Why Italians' sensitivity to weather is actually the right way to live
With the dawn of spring comes the dawn of my favorite feeling in Italy—relief.
(This piece was originally published last year in Italy Segreta, but they have generously let me republish it here.)
When the first slivers of sun began to make their way onto the terrace of my Roman apartment on a balmy March day, I stuck my head into them like a cat, relishing the feel of the heat on my skin.
Perhaps it was the contrast that gave way to this distinct pleasure. Only days earlier, I had been caught in a treacherous rainstorm while making my way from Piramide to the Fascist-era post office on Via Marmorata, awaiting the one bus that would take me up the hill to my apartment. That morning, I had optimistically decided against a jacket, thinking it would be charming to take a chance, to just wear a sweater, to be calm and carefree. (Was I ever calm and carefree?) But as I finished my Ostiense breakfast meeting, I looked up at the cloudy sky, slipped on my sunglasses (counterintuitive, I know) and prepared for the deluge.
At that moment, a text arrived from my best friend: “Emergency,” it read, accompanied by an immediate phone call. So as the skies emptied themselves out on top of me, my hair matted to the top of my head like a wet dog, I squinted at her on the phone screen, trying to keep track of the story she was recounting. Every so often, I glanced at the bus wait time, watching the pixelated number that never seemed to change. How could it be nine minutes away forever?
By the time I finally boarded the bus, water pooling at the sides, caked dirt covering the floors and even the seats, it was clear that almost everyone in Rome had lost any semblance of sanity. Umbrellas were scattered throughout, coats dripped with the remainder of the storm, and someone, somewhere, was screaming. In this, I felt a sense of community–we would not soldier on through visible weather-related discomfort like the British. We were all–insofar as those of us on the bus were a “we”–in this together. Life was not meant to be suffered through. And if we were going to suffer, we were at least going to complain. To live in Rome, perhaps to live in Italy, was to feel something.
This was so far from what I tended to witness in America, where the goal seemed often to feel as little as possible, to put as much distance as we could between the natural and the comfortable. We were plagued by offices made frigid by our over-use of air conditioning, despite blistering summer temperatures outdoors. We were destined to eat genetically-modified foods without even really understanding what that meant. The vast majority of Americans still used their cars to get to work, at roughly 76%. (Compare that with 56% in the Netherlands, though it is known as a particularly bike-friendly country.)
In all of these behaviors, there was an inherent disconnect between the world that was organic and the world that was created. You could call it a sort of entitlement, a refusal to be controlled by the bounds of nature. Was the inevitable outcome the haunting setting of Wall-E, a dystopian future in which humans spend most of their time consuming media and eating, barely interacting with the physical world at all?
Italians, on the other hand, were not afraid to be dictated by their surroundings. They would cancel Friday night plans because of a light rainstorm. And who could blame them? It seemed right, sacred even, that the mere occurrence of rain could bring a global capital like Rome to a stand-still. And who among us hadn’t heard an Italian friend fault a weather change for a recent sickness? A quick shift in hot to cold weather or rain to sun was something to be feared as much as celebrated. Desensitization to our environment, this was not.
That this is an Italian phenomenon is backed up by data, not just my own personal experience. In 2001, one in four Italians suffered from anxiety, depression, and fatigue related to the climate–many of these literal physical manifestations of changes in the outside atmosphere. As many as 15% also experienced a sense of unease in the transition from summer to winter. Roughly 36% of Italians were frequent checkers of the weather, to the point where it had an effect on their mood and everyday behavior. And even if the phenomena of colpo d’aria or colpo di freddo have been largely disproved, the act of leaving the house without a scarf not being enough to get one sick, that doesn’t stop Italians from living by it. Leave the house with wet hair and you might be chastised—after all, you might inadvertently give yourself neck pain.
But when I texted an Italian friend for his thoughts, he dismissed the premise, wondering if we weren’t all a little like that. I wasn’t convinced that we all were. Perhaps the closest English translation to meteoropatico is “seasonal affective disorder,” a word that, in English, has a more clinical rather than sociological connotation. Seasonal affective disorder conjures days laid up in bed from not seeing the sun and depression brought on by the bitter January chill, not a mere general sensitivity to the weather.
After two years here, I think I finally understand the anecdotal evidence behind the statistics. I actually feel a light wave of disgust when I see American students prancing around my neighborhood without a jacket in mid-March, even if the weather is 23℃. Aren’t they cold, I wonder, pulling my knee-length leather jacket tightly around me. It’s almost an affront to my eyes to see bright colors too early in the season. Don’t they know it’s February? You simply can’t wear florals now.
I no longer feel like I am following these cultural rules, as following would imply a certain level of obedience, of adhering to something outside myself. Now, the rules come from within me, as if my neural pathways have already been rewired.
I used to see these as a way of keeping me out, of reminding me what I most certainly was not: Italian. Once, I was walking with a friend in Monteverde when a man handed us a flier for some event. My friend, who speaks an impeccable Italian that I will never be able to fully embody, began to playfully argue with him, but he casually waved a hand: “Ma non sei italiana?” (“You’re not Italian?”) He said. Well, she wasn’t. “Si vede” (“It shows”), he doubled down.
For a long time, I thought my Americanness was like this–“si vede,” in all the ways I knew and probably some I didn’t. But after enough time in Italy, I realized that two things could be true: my Americanness could sometimes go undetected and I could never lose it. Occasionally, I would talk with someone at a bus stop before they’d say to me: “Ma non sei di Roma, giusto?” (“You’re not from Rome, right?”) I’d laugh, not a bit proudly. “Non sono neanche italiana,” (“I’m not even Italian”), I’d tell them.
Maybe the greatest privilege of my life is getting to be an observer of this culture, never really belonging but always trying, always striving, out of some kind of love. I feel that most when I step outside my apartment on an unseasonably warm spring day and make eye contact with passersby, exchange a sort of knowing glance, as if we’ve both imbibed from the same fountain, shared the same in-joke, as if, for just a second, a shift in the weather might be leading us both to a brief moment of euphoria.
I loved this! I am italiana, and when I am abroad I am always amazed by how americans can dress how they want even during a blizzard. “So not everybody spend a weekend each month running a mental algorithm about what should be the appropriate shape, colour, texture, fabric to wear in this very moment? Don’t they plan a specific day for stop wearing socks and stockings putting them away for 3 months?” I keep asking myself!
I am sensitive to the weather too and it makes me feel connected to my Italian roots! I think US society expects us to operate the exact same way no matter the weather or season and that’s simply not how it works.