Copyright, 2003 by Kurt Nemes

Fortunately, Tiger and Teeny had also come along. Claire had bought Tiger--a two-foot long rubber monitor lizard--at The Nature Company several months before our trip. Simone’s traveling companion, Teeny Tiny Tears, a doll with finger-in-a-light-socket red hair, arrived last Christmas in a package from my parents. Both items figure prominently in our daughters’ imaginations and emotional lives.

On our trip, the toys became a kind of spiritual anchor for each child, a way of holding onto something familiar in an alien environment where no one spoke their language, buildings were hundreds of years old, people ate things like squid and octopus, and they stood out like sore thumbs with their blonde hair and fair complexions. And we would need as many anchors as possible before the first night was over.

Each of us heaved a sigh of relief when we finally pulled up in the main square of the tiny, medieval village of Pisciotta and saw our friend, Gianfranco, sitting on the terrace of the Bar Agora--just where he had said he would be--sipping a granita di fragole.

But now Gianfranco was telling us the bad news: the deal he had arranged had fallen through. We wouldn’t be able to rent the beautiful villa with the lemon trees in the garden after all. It was about 6:00 in the evening.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve found you another place, right next to the old one. It belongs to the brother of the first guy. It’s not as nice, but what are you going to do? This time of year.”

That had worried me from the day Gianfranco had promised he could find accommodations in the town where he spent every summer teaching Italian to foreigners. All Italians get a month of paid vacation every year, and every August many vacate their city flats and head for the mountains or the beach to chill out. The first landlord, Signor Raffaele, had rented his villa out from under us to a couple from Turin who wanted it for the entire month. Since we only had a week, we just couldn’t compete.

“Still,” Gianfranco said, “you’re not going to spend that much time at the house. You’ll be here or at the beach or in the restaurant.”

Originally, we had wanted to visit our favorite places: Rome, Siena, Capri and Pompeii. But as we’ve learned on trips to England to visit my wife’s parents, there are only so much sight you can see with two youngsters in tow.

Instead we took a leaf out of the average Italian family’s book. Many spend their summer holidays in sleepy little sea-side towns where they lounge on the beach during the day, dine in homey ocean-side trattorie, take siestas in the afternoon, and stroll around the town at night savoring the cool sea breeze and a sumptuous ice cream from the local gelateria. In short, it's the Italian equivalent of going to Ocean City--except that it's on the Mediterranean, there are Greek ruins nearby, and you can actually get a good cup of espresso. Thousands of these little towns dot the Italian coast and are passed over by the average tourist out to visit the major attractions. Fortunately, we had a contact--Gianfranco--in one of them by the name of Pisciotta.

Pisciotta lies about 200 kilometers below Naples. Any guidebook will tell you this area abounds with sites of cultural interest, good food, and long, sandy beaches. Ruins of ancient cities follow the coast. Vergil says Aeneas landed in Pisciotta which was famous then--as it is now--for its olives and oil. Another the town--Paestum--boasts of the best-preserved Greek temples in the Mediterranean region.

Nearby Amalfi, once an important nation-state, contains a jewel-like Romanesque church. In the ethereal heights above it stands Ravello, where Wagner composed operas, Nietzsche wrote philosophical treatises and Gore Vidal pens his essays today. Physically, the countryside is stunning. Mountains, covered with olive and grape, run along the coast down to the water’s edge. Long, sandy beaches end in the clear, deep, cobalt blue waters of the Mediterranean. Gianfranco was right--even if we ended up staying in a hovel, we’d still have plenty to entertain us.

Of course, to get to this Eden, we’d have to drive out of Naples’ Capodichino airport past the high-rise mausoleums, slums, and urban sprawl--much of which consist of precarious high-rise apartments that violate Italian anti-earthquake regulations. We’d hold our breaths near the belching refineries and behind derelict cars and trucks on the clogged motorways--always hoping we’d not die at the hands of some maniac in a Lamborghini Countache. But we decided the rewards would far outweigh these risks.

Claire sat clutching Tiger and Simone pressed Teeny to her chest and sucked furiously on her thumb. Gianfranco suggested a place to eat called Tre Gufi (three owls). This pizzeria occupied the bottom floor of a 17th century Neapolitan palazzo that sat astride the backbone of the hill of this medieval village. We climbed the streets too narrow for autos to pass and were enveloped by the quiet of the village.

Turning a corner, we emerged onto the terrace of the restaurant. The maître d’ showed us to a table at the edge and we looked out westward down over the village and the olive tree covered hill, above the port of Pisciotta and out to the Mediterranean. The sun set while we washed down slices of pizza and rings of fried squid with the local white wine.

Tiger made a splash. It started when Claire sat him next to her on the table. The waiter walked up, greeted us and jumped back in fright when he saw Tiger.

“Wow,” he said. “Is he real?”

“No, he’s rubber.”

“He looks so real. Can I borrow him?”

“Sure.” The waiter hid Tiger behind his back and ran over to the table where the girl he had his eye on sat, and thrust Tiger into her face. General pandemonium broke out as she screamed, then laughed, and finally took Tiger on rounds to other tables. This scene was repeated many times on our trip.

Simone, being younger and less of an extrovert, often faded into the background when the attention focused on Claire and her lizard. But Teeny, Simone’s doll, played an important role for her owner, too, though not in such an obvious way. In fact, I completely misread the role of Teeny until much later.

Often, Teeny, seemed like a nuisance to me. In the morning before going out, Simone would make a commotion about what Teeny was wearing, the doll’s hair, or where she had put one of the doll’s accessories. The trauma around these events often held us up and made everyone else wish for Teeny’s demise.

One day it came to a head. I was driving along a narrow coastal road on the way to the beach when suddenly Simone let out a blood-curdling scream that seemed to come from the depths of her soul.

“Her eye is broken!” she wailed. “Now we have to call Santa Claus to come and fix her. But we can’t call Santa Claus because it’s not Christmas. But only Santa Claus can fix her.”

Her cries were like fingernails on a blackboard, so I pulled the car over to the side of the road. Simone handed me Teeny. Somehow, she had managed to push the doll’s eye back into the brain cavity of its head.

“I can fix this,” I thought to myself, “but I need a screwdriver or something to pop the eyeball back into place.” But the car rental company hadn’t given us a tool kit. I wondered how I was going to fix it. Then suddenly it struck me.

“Does anyone have a bobby pin?” I asked.

My wife did, so there, on the shore of the Mediterranean about a mile from Palinuro, the town where Aeneas stopped off on his wanderings before he discovered Rome, I performed eye-surgery on Teeny. At first, I managed to pop the eye back into place but couldn’t work out exactly how it was supposed to fit. The eye wouldn’t close, but it looked OK.

“Simone,” I said in a grave voice. “I got the eye back in place, but Teeny may not be able to close it again.” She stopped crying, took the doll from me, and looked at it sadly.

“Poor Teeny,” she said.

As I turned around to drive off, it suddenly came to me how to fix it correctly. I asked for it back and jiggled the eye into its proper place. It worked like brand new.

The rest of our trip, Simone relaxed and settled in to the village life. She had been able to let off a lot of steam, received a huge amount of attention, and now it was over. At the time, I felt un po’ nervoso myself. Later, I saw that this was Simone’s way of exercising some control over her situation. After that, she started enjoying the compliments she and Claire received in the Bar Agora. I knew everything was all right when one morning, when we were getting ready to go to the beach, she bounded into the room and said: “Mommy? Daddy? Are we going to the bars today?”