Six Things I Do (And Don't) Miss About the U.S.
No matter how far you wander, you're always an American
I left the U.S. for Italy seven years ago. Seven. I can’t account for that time except to say I wrote a lot of books and drank an ocean’s worth of cappuccino. For a thousand reasons, living abroad isn’t easy, and I suspect that is true for people of all nationalities. Having said that, there is one particular American thing I miss greatly, and that is ….
Convenience. I’m talking two in the morning, you desperately need a handful of Motrin, you drive to the CVS, and look, it’s open. The roads you drive on? Wide. Well-tended. Clearly marked. Here in Europe, you drive neck-and-neck with motorists close enough to reach out and smack. You often want to.
Know what else is convenient? Being able to walk into damn near any pharmacy to get vaccinated. That kind of service and availability leaves me sick with envy. Here in Italy, the website for reserving an appointment regularly malfunctions, which forces you to call. When you call, no one ever answers or the numero verde (the Italian equivalent of a 1-800 number) is no longer valid. You will drive miles and miles to the appointment, assuming you’re lucky enough to get one, and the paperwork will be daunting. As a foreigner without a national health card, I’m pretty much screwed.
In the U.S., if you needed to get your driver’s license renewed, your social security card, and your birth certificate, say, it is not unreasonable to expect that all of these chores might be completed in one day. Not in Italy. Going to the post office to pick up a package (and there is no guarantee it’s going to be there, even if you received a notification telling you it was) is about the most you can expect. John and I joke about it all the time. He’ll get up in the morning, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, mentally ticking off a list of things to do, and invariably I will Debbie Downer the whole thing by saying, “Are you crazy? Curb your enthusiasm and pick one.”
Even a Taco Bell. I’m desperate. Photo by Christine Siracusa. Really good Mexican food. The thing about a nation of immigrants like the U.S. is you can indulge any foodie whim you want. Got a hankering for Vietnamese pho? Call Grub Hub and it’s at your door in forty minutes. Mexican food? There are taco trucks in Houston alone that would knock your socks off. Every exotic ingredient can be found at a grocery store. In Italy, if you want sesame butter to make hummus, you’re going to Rome, which is 70 miles away.
Here in Italy (trust me, I’m not complaining), food comes in one denomination: Italian. I love Italian. Hands down, it’s my favorite. But there are times when I feel as though I might be willing to do petty crime if somebody put a plate of fajitas in front of me. Mexican food is part of Texas’s cultural heritage. In Houston, there are Mexican restaurants on Telephone Road that would make you change your religion. I dream about Mexican food. I want to go to one of those places that makes fresh guacamole right at your table.
Photo by Owen Cannon Elevators. I’m not saying that Italy doesn’t have any elevators, but … nobody would get pushback from me if they wanted to install a few million more. Steep hilltop towns like Spoleto have a smattering of public elevators, which is lovely. Would it kill elected officials to get some elevators going in our town, too?
Websites that work. If you want to pay a bill in the U.S., what do you do? You go online and pay it. That’s not so straight forward here in Italy. When we pay a light bill, for instance, we’re not always able to do that online. Most of the time, we have to go to the nearest tabacchi (tobacconist’s shop), pay, obtain a printed copy of our receipt, create a cover letter explaining who we are and what this is, and then fax the receipt and the cover letter to the power company. There goes your afternoon.
Affordable—okay, cheap—clothing. Yes, yes, I know I’m not supposed to want a ten dollar top, fifteen dollar leggings, and thirty dollar shoes. But I do. Because of its propinquity to Mexico, my hometown of Houston is a mecca of cute, stylish, affordable clothes, which I enjoy buying, so sue me. In Italy, luxury items (clothes are classified as such) are heavily taxed, so forget it.
Parking. Most Americans have no idea what a rare and beautiful luxury it is to be able to drive a car into a freshly tarred parking lot and then, without having to parallel park, angle that car into a generous space. Here in Italy, people end up parking—literally—on sidewalks, illegally double parked, or if they’re lucky, in a paid parking garage that costs more than the GDP of a small Eastern European country.
As much as I love the U.S., there are some things I don’t miss. Most of them are fixable. The question is, however: will we?
Guns. Violence. Shootings. I don’t need to tell you how horrifying, unfathomable, and tragic America’s mass murders are. Every time I open a news app, I know there will be at least one. Italy has guns, but people don’t open carry, hide them in glove boxes, or resort to gun battles to settle a dispute. Shockingly, guns are used for hunting. Children go to schools without metal detectors, barbed wire fences, a police presence. If there was a Sandy Hook incident here in Italy, the entire country would go (appropriately) mad. Action would be taken. And it wouldn’t involve protecting “gun rights.” Guns shouldn’t have rights; people do.
Photo by Camilo Jimenez. The uncertainty of healthcare. If you get seriously ill in the U.S., and you happen to be one of the millions of people who don’t have and can’t afford health insurance, you’re up the creek without a paddle. That’s not the case in Europe. Sick people receive healthcare, full stop. Health insurance is not predicated on your job or your income or your nationality. Why this continues to be a contested issue in the U.S. astounds the people of Western Europe. I’m often asked about it, and when I try to explain, all I get are slow blinks of non-comprehension.
You can’t get this stuff OTC in the States. I used to bring back boxes and boxes of it. Chain stores. Given the fact that I love and miss the convenience of American life, it is indeed ironic, possibly hypocritical, that I deplore the very chain stores that make convenience possible. But there’s something demoralizing and a little soul-less about walking into an over-lit retail barn that looks identical to the retail barn two blocks away where you will find the same aisles full of the same stuff, none of which really lives up to its hype. In Italy, stores are small, usually family run, and offer only a handful of products, all of which work. Oki, for instance. That stuff is magic. Headache, toothache, menstrual cramps, Oki will kick its ass and then stand in line to do it all over again.
Actually a photo from a Chinese shopping mall, but I think it pretty much says everything. Commercialized holidays. If I never again see a tacky mall bursting with tacky Christmas decorations, I will be outrageously happy. That these decorations make their unwelcome appearance as early as September and October only increases my revulsion. Don’t get me wrong—you see Christmas decorations in Italy, too, but with far fewer malls and commercial centers, the worst offenders are given no leeway. Plus, it’s Italy. The Christmas stuff is usually pretty tasteful. I’m not against Christmas, just the tackiness.
The staggering cost of rent and food. Freelancing aside, there is no way we could afford to live in the U.S. these days. Even in “moderately priced” city like Houston, rent on a decent apartment starts at $1400. Three bags of groceries? $80. Who can afford this? Too many Americans can’t make ends meet. Long gone are the days when a family of four could live on a milkman’s salary, send their kids to college, and then go on an annual vacation. The only reason these things are possible in Italy is because many Italians live in the same apartment their great-grandparents did, they eat communally, drive fuel-sipping cars, and rarely move far from home, if they move at all.
The hustle. Everyone in the U.S. has to work themselves to death in order to live. It’s go, go, go, all the time, one side hustle after another—we call it “gig work” in the States—no 401K, no health benefits, no sick leave. I should know. For sixteen years, I cobbled together a living teaching group fitness classes, writing novels, penning advertorials, and training personal clients. I had walking pneumonia for six months and didn’t know it (except for the painful coughing) but couldn’t afford to take the time off to go to a doctor that I also couldn’t afford. This is indecent. A violence that is done to Americans every day, only most of them have no idea it’s not normal.
In the end, I can come to only one inescapable conclusion. America’s problems are not lack of people power, smarts, or resources. We’ve been brainwashed into accepting the unacceptable by politicizing things like healthcare and human rights. But make no mistake—our problems are very much of our own making.
I love my country. Deeply, painfully love it. And I watch and hope—from a greater distance than I want to—for things to improve.
America is worth it. You are, too.