An Inconvenient Life

­Two months after our wedding, I was lying on the tile floor of our new Italian apartment, willing myself not to sweat through my last clean tank top. It was August, which means two things in Italy. First, it is hot. And second, everything is closed. Because the 40-foot container carrying our furniture, car and the rest of my clean clothes was missing somewhere between Norfolk and Naples, there was nothing to do but wait. I was also waiting for the phone company to install our DSL line, the handyman to fi x the leaking hot water heater and the department store to deliver a washing machine. With nothing else to do, I laid on the cool tile floor, imagining that the hot, sticky breeze blowing in from the terrace was the ice-cold air conditioning we had left behind in North Carolina.

In my previous life—my convenient, efficient, “Would you like paper or plastic, ma’am?” life—in the States, I started each day with a run at 6:25am. For precisely 35 minutes on the treadmill in our apartment complex fi tness room, I ran at a steady 6.2 miles an hour while watching MSNBC and listening to the same workout mix on my iPod. The rest of my day was similarly scheduled to provide maximum benefit with minimum effort. I caught up with friends during yoga class, bought groceries and new windshield wipers at SuperTarget, and had my favorite shows TiVoed and waiting for me when I fi nished microwaving dinner. Routine slowly morphed into rut, and although my husband and I weren’t unhappy, these predictable lives weren’t as fulfi lling as we had imagined. The day that the air conditioning broke in my perfect, temperature-controlled exercise chamber, I took it as a sign that it was time for a change. My husband had just been offered a three-year job in La Spezia, Italy, so we decided to trade the corporate ladder for la dolce vita.

After we arrived in Italy, in the weeks before all of our worldly possessions joined us, we coped with the daily frustration of waiting by eating. Luckily, the one enterprising business in town that was open in August was the local pizzeria. And it was a fantastic pizzeria. We ate pizzas with pesto and sausage and cheese; crostini with lardo, prosciutto and fresh mozzarella; pasta with ragù and butter and sage; and we washed it all down with liters and liters of wine.

After every meal, I considered resuming my old exercise routine to offset this culinary excess. The problem was that it was too hot to run outside; by 9 o’clock, it was already sweltering. Now that I had broken free of my office job, I couldn’t be bothered to get up at 6am to run while it was still suffi ciently cool, like my husband did. And although our tiny town has three different bread shops, it doesn’t have a gym.

I fooled myself into thinking that I could eat my way through Italy as long as I did yoga a few times a week. This plan worked well for a while. Then our furniture finally arrived and with it, our bathroom scale. My illusion was immediately shattered: I had gained eight pounds in less than four weeks. Although I tried to ignore my husband’s told-you-so smirk, I knew he was right: I was going to have to run outside.

So I mapped out a three-mile back-road circuit, woke up an hour earlier and laced up my trusty New Balances. I had never run hills before. I had never run in 70- plus degree heat before. And not since those awful fitness tests in high school had I run without a motor and conveyer belt helping to propel my body forward. Plus, for the past month, I had done little more than lift a fork/piece of pizza/enormous hunk of cheese from a plate to my mouth, so any fitness I had brought over from the States had gone the way of my skinny jeans.

On my first trip out, I hadn’t gotten through the first Maroon 5 song on my iPod mix before two old women walking arm in arm along the road stopped to stare at me. As the heat of a self-conscious blush started to spread across my cheeks, one of the ladies began clapping. As I passed, they shouted an encouraging “Brava, brava!” at me. Had I known that there would be a cheering section, I might’ve started running sooner.

With new confidence, I managed to struggle up the first hill into the town’s main piazza. There, a cluster of old men huddled around a marble bench in the shade looked up from their conversation and started waving me over. Fearful about my still-rudimentary command of Italian and already very sweaty, I wanted to bolt. But after that hill, I really needed a break. As it turned out, they just wanted to ask me how far I ran, how old I was and whether I agreed that it was a beautiful day.

Most days since, the same men—give or take one or two—stop me to again ask how far I ran and whether I agree that it is a beautiful day. By now I’ve answered their questions many times over; they must know that I run five kilometers and that I always think it’s a beautiful day. But I still stop for a minute or two to see how they think Italy played in last night’s soccer match…and to catch my breath.

My run takes me past olive groves and lemon trees. In the spring, fantastically fragrant wisteria and gigantic pale pink roses spill over fences and into the road along the way. Near the town cemetery, a roaming pack of unpenned goats bleats at me each time I run by. I recognize almost every face I pass and even those I don’t, I greet with a breathless “buongiorno.” I now take delight in the surprises along the way; I am no longer the girl who would cringe at even the most minor of interruptions to her routine. And when I make the final sprint up our driveway with the early morning breeze in my face, I am sweatier and happier than I ever was after a workout in our old, isolated fitness room.

Like my change in running routine, we’ve had to make many adjustments to this culture that values the quality and enjoyment of life above all else. This life is messier, sweatier, less convenient and often unbelievably frustrating. But learning to relax, slow down, savor the food, the wine, this beautiful day—these are the reasons why we came to Italy in the first place. I don’t mind waiting in a chaotic mass of people at the bread shop to buy some amazing focaccia because I know the owner will cut me a thick, chewy piece from the middle; she knows I don’t like the crispy edge bits. And no matter how convenient it might be, you can’t get bread like this at SuperTarget.

Ingrid K. Williams is a freelance writer living, eating, and still running in Santo Stefano di Magra, Italy. She can be reached at ingridkwilliams@gmail.com.

~Ingrid Williams