[Music]

Sara Marinelli (00:09):
I am Sara Marinelli, and this is Letters to Italy. In this series, I speak with Italian expats in the Bay Area at the time of Coronavirus. How has the pandemic reshaped our lives here and our relationship to Italy? If there has ever been a time to look back on our choices and ask the question “Where is home?" It is now.

(00:40):
In this first episode, I share some of my letters to Italy: a personal COVID diary that helped me stay connected with the country I left 14 years ago.

Today I got my first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. It's March 3rd, 2021. And while driving to the vaccination center, I felt excited. I put a nice dress on and even makeup under my mask. For me, it was a special day. 
Soon after the injection, as I sat for half an hour in the observation section, I took in the scene around me.

[SFX: Vaccination Center]

(01:32):
I saw hope and relief and efficiency coupled with kindness, and I was moved. I couldn't help thinking of my family. My over 70 year old mother suffering with respiratory disease has not received the vaccine yet, and is waiting for a home visit that never comes. I alternate between hope and discouragement. The Italian news speaks again and again of lockdowns throughout the country, cases on the rise, the healthcare system under pressure, and a slow vaccination plan.
I trust that there is truly that light at the end of the tunnel, as everyone keeps saying, including me, and that I can travel to Italy soon. In June, it will be two years since my last visit.  
I mark the calendar for my second dose and I think over a year ago, when it all began.

Mio amore, 

sei come l’amante lontano al quale scrivo lettere fino a quando non ci rivedremo. 

Conoscevo tutto di te, il tuo volto e il tuo nome, il dolce e l’amaro….

(03:00):
This is the first letter I wrote to Italy, my far away love, in early March, 2020. I am a writer, educator, and radio producer in San Francisco. I grew up in Naples and moved to the Bay Area in 2007. In so many years, I never felt so close and so far away from Italy, as in the first months of the pandemic. The separation from Italy that I had chosen years earlier, suddenly became forced. Our families and friends were going through a difficult time, and I - like many other Italians - could not visit them.

[SFX - Phone call]

(03:45):
In the first week of March, la zona rossa, the red zone that had started in Lombardia was spreading everywhere. The country went to complete lockdown and was isolated; borders were closing, airports shut down, — my flights canceled uncountable times.

[SFX - Phone call]

Even if we made it to Italy, mobility was restricted, Visa regulations changing, and it was complicated to return here. We relied on daily news on Italian TV and radio channels, social media and phone calls to understand what was happening.

[SFX - Phone call]

(04:46):
I spent days and nights calling family, friends across the country, leaving messages, waiting anxiously to hear back. 
I remember fearing for my mother's health. The idea of not seeing her in case something happened terrified me.

[SFX - Phone call]

(05:12):
“Don't worry,” she says. But it was hard not to. I know many Italian expats had similar worries for their parents. Soon, all of us far away from family had the same fear. Even when 10,000 kilometers of distance and two oceans were not in between.
Lonely deaths have been the most dreadful aspect of this crisis.

[SFX: Italian radio news]

(05:54):
By the end of March, the count was a hundred thousand cases, 13,000 people deceased, of which almost a hundred doctors. Cities like Bergamo, Brescia were in a state of shock for their losses. 

[SFX: Italian streets sounds]

In a country filled with churches, it struck me that there were no funeral bells ringing: only silence, and no time to grieve. 
I felt split between two lives. Two time zones, two places. I withdrew from the city outside ahead of time. The so-called normal had already altered for me. While San Francisco was living its last bit of freedom unawares, I had deprived myself of it. I lost count of my days of quarantine.

[SFX: pages turning]

Cara Italia, 

Nove ore di fuso non sono niente. 

Se dormo di giorno e sto sveglia di notte, sono in sincronia perfetta. 

e nel tempo capovolto, posso vivermi il sogno e l’incubo di essere in Italia..

 Dear Italy,

Nine hours of time difference is nothing. If I sleep during the day and stay awake at night, I am in perfect synchrony with you. In this overturn time, I can live the dream and the nightmare of being in Italy. 

[SFX Italian ambulances]

(08:31):
I am sure you've all seen those images of Italy in the first lockdown when COVID-19 was yet to become a global pandemic: the aerial views of piazzas and churches, the quiet and clean Venice canals, the small towns and the big cities, all seeped into my dreams. I would wake up displaced with vivid memories of people, places, moments I had forgotten, and I longed for all that I had left.

[SFX Pages turning]

Mi ricordo il chiosco dell’acquaiola all’uscita di scuola. Lei mi chiamava “a’ rilla” perché saltellavo invece di camminare…

(08:33):
I remember the fresh lemon kiosk outside my elementary school. The lemonade lady used to call me “a’ rilla” -  little cricket - because I skipped instead of walking, and I never stopped talking.

[SFX: vintage record playing]

(08:56):
You should know that I don't allow myself to be a very nostalgic person. I am not a collector. 
I throw things away as a preventative measure against nostalgia, the sickness that every immigrant needs to keep away.
But everything that I didn't keep is a piece of memory lost. In a time of such uncertainty looming over the future, I wanted to gain some of my past back. I wanted to remember who I had been and where I come from, what brought me to the present moment in which I felt unsure on how to keep going. I felt the urge to be a keeper. To document. This was not a year to forget, as so many people have said.
This is how “Letters to Italy” came to be. I began keeping a daily journal and an audio-diary, like I had not done in years. Every day, I would sit at my kitchen table, turn off my devices and write into the night, waiting for the 8:45 AM news. After years of writing in English, even the simple fact or writing in my native language was a return home. I filled notebooks with memories, along with thoughts, wishes, fears, and personal prayers. They were my love letters to my culture, my people, my response to the sorrowful postcards from Italy that we received hourly into our screens. 
Mine were also messages in a bottle to my future self, a tangible proof that I have survived, that I have learned my resilience.

(10:46):

I watched how Italians endured the strict lockdown, how they found ways to come together in isolation. 

[SFX Music from Italian balconies]

(11:11):

The silence from the muted cities suddenly broke, and music rose from windows and balconies.
When the stay-home order started here, I felt trapped in my apartment, and I wanted my balcony back. 

[Music]

I paid attention to the songs people were singing out loud to give each other courage. I began collecting them for my radio show, but the radio station shut down too. 

[Recording of my radio show]

(12:05):

“Welcome to Italian Frequency. This is Sara Marinelli, and I'm still recording from my closet in San Francisco during these weeks of Shelter in Place where we are staying home. And, uh, so I found this quiet place in my closet: my upstairs neighbor is very loud. These weeks, I am, uh, creating shows that I called “Canzoni contro la paura”: Songs against Fear”. And I invited people in living in Italy and also all Italian expats here to curate the show with me by proposing some songs. And I also gathered the music and the songs that have been played in Italy during these weeks, either from the balconies, but also the songs that are more popular now on radio shows.

[Music]

(12:54):
When I played the songs people requested from Italy and from here, I felt I was shortening the distance. Just an inch closer.

[Music]

(13:13):
I wondered how the Italian community of the Bay Area was coping with the news and dealing with our own quarantine.
North Beach, San Francisco’s Little Italy was, of course, shut down.

[SFX: car drive]

(13:37):
I'm driving in North Beach, Columbus avenue, and I’ve never seen it so empty. It's May, 2nd. May 6th was the day that Shelter in Place was supposed to be over, but they extended it until May 31st. And I wonder what's going to happen for all these restaurant owners. I see a lot of them completely covered with wooden boards. Some are open for takeout. 
I never drive around here. It's always busy and impossible to park, and full of life, any Italians, and good food. Some of these restaurants have been here for a really long time.  I've heard some had to completely shut down their business and they're not coming back. And they had to close the restaurants that they had for many years. Some people left as well.

(14:54):
I reached out to some Italians here. I wanted to know their stories, how they tended to the long distance relationship with the country during this trying time. Despite our diverse backgrounds and professions, we share this experience now.
I was sure that each in their own way has been sending out their love letters to Italy. 

[Music]

Dear Italy. I hope that you can hear us.

(15:44):
In the next segment, I am speaking with Valentina Imbeni, the founder and head of the international school, La Scuola. One of the few schools in San Francisco that succeeded in staying open after the first lockdown. I hope you will join me.

[Music]

(16:12):
“Letters to Italy” is produced, edited, and hosted by me, Sara Marinelli.
This series was made possible thanks to the support of COMITES of San Francisco and the Italian Consulate of San Francisco with funding from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. I am grateful for their support. 
Thanks for listening.

© Sara Marinelli