The Sixteen Euro Bellini

The U.S. may be the last great superpower but you wouldn’t know if from the exchange rate. It seems that all of Europe has chosen to comment on our international politics with the one thing we Yanks understand: money.

This was all too clear on a recent jaunt to Italy. The U.S. dollar stood at a dismal $1.26 to the euro. My sister and I had planned a “budget” trip, just a few steps above the poor exchange student that I was 20 years ago. We knew prices were higher than in the States, but the dollar’s daily slide against the euro hit us like sticker shock.

I’d booked us into an 80 euro per night hotel in Mestre, a middle-class town just outside of Venice. It was still low season, but even one star and no star double rooms in Venice proper were over 200 euros per night. A one euro bus ride from Mestre would give us the Grand Canal plus a quiet, comfortable sleep in a room with cable TV and private bath with a hair dryer. My sister, the corporate traveler on whose frequent flyer miles we had flown, was grumpy about the location. All this frugality had to be rewarded somehow and she decided it would be on Bellinis at Harry’s Bar In Venice on the Grand Canal.

Well, that was our Alamo, our Saigon, our Tikrit. Sixteen euros for a peach juice and champagne cocktail. After drinking one apiece, neither of us felt a buzz. We were sober enough to do the math: At that day’s exchange rate each Bellini had cost $22.46. We scurried out of Harry’s, regretting whatever Yankee arrogance or stupidity had led us there in the first place.

From then on, the Bellini became our point of reference for everything. In Mestre, we indulged in three course dinners with wine, proclaiming “This whole meal cost less than that Bellini.” An ornate Venetian mask was just “a few more euros than a Bellini.” Laced espadrille shoes were “cheaper than a Bellini.” We calculated our cab fare and tip to the airport at “about two Bellinis.”

Last week , my sister called me from a bar in Half Moon Bay, a sort of Mestre to our hometown, San Francisco. She informed me that she was looking out at the wide blue ocean and drinking a Bellini that cost less than half of what we’d paid in Venice. And yes, this time, she was buzzed.

In the Blink of an Eye

This weekend two of my nephews graduated from middle school and from high school, respectively.

Unbelievable. As far as I’m concerned, they’re still 2 and 6 years old. Or 8 and 12 at the most. Those are the photos that have lived on my bulletin boards for years. Along with their crayon drawings which hang, framed, next to museum prints on my walls.

I am a professional aunt and take the job quite seriously. It’s for life and it’s 24/7. It comes with responsibilities and privileges that range from being in the delivery room to sleeping in a bunk bed on Pokemon sheets, telling scary stories by flashlight. In the line of duty I’ve been peed on, vomited on, spat at, punched, had hair pulled out and done a thousand diapers. I’ve lived the saga of food fights, tantrums, carsickness and pre-nap crankiness. I’ve been to Disneyland more than I can bear and I hate Disneyland. I go broke every Christmas giving gifts, as well as on birthdays and at milestone events like straight A report cards and graduation.

But being an aunt comes with special perks too. You get to break the rules from time to time. Like letting the tykes eat frozen yogurt for breakfast, saying “At least it’s yogurt.” Or letting the older one-paint bikinis on gingerbread men when decorating Christmas cookies. I’ve left an economic and nutritional imprint on kids whose idea of eating vegetables means onion rings and French fries. Instead of overpriced pop corn and soda at the movies, I bribed them into munching power bars we sneaked in and taking them for sushi afterward. (It was actually cheaper.)

I’ve seen all of the good, bad and mediocre kid movies of the past 15 years as well as their video sequels. Since they were boys, I grew up with arcade, Nintendo, Playstation, X Box video games. By coincidence, I’m the aunt who worked in the animation business for years who took them to different studios to see animators at work. This was to teach them why they should sit and watch all those long credits at the end of a movie and not make pirate copies of those video games.

About the time they started to play marathon rounds of Halo, I noticed a change. The older one’s voice deepened. He grew more than a foot taller one summer. Their crayon drawings and scribbled notes become misspelled email messages, then occasional IMS. Instead of going to movies with me they’d mumble: “Just give us the money and drop us off.” They even started challenging me in conversation, saying: “That’s just an opinion, Auntie Mia. I don’t think so.” They love gangsta rap and blaring hip-hop. The last time they rode in my car, they changed the radio pre-sets to the loudest urban stations.

They’ve grown up. They’ve become young men. They won’t give me any updated photos but I can check out their My Space pages. These aren’t the same little buddies I knew a few years ago. Like a parent, it’s time to let them go. They belong to others now.

I guess I can take down their framed crayon drawings.

The question is: What will put up instead?