Home Sweet Home Part 2

Today we were all home, Giulio's school is still closed as is mine, they won't open until Wednesday here in Italy. We kept Livia home too since we planned to go and see the horse show going on in the center of town but an unexpected thunder storm kept us inside. With the darkening clouds, Lorenzo's mood darkened too. He has to do patrol tonight, from 7pm to 1 am, a part of the job that he really hates. He doesn't do patrol everyday, but once a week he usually gets assigned to it, and worse yet, he got assigned to the evening shift which means beligerent drunk people and fisticuffs. Although in Italy the police always patrol with two officers in the car, Lorenzo hates it, especially because in a small town like ours backup could be kilometers away. And if they end bringing someone in, it's worse for him because he ends being stuck with all the paperwork and arranging the arrest. I alway send him off with a prayer that all will go well at that by 1:30 he will be at home and in bed. I started getting dinner ready early, around 5:30, while he started getting ready for work. At 5:55 I had three things going on the stove, Giulio was in the bathroom trying to go poop and Lorenzo had finished shaving and was about to get into the shower. Livia was sitting in her high chair watching me rush around, waiting for her own dinner to finish cooking. Suddenly the doorbell rang. I went to get it, thinking it was probably Vanda asking to borrow an egg or requesting to have their DVD of "Cars" back. I peered through the peep-hole and saw Signora Pala, the sweet elderly lady who lives below me standing outside the door. Sig.ra Pala is decidedly low-maintanence and I wondered what she could possibly want, in two and half years here she has never asked so much for a glass of water. I didn't think anything of the old t-shirt and baby food stained shorts I was wearing but quickly unlocked the door and opened it to find not only Sig.ra Pala but also Don Vincenzo complete with surplice and cassock and carrying a black bag with what looked like a jar of Holy water. "Hello!" called Don Vincenzo, "We've come to bless the house!" "Oh," I said, slapping a big smile on my face, "Come in, please, come in." All the while I'm thinking, 'Bless the house? I never ordered any house blessing. And man, does this guy know how to time it!"
"Excuse me just a moment, " I say, big smile still in place. I whip round and closing the door that seperates the living room and the hallway behind me, I knock on the bathroom door and say cheerily, "Lorenzo, Don Vincenzo and Sig.ra Pala are here!" Meaning: watch what you say, you grump. "Oh," he says. There's a pause. "Just a minute." I go to the bedroom and close the wardrobe doors which were wide open as I had been in the middle of hanging up drycleaning when the door bell had rung. House blessing? Did this mean the priest was going to go from room to room, blessing as he went? I hoped not, slamming shut the wardrobe doors but leaving the clothes on the bed. I go back into the living room where our guests have just discovered Livia, who has remained quietly in her high chair, Sig.ra Pala cooes over her. "How beautiful! What a beautiful baby!" I squeeze past Sig.ra Pala and turn off the three stove top burners so we are no longer being assaulted by the smell of veal with mushrooms, and take Livia from her chair and bring her out into the living room where Don Vincenzo gets in on the act and starts cooing too. I tell him that Livia's baptism had gone really well, that we really liked Don Giovanni (yes, that's his name) who performed the service. I also tell him about a baptism we went to in Rome where the priest banished all the crying babies to the sacristy so he could give his sermon undisturbed, and told the rest of the congregation to "Be quiet." As I talk I keep glancing desperately towards the bathroom waiting for Lorenzo to appear, I can't hold them off forever. Finally he comes out, nicely dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, making me look even more slovenly than ever, and Giulio gives up trying to poop and comes out too.
After a few moments of small talk, mostly asking Giulio if he is nice to his sister and Giulio holding forth on the fact that is was raining, we get down to business. We are both given prayer cards with the blessing rites on one side and a prayer from Saint Ambrogio on the other. With Sig. Pala taking the lead, we respond to the priest's prayer as indicated on the card. I'm following along when suddenly drops of water hit my arm. Good Lord the man is waving holy water around the house, liberally at that. "It's raining again!" Giulio calls, touching his head where some of drops had fallen. I shoot him the hairy eyeball, but luckily we were at the end of the prayers by then, and it seemed that blessing the living room was enough to consider the house sufficiently blessed. The dry cleaning was safe. We chatted a few more minutes, mostly about The State of the World Today, and then with many hearty farewells they were on their way, on to bless the next house. Gosh, my (extremely devout Catholic) grandmother would have been so proud! I was suprisingly happy about having our house blessed, though completely blindsided. While it was not something I would have sought out myself, it was a nice thing to do, and hey we can use all the help we can get, be it divine or otherwise. It's just the kind of thing that Sig.ra Pala would be involved in, and her bringing the priest to our house after he had blessed her home and before they went on to bless many others was her way of doing something nice for us. A house blessing is just the kind of thing that she likes and therefore kindly assumed it was just the thing we would want for our home.
Signora Pala, like Terry and Eugenio, is one of life's good people. She brings me candles that have been blessed in church by the priest to hold against the children's throats to protect them from sore throats, church bulletins, and olive branches from Palm Sunday. The fact that I have yet to go to Mass here is no problem. She understands that for obvious reasons I can't take my children yet, assuming that my lack of involvement is simply a question of having other time commitments. While she asks nothing of me, I often go downstairs to her, to have her patch Giuio's jeans, or iron Livia's christening gown. Twice I have gone begging to see if she can sit with the kids for 10 minutes until Lorenzo gets home. She is always smiling, rushing off on her blue bicycle to help with the Mass or administer communion to some invalid. Every morning she rides into the center of town to put flowers on her husband's grave, and while she hates cooking, will happily sew anything that needs sewing. During many of Giulio's early morning meltdowns on the stairs she will come out and hold him while I go and get the car out of the garage, and he will be smiling, the whole crisis forgotten by the time she brings him out to the car. She also never complains about the noise going on directly over her head, be it Giulio running back and forth or Livia crying in the dead of night. Whenever I apologize for some late night goings on she always laughs and tells me she is just sorry that she can't come up and take care of the baby and let me and Lorenzo sleep. Believe me, it took all my restraint not to hand her my keys and with a hearty slap on the back say, "Come whenever you want, don't feel you have to knock first!" She suffers from insomnia and likes to hear us overhead so she doesn't feel so alone, her two sons are married and moved out years ago.
Sig.ra Pala has lived in this building since it was built, she moved here as a newly-wed, after living with her mother in the apartment building next to our. Apparently it was another priest who convinced her to buy her apartment on the west side of the building, instead of the one on the east side. "I wanted the other one, because the bedrooms get direct sun in the morning, while ours get the afternoon sun, so I thought they would be cooler. And also that way I could see my mother's apartment from my window. But he told me that by afternoon all apartments are hot anyway, at least on the west side they would be cool in the morning. And having an apartment farther from my mother's meant I could argue with my husband in peace!" Downstairs in her little plot of land, she has put down flat stones in lieu of a vegetable garden and a statue of the Virgin Mary that has a little light on top that she turns on every night.
And then there's Piero, but I will get to him next time.
As a sort of p.s. that has nothing to do with anything, Giulio when he comes and gives me a big hug and kisses now says "You're my donkey." It's his new way of expressing affection. I have no idea where it comes from.