and apprehensive waiter, who didn't know if he had been praised or offended, who Fillmore was. "Un presidente Americano. Un buono uomo," I kept repeating, hoping he understood. But by nightfall, Simon will acknowledge he had a good day. It helps that you can get a small gelato for less than 2 Euro.

And it helps that in this town, where so little is recognizable to him, where there is so little he desires--there are no American bookstores, or a Gamestop, or a cinema, or a Video Arcade type place--he found sailboats. Simon has been learning to sail and was delighted to look down from the bellfry of San Giorgio Maggiore--and there they were.

I, in turn, who desire so little in Miami, am full of wishes and appetites: for Pistachio cake, and marzipan, and that apartment at the top of so many buildings. If you look closely, you can see they have a small roof-top garden.

I daydream how in that apartment I would be endlessly happy, eating little peaches shaped of marzipan. One feels so alive when one is full of wants. I, who hardly ever have my feet out of Birkenstocks, today saw a pair of boots, and a flashy purple handbag, and red mittens. I wanted them all. None of these items, except for the pistachio cake, will be bought. But it is lovely to covet them for a day.