It's been an entire year since we arrived in Sicily on our one-way ticket from the United States! Usually, when approaching a one-year anniversary, it feels like time has moved so fast. But not this time.
In some ways, this feels like the longest year ever—in a good way!
I cannot believe how much we have done and accomplished. From learning to navigate the healthcare system to completing my immigration paperwork to undertaking planned and unplanned home renovations, we jumped into the deep end of life in Italy in our first year living here full-time.
Plus, so far, we've done it all without a car. Though I am finally in driving school studying for my Italian license and, if I pass the written and driving exam, we hope to buy a car this coming spring!
What I haven't done is keep up with this blog as much as I should. I have a half dozen half-written blog posts about everything we've been doing. But I haven't finished any of them. Instead, we've been busy living.
So, let's talk about what it's really been like for us, living full-time in Sicily.
Life in Italy: Not Quite Emily in Paris
My parents love the Netflix show Emily in Paris. If you haven't seen it, the series is about a twenty-something American woman who ends up landing a job in Paris despite not speaking French.
The third season recently came out, and my mom keeps asking if I've watched it yet. I find the show to be light-hearted fun and, when dubbed in Italian, it's fantastic for practicing Italian comprehension. So this past weekend, I queued up Season 3.
Watching Emily in Paris, especially now that I've been an Italian resident for a full year, what really stands out to me is how often Emily stops and marvels that she is living in Paris. The show is geared around that intoxicating feeling of "pinch me, I can't believe I'm in Paris." And it evokes it marvelously well.
I used to feel that living in New York City. I'd stop and marvel at the midtown skyscraper canyons or the view of the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park. I prided myself on having half the subway system memorized and always knowing which way was North (for real, this is a thing). Even during the pandemic, after twenty years in NYC, when I rode the ferries or walked miles to doctor appointments, I'd stop and marvel.
What's strange, though, is I haven't had that "pinch me" feeling here in Sicily. At least not in the same way. And I haven't missed it.
I suspect it's because we've found something one level deeper. We aren't pinching ourselves. Instead, we're learning—about another culture and another way of living. We're learning about ourselves and who we are and who we want to be. When I have a moment where I might otherwise "pinch myself," instead I just quietly take it in and feel gratitude to have the chance to be alive in that moment, and for it to feel ordinary and right.
Like one morning this week, when I was out buying cat food and picking up milk...
Lots of Facebook forums about "expats in Italy" have folks who will tell you that living here is so different from visiting. "You'll lose the rose-colored glasses soon enough," they write to those who post about dreams of moving to Italy.
I have been waiting, wondering if I will lose the rose-colored glasses. But now I'm starting to think that, perhaps, we forgot to put them on in the first place.
Save the Cat
In screenwriting and novel writing, there is a philosophy called "Save the Cat." I'm simplifying this, obviously, but the theory is that you get audiences to root for your hero by having the hero "save the cat" early on. The cat can be anyone or any creature in need. The point is that your hero notices someone in need and offers aid. This action shows that, however flawed your hero may otherwise be, they still have goodness at their core.
Save the cat sounds simple enough. But I wonder how many of us would even notice that the cat needed saving. I know I don't always.
Once, in NYC, I was in a semi-full subway car where a clean-shaven white man in a rumpled suit had passed out, taking up a whole bench. He looked and smelled drunk. I didn't check to see if he was alive or needed help. No one else did either, not while I was in that car. We all avoided him.
Yes, there are a million reasons why it made sense, for my own safety, to not engage with a potentially drunk male stranger. But I sometimes wonder: What if he had needed help?
Here in Sicily, I constantly see people going out of their way to help people in need, whether strangers, acquaintances, or friends.
A taxi driver I know from Priolo, Carlo, took me to a medical appointment down in Siracusa. But when we were ready to leave, an elderly man outside the clinic collapsed. I didn't see it. A middle-aged man himself, Carlo jumped out of the car and ran to the man's aid.
On a bus to Siracusa this past August, a woman's child was weak from suspected heat exhaustion and the bus driver pulled over, called his friends in the medical response teams in Priolo, and held the bus until the child could be assessed and taken for treatment.
Our lovely friends, Lily and Lele, noticed an abandoned puppy on the side of the road near Melilli this past summer. We'd all spent a lovely day having a picnic and a walk in Noto Antica and they'd just dropped us off in Melilli. Of course, they stopped and picked up the puppy. They took him home, fell in love, and are raising him now.
All of this got me wondering: What would it take to be the kind of person who saves the cat? And am I that person?
A few weeks ago, just before a Mediterranean cyclone was due to sweep through the region, Marco went up the hill behind our house to feed the wild-living cat we named Topolina. It was drizzling and, for some reason, I stayed home. Until I got a call from Marco: "Camellia, there's a box of kittens up here! I think someone abandoned them."
Marco had noticed kittens in need. There was no one else around. Whatever happened next to those kittens was up to us now. If we left them, they would likely die in the storm. If we brought them home, well, let's just say that we were not remotely prepared.
Three Kittens in Sicily
I grabbed a shopping bag and some towels and ran up the hill. Topolina hissed at the tiny soaking kittens. (She is NOT a fan of other cats.)
We wrangled the little critters into the shopping bag and carried them home. The next morning, we ran to the pet store and bought all the supplies we could carry.
That first week, the kittens were all big eyes and ears and I was terrified of breaking them. They were about five weeks old and kept trying to crawl up our bellies and nurse. The littlest ones looked like NYC rats when they got wet.
There were several days when they all had diarrhea everywhere. Until that fully resolved, I had a part-time job as a kitten butt-wiper, cleaning three kitten butts every time they pooed (which is multiple times a day).
We took them to the vet and got them the right medications. While there, we accidentally found permanent homes for them, too. The vet is actually adopting two of them! Now, the kittens are around nine weeks old and healthy and rambunctious and adorable and driving us bonkers.
We thought about keeping them, but after many tears, we realized it wasn't the right time for us. We're just their temporary parents, filling in for their missing mama until they're big enough to go off to school and lead wonderful lives. It's going to be super hard to let them go.
But I'm grateful that Marco noticed them and that, together, we took action. And, of course, many people stepped in, too, and helped us help these kittens these past few weeks.
So, What Is it Really Like Living in Sicily After One Year?
Unlike Emily in Paris, you don't really pinch yourself when wiping poo off kitten butts. But you do connect with your neighbors and community. You learn about yourself.
So far, life in Sicily is challenging and overwhelming and involves lots of logistics. But it's also peaceful and beautiful and surprising in so many ways.
Basically, it's real life. And I wouldn't want it any other way.
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