Author: lisayakobi

Short Stories

Moving to Italy, My Visual Diary

lisayakobi

words + illustrations by Lisa Yakobi published in the October 2023 issue of the Florentine

2023

Before leaving New York, whenever I told anyone I was going to Florence, the inevitable response was, “I’m so jealous! My dream is to have a villa in Italy!”

I met someone who did it. He bought a castle in the Italian countryside, sight unseen, and a few months after moving in, he told me, he was so bored, he’d been considering throwing himself out the window. Then I heard of a student who also had trouble in paradise. He jumped off the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno river with a plan to end it all, but a street vendor dove in and rescued him.

I approach the elegant Loggia del Pesce, a fish market designed in the 1500s. It looks out of place here, and it is. Moved from its original location twice to the center of the city, too lovely to demolish, today the only fish that reside here are in the aquatic reliefs that top its arches. I glance at its beauty with… indifference.

What is wrong with me?

People think if you live in a beautiful place, you’ll be happy. I’ve just moved into a garret, tiny, white, with skylights in the most beautiful city in the world. I am here to devote myself to art, to finish painting My Visual Diary series and write, and I have begun. I ask myself, Isn’t this enough? A voice within says, “No!” Why? Am I tired of Italy? No, It’s something else. Worse.

Next to the loggia, I spot a waitress in front of a favorite pizzeria. Exquisitely thin, in shimmering black leather pants, with her long blond hair, button nose, and face of a saint, she is more striking than ever. Two young Italians walking beside me stop, riveted, and one of them murmurs the word you hear everywhere in Florence: “Bella.”

Beauty is the reason for everything in Italy; it’s the reason the ornate fish market is here, the reason the waitress is dressed in such astonishing attire, and the reason I’ve returned here too. But it was different in 1983…

1983 My Visual Diary

FIRST DAY

On my first morning in Florence, I waken to the sound of opera coming from my window. I look outside. Everything is too beautiful! I stay in my room and draw in My Visual Diary, a sketchbook that became a series of paintings.

ITALIAN COAT

I can’t believe my graduate program is in this magnificent villa! I will have the grandeur of a Medici princess. Actually, I won’t. The villa is for the administration. Our art studios are in the unheated stables.

It’s an excuse to splurge on a coat. I’m sure I’ve attained the height of Italian chic until my reflection in a shop window reveals a Little Red Riding Hood.

ON A QUEST

Fashionably dressed men call out “Ciao Bella!” and offer a ca!é or gelato. What I really need are clear directions to a laundromat.

CAPPUCCINO

When all else fails, it is time for a cappuccino. My plan is to be taken for an italiana, but as soon as I say “un cappuccino,” the baristas gleefully announce me as “Un’americana!”

PREGO, SIGNORINA

When I enter a shop, the clerks always greet me with “Prego, signorina”. I am willing to pray. Sometimes I get what I pray for, and sometimes not.

THE TELEPHONE

I push coins and gettoni into the phone in the bar, hoping I found the right slot. I tell the guy who asked me to call I can’t talk because it’s too noioso and find out later that means boring, not noisy! No wonder I never saw him again…

FIRST DATE

I meet another guy I like and plan to get all dressed up and impress him on our date, but I arrive home late with a lost dog and laundry in tow, and he is already at my door.

My parents’ weekly phone calls always begin with, “Well…” and a long pause (meaning Did you meet someone who is “marriage material” yet?).

After two years, in desperation, they buy me a ticket home and sign a lease on a Manhattan apartment. I return to New York, marry, and dream of Italy.

2023

Decades pass. Divorced, children grown, I head back to Florence at the age when they say women are invisible.

Now I see what’s wrong with me… It came to me in that moment by the loggia. I’m jealous! I’m not tired of Italy. I’m tired of being a spectator, of admiring things.

I want to be part of the picture, and admired too! I want to hear “bella” murmured about me! Not by a random Italian or on the street. I want to have a fling. Just one question: With whom? I haven’t a clue.

It’s really been a while, but there must be someone. One person does come to mind. No, impossible! We’ve been out of touch for years. I tell myself, forget it. Love will ruin your plans. Remember, you’re a signora now.

Don’t even think about it!

I take out my phone. I have a text. What? It can’t be! It’s him. He asks how I’m doing. I lie and say, “Okay”. I get an idea. I will invite him to visit me. No, I can’t do that! I hardly know him.

I do it anyway. He writes that he will come. In two weeks! Where will he stay? What if he doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like him? No matter. My heart is leaping as I take in all the beauty around me.

Not sure what’s wrong with you? Here’s the secret: follow your jealousy. Do that, and it will reveal your heart’s desire and lead you to the life and land of your dreams.

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Short Stories

My Comforter Cover Takes a Vacation

lisayakobi

(This story was published in The Open Doors Review N. 7)

Italians believe Americans are optimists.

I like the stereotype. I am even starting to take pride in it.

So why is it that even as I tell myself that I will pick up my bed linens today, I’m mentally rehearsing how understanding I’ll sound when they tell me my laundry isn’t ready?

I am determined to learn Italian. I have no intention of going to school. I will simply insist on speaking Italian with everyone but native English speakers.

When I found an apartment, I started bringing my bed linens to the laundromat. At first, no one in the laundromat understood much of what I said. It took a while, but I can finally say pillowcase, sheet, and comforter cover in Italian. I also know to say Buona Sera at one o’clock in the afternoon, even though it means good evening.

The other day at the Apple Store, I discovered just how effective my ability to communicate was. I was explaining the problem with my phone cable and referred to it as a cavallo. I thought the woman next to me in line might be getting impatient, but when I glanced at her, she had a broad smile and seemed to be suppressing laughter. What was so funny? Then, it occurred to me that cavallo means both cabbage and horse in Italian depending on where you put the accent. Could it mean cable, too?

I asked the clerk, “Is a cavallo an animal or a vegetable?” He replied, “Vegetable.” Then I pointed to my cable and asked, “What is this?” He replied, “Cavo.” Isn’t that a cave?

Recently, I overheard a little Italian girl tell her mother that I spoke like a bambina, meaning little girl. She overestimated me.

I always look forward to going to the laundromat to gauge my progress in Italian.

When I picked up my comforter cover at the laundromat a month ago, I saw it was ripped. I brought it back with the rest of the linens (thinking to avoid further confusion by returning the whole lot) and left it for the tailor to repair.

I stopped in twice in the past few weeks, but my linens were still not ready.

I greet the beautiful blond, whom I have dubbed Persephone, wondering why she is in this sweltering inferno of a laundromat.

There is the odd, bearded man who emerges from the back room like one of those denizens who stoke the fires of hell. I feel too guilty knowing my linens are perpetuating his purgatory to acknowledge him.

Persephone examines slips of paper and brings out my laundry without the comforter cover. She apologizes. My comforter cover is not ready and explains that the seamstress had gone on vacation for the summer and had taken it with her.

She took it with her? I imagine the seamstress as another pretty Italiana on the island of Capri, lounging on a speed boat, hair whipping in the wind, my comforter cover warming her legs.

Persephone says she will text me when the seamstress returns, most likely in a month.

I tell myself I can live without clean bed linens for a little longer. After all, if I feel desperate, I can wash the set on my bed in my washing machine and hang it on the clothesline.

I know I won’t do that.

The weather here is as unpredictable as everything else.

I probably wouldn’t wash my linens even if I were sure it wouldn’t rain because I don’t trust my washing machine. Italian washing machines use so little water that the laundry barely sloshes around. The machine spins, changes direction, spins again, and requires three or more hours for one load. Even then, I am not sure anything is properly cleaned. I never put more than a minimum amount of detergent in the machine in case it doesn’t get rinsed out.

Besides that, I don’t have a dryer.

Most Italians don’t have a clothes dryer. I understand why. I once had one in an apartment I rented, made a test, and put clothes in the dryer and on the clothesline. Just as I suspected, the clothes I hung on the line dried much faster. The ones in the dryer were still cool and damp after an hour’s spin. The dryer did not even produce heat. Perhaps it wasn’t a dryer at all?

I decided to try a self-service laundromat once. I put my wash in and returned a few minutes before closing to pick it up. (This was when I first came to Florence and didn’t know better.) I peered through the slats of the blinds Italians pull down when a shop is closed and saw my laundry swirling around inside the dryer.

Why didn’t I sit inside the laundromat and guard my laundry like everyone else?

Walking away, incensed, I practiced telling the attendant that they needed to close at the time posted, not earlier! But that was the problem; there was no attendant to tell. The place was self-service. No service would’ve been a more accurate term.

I had a premonition that I would wait a long time for my comforter cover and linens. I was right. I made many sojourns to the laundromat and practiced patience.

A month turned into three.

Optimist that I am, I kept thinking my linens would be ready the next time I stopped in, so I never washed the extra set I had on my bed.

Thankfully, I had no visitors, so no one knew.

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ridiculous

How to Do the Ridiculous

lisayakobi

I couldn’t wait to start coaching! It was 10 years ago, and after a bewildering two years of trying to figure out how to support myself and my three children, I heard the words “corporate coach,” and I knew that was it! I didn’t know exactly what coaching was and had never been in a corporation (or even worked in an office) but I had made everyone I had come into contact with rich (except me!), and it seemed I would now have an occupation that would allow me to benefit financially from my gift.

It was two years since I had become a single mother to my home schooled children, the oldest being 11, and I had a continual flow of thin envelopes in my mailbox communicating in complex terms that I had late fees, overdraft charges and utility cutoff dates. I was teaching art with my children (I told the school and camp directors they were my “cleanup helpers” and they taught alongside me) and showing my paintings, but having decided I did not want to sell my artwork (I loved my paintings!), I knew I had to find another “revenue stream.”

That was a new word in my vocabulary. I learned it at my first networking event, when some sort of financial professional used that phrase and also “passive income streams.” I imagined gold flowing freely into my house (a good idea!). I apologetically told him I had no idea what he was referring to, but since it did sound promising, I told him to give me a call. Next day the phone rings. “Lisa Yakobi?  I’d like to continue our conversation.” I’m interested.  After fifteen minutes of him going on in the same vein as before I said I was sorry and told him I still didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about (or what he wanted from me), at which point he hung up abruptly. I thought that was rather rude and added “revenue stream” to my vocabulary list of words to investigate…and as something to acquire!

Well, after hearing about corporate coaching, it seemed I found my magic key to riches (which meant at that time paying my array of bills, mortgages and loans). I began by signing up for coach training on the phone (now I did “school at home” too!) and learning from students and teachers all over the world how to “empower” others.

I went about “empowering” everyone I met, at no charge (as was my habit anyway), but now I engaged them in more lengthy conversations about their “challenges.”

I soon discovered that absolutely no one wanted coaching (even at my price: which was zero per hour)! Ten years ago, no one knew what coaching was (or even wanted to know). Unfortunately, I couldn’t describe it. When I said I was a coach, people asked me, “What sport?” I always responded with curiosity, “What sport do you think?” and they all answered, after a pause, “Lacrosse?” I have a vague memory of playing an inane game with sticks in high school, with my very athletically inept schoolmates (sports weren’t cool in the Hippie days). To this day, I have never seen a Lacrosse coach (but if any of you wonder what I look like, that might be a helpful description!).

I had to practice my “coaching skills” and being newly single, my first prospects were any man who asked for my phone number. I gave it out liberally, and when my men called, I kept them on the phone for hours, with my coaching question list in front of me, asking them about their early “passions,” “limiting beliefs” and the like. If they endured this drilling and still wanted a date, I would meet them for coffee and reveal my true intentions (of converting them to coaching clients). Needless to say, I did not convert one “prospect” nor get second dates.

Six months went by in this way, with my adding to my “free coaching for men” several meetings that I organized of the few coaches that lived on Long Island and offering every single coach an opportunity to barter coach with me. I even mentor coached a few with my very limited abilities! One of my coaching barter “mentees” I liked so much I asked her to be my business partner. So far I hadn’t earned a penny through coaching, but neither had she, so we were in business! I had started facilitating classes for $5 an hour at the local Women’s Center where I snuck coaching into their program (we were only supposed to “share” without comment or “judgment”) and invited her to co-lead one of my groups. I even split my pay with her!

She advised her daughter to coach with me…and I had my first real “client!” Wow! I started her at $200 a month for 4 one-hour coaching sessions that took place in my master bedroom! My home schooled kids did what was called unschooling, which resulted in a great deal of noise, mess and running about the house, but my bedroom had a lock on the door and was relatively quiet. My client went from what she believed was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to a new job, a boyfriend, a volley ball league, art classes and a townhouse condo! She now seemed way happier than me! Although that was somewhat disturbing (and a trend that continued), I went on to have a full practice of coaching clients (all female) that coached in my bedroom! By the time I found a man to coach, it was spring and we coached at the picnic table in my backyard. In the summer, after many mosquito-bitten clients, I tamed my children and had clients sitting indoors at my dining room table.

It took many years for me to stop the threatening mailbox flow and become a corporate coach in reality, not just in fantasy. I had always been accused of being on “cloud nine” (where were clouds 1-8…and beyond?). I supposed that meant I lived in a fantasy. Well, it was my fantasy that drove me. It was my fantasy that made me believe people would pay me $200 to coach in my bedroom. And it was my fantasy that brought me my “revenue stream” after all.

How do you do the ridiculous?

Get on cloud nine and keep going!

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blog

I Got Married by Mistake!

lisayakobi

By mistake? Oh, well maybe everyone does that.
But mine was a grammatical error.

Let me explain.

It is 1988. I am teaching English 1A to adults pretending to study English. They are actually in my class to obtain and maintain their student visas. The men succeed in not learning better than the women. So, in the interest of justice and fun (and being a former feminist), I don’t discriminate; I give all the men Ds. They consider their grades a joke. And among my underachieving students is my husband to-be. He asks me before, during and after class for the whole semester and succeeds (even without the benefit of eloquent English) not just in achieving a date with me but on winning my hand on our very first date!

Three months later we are on what can only be called a honeymoon by a great stretch of the imagination. We are in his country and all of the inhabitants are his relations. We are waiting for his visa so he can return to the US. We are a week into this experience when his sister in law (the only one among the throng who speaks English) asks me with undisguised wonder how we got married. I proudly relate the romantic story of my husband’s proposal on our first date.

In a surprised voice my sister in law tells me that my husband told her that I proposed to him! Me propose? What an outrage! What could this be about? Why would he make up such an absurd lie? How did I do it? I demand to know. Did I get down on bended knee? I fume: I would never propose to a man! (Feminism – out the window). I insist that I would know if I had proposed! I add I wouldn’t make a mistake about the most important moment of my life! (I’ve turned into my 1950’s Barbie doll). I’m furious!

She translates (where was she on my first date when I needed her?) that he said he would marry me if things worked out!

What! He said “I will marry you if you want” Not would! Nothing about if things worked out.

I explain to my sister in law. “I’ll tell you exactly what he said! He had just told to me that besides having a language gap we had a significant age gap. This seemed like a serious challenge to my mind. I was attempting to convey that to him in simple English by saying, ‘You are so nice. It’s too bad you are eight years younger than me. We could never marry.’ To which he replied, ‘I will marry you if you want.’  And I replied (copying his syntax) ‘I want.’”

Now my husband directly states the facts as he understands them:  “You told me that you wanted to marry me, so I said OK.”

Horrible!

I get it! He never learned the conditional tense… the word ‘would’ was taught in the English 1B curriculum.

Thus the deed was done. What now?

What do we do when we realize we have made a mistake of breathtaking proportions?

What I did. I did the absolutely least logical thing possible: I carried on as if nothing had happened!

And hated myself for my mistake.

Five years later. I am at a lecture for married couples who want to improve their relationship. The speaker enters the room wearing a very substantial fur hat; a knee length black coat in a style sported in Poland a century ago and a long untrimmed beard. He is introduced as a Hassidic rabbi who works in the diamond district of Manhattan. He begins his talk by asking the couples in the room to raise our hands if they would marry their spouses again knowing what they know now. Not a hand shoots up. Then slowly, and with glances around, all the hands go up. The message was clear; everyone had gotten married by mistake! (Admittedly not by grammatical error – but really what’s the difference – we all wound up in the same place anyway.)

The rabbi then shares that he does marriage counseling and that he had presented day after day, year after year with couples who are almost exact opposites and absolutely incompatible. What truly amazes him, he says, is that these people ever believed they were compatible and had anything in common!

He then asks us if we know how a diamond is polished. He explains that that a diamond can only be polished by another diamond and that the friction brings out their perfection. He clenches his hands into fists and brings them together and twists his fists against each other.

He tells us “This friction is marriage. The purpose of marriage is the perfection of two people. The friction removes our rough edges and brings out our perfections!”

So marriage is a God-trick!

Wow! All our “negative” relationships are divinely ordained! All those annoying people at work, at cash registers, not to mention our blood relations are positioned to aggravate us on purpose… by God! No use begging Him to fix our enemies. No point in switching jobs or lines to avoid stress. Friction producers will beset us (I mean perfect us) every step of the way. God has a sense of humor!

We cannot avoid “stress”. Stress (or friction) isn’t the consequence of relationships – it’s the purpose! People are literally here to annoy the hell out of you. Actually, the friction is the relationship!

So what can we do to accelerate our growth (besides choosing a mismatch in marriage) to improve our lives? Just follow these four simple steps:

  1. Expect idiocy. Stop being shocked when things go wrong. Quit imagining that you (and others) are reasonable and capable. A little observation of human behavior will convince you that none of us are primarily motivated by reason. If we were rational beings we would let Chihuahuas become extinct, choose Aloe Vera juice and kelp over Crème Brule, forgive our siblings for being born, stop multitasking, never go to war or shopping malls, avoid Mocha Lattes, Coach bags and excesses of all kinds, drink eight glasses of filtered water daily, and we’d all be happy, healthy and wise.  Not the case. People are more or less idiots. You too. No need to feel deceived, angry, dismayed, humiliated, or take revenge.
  2. Every time you encounter things that start with an i (ineptitude, incompetence, idiots, injustice, irrationality, interruptions, insults and insects), ask: What can I learn from this irritant? Keep your mind focused on the idea that annoyances are spiritual assets. Cherish the opportunities that noxious people and places afford you to perfect yourself. Choose the path of irritation.Bless your difficult, inept and uncooperative co-workers, partner (or ex), your children, parents, voice mail menus and people everywhere for offering you opportunities to develop patience and compassion (or both!) and accelerating your trip to enlightenment!
  3. Get ready to tumble! It’s human nature to climb mountains. And there is a natural law that says: What goes up must go down. We don’t really want to play a game where we are guaranteed to win. It’s boring. God set up the game of life so we are motivated to play: no guarantees, lots of confusion, and thankfully plenty of folks to inspire us by giving us a little push just when we think we’ve reached solid ground.  Skip the blame and shame. When we fail we usually look for someone to blame but if we really investigate our feelings it’s always ourselves we are really upset with. Berating ourselves (or others) never improves performance. Try making someone develop a skill or work faster by yelling at them (I have-hasn’t worked yet).
  4. Share your mistakes… with everyone! Other people find them funny. Better yet – blog your most embarrassing moments – let the world enjoy them! After everyone finds out about how really inept you are it will be easier for you to embrace. If you did something drastic and really messed up your life you might even consider writing an edifying book about it and become a much sought after speaker. If you go to jail or get mixed up with crazy or very rich people someone might think it would amuse the public at large and you could be famous and make millions helping others see how bad your mistake was. Just a thought.

Remember, it’s all right. Ultimately, there are no mistakes. No wrong turns. The climb is steep, we are flawed, idiocy abounds… and that’s just perfect.

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