Book excerpt - "I Can't Believe We Live Here"

To mark Liberation Day in Italy - 25 aprile - we thought we’d post this excerpt from our book, I Can’t Believe We Live Here, the story of how we came to move to Italy, and how we fared while global pandemic lockdowns halted the world. Getting in the groove of remembering Italian holidays is one of the adjustments we are (still) trying to make after moving here.

The episode recounted below occurred one month into Italy's strict lockdowns, when we had trouble telling what day it was.
(Spoiler alert: It was 25 April, a major holiday!)

One day in late April [2020], I headed out to the supermarket with a big shopping list. On the drive to the store, the streets seemed even more deserted than usual — less "standard pandemic" and more "zombie apocalypse." I pulled into a totally empty parking lot at the Co-op and saw a sign on the door: “Chiuso il 25 aprile.” Closed for 25 April. I mentally face-palmed myself; I should have realized this.

Driving back home, I slowed down for a road crew re-drawing parking lines on the street above our house, and a pair of Carabinieri to manage traffic around them. They flagged me down with one of their dreaded red paddles.

“Dove vai?” a gruff, older officer asked — Where are you going?

I was going to do the shopping, I explained; now I’m going home.

“Dove abiti?” — Where do you live?

Just on this street, I said; 50 meters from here.

“Documenti, per favore.” My heart rate spiked. While the guy took my documents — US license, car registration, and Italian ID card — to his vehicle, the other officer came up to me.

“Tutto chiuso oggi, 25 aprile — e un giorno festivo nazionale,” she told me — Everything’s closed today, it’s a national holiday.

“Si, il Giorno della Liberazione,” I replied, smiling in what I hoped was a self-deprecating way. I threw in an actual face-palm for clarity, and explained in my broken Italian that I knew that April 25 was a national holiday, but with the lockdown, every day seems the same and I didn’t really know what the date was until I got to the store.

She smiled back. She, like everybody in these times, probably understood the idea of all the days running together. She turned toward her colleague, who was coming back to my car. She said something to him that I didn’t catch, but then they both laughed as they gave my documents back to me. (I noted that they didn’t ask for my Autodichiarazione form.)

“Buona giornata,” she said, and her colleague waved me to move along. I quickly thanked them and slowly drove off, hoping I had successfully masked my shaky-handed panic.

I got back home empty-handed. Right away, Zen saw the still- shaken expression on my face. When I told her about the traffic stop, she just hugged me and patted my head. “You’re okay, you’re just such a hardened criminal, evading the authorities again,” she teased. That calmed me down. Then she poured me a little glass of wine — that calmed me down more.