The Amalfi Cups

Liza
May 15
6 min read

I confess to feeling quite stumped, and not really knowing what to write about. I know that it’s Thursday afternoon, and that my routine has involved writing on Thursdays for the past six months. Without that routine I might find myself in a mental health facility for middle-aged women, somewhere out in the woods. In Connecticut, maybe. So, I do stick to it, generally. I deflect and delay and find a thousand reasons not to leave my house right away. But eventually I do find myself at the library, at some point, on Thursdays, before picking up my boys from after-school. And generally, I know ahead of time what I am going to write about. Wednesday is supposed to be the day I brainstorm and come up with my silly ideas. Yesterday it did not happen, however. Which might have to do with the fact that I stayed up until 1:30 am the night before, watching most of The White Lotus' first season while my husband was away on a work trip.

I thought I had been a good girl for a while, mostly honoring my new routine of writing down my day’s plan every morning. I have started and abandoned that routine so many times over the years, particularly since I stopped teaching before moving to France three years ago. And yesterday, indeed, was an off day. I knew it would be as soon as I woke up. Because no matter what time I went to bed, my teenage son still had to be at school by 7:45 am for his AP exam. Which means that just like before an early morning flight, I did not sleep for a minute, despite setting two alarms. What was the point of sleeping when I knew I would be jolted awake four hours later. Then I had a lunch downtown and it was pouring rain, and my son was home all afternoon after the early-bird AP test. And then soccer training for my 9-year-old was cancelled, which was good news because I didn’t have to take him there and wait for an hour and a half in the East 96th street no-mans-land that serves as his soccer field. But also, bad news, because he was home, with the boy energy he would have otherwise spent on said soccer field. Suddenly everybody was home when they shouldn’t be. But my husband wasn’t, when he should have been. Which meant he wouldn’t be around to clean up the kitchen after dinner. Somehow this always feels like the very worst moment when he is away. I consider that once my children have been fed in the evening, I have an inalienable right to collapse on my couch or bed. So, when I go back to the kitchen after putting the boys down and the dirty pots and pans are STILL THERE, I always want to cry. Last night there was the Knicks game, so dinner was mostly chips and salsa, with some leftovers that the kids didn’t touch. That was definitely a plus, which made clean up easier. On the other hand, the Knicks lost. So, an off day all around.

I woke up in better spirits today, having gone to bed before the Knicks loss, on account of the previous night’s White Lotus and AP catastrophe. Still, I did not know what to write about. And the day was off to an ominous start when I spotted my nine-year-old’s swim bag on the living room couch, at 8:07 am. Followed by my phone’s ding and a message from my husband confirming what my eyes could already see. Swim class was at 8:30 on the other side of town, and the boy did not have his swim bag. The boy is also our anxious one, who loses his mind when things do not go according to plan. I was thinking that he might just have to lose his mind anyway, because there was no way I could bring him the bag in time. When my phone rang and it was the sports teacher. The bag could be brought directly to the swimming pool by 9 am. I was still hesitant because I had a Task Rabbit scheduled for 9:30 am, to mount the kitchen shelves I have thought about for the past seven months. Now the shelves were here, the guy was coming. It felt quite momentous

But I guess the god of swimming pools (is that Poseidon?) had other ideas, because I found myself harried and disheveled in front of an Upper East Side community center at 8:54 am, with no idea how and where to find my son. The address given by the school happened to be that of a Senior Center, which somehow did not agree with my vision of twenty rowdy third graders going in for a swim. Indeed, the lady at the front desk told me that the pool was in a separate building, the one with a big red door. The trouble was, the next building did have a dark brown-ish, red-ish door, but the door in question seemed to be leading nowhere, and to not open from the outside. I must have looked quite lost at that point, because an old man sitting on a bench nearby told me that I looked, well, quite lost. And proceeded to explain that there was another red door in the middle of the block, which probably was the one I was looking for. Indeed, the lady inside told me that this was the preschool, not the pool, but to go talk to her colleague down the hall. Finally, I made it downstairs, and, past a dingy gym, there was my boy sitting on steps by a pool, watching his classmates swim. The bag was handed over and I made it back home just in time for the Task Rabbit. In the taxi, I found myself quite moved to have seen my son like this, in an environment he talks about, but I had never seen. For a minute I was the little mouse I sometimes say I want to be, tucked in my children’s backpack and following all their adventures throughout the school day. The cafeteria, the library, the pool. My morning had felt ruined at 8:07 am, but I got to be the little mouse in the swim bag and now I almost wanted to cry. Really, a night without sleep in the middle of the week will play tricks on a mother’s mind. Remind me not to start season two of The White Lotus anytime soon.

No matter how moved, and silly, I was, I still did not know what to write about. But then S. the quiet Russian handyman came, the shelves were mounted, and I promptly pulled the Italian bowls and coffee cups I purchased two years ago on the Amalfi coast, when we lived in Paris and traveling was easy. I had bought these cups because I thought they would look so pretty on a kitchen floating shelf. The trouble was, there was no space in my Paris kitchen to have pretty shelves. So, the cups stayed in a cabinet for two years, first in Paris, and then back in New York, where there WAS the perfect empty wall for shelves, but there was NOT a happy mother, for a few months after we moved. Those shelves became a symbol of sorts for my difficulty in adapting to my new life, which was also my old life. My resistance to being back, the sorrow I felt for so long, and still feel at times, after saying goodbye to home. So, seeing the cups up there, in their bright, hand-painted stripes, with the chipped saucer I accepted at a reduced rate, brought at least momentary joy and satisfaction.

The cups were hidden for so long, no one knew we had that ray of sunshine in our overstuffed cabinets. Now they are out, reminding me of that new, almost empty cliff hanging hotel that the kids loved so much. Reminding me, also, of how we couldn’t do the whole Amalfi coast drive we were planning to do, because my husband had shingles and was miserable. But we did make it to Capri for the day one day, and I would give anything to be back. The boat, the cliffs, the lemons. That delightful restaurant tucked away under the trees. The walk to the cliff with a view of Villa Malaparte and some reminiscence of Brigitte Bardot in a wide blue headband - because what woman in her right mind wouldn't fancy herself with that straw blond hair and blue headband on the roof/patio of a cliffside Italian abode ?

It has been so long since we have travelled for pleasure, not for family or professional obligations that have moved us back and forth. Life right now feels more like a daily grind, the stress of living – surviving? - in New York with a big family, the anxieties of supporting a high school junior trying to build his future, while his siblings still need to live their lives, and follow their own path. So, call me silly, but some teacups on a wooden shelf this morning gave me the joy that I needed, and the hope for bright, lemon-scented days. I knew, as soon as I saw them, that I had something to write about in the library that day.