As he looked up at the cold dark ceiling and listened to the distant cars passing by, he could think of nothing else but time. How long would it take to return to his friends back home and go on another adventure? The stale air of the night meant getting lost in thought instead of having one.
He lay on a hard single mattress, the clammy summer breeze blowing through the open window. The smell in his nostrils was a mixture of pine trees and mold. The hundred-year-old farmhouse was built of stone, and his room's cold granite floor sat above what used to be a barn and was now his grandmother's paramour's workshop.
The bed frame was made of weak aluminum holding up a cheap box spring mattress. Each movement would trigger a symphony of tiny springs and metal rubbing on metal. He feared he would wake everyone up by moving around. So despite being uncomfortable, his only option was to dwell. He dwelt on what he missed in Chicago: his Transformers, his GI Joes, his He-Man figures, his baseball cards, his comics. He dwelt on the fact that he was in a foreign country with no friends, barely spoke the language, and had no one his age to play with.
In the distance, he heard echoing howls. Every sound from outside seemed so far away, while the squeaks from his small adjustments to get comfortable seemed to boom through the house.
The odious buzz of a mosquito whizzed by his ear as he noticed the Doppler effect. It made no sense to him why this tiny vampire would willingly sound the alarm before having a meal.
Summers in Chicago were hot and full of mosquitoes too, but his family had screens on the windows, and when it got hot enough, they had air conditioning. The houses in Italy, for reasons he couldn't understand, had no screens and no AC. To make it worse, any light or sound inside was like a beacon for outside insects to find their way in and disturb the peace.
Stef's family spent every summer and winter in Italy. He had gone through these differences between Chicago and Italy many times, but they still felt new each visit. Each trip to Italy seemed like a distant memory to him - so much time passed between visits, especially for someone his age. Time moves faster as we get older, and weeks for a child can feel like years. An entire summer for an eleven-year-old is a lifetime.
After finally falling asleep to memories of his past adventures, he woke to the loud caw of a nearby rooster. The night and all his imaginings of the surrounding landscapes gave way to bright reality.
Peering out his window, Stef saw the tree-lined road and gravel driveway leading up to the house. There were two cars there now; when he had arrived last night, there had been only one.
As he got up and dug through his suitcase to find his Bulls hoodie, he began to notice details of the room he hadn't seen in the darkness. The ceiling was about ten feet high with cobwebs in the highest corners. Those beasts had been watching him while he slept, probably thinking about ways to drink water from his mouth - at least that's what his friends back home had told him about these eight-legged creatures. If he looked at it positively, maybe they were friends guarding him from the mosquitoes while he slept. He was fine with that.
Slowly working his way to the door, the cool floor under his bare feet reminded him that he wasn't at home. As the door opened, he caught a whiff of something sweet coming from down the hall and decided to follow his nose to find out what it was.
"Buon Giorno Ste," said his nonna.
She was sitting at the round dinner table, covered by a colorful plastic tablecloth. Before her was a half-eaten piece of crostata. The rest of the breakfast pie sat in a perforated tin tray in the center of the table.
"Giorno," he sleepily replied.
"Morning," his mother smiled at him. "Do you want some crostata?"
"Sure."
"Caffe latte?"
"No, tè per favore," he uttered. He wasn't a fan of coffee, so he asked for tea instead.
"How did you sleep?" his nonna asked.
Not wanting to offend his host, his grandmother whom he rarely saw, he replied with a big smile, "I slept well." Stef always tried to make the best of things, and being empathetic was one of his better qualities.
"Nonna made this," his mom said as she put a slice of fresh crostata down in front of him next to a cup of black tea.
"Looks great."
Crostata was an Italian baked fruit tart. This one had been baked by Nonna that morning using fresh fruits from her garden. The sloppily laid criss-crossed crust on top reminded him that this was authentic, and that his nonna was old. He didn't mind the asymmetry of the dish - it was delicious.
"Cosa mi racconti di bello?" nonna asked. Despite having been married to an American GI, Stef's grandfather, her English wasn't great, so she often spoke in Italian. She wanted him to tell her a story, but he didn't really understand the question.
His knowledge of Italian was basic, and a lot of the words didn't make sense. Stef shrugged.
Figuring that he didn't understand, she asked again in English.
"So, tell me a story."
Stef shrugged again. Not trying to be rude, he really didn't have anything to say. Stef had lots of stories to tell, but didn't think that nonna would be interested.
"What are we doing today?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"We're going to the American Beach."
Nonna was one of the oldest legal drivers in Italy. There had even been an article in the local Tuscan paper about how, at 84, she was the oldest person to get her driver's license renewed. Somehow, despite her age and arthritic hands and legs, she managed to put that manual transmission Honda into Grand Prix mode on the country roads.
Pulling out of the gravel driveway, with the two-ton vehicle crushing rock and insect alike, their first adventure was underway. The road to the American Beach was lined with tall cypress trees on each side.
Behind the cypress trees stretched acres of Tuscan landscape, rich with olive groves, fruit farms, and ranches. As the trees whooshed by, Stef caught glimpses of animals between them - sometimes families of deer, other times boars and birds.
In the car, Stef stared excitedly out the window. He saw kids in swimsuits (often speedos) heading to the beach. Seeing kids his age and girls, he was excited to get to the water.
The driveway to the beach parking lot was long and sandy, surrounded on each side by wild foliage. The parking lot was filled with old-looking cars from some decade prior. It seemed to Stef that Italy was like the US was, just 30 years behind.
Getting out of the car and walking towards the beach, Stef felt a familiar fluttering in his chest - excitement. The only beach in Chicago, on Lake Michigan, was nothing compared to this one. There were food stands (American food: hot dogs, burgers, nachos), cabanas, equipment rental shops, and bathrooms.
This area had once been a settlement for American GIs in WWII. Everything seemed to be from a place that time had forgotten, like it hadn't changed since then.
Nonna had a small walk-in locker outside where they left their belongings. Walking in his flip-flops, Stef felt the sand getting between his toes.
The beach, before the actual water, was a sea of beach umbrellas and beachgoers having a good time. Children were running in every direction, people were having meals, and vendors walked by (a man selling fresh coconut yelling "Ah-doe, coco bello coco!").
Stef, his mom, and nonna sat under their own umbrella and began to eat a meal of fresh prosciutto, melon, grapes, and homemade sandwiches.
Stef was envious seeing the other kids and asked if he could go play. He walked through the army of umbrellas, looking at everyone.
He headed toward a small playground where he saw some other kids. Most of them were speaking Italian, and Stef wasn't comfortable enough with the language to start a conversation.
As he went down the slide and swung on the monkey bars, he overheard a couple of boys speaking English. Feeling bold from the playground fun, he went over and introduced himself.
One boy was named Darryl and the other Markus. They were brothers, sons of an Army man who lived on the base. While American, they traveled so much they called themselves Army brats, without any real home in the States.
Stef mentioned it was his first day here and that he had seen a small hill on the horizon past which he couldn't see. The boys said there were dozens of other similar beaches, but this was the only American beach, mainly used by Army folks and their families.
They believed the other beaches were off-limits and that they couldn't leave the American beach.
Being an adventurer, Stef inspired the brothers to travel with him over the hill to check out the next beach up the coast.
The walk felt long as they waded through endless umbrellas and beach patrons. They traveled for what felt like hours before they even made it through the first wave of people.
Finally, they reached the base of the hill, sparsely covered with green shrubs that seemed oddly out of place on a sandy Mediterranean beach. At the top of the hill were two spotlights shining down on trenches that had been laid during WWII.
The spotlights were passing from side to side, criss-crossing in the middle. The strange thing was that until this point, until they had reached the bottom of the hill, none of this was visible. It felt like they had been immersed in a new world, a relic of a world past.