Notorious Vandal Strikes Again - The Florentine

16
Thursday 20 October 2005
Culture & CUSTOMS
Life in Italy
www.theflorentine.net
Married to an Italian
The First Fight: Stepping Lightly into Italy’s “Inside” World
by Fred Birkhimer
When my Italian then-girlfriend,
now-wife, and I
moved in together, our First
Big Fight wasn’t about money—we
didn’t have enough to fight about. It
wasn’t about any of the sources of
conflict you might guess would plague
a cross-cultural relationship (nosey
in-laws, insensitive friends) or, for
that matter, any relationship (washing
the dishes, putting the cap back on
the toothpaste). Surprisingly, it wasn’t
even about the well-known Italian tradition
of insane jealousy (that would
cause the Second Big Fight).
The First Big Fight was about slippers.
Italians, it turns out, have very precise
ideas about the domestic sphere.
All the chaos and disorganisation
plainly visible here every minute of the day—when
you shop, work, drive, take the bus, or even just
get a coffee—is strangely absent when you come
home at night after a hard day at work. When
you shut the door behind you, you are subject
to an iron-clad series of rules, regulations, and
laws that are as merciless in their conception
as they are draconian in their implementation.
Exceptions will not be made; prisoners will not
be taken. One such law concerns inside clothes
and outside clothes. Italians, in spite of (or, perhaps,
because of) the chaos that surrounds them,
are obsessive about compartmentalising.
Slippers are the most essential item of inside
clothes and, as such, form a mutually exclusive
set with the outside world. That is to say, not only
can you put slippers on when you get home, but
you must. Don’t think twice. The opposite is true
as well: when you leave the house, putting on
your shoes must be the very last thing you do.
I should mention that similarly rigid rules
apply to the seasons. In the world of fashion
and clothing you’d expect this here; consider the
favourite Italian pastime, “changing the closet,”
a phrase I’ve learned to dread even more than
“let’s go to Ikea.” It means spending an entire
day—in the company of your mother-in-law (we’ll
talk about Italian mothers-in-law another day),
since such delicate affairs are best decided in the
family council—deciding which clothes you can
safely put away for the winter/summer, only to
endure the opposite process the following spring/
fall. Why does it hurt the Italian sensibility to
have both long- and short-sleeved shirts sharing
the same closet, when they are perfectly content
to walk around in wool scarves and micro-fibre
parkas suitable for arctic excursions in late September,
practically the minute they get back from
a month at the beach?
But, let’s get back to the slippers.
The problem was, I didn’t even have slippers.
(In my defence, I should mention that moving
to another continent while staying within airline
baggage weight limits is a bit tricky, especially if
35 of your 40 kilos are books and CDs; even had
I been an assiduous slipper-wearer in the States,
I confess they might not have made the cut….)
From the horrified gaze of my then-girlfriend,
“Consider the favourite
Italian pastime, “changing
the closet,” deciding
which clothes you can
safely put away for the
winter/summer, only
to endure the opposite
process the following
spring/fall.”
though, I could see that this was
not a good excuse. Not owning slippers
is simply inconceivable for the
average Italian, and so I unwittingly
became a member of a club I guarantee
you don’t want to be a member
of: those who live like students. Italians,
it turns out, occasionally compensate
for the chaos that they cleverly disguise
as “daily life” with somewhat extreme categorisations.
This one involves being a bit too bohemian
in lifestyle.
Let the record show that I had lived in Florida
for five years when in graduate school, so I was
no stranger to flip-flops. Unfortunately, slippers
and flip-flops for Italians are distant relatives,
barely on speaking terms; the former are dignified
inside clothes, while the latter are scruffy outside
clothes and as such are appropriate only for the
beach. My new Italian family gleefully illustrated
this point for me when my flip-flops left footprints
all over the freshly mopped floors, something
that suitably domesticated slippers would never
have done. (Triple parking and tax evasion? No
problem. Leaving footprints on freshly mopped
floors?! Now that is what they call a problem.)
So, when you contemplate a life-changing decision
like moving in with an Italian, along with
patience, a sense of humour, and a patriotic vein
you never would have suspected you possessed,
be sure to pack a pair of slippers. And make sure
they’re appropriate for the season.