Talking Location With…. author Michelle Damiani – a day in the life of Spello UMBRIA

22nd April 2018

#TalkingLocationWith… author Michelle Damiani, who shares a day in the life of Spello, UMBRIA. Umbria is the setting for her novel “Santa Lucia”

It’s Saturday in Umbria, so my three children are in school. Funny that school ending at 1:00 but including Saturdays used to feel like a scratchy sweater, but now it’s as comfortable as yoga pants. Having lunch together every day means that by the time my children tuck in, they’ve had so much free time it’s like a whole weekend elapsed in the space of an afternoon.

Anyway, I have several hours to myself, with no Italian lesson and no writing, so I take a new route to the butcher shop. Spello is so tiny tourists zip up and down the length of it in an hour and then mark it off their to-do list, directly under Assisi. Spello, check! But they haven’t really seen it. To really see Spello, you need to wander down dappled alleys, with moss softening cobblestones and mysteriously skinny doorways floating higher than their traditional neighbors. Are they really for removing the plague-stricken dead like my Italian teacher tells me? Or for escaping murdering medieval intruders? Crossing Spello off a list hardly leaves room for this kind of wondering.

I myself didn’t notice the Roman lettering etched into the bakery wall until the gruff man with the little red dog pointed it out. I remember, my arms were laden down with wood-fired loaves and a bag of biscotti, but now that Spellani stop me for conversation, no matter what is on my agenda, I pause. Luckily, there’s very little on my agenda beyond soaking up this town, these people, and the way we’re changing individually and as a family. Unlike home where I frantically raced past people with a hurried wave, “How’r’ya?” As if I lacked the time to get the whole sentence out. “Busy? Busy!” I would call to the blur behind me.

I take a steadying breath.

Here comes my Italian teacher. He’s always full of stories about salt wars that changed local cuisine or historical roots of local oil and flower festivals. Today though, he wants to know where I’m headed. “Il macellaio,” I tell him. He nods and slowly articulates a question about what I’ll be buying. I tell him meat for a sugo. He rocks back on his heels, pleased. His voice speeds up, slipping into the local Spellani dialect as he explains that in Spello, a sauce without meat is “sugo finto”, fake sauce. Ever since he helped me figure out how to make soup with the pig skin I accidentally picked up at the market (to my horror), he’s taken my culinary training under his wing.

He admonishes me for not wearing a scarf before taking his seat with the card-playing menfolk. The men ask if Juno is safe at home before erupting in guffaws. My American cat escaping onto the terra cotta roof-tiles is second only to my pig-skin soup in defining who I am in Spello. It certainly gives us something to talk about, though I sometimes wish I’d accidentally purchased daisy blossoms. Still, the soup was surprisingly tasty. So tasty that my Italian teacher ended up proudly handing out samples.

I laugh and assure them Juno’s sleeping and then continue down the hill. I wave as I pass the bar where my husband and I sipped our morning coffee earlier. The bar had been packed then, full of people arguing politics. I hadn’t paid attention, just let the musical tones roll off my shoulders. The bar owner waves back and calls out that I might need an umbrella.

I look up. The late morning fog is indeed condensing, muscling into something more menacing. I quicken my steps. These ancient cobblestones are slick when they are wet. Nonetheless, I stop and smile at the cat curled up in the window-box. I brush my fingers against the caper plants bursting from the wall of pink stone. And I take an unfamiliar alley, just for the pleasure of figuring out where I am when I emerge under an arch made from crystalline white rocks.

At the bustling butcher shop, an elderly neighbor orders me to buy the thin slices of beef and arugula. Nodding meekly, I ask her which salumi she prefers and she doesn’t hesitate before pointing out the mortadella, con pistacchi! I guess mortadella without pistachios is anathema. The butcher overhears and slices me a sliver of the meat before continuing to thwack his cleaver through pork chops and scoop mozzarella into clear bags. The lady waits while I nibble the mortadella. An explosion of taste, like Christmas morning and twilight baseball games all rolled up together. I nod eagerly. She pats my arm, warning me to hurry before the rain comes.

I’m not that far behind her with my mortadella, shaved beef and arugula, ground beef and pork for sauce (not finto!), and a packet of twisted pasta I’d never noticed before. Plus, a necessary bottle of local wine.

As I wend my way back up the hill, I think about how I’ve lived more in these morning hours than I did in a week back home. By slowing down and reveling in the moment, I understand where I am. Here, life is an art form, made of street-side conversation and new tastes and caper berries growing out of unexpected corners. My work is to stay present and let Spello untangle the knots so that I can breathe it in.

Thank you so much to Michelle for sharing her life in Spello, what a wonderful place, it has to go on the “must visit” list! You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook and via her website  (with tips to make the most of a visit to Spello).

You can of course buy her books “Santa Lucia” and “Il Bel Centro” (memoir) through the Tripfiction Database

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