An Umbrian Love Story

Pat Conroy's article, "The Romance of Umbria", had me fawning for the sweetness of Umbria and the romance that it inspires. It's not long before I'm asking myself, why can I make a trip to Umbria? The lead is instantly catching thanks to the personal, sweetly intimate writing style that perforates the rest of the piece; "'Tell about Italy,' my wife says, her voice sugared with her deep Alabama accent. 'Tell me what you loved the most.' I tell her two stories...". It's something about the way he talks about her accent that just has me picturing how he must look at her sweetly as she says this to him. Soon after in the piece he demonstrates a meaningful use of quotes that add another layer of personality and an additional intimacy, this time with the location, while making a comparison applicable to the reader. Talking about a house he once rented he quotes a brief exchange he had with his landlord upon asking if the house is old; "'No, no, no, no,' he said quickly. 'You Americans love the old things, but this house is not even 500 years.' Stunned I said, 'It was built before Columbus set sail.' 'Yes,' my landlord said. 'But you don't understand. In Rome, she is a baby.'". I thought this quote was wonderfully descriptive of the type of conversations that occur, what we consider astonishingly old, the Italians consider infantile, our history is but a baby compared to theirs.

After this he begins a repeated theme, "That is how Italy taught me about time". It is another demonstration of the honest, heart-felt writing that Conroy employs and it's a nice change of pace from the ordinary to hear about someone learning something from the actual place and people of Italy, not just its attractions and monuments of the past. He tells us about his mother's battle with cancer, an extremely personal and emotional detail that he did not have to share but chose to, with the reader, he lets us further into his life by doing this and makes him that much more endearing as a person and that much more admirable as a writer. He provides a wonderfully placed anecdote shortly after to emphasize the theme of learning, and this time how Italy taught him about being alive. He tells us, "I am finally living the life I think I was meant to live. I had no idea that a man in his fifties could fall in love with a woman in her fifties and that they could teach each other things about love and ecstasy and wonder...".

A little while later, when him and his wife are discussing where to go on their honeymoon he gives us another example of his expertly crafted descriptive language that is coated in an earnest, sweetness that you can't help but connect with; "Not to have traveled widely seemed unlucky to me, but not to have seen Italy was heartbreaking and unimaginable. My own heart has been shaped like a boot since I lived in the city of Rome for three years in the faraway eighties. If you cannot find happiness in Italy, I told Sandra, then I do not think you can find it in Eden". Here he again makes a useful comparison, everyone knows about the Garden of Eden and what it stands for, and the fact that he compares Italy to it is hugely telling. The fact that he describes his heart as being "boot shaped" is fabulously rich with imagery.

When he describes Umbria and why you travel there, he also provides a rich example of his well-crafted descriptive language; "Umbria. The shuttered beauty of the very name strikes me as luscious as a pear, as dark as the boars that roam her mountains, gorging themselves on wild chestnuts. This is a place where the centuries give up their stories at their own pace. You go to Tuscany because you must; you go to Umbria because you can. It is the province in Italy you travel to when you want the country itself to enter the pores of your skin. Umbria is Italy turned inward, its prayer to itself". This passage doesn't even need anything said about it, just reading it you know it's a perfect section of text.

The piece continues in this fashion, mixing personal anecdotes and stories of their time in Umbria sugared with the sweet, intimate writing style that he introduced in the lead and carries all the way through to the conclusion which upon reading I find that my hand has made its way to my heart, feeling a bit of the love he describes in myself.