General Hospital

We are sitting here, watching Prodi's Center-Left government come up for the final vote to decide if the government will fall or not. If it falls, it means new elections. Anyway, the news feed goes back to the Senate, to the President of the Senate, Marini who has been handed the paper with the outcome of the final vote. "The "SI"s 156, the "No" 161, so the government has fallen. As Marini is reading out the final vote he stops for a moment to ring the bell to get order. "No, no, no. Senator Ramazzi, no. Put that bottle away! It's not like we're at a restaurant!" It seems that Senator Ramazzi in his glee cannot restrain himself from busting out with a bottle of Spumante to celebrate, right there on the Senate floor. And so Prodi has fallen, not that it changes much. You learn living in Italy that the people who are disgraced on the front page of the politics page today will be government ministers of tomorrow.
On to something that has a much more immediate influence on my life: we are still in one of the inner rings from Dante's inferno: the ring of children with colds and viruses. Two weeks ago Lorenzo stayed home most of the week with either Giulio or Livia or both, as they seemed to be taking turns. Friday morning both kids seemed well, well enough at least to go to school, then Livia decided to one-up Giulio and got bronchitis and a trip to the ER on a Friday afternoon where the Doctor reamed us out because I had thought she was better and sent her to the nido that day. I felt like the worst mom in the world. And of course there was nothing I could say because she was right, Livia shouldn't have gone to the nido that day, it was my optimism triumphing over my common sense. (I should add that an ER visit doesn't mean what it would mean in the US, that she was gravely ill. It means that her pediatrician wasn't around on a Friday afternoon so we took her to the hospital where a ped. would take a look at her.) With the help of cortisone, Livia was a new baby by Saturday, but we had learned our lesson and Lorenzo stayed home with her on Monday, along with Giulio for a good measure, just to make sure she was really OK. Then Monday afternoon I got a call at work. "Are you ready to laugh or to cry?" I heard my husband ask. "Giulio has a fever." A low fever, 98.7, really the temperature you might get running around the room. And in fact, upon being checked out by the pediatrician, who at this point has seen the children more than most of my relatives and close friends, gave both of them a clean bill of health.
With the antibiotics warding off attacks we coasted along until Friday. Friday night I got into bed when suddenly I was summoned to the kids room by the loud command "Mamma! Mamma!" It was Livia, standing up in bed, holding her arms out. Assuming she simply wanted water I grabbed the bottle off the shelf and in the semi-darkness turned to give it to her. Strange, I thought, there appeared to be a large dark stain down the front of her pajamas. Then I realized that it was a stain, actually, it was in fact vomit. And not just on her pajamas, but also on the sheet and comforter cover, but not, thankfully and miraculously on her stuffed animals. By now I'm a pro at containing bodily fluids. I got Livia out of bed, stripped her off, stripped the sheets and the mattress pad (but not the mattress!) and somehow got the baby changed, and washer loaded and running, and Livia back into bed in like 10 minutes. Ok, I thought, maybe she had something that hadn't agreed with her at dinner. I seemed to have rinsed most of dinner of her Pjs and sheets. But the next morning she threw up two more times and went on to have a day and a half of diarrhea, and wanting just to sit on my lap with her head against my chest which, if you are the parent of a toddler, you know that this is one of the scariest things of all. Lorenzo came home from work on Sunday, took one look at her and announced he would stay home with her tomorrow. This morning she was doing pretty well, eating her breakfast, running around, smiling. And so I took Giulio to school, and I went to work, thinking that at last we had managed to break the cycle. Then today at lunch Giulio's school called me. He has a fever and wouldn't eat lunch and was crying. I called Lorenzo. "Are you ready to laugh or to cry?"
And so now I sit here waiting. It's not looking good. The fever went up in the evening, and while a tiny part of me wants to hope against hope that he will come bounding out of bed tomorrow, it's not looking promising. It all wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I have a new job, and the first two months are a trial period, so I don't get the full benefits of the other employees, meaning, mostly I don't get paid to take time off to stay home with Giulio, and seeing as I am still in a trial phase, I don't want to do anything that would encourage my boss to think that maybe they don't need me after all. What's worse is that I don't know how long he could be sick for, and I know we have to find someone, some fairy godmother who can come and be with the kids on the those days when they are sick and we can't miss work. For tomorrow Sig.ra Pala has come to the rescue, she can come at 10 and stay until Lorenzo comes home, so I will go to work late. But what if this goes on for days? And if Livia gets sick again? And in the long term, what are we going to do, because they will get sick again. It seems that in Italy if you really want to succeed in business you need to need to have your now retired parents, active but living close to your home, ready to sweep in and stay with the kids when you need it. Part of me also feels that feeling of desperation I felt when the ER doctor let me have it last week at the hospital. What I wanted to tell her is that we are doing the best we can. That we should be forgiven for making a poor judgement call when we have only ourselves to rely on. It's becoming more and more clear why so many Italians stay close to home, because in the end, your family is all you've got. And it's only January. Keep your fingers crossed for me, would you?

Dr. C, Medicine Woman

It's a complete Murphy's law here. When the children were home from school on Christmas break for two weeks and my mom and dad were here to help us take care of them--no major illness. Now that my parents have gone back to the States and we are both back at work, well, guess whose sick? After four days of fever, coughing, and two visits to the pediatrician Giulio gave in to an ear infection and has been put on antibiotics. Livia, who seems to be on her way to matching her brother's previously unbeaten record of an ear infection each month until having his adenoids out at age 3, has a terrible cough, runny nose, fever and we are on stand-by for the latest development with her ears. At this point we practically have cold medicine running down the walls. Sit down to have dinner and you have to move six bottles, a nasal spray, and five packs of tissues before you can reach your plate. Pick up your daughter to give her a kiss before running off to work and you have matching silver snot marks decorating your shoulders all day--what all the best dressed mommies are wearing. All this illness means that I haven't been sleeping much. My evenings and small hours of the morning have been spent shuffling Giulio around from his bed to the couch and back again, doing the nebulizer (the medicine of choice here in Italy), administrating doses of Ibuprofen, and refilling the humidifier. And now Livia has suddenly found her voice, standing up in her crib at 20 minute intervals and yelling "Mamma!" Mamma!" until I go in and pick her up. And every night I tell myself that tomorrow we will wake up and this 24 hour, no 48 hour, no 72 hour, no 97 hour bug will have passed like a dream in the night. Except it hasn't. And while I know it's not the kids' fault, things have been made more complicated by the fact that I have changed jobs and now work a full-time day, instead of hours sprinkled throughout the day as I did before. Child care has become a challenge, Terry is reluctant to take the kids because, rightly enough, she doesn't want her little boy to get sick too. And honestly, if I find being alone with my sick children all day, how in the world can I hope to find someone who isn't a blood relative willing to do it? In the end Lorenzo, who spent his birthday arresting and processing the paperwork of some man who thought it would be funny to hold up three women and take their money and their phones using a fake gun before one of them realized it was fake and karate chopped him, has reluctantly offered to take time off and stay home with the kids. He finds my annoyance that there are so many things that still have to be done after I get home baffling. "I'm taking care of the kids!" he exclaims when I sigh audibly over the phone after being asked to "swing by" the supermarket on my way home and pick up 20 items, after having worked a 9 hour day. Or being told that we are almost out of Giulio's fever medicine so could I get more AFTER I have come home and changed my clothes. In his defense, he does other things like laundry, removes the mold off the ceiling (thank you humidifier!), and buys a new cartridge for the printer.
Of course life isn't all snotty noses and being up all night--even though right now it FEELS like it is. (As I type this Livia is yelling out for me from her crib). In the far distant past of only four days ago I went with my friend Theresa to a bachelorette party, for a woman I had met once when we all went out for drinks. When Theresa said the words "bachelorette party" the images of male strippers dressed as firemen, women wearing veils drunkenly weaving around the dance floor, and penis shaped lollypops as party favors came to mind. Then I remembered I live in Italy where when we "girls" meet up for a drink everyone but me orders a Coke and I feel like a huge lush cause I ask to see the mixed drink list. I was positive this would be a tame night. And it was. Other than the bride to be trying on her gift of matching bra and thong on over her clothes right there at the table, it was a quiet night, though a fun one. The dinner was held at this restaurant that specialized in Argentinian meat, I know, the Italians have the Bistecca Fiorentina and yet they are obsessed with the Argentinians and their meat. The restaurant had this enormous fake ship mast and deck in one corner, which looked like the owner had gotten at half price when they had struck the set for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, while the rest of the place has this soft, white design, like being in the courtyard of some 19th century building with fake windows and everything and with IKEA themed tables and chairs. I found the whole thing rather unsettling, as though the decorator had been unable to make up his mind. "What is the theme here?" I kept asking Theresa, who I don't think really knew what I meant.
All the women who came to the dinner were lovely. All wonderfully dressed and made up, with jewelry and gorgeous hair and some of them had obviously been given the dress code before they came out which turned out to be cute little jackets and blouses with jeans tucked into boots, like elegant tall jockeys. And some were married, and some weren't, and some had kids, and some didn't, and I remember thinking that I am so glad that I am married, because let me tell you, the competition here is fierce--i.e. Italian women are and always will be so pretty with a sense of style built into their DNA that I will never have. And I noticed a change, at least among the younger women, (when I say younger, I say the under 38 crowd.) Instead of the house salads and water that I was expecting women to order,(no one can deny themselves fantastic food better than Italian women can) we got starters, and steaks and potatoes, and dessert, and best of all wine, lots of red Argentine wine, and it wasn't even me to suggest ordering it. I remember when Lorenzo and I first moved up North we would have dinner at someone's house and I would be the only woman having wine, while the hostess would make some comment about how I liked my wine, didn't I, and me feeling offended because in the US or England saying someone likes their wine means that it's time they sign up for AA instead of just having a glass or two over a four course meal. It's like Italians and running (which we are still doing-at Christmas I ran a 15k, though Eugenio missed that one,) just seven years ago no one was doing it, now, at least at a bachelorette party an Italian woman can have some wine and no one bats an eye.