A number of years ago, an Italian chef taught me the phrase, “Tutto al posto.” I was eating in his restaurant and he asked me how the meal was. I probably tried to answer him back in Italian, trying to convert some English idiom into another language and he stopped me and said, “Tutto al posto?” It literally translates to “All in place,” and I took it to mean, “All is as it should be.” Some quickl googling showed the full phrase to be, “Tutto al posto giusto,” which means all is in the correct place.
I’ve been thinking of the phrase a lot lately, as we set about putting our post-vaxxed world to rights. Getting my first hair cut…tutto al posto. Cleaning the house for actual visitors…tutto al posto. After my first professional brow wax in 16 months, after nearly a year and a half of me trying to tend to them myself, I looked in the mirror and sighed, “Tutto al posto.” It is a relief. There is an order to it that feels centering and calming, after a year of feeling like we’ve had no center, and despite being unsure if this calm is before an even bigger storm.
Our pandemic lives were like an overhead compartment during a transatlantic flight: Some contents may have shifted during travel. They talk about neural pathways in the brain and how changing habits or thought patterns can create new ones. I think there are neural pathways in the home, too. And for these last many months, we’ve had to create new habits in our home. The functions of rooms changed; we had to adapt our environment for our new needs. I bet if you mapped our pre-pandemic home lives, like a Family Circus cartoon of where Billy’s been when he said he’d be “right home,” and put it over a pandemic map of our home habits, the trails we blazed inside would be different. Bedrooms became offices; dens became bedrooms…and dining rooms, and home theaters and exercise rooms.
And so, things got moved and rearranged. Tutto is not al posto. We still keep our mail on top of the dryer, a vestige of when we thought we had to quarantine it for a few days. Puzzles have taken over the dining room table. Christmas boxes are still on the spare bed because it’s only been the two of us in the house since then, and I guess we haven’t fought or snored – at least not enough to get us exiled. I found a Christmas decoraration still up in March.
As I was tackling my closet over the weekend - organizing all of my shoes according to color – I realized, “Tutto al posto feels good.” The closet is definitely one of those areas whose pathways had changed: The same three outfits I wore each week hanging up in front where I had a direct route to them each day; various off ramps to cocktail attire or party wear having been reclaimed by nature due to lack of use. And it wasn’t only the fancy clothes that had been neglected; I feel as if I missed five seasons’ worth of outfits! I recently went to see friends in Malibu and was delighted at being able to wear a year’s worth of seasonal attire all in one visit. I mean, I suppose I could have put on a cashmere sweater and boots just to sit around and watch Wandavision, but I never got around to it. And so, all of my winter 2020 looks sat around like they were encased in amber.
And maybe that’s one of the reasons Tutto al Posto feels so good; we’re reawakening joys that had to lie dormant. Cleaning off the bed means loved ones are coming. Organizing shoes means I’m going to be feeling fierce in heels again. Yes, it’s therapeutic; we’re controlling little corners of our world, the only ones we can. But we’re also casting spells for the future, creating space for change and the good times to come.