sempre stranieri

Always foreigners. It's been stated by authors who should know. Not the pollyanna ones who write things I can't read, but those who tell it like it is. After Hannibal comes to mind by Barry Unsworth.

On the first day of the Christmas holiday, Thomasina stepped off the school bus in an obviously quiet

mood. At home she waited until we were alone before losing her composure and crying in my arms. Her school friend of many years had avoided her, preferring Italian friends on her 'smart phone' and fruitless boyfriend strategies. Thomasina confessed to not being able to keep  up with the slang, the dialect, of the locals and their fast-track chatter about TV shows, local cinema, immediate society, and current fashion. We have restricted  her cell phone, TV (absolutely non-existent), movies, and most social life. Instead we have insisted on homework, tennis lessons, sailing lessons, swimming lessons, and housework. She and Isolde have lived as a pair of friends in a foreign land. Every adult we know praises our kids as the most polite, the most informed, and the most well adjusted of any they know; but I worry. Any kid who is not accepted by her friends is in for a hard time, in my opinion.

Yesterday, Alex told me we had not been invited to the New Years Eve party of a couple we thought were friends or ours. We passed a nice holiday with numerous visits beginning with Thanksgiving and I felt a bit exhausted by it all, not to mention the frustration of obligatory gift shopping, when faced with the self-imposed schedule of making daily progress on this infinite pile of work I've set out for myself. But, if pressed, I have to confess, I don't have many friends here. When a potential acquaintance, let alone friend, holds a New Year's Eve party and forgets to invite me... well that's fairly obvious. When I learned of the snub I shrugged it off, but it's been haunting me for the whole week. Now I know what it feels like, Thomasina.

All vacation long, we've been thrown together in our small, snug apartment. We've made the best of Christmas with our olive tree and Jaquetta's cooking and inspirations, but it's been a very private season. We all work most of the day, including Christmas Day (cooking, etc.), the girls do their homework, Thomasina does some guitar practice, Isolde reads endless books until she is forced to re-read those she read last week. They practice their bridge (card game), swimming, and tennis. And the girls seem happy to play with each other at loads of make-believe games.

We are currently watching the weather report for signs of snow at the local ski area, but time is running out. School starts on monday and tonight it's raining.