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I decided to go to Parma for reasons, only one of them considered good. I had never been; it wouldn't take long for me to get there; someone's mother I knew grew up there; it is home to the world's best prosciutto. Often, when I retell this story in Italy, I skip the first reasons and, conditioned by a culture that always sanctions culinary adventures, go straight to the last. "I wanted prosciutto di Parma, so I went to Parma," I'll say, "found a deli, had a few slices, and left." It's reductive, but it's more or less true: I spent fewer than four hours in Parma, and one of them eating. When (half-heartedly and usually jokingly) asked why I decided to take a train an hour and a half northeast for a product I could have easily found in Pontassieve (where I was staying at the time), I usually respond, "wouldn't you?" or, "isn't it worth it?" or (and this is a crowd favourite) "but it's not the same in Pontassieve," and am met with great approval. The story generally ends there, and we move onto other travel tales or, more frequently, a discussion of what to eat for dinner.
Of course, I hadn't taken a train an hour and a half northeast for prosciutto. Or even to visit Parma. Actually, I had planned on spending the day in Bologna, a much more justified location on an American tourist's map. But after climbing the Asinelli tower - which is what I had gone to do - and with nowhere specific to go, muscle memory brought me back to the station, and I decided to head over to Parma, just a thirty minute ride away. And because I had never been, and because someone's mother I knew grew up there, and because it's home to the world's best prosciutto.
I only talk about my experience visiting Parma's ducal palace, gardens, and library in reference to my research travels there in the summer of 2012, even though I had visited all three places four years earlier, and before stumbling rather half-consciously into the deli where I eventually had my now famous afternoon snack. I do it to preserve the dignity of the prosciutto, because it makes for a better story; going to Parma to take a walk around its centro storico is decidedly much less appealing to an Italian audience.
And I almost never mention the encounter with an Ursuline order of nuns that still defines my relationship with Parma -- in my own mind.
The Ursuline order of nuns was formed sometime in the 1500s, most famously in Brescia (1535), but most importantly thereafter in France. It was a cloistered order with an educational aim: Ursuline sisters took seriously their role as educators complementary to their Jesuit brothers, leading them to open the enclosure of their convent for the specific growth of Catholic education for girls. In Italy, Ursuline convents proliferated especially in the north; Parma's is made more famous for the eventual tenure of Princess Maria Antonia of Parma there in the early nineteenth century.
But I didn't know any of that when I arrived at their doorstep outside the walls of the ducal residence. I didn't know any of that until my academic curiosity led me to research it, much later.
There was a period in my life, roughly from 2000 to 2007, during which I believed fervently in signs. Universal Signs. Signs From my Subconscious. Signs From Above (or somewhere similar). The kind of signs Paolo Coelho, in his infinite (if somewhat redundant) wisdom taught me I should seek out, believe in, listen to. Toward the end of that time, I had a dream about nuns, or a reflection on my private-Catholic-school education, or a momentary disillusion with the pressures of secular existence (as I perceived them) that led me to look up international orders of nuns, pick the one of my liking, and choose my nun name (as put to a vote among friends). I was to be Marie-Antoine/tte, Ursuline sister, somewhere in Italy. By the summer of 2008 and by way of a litany of disappointing outcomes to difficult events, I had both rescinded my dream of donning a habit and stopped believing in signs. But randomly finding an Ursuline convent, in Parma, that an unintentional namesake had made famous, caused me to take pause, both as it happened and, to a larger extent, as I discovered the full range of the coincidences it entailed.
I don't remember the afternoon with any clarity. It's not among the episodes that stand out in a particular way in my mind about my life. Parma was an impression left on the soles of my feet and somewhere behind my retinas that registered, eventually, onto film and hard copy prints hung on my first apartment wall. Above my bed. In bicycle tires and red brick. What I remember are the curves of its streets, the sunlight dipping behind its orange-walled homes. I remember thinking, without the knowledge about it that I would acquire only later, that all of Emilia-Romagna looked the same; in essence, Parma might as well have been Bologna (or, as I observed years afterwards, Modena, or Ferrara, or Ravenna). I remember my soft-shoed footsteps tiptoeing into the silence of empty courtyards to steal photos of perfectly white-washed walls or wrought iron gates. I remember the late-afternoon heat cascading down my neck and wrapping itself around my shoulders as evening fell. I remember being lost.
And I remember the plaque outside the open gate of an Ursuline convent drawing me to it from my position across the street. I remember the little flower garden behind it beckoning. I remember the yellow air hanging inches above the paved road that led from the external gate to the convent's entrance door -- also left wide open, inviting.
I had not expected such hospitality.
Despite the call for guests implicit in the convent's open state, I entered tentatively, looking around me. I don't remember now if the white-dressed sister that eventually greeted me did so from a formal position of reception, or whether she responded instinctively to the smells and sounds I brought with me into her home. It was unusual for a nun of the Ursuline order to wear a white habit, I thought; surely, this was a sister with special exemption from cloistered life -- a teacher, or a nurse expected to service her community in a way other members of her order couldn't. She looked to be in her early sixties, and was the only one I saw that day, so I had no opportunity to compare her dress or behaviour with anyone else's.
She welcomed me with a smile that spread beyond the arbitrary limits of her face. I asked if I was disturbing anyone, if I might look around the convent now that I was here. Of course, she said. The sisters were always happy to have visitors; she would show me around.
She took me through a short, cool, and narrow hall, and up a marble staircase with iron handrails. At the top of it was a row of rooms, most behind closed doors, but some left open for the curiosity of those walking by. At the far right, was a bathroom. To its left, a small study with heavily-shelved bookcases lining the walls anchored by a small table at the room's center and, a few feet away, a light blue couch, old but sturdy. We turned left into the chapel parlour that, despite its Catholic decadence, had perhaps once hosted secular visitors. A magnificent glass chandelier hung from a domed ceiling above floors that shone with the same marble pattern as the staircase that had led us to them. It was mostly a standing room; a few armchairs set up before a coffee table laden with cross and Bible lent it a hospitable air, but otherwise, it was a sad and stale space, no longer accustomed to attention or appreciation.
The Sister asked me if I'd like to sit for a while; I said no, thank you -- I was happy just to have a look around. Soon, I should get back to the train station, since friends were expecting me in Florence around dinner time.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "You've just come back."
She fixed me, wide-eyed. I felt myself flicker, but must have made no show of it: her gaze remained consistent. Her comment had, of course, thrown me. That I should wander into an Urseline convent that just happened to be open at the time of my passing by was enough the stuff of strange astral alignment. That she should recognize me as a once habitual resident was too much even for my former sign-adhering self. I was to make something of this encounter, I could tell. But I didn't know what and I didn't know how. I didn't even know why, but I felt, as one feels a kick to their shin, the weight of sleeping pulling down their eyelids, or the distinct pangs of insistent hunger, that this was a moment worthy of my reflection and reaction.
"Come back?" I responded. "I've never been here before; it's my first time visiting," I said hesitantly.
"Oh. But that can't be right. I know you. I've seen you before, you've stayed with us. You've been here before, I'm sure of it."
She looked at me earnestly, and I detected on her skin and in the wrinkled corners of her mouth the formation of an unspoken plea, the resistance of a faith barely noticeably flinching.
"Maybe I look like someone who has been here before," I answered, smiling, as unsatisfied with my response as she was. "Or maybe I have a familiar soul."
Theologically, she was not supposed to appreciate the second of my answers in any way. Catholic dogma preaches against the reincarnation of the soul, unless with its own body after the Second Coming and the final judgment it brings with it. But from her four feet eleven inches, she reached a hand onto my shoulder, and I felt comfort. Whether mine or hers is another question entirely.
We toured the rest of the floor; the one above it hosted some of the sisters, she explained -- there would be nothing of interest to me there. Then, we headed back down the long marble staircase to the place where we began. There was a small flower and herb garden in the yard if I wanted to see it. I could spend as much time there as I liked.
I thanked her and extended my right hand. She took it between both of hers and pressed against it from both sides. "God bless you," she said. I watched as she walked away, her white veil trailing lightly behind her in the perfectly still air. It only occurred to me on my train ride home that, contrary to what I might have expected, she had not asked for a donation. Which was just as well, because I had forgotten to offer one, and most likely didn't have any small bills or loose change with me, anyway.
I sat in the garden for a long time, individuating as many flower species as I could. I didn't get far; growing up in Montreal had left me sensible mostly to plants amenable to a harsh North American climate. There were things here I'd never before seen in my life, or that I could recognize only through the distant memories of my travels to which they were secondary and remained nameless. I lingered on the rose bushes and the Jasmine -- two easy and familiar favourites -- and wondered what I was to make of this unexpected meeting and the strange twist it had taken. I asked myself what someone who still believed in universal signs might find in being mistaken for someone in such a formerly relevant context, and with so much conviction. Earlier in the year, some friends had spoken to me about the Law of Attraction and the tendency to reap the energy that you sow, often when you least expect to. But I didn't believe in such flimsy philosophies and settled on coincidence, or at the very least, on inexplicable bizarreness. I had joked about being an Ursuline nun in Italy. Then, one recognized me as her sister, or her comrade, or at least as a friend. It was just a strange, silly thing.
I had gone to visit Parma for reasons, only one of them good. I had never been; it wouldn't have taken me long to get there; someone's mother I knew grew up there.
A mother I had never met, but one I'd heard spoken of frequently with great pride and the complicated ambiguousness of unconditional love and lingering filial resentment. For the mistakes a mother makes. For the misunderstandings that come of generational separation. For the complications created by geographical distance. For the familial schism that follows divorce. A scholar and a teacher, like I was. Over the previous two years, this unknown mother had taken dimension in my brain and in my heart. I'd seen where she lived once; I'd leafed through the many books she kept on local architecture and ancient design, on the growth of cities, and the decline of the Roman Empire. I knew her tastes, her lines. I longed to examine the folds of grey in her dark hair, the spaces between her teeth that showed through when she laughed. (I assumed they did, because her son's did, and her son had a face I knew well and loved, too.) But this was the end of a moment; the encounter I'd for so long imagined would now never happen, and this mother's face was forever to remain, in my imagination, a softened assembly of the male features they generated, the ones I knew so well. I had come to Parma to know something of this prematurely lost mother, to feel something of the kindness and warmth I imagined to be hers as I scanned her bookshelves and her kitchen cabinets. I had come to Parma to meet her.
And instead, I was leaving it not a daughter, but a sister, in the protective custody of a different warmth, a different educator. Instead, Parma had recognized something of the kindness and good spirit in me, making it impossible for me to come away a stranger.
I left the convent gardens just as the reminder of a skipped lunch gripped my stomach. Parma was home to the world's best prosciutto, I considered. I found a small deli counter with an outside terrace on the way to the station and stopped for half a kilo of meat and some parmesan and grissini to go with it. A middle-aged woman in a threadbare apron brought it to me, sun in her eyes, and for an hour, I sat and ate it slowly.
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