Children everywhere amass and collect objects, from the most mundane to the more prestigious and carefully cultivated, sometimes with the help of the adults around them.
I once had a small collection of Egeria water bottle tops - I do not know why. But during my middle school years, I was introduced to a new and fascinating obsession: collecting fialette.
Fialette (literally: little vials) are small, narrow glass vials of perfume samples. I had no interest in perfume, or cosmetics of any sort, but the cute little vials somehow proved irresistible.
My friends S and D had inducted me into their sisterhood of fialette worship. Their collection was facilitated by the fact that they were actual sisters.
When I was in the 6th and 7th grades, the family I lived with in Milan preferred to have family time on the weekends, visiting their children and grandchildren for Shabbos meals and enjoying their empty home. This is understandable to me as an adult, but as a child, it was yet another difficult part of my life that set me apart from my peers. My hosts’ family time meant I had to leave to stay with another family for the weekend. Rome was too distant for a weekend visit.
On Fridays, I boarded the school bus with an overnight bag and was met with a chorus of “dove vai per Shabbat?” Where are you going for Shabbos? The scenario reversed itself when I boarded the same bus on Monday afternoons, headed 'home'.
One of the families I visited was that of my classmate S, the aforementioned collector.
S and D had swimming classes on Fridays, so after school, we would dump our bags in their home, then catch a city bus to the pool, a huge facility owned by the city of Milan.
I sat in the bleachers, bored, waiting for the class to end. Sometimes, S's sister D ditched the class and kept me company.
On Sundays, we ventured into the courtyard of their building, which shared the space with a fabric factory. There was a dumpster filled with discards, so we pilfered the fabric and brought it upstairs, our imaginations running wild. That is until we turned our minds to the more noble art of collecting perfume samples.
“It's so easy” my friends explained,” “all you do is walk into a profumeria and ask for fialette”.
Who doesn't like free stuff that smells good? I was sold on the idea in no time. From then on, our Sundays were spent roaming the profumerie of Milan, politely (though not always, because my friend was pushy) asking for samples.
Some store clerks gave them to us willingly, others sniffed at us and shooed us out - it didn't take a genius to figure out it was highly unlikely that we would turn into actual customers.
My friends and I shared the collection at first, but that arrangement was clunky and I eventually started my own.
Sensing my enthusiasm, my mother brought back fialette whenever she needed new makeup and went to visit our friend G's cosmetics shop, not far from the central train station in Rome.
I'll have you know that some fialette were more prized than others. The best were not simple vials, but actual diminutive copies of the real bottles. You could unscrew the tiny square cap and feel very adult-like as you squirted some free expensive perfume on your wrists. Not too much though - an empty fialetta was worthless. That was an unwritten rule.
Our obsession did not catch on with our other classmates, perhaps because they were more well-off and not as interested in scoring free stuff. No matter - they were welcome to keep their Barbour coats; we had a growing collection of fialette!
In March of 7th grade, I noted in my diary (inspired by Anne Frank's, of course) that S had given me 2 fialette in exchange for two of mine: Trussardi Action and Soir. On the same page, I bragged that I owned fialette from Miss Dior, Giò (Giorgio Armani), Venezia di Laura Biagiotti, and many more.
We tried to obtain fialette di marca (good brands), but beggars can't be choosers.
The next few pages of the diary tell the story of my return to Rome for Pesach vacation.
Dear diary, I wrote in Italian, I'm on the train. In my compartment there are three middle aged women who are speaking in Bergamasco (the dialect spoken in the northern city of Bergamo). My brother is reading Topolino (a Mickey Mouse comic book).
Over the next few days, I related the birth of a new sister and our Pesach preparations, which implied my prized collection of fialette was soon to be locked away with the other cosmetics that didn’t pass the chometz-free test.
First, though, I had more to say about it.
On March 27 I wrote: I squeezed 14 oranges, 4 grapefruit, and 4 lemons for the chicken. Now I have a moment to rest. Have I told you about my perfume collection? I have 25 fialette, excluding doubles!
By May, my collection had doubled. I reported that I had set a goal of owning 49 fialette by June 30th, but as of my writing on May 30th I had 54. Nicely done, young me!
In a much less excited tone, I recorded that I got an A in history.
5 days later, a friend was mad at me because I had apparently promised her fialette. Figurati! (As if!)
By the first week of June, I had 57 fialette. One Sunday, I met S outside Bet Chabad on Via F. Bronzetti and headed to Piazza Cinque Giornate to hunt for more fialette.
When we parted, I boarded a bus in the wrong direction and had to switch after a few stops.
My host mother sent me to the supermarket, then back again because I had forgotten the sugar. Didn't she know I was exhausted from an afternoon of perfume collecting?
What interesting lives we lead!
On June 6 I owned 61 fialette but hated my class.
Soon, I was back in Rome, waiting for summer camp to begin.
My collection grew the following year, but after that, I was off to Israel for high school. From time to time, when I was home, I browsed through my collection, wistfully, until eventually bequeathing it to my sisters, who did not share my former enthusiasm for it.
So it goes.