In Italy, transport strikes loom suddenly, like a sharp-toothed dinosaur in a children’s pop-up book. The country’s queues are waves rather than lines, forming like a tide, with surge and flow.
Around here, calendars are used for counting down, not for arranging things ahead of time; the idea of drafting a game plan is saved for when you’re a single square away from your ultimate goal. In Italia, premeditated organization and deliberate planning doesn’t seem to top anyone’s list. Not that it matters. Lists are a legend-figments that exist only in the land of make-believe.
To the untrained eye, the country is steeped in spontaneity: conversation and sentiment are poured out as readily as coffee, and served just as quickly-immediate but comforting-rigorously su due piedi. Italians prefer to stand, I think, because you never know what situation might arise out of nowhere, taking you to places unforeseen.
Having started with a premise like this one, I now feel free to suggest that Italian disorganization is a myth. Or, better said, Italians like to appear disorganized, but the country is not without its rigid systems, though as hidden as stone walls under foliage. Rigid expectations do exist, exerting potent medieval strength on the psyche. The Italians’ secret objective, I’m quite sure, is to seek an order to things. Otherwise, how could you explain their ubiquitous love for a verb like sistemare?
The word sounds like ‘systemize’ and it’s all about finding order in the court. A combination of ‘settle’ and ‘arrange,’ you can use it for just about any need that sprouts up in the world’s human gardens. Use it to talk about styling your hair, furnishing a house, finding fine employment, fixing the drain pipes, securing temporary lodgings, straightening your tie, solving a problem and tidying a mess. Mi sistemo i capelli, ti sistemi la casa, il suo figlio è sistemato in banca-you catch my drift.
Worrywarts by nature and fatalists by choice should always choose life partners who select sistemare as a frequent part of their daily dictionaries. Filippo says it often and if you can love someone for his favorite verb, then that’s my reason for choosing him. And here’s the sentence you need to listen for: Non preoccuparti, si sistemerà tutto, vedrai. Don’t worry, everything’s going to systemize itself.’ You’ll see. Once a situation’s scrunched into a system, it’s going to be alright, I promise.
I cannot go without my weekly dose of this philosophy, and Filippo often administers it on Sundays, because that’s the day I fret about all the things that might go wrong in the week to come. It’s also the day we eat banquet-style family dinners, swallowing news of Filippo’s mother’s friends’ children as if her comments were un contorno. Our entire generation is filled with survivors of a bust economy who piecemeal multiple jobs and avoid commitment like the plague of 1647. The only truly successful thirty-something brood in the country are apparently related to Signora Wilma, a chatty braggart who lives across the corte from Filippo’s mom. Long dinner short: Che cosa aspettiamo per sistemarci? I’d translate the question for you, but I’m still choking on it.
Filippo waited until we were safely in the car to comfort me. ‘Don’t worry about my mother. She likes to ‘arrange things.’ She means well, but she can’t help herself.’
‘I know,’ I nodded. ‘No mother can ever help herself, no matter the nationality.’
‘It’s a long-standing thing. Her aspiration is to vedermi sistemato.’
‘She wants to see you “systemized?”‘
‘Si. With a good bank job and a wife to feed me.’
‘No banks give good jobs anymore.’
‘True.’
‘But, I’ll feed you if you want,’ I suggested, touching his hand. ‘Dille che ti sistemo io.’
My statement struck Filippo funny and he laughed the way no man ever should when a woman offers to make an unspecified number of meals. Luckily, he was quick to clarify, ‘If you say ‘ti sistemo io,’ it’s as if you’re planning to scold me. It means someone’s in big trouble.’
‘Really? You use the same word for getting married and getting in trouble?’
He looked at me, his face completely straight. ‘It’s not so strange if you think about it.’
Then he turned to watch the road, squelching the tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Well, now doesn’t that top it? Trouble and matrimony wrapped up in one word. Next, he’ll tell me that ‘organization’ and ‘chaos’ have much the same meaning.
Filippo looked peaceable and said no more. It’s part of the deal we have. He finds nothing weird about life and I find most things as strange as the day is long. In many ways, it works for us. It’s how we settle it. Per ora, sistemiamo le cose così.
