So here was Luca's plan for the festivities--he would pick me up at around seven o'clock at night, after he'd finished work, and then we would drive north out of Rome for an hour or so to his friends' house (where we would meet the other attendees of the birthday party) and we'd drink some wine and all get to know each other, and then, probably around 9:00 PM, we would commence to roasting a twenty-pound turkey . . .

I had to do some explaining to Luca about how much time it takes to roast a twenty-pound turkey. I told him his birthday feast would probably be ready to eat, at that rate, around dawn the next day. He was destroyed. "But what if we bought a very small turkey? A just-born turkey?"

I said, "Luca--let's make it easy and have pizza, like every other good dysfunctional American family does on Thanksgiving."

But he's still sad about it. Though there's a general sadness around Rome right now, anyway. The weather has turned cold. The sanitation workers and the train employees and the national airline all went on strike on the same day. A study has just been released saying that 36 percent of Italian children have an allergy to the gluten needed to make pasta, pizza and bread, so there goes Italian culture. Even worse, I recently saw an article with the shocking headline: "Insoddisfatte 6 Donne su 10!" Meaning that six out of ten Italian women are sexually unsatisfied. Moreover, 35 percent of Italian men are reporting difficulty maintaining un'erezione, leaving researchers feeling very perplessi indeed, and making me wonder if SEX should be allowed to be Rome's special word anymore, after all.

In more serious bad news, nineteen Italian soldiers have recently been killed in The Americans' War (as it is called here) in Iraq--the largest number of military deaths in Italy since World War II. The Romans were shocked by these deaths and the city closed down the day the boys were buried. The wide majority of Italians want nothing to do with George Bush's war. The involvement was the decision of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister (more commonly referred to around these parts as l'idiota). This intellect-free, soccer-club-owning businessman, with his oily film of corruption and sleaze, who regularly embarrasses his fellow citizens by making lewd gestures in the European parliament, who has mastered the art of speaking l'aria fritta ("fried air"), who expertly manipulates the media (not difficult when you own it), and who generally behaves not at all like a proper world leader but rather like a Waterbury mayor (that's an inside joke for Connecticut residents only--sorry), has now engaged the Italians in a war they see as none of their business whatsoever.

"They died for freedom," Berlusconi said at the funeral of the nineteen Italian soldiers, but most Romans have a different opinion: They died for George Bush's personal vendetta. In this political climate, one might think it would be difficult to be a visiting American. Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying, "We understand how it is--we have one, too."

We've been there.

It is odd, then, that Luca would want to use this birthday to celebrate an American Thanksgiving, given these circumstances, but I do like the idea of it. Thanksgiving is a nice holiday, something an American can freely be proud of, our one national festival that has remained relatively uncommodified. It's a day of grace and thanks and community and--yes--pleasure. It might be what we all need right now.

My friend Deborah has come to Rome from Philadelphia for the weekend, to celebrate the holiday with me. Deborah's an internationally respected psychologist, a writer and a feminist theorist, but I still think of her as my favorite regular customer, back from the days when I was a diner waitress in Philly and she would come in for lunch and drink Diet Coke with no ice and say clever things to me over the counter. She really classed up that joint. We've been friends now for over fifteen years. Sofie will be coming to Luca's party, too. Sofie and I have been friends for about fifteen weeks. Everybody is always welcome on Thanksgiving. Especially when it also happens to be Luca Spaghetti's birthday.

We drive out of tired, stressed-out Rome late in the evening, up into the mountains. Luca loves American music, so we're blasting the Eagles and singing "Take it . . . to the limit . . . one more time!!!!!............