Today was the first day back at work after the three day weekend. The kids are still home. Last Monday I was taking a shower when it dawned on me that spring break was almost upon us and that I still hadn’t organized childcare. Lorenzo seemed stunned that the schools would be closed for five days around Easter, and kept demanding to know why, why would they be closed for almost a week? Didn’t he have spring break when he was a kid I wondered, but I had to admit it seemed like a lot of time to fill. Before, with my old job we followed the school calendar and so when the schools were closed, we were closed (but not paid either) and there was no concern over who would be with the kids. Now I’m finding these long breaks the bane of my existence. It means telling Lorenzo to have his day off on Tuesday so he can babysit, and begging my neighbours to fill in for the other days, which is how we solved it this time, the kids went to Terry on Thurday, were home with Lorenzo Friday, everyone was home Monday, and today Lorenzo is home with them, he did work Easter though. Tomorrow he’s working in the afternoon and at any rate Livia will be back in daycare, which just leaves Giulio to spend the afternoon at Giusy’s tomorrow, which he couldn’t be happier about.
Getting out the door this morning proved just as stressful as always, even though I was the only one who had to be somewhere on time. Breakfast was hard going, one child demanding what the other child was eating, or demanding what I was eating, which meant I never managed to take one bite of cereal before I was out of my seat again to get another breakfast roll for Livia who then proceeded to leave most of it on her try and then scream like a banshee when Giulio tried to eat it. Yes, Livia is talking now, she can scream at full volume, “E’ mia! E’ mia!” (It’s mine, it’s mine!) which I should take as a small comfort that she is on track developmentally. Then Giulio wanted a banana, but not the banana that I had given half of to Livia. A whole banana, an “upright” banana with the peel still on. God, how he takes after me when I was a kid. And yet this complete understanding of where this mentality was coming from did nothing to increase my patience or understanding and I proceeded to have a pointless argument with him trying to convince him that half a banana still in the peel was just as good as a whole one. No such luck. He gets a new banana, unpeels it, takes one bite and then leaves it on his plate, causing another lecture from me. He goes to his room in floods and I grimly eat the greatly discussed piece of fruit. Livia wants to eat standing on the floor in the kitchen, instead of in her high chair where I want her. I put her in the high care where she stands up and refuses to eat, so I let her get down, where she gestures wildly to the pieces of roll on her tray. Back up again, no hunger unless feet are touching the floor. We compromise. She kneels in Giulio’s abandoned chair and finishes her breakfast.
After brushing teeth and washing faces the kids mill around the door waiting for me and Lorenzo to catch up as we throw dishes into the sink and pick up stray socks that have wound up on the living room floor. You know the old saying how you should always change your underwear in case you are run over that day? I always feel that way about my house. I want some semblance of order before I leave in case I get run over so the news reporters coming to interview my bereft husband won’t find the morning’s bowl of Cheerio’s still on the table, or a pair of pyjamas lying on the floor by the couch. Strange I know. Perhaps Italy is really starting to get to me. Anyway, the kids are by the door and Livia has some toy in her hand and Giulio announces he wants a toy too, specifically the plastic whale he got with his chocolate Easter egg, which I go and grab off the changing table in the kids’ room. In Italy they don’t have Easter baskets. They have these large hollow chocolate eggs which are placed in the center of a large piece of shiny cellophane wrap, and then the wrap is pulled up over the egg and gathered up at the top with all the excess wrap sticking straight up and tied with a piece of gold string. They are all different kinds of eggs, sizes, and price ranges because inside the egg is a little toy which is usually worth about 50 cents, the eggs themselves sell for about 4 or 5 euros depending on who made them and what the toy is.
They have girl eggs and boy eggs, so Giulio had received a little plastic blue whale, which doubled as a water gun, Livia a little pink stuffed pig, and then I got from the egg that I had won running a 15K the week before a small clear plastic tambourine. I had been really reluctant to open and eat my egg, as Eugenio said, it hadn’t cost very much but it had taken a lot of effort to get! In short, the toys are crap and yet the kids did nothing this weekend but argue over them, the whole è mio, è mia, though Livia in these cases was the more guilty party. My kids interest in toys is relative to how much the other one wants it. Livia had been playing with the plastic tambourine, (I saw Giulio with the pig yesterday) but as soon as she spotted the whale she wanted that too and when I opened the door she follows Giulio into the hallway in hot pursuit of the whale. When I get outside the door Giulio is sitting forlornly on the step while Livia stands in front of my neighbor’s door grinning and clutching both toys in her hand. Chaos ensues. I take the whale from Livia who starts wailing, and hand it to Giulio, and I pick her bereft form up and try to get her attention with the plastic tambourine. I get it into her hand and she looks at it limply for a moment before letting it drop to the floor where it promptly breaks apart scattering plastic disks all over the stairs. I put Livia down and rush around, trying to pick up as many pieces as possible, shoving them into my coat pocket and swearing under my breath. God knows what the neighbours think we are up to first thing in the morning, what with yells, tears, and things smashing on the steps. And then Lorenzo appears behind me, not knowing anything of the charged 60 seconds we just had. “What’s that?” he asks about a stray disk that we find at the bottom of the stairs by the main entrance. “That? Oh, nothing.”
In the car I feel tired, really tired, as though the straining and warring of the morning has taken its toll. That and that the fact that I got up at 5:30 to go running. I ran a 12k race yesterday and today felt like I was running uphill the entire time. Giulio tells Lorenzo that they will have to buy another toy for Livia today because hers broke. “No,” I say weakly from the front seat. “No more toys.”
“Are you going to work Mommy?” Giulio asks.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go to work?”
And get away from a day of battles over toys, breakfast cereals, and chocolate eggs? After this morning? God yes. But no I can’t say that, and honestly, it’s not even 100% true. More like 75%.
“No, Giulio, I don’t, I would rather stay with you.”
“Why do you have to go to work?”
“To make money to feed you, and pay for clothes and toys. You know how sometimes you don’t want to go to school?”
“Yes, sometimes I cry because I don’t want to go to school.”
“Yes, well, once you get there and then you start playing with Andrea, and Filippo, and Simone, and Massimo, and Antonietta, and Angelica then you start to feel better.”
“I don’t like Angelica.”
“Yeah, but you like Antò, right?”
“Yes.” He’s quiet for a moment.
“Will you remind Daddy to come back and get me today?” I ask.
“Yes, I’ll say, Daddy we have to go get Mommy.”
“Yeah, don’t let him leave me at work.”
“Sometimes Mommy when you are at work I miss you and I cry.”
Oh God, I felt like crying right then too. And I felt terrible about every thinking that I couldn’t wait to get to work, I felt terrible about going to Germany last week overnight for work, and enjoying the silence of my hotel room and getting dressed without having to simultaneously dress and feed two small children. I’m totally verklempt as Linda Richman would say, but it wouldn’t be cool to start the day out with rivers of mascara running down my face so I blink back tears.
“Yes, but Giulio I always come back to you, you know that right?”
“Yes, Mommy.” He brightens. “Ok, see you tomorrow!”
“Not tomorrow Giulio—tonight! You better come back at 5:30 and get me!”
I feel good, very good as I head into work to start the day, in the end I guess it was a good morning after all.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
The Lullaby
After a dark and foggy couple of weeks we woke up Sunday morning and found that spring has sprung. Or that this global warming is really scary and happening much faster than anticipated. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing (quick! Let's get some laundry on the line!) and best of all, it was warm. Just the day to take a walk, ride bikes, be outside with your nearest and dearest. We cleaned the house. Sad to admit it, but the house was yucky, I no longer have time during the week to clean it, and coming home when it's getting dark has its advantages because it hides the dust bunnies under the furniture. Cleaning when it's sunny has its disadvantages; you can see how badly you needed to have cleaned the house before today. But whatever, at least Lorenzo was there to help me so it went faster and he is an intense cleaner, he takes on the tasks that I am than happy to let go, like beating the couch to get the dust out of it. Or rather, the dust rises up in tremendous clouds and then settled back onto the couch again.
We had hoped to get done early so we could do something outside as a family before Lorenzo had to go to work at 2, but it became obvious around 12:30 that it wasn't going to happen. I was thinking of taking the kids to the park and then I remembered that as Friday was our town's feast day, then on this particular Sunday there would be serious celebrations in town. The story behind the town's celebration is that in February 28, 1528 the town risked being invaded (and having its butt handed to it) by the French army. But then a miracle occurred, a painting of the Madonna in the town's chapel began to cry real tears, which caused the French army to lay down it swords and leave the town alone. They do this re-enactment complete with soldiers on horses, people in historical dress, and long processions. There is also a mass where the sword and helmet of the commander of the French army is on display. More importantly, there are also market stalls selling candy, clothes, cds, food, as well as a carnival that comes to town every year and always coincides its visit with the town's feast day. I was all set to take the kids, go the see the procession, (Lorenzo said I could park the car at the police station, solving the stress of finding parking) and eat one of those famous sausage sandwiches with onions. But Giulio wanted to go to the pool. The indoor pool, which wasn't really the place I wanted to be on such a beautiful day. He hasn’t been since we had that awful month of illness back in January when he missed the last three of the nine lessons I had paid for. We haven’t been back since, I’ve been meaning for over a month now to go back and sign him up again, though it is one of those things on my list of things to do that I never forget but never remember to do.
Despite trying to tempt him with the promise of real live horses and a ride on the merry-go-round, Giulio stayed adamant about going to the pool so in the end I gave up trying to convince him and got our swimsuits. In fact, going to the pool turned out to be a rather good idea. Even though we had to park kind of far away because the pool parking lot was full of cars belonging to people who now thronged the streets and vendor stalls, the pool itself was practically empty. The warm day meant I was wearing a t-shirt, while Livia and Giulio wore light, long sleeve t-shirts. We kept passing people who were elegantly bundled up in sweaters and jackets, as though somehow their memory of the cold weeks we had just gone through would help keep them cool against the hot sun. I have noticed that Italians dress more according to the calendar than by the actual weather, at least when easing themselves out of winter. No Italian would go around in short sleeves in February if the temperature was in the high seventies anymore than they would go around in short sleeves with temperatures in the low thirties. You really want to shock an Italian? Show up at their house with your legs bare before the middle of May. I could always spot the foreign tourists when I lived in Rome because (among other things) of how lightly they were dressed, no self-respecting Italian leaves their jacket at home before the end of April, no matter how warm. The cold might leap up from behind you at any time and take you down.
Giulio and Livia had a great time at the pool, Giulio leaping confidently from the side into the shallow end with me holding his hand, and Livia stepping off the edge into the water without even breaking her stride. She was so confident that I would catch her she seemed like someone doing one of those trust exercises they make you do on office retreats. You know, when you call out “fall!” and then let yourself fall backwards into the waiting arms of the women from the HR department and the man with the cubicle next to you. It was a little unnerving actually, as Livia would just walk off the edge without any warning, but she seemed to really like it and Giulio got to show me all the moves he had learned during his swim lessons. Note to self: sign Giulio up again for swimming lessons! Best of all the locker room was empty when we took showers and got dressed so no one had to watch me run around with my bathing suit around my waist trying to pin Livia down and get a diaper on her with Giulio giggling hysterically sitting naked on the locker room bench trying to put one sock on.
Today was business as usual with the kids at school and Lorenzo and myself back at work. I’m getting used to work, how to plan my day, how to plan my week, and it seems for the most part that, barring sick kids, Lorenzo and I have found a way to get through the week in one piece. Today though I came home exhausted after a long day, after getting Livia from daycare and going grocery shopping, only to find a huge pile of dried laundry sitting on the bed, results of my rather over zealous running of the washing machine the day before. I was ready to start bitching but Lorenzo took the groceries and got busy with dinner and just then Giulio came running up to me, with on hand behind his back.
“Look Mommy, I have something for you.” He held out a slightly squashed purple flower without the stem. “I picked it just for you.”
Of course I melted. Took the kid in my arms and kissed the heck out of him. And then got down to folding laundry, putting it away, and getting the kids into their pjs. I know, I should have been enjoying these precious moments with my children, taking pleasure in being with them, but instead I just focused on the task of getting them into bed, with Lorenzo calling me to the table because dinner is ready, like I’m doing my nails and gadding on the phone with a girlfriend instead of trying to read “Peepo” to my children before kissing them goodnight and tucking them in. Only Giulio is mad because we are going to bed without reading the story again, and he kicks off the covers I have pulled up to his chin, he way of protesting. I’m too tired to argue and just turn to go when he calls out frantically to me: “Mommy!” And then, if nothing had happened he says in a much quieter voice. “Will you sing good night to me?” Our goodnight song is one I have sung to him every night since he was a baby, taking the song “Goodnight My Someone” from “The Music Man” and just changing the words. It’s a brief song, only four lines, the perfect length for a tired woman worn out by a long day with a baby, but tonight at this point the four lines loom as long as four Shakespearean sonnets. I bend over the bed, putting my face next to his ready to sing the song quickly.
“Good night my Giulio, Good night my boy.”
OK, almost there, I think. His cheek is against mine, his breath even and quiet in my ear.
“Good night my Giulio, I love you so.”
His cheek is so soft, My little baby, my little boy, a boy who in another few years won’t want me singing in his ear before going to sleep and checking to make sure he has his Pat the Bunny and stuffed elephant in bed with him. I take a deep breath and slow down, wanting to draw out the last two lines and remind myself of right now, not five minutes from now or after dinner, or what I have to do before the morning, but now, just me singing a lullaby to my son.
“The stars are shining their brightest light,”
I feel like crying, my very own Madonna of the Tears weeping over two children so wonderful I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve them. No, I won't cry, I’m going to enjoy this moment, not rush. My Giulio, the little boy who picked a flower for his mommy, the little boy who loves his mommy even though she isn’t perfect and who one day will see her faults better than he will see his own, but that hasn’t happened yet. Not today, not right now, not while I’m singing this song. I’m just a mommy singing to her boy, with his little arms around my neck and his breath in my ear.
“Now goodnight my Giulio, goodnight.”
We had hoped to get done early so we could do something outside as a family before Lorenzo had to go to work at 2, but it became obvious around 12:30 that it wasn't going to happen. I was thinking of taking the kids to the park and then I remembered that as Friday was our town's feast day, then on this particular Sunday there would be serious celebrations in town. The story behind the town's celebration is that in February 28, 1528 the town risked being invaded (and having its butt handed to it) by the French army. But then a miracle occurred, a painting of the Madonna in the town's chapel began to cry real tears, which caused the French army to lay down it swords and leave the town alone. They do this re-enactment complete with soldiers on horses, people in historical dress, and long processions. There is also a mass where the sword and helmet of the commander of the French army is on display. More importantly, there are also market stalls selling candy, clothes, cds, food, as well as a carnival that comes to town every year and always coincides its visit with the town's feast day. I was all set to take the kids, go the see the procession, (Lorenzo said I could park the car at the police station, solving the stress of finding parking) and eat one of those famous sausage sandwiches with onions. But Giulio wanted to go to the pool. The indoor pool, which wasn't really the place I wanted to be on such a beautiful day. He hasn’t been since we had that awful month of illness back in January when he missed the last three of the nine lessons I had paid for. We haven’t been back since, I’ve been meaning for over a month now to go back and sign him up again, though it is one of those things on my list of things to do that I never forget but never remember to do.
Despite trying to tempt him with the promise of real live horses and a ride on the merry-go-round, Giulio stayed adamant about going to the pool so in the end I gave up trying to convince him and got our swimsuits. In fact, going to the pool turned out to be a rather good idea. Even though we had to park kind of far away because the pool parking lot was full of cars belonging to people who now thronged the streets and vendor stalls, the pool itself was practically empty. The warm day meant I was wearing a t-shirt, while Livia and Giulio wore light, long sleeve t-shirts. We kept passing people who were elegantly bundled up in sweaters and jackets, as though somehow their memory of the cold weeks we had just gone through would help keep them cool against the hot sun. I have noticed that Italians dress more according to the calendar than by the actual weather, at least when easing themselves out of winter. No Italian would go around in short sleeves in February if the temperature was in the high seventies anymore than they would go around in short sleeves with temperatures in the low thirties. You really want to shock an Italian? Show up at their house with your legs bare before the middle of May. I could always spot the foreign tourists when I lived in Rome because (among other things) of how lightly they were dressed, no self-respecting Italian leaves their jacket at home before the end of April, no matter how warm. The cold might leap up from behind you at any time and take you down.
Giulio and Livia had a great time at the pool, Giulio leaping confidently from the side into the shallow end with me holding his hand, and Livia stepping off the edge into the water without even breaking her stride. She was so confident that I would catch her she seemed like someone doing one of those trust exercises they make you do on office retreats. You know, when you call out “fall!” and then let yourself fall backwards into the waiting arms of the women from the HR department and the man with the cubicle next to you. It was a little unnerving actually, as Livia would just walk off the edge without any warning, but she seemed to really like it and Giulio got to show me all the moves he had learned during his swim lessons. Note to self: sign Giulio up again for swimming lessons! Best of all the locker room was empty when we took showers and got dressed so no one had to watch me run around with my bathing suit around my waist trying to pin Livia down and get a diaper on her with Giulio giggling hysterically sitting naked on the locker room bench trying to put one sock on.
Today was business as usual with the kids at school and Lorenzo and myself back at work. I’m getting used to work, how to plan my day, how to plan my week, and it seems for the most part that, barring sick kids, Lorenzo and I have found a way to get through the week in one piece. Today though I came home exhausted after a long day, after getting Livia from daycare and going grocery shopping, only to find a huge pile of dried laundry sitting on the bed, results of my rather over zealous running of the washing machine the day before. I was ready to start bitching but Lorenzo took the groceries and got busy with dinner and just then Giulio came running up to me, with on hand behind his back.
“Look Mommy, I have something for you.” He held out a slightly squashed purple flower without the stem. “I picked it just for you.”
Of course I melted. Took the kid in my arms and kissed the heck out of him. And then got down to folding laundry, putting it away, and getting the kids into their pjs. I know, I should have been enjoying these precious moments with my children, taking pleasure in being with them, but instead I just focused on the task of getting them into bed, with Lorenzo calling me to the table because dinner is ready, like I’m doing my nails and gadding on the phone with a girlfriend instead of trying to read “Peepo” to my children before kissing them goodnight and tucking them in. Only Giulio is mad because we are going to bed without reading the story again, and he kicks off the covers I have pulled up to his chin, he way of protesting. I’m too tired to argue and just turn to go when he calls out frantically to me: “Mommy!” And then, if nothing had happened he says in a much quieter voice. “Will you sing good night to me?” Our goodnight song is one I have sung to him every night since he was a baby, taking the song “Goodnight My Someone” from “The Music Man” and just changing the words. It’s a brief song, only four lines, the perfect length for a tired woman worn out by a long day with a baby, but tonight at this point the four lines loom as long as four Shakespearean sonnets. I bend over the bed, putting my face next to his ready to sing the song quickly.
“Good night my Giulio, Good night my boy.”
OK, almost there, I think. His cheek is against mine, his breath even and quiet in my ear.
“Good night my Giulio, I love you so.”
His cheek is so soft, My little baby, my little boy, a boy who in another few years won’t want me singing in his ear before going to sleep and checking to make sure he has his Pat the Bunny and stuffed elephant in bed with him. I take a deep breath and slow down, wanting to draw out the last two lines and remind myself of right now, not five minutes from now or after dinner, or what I have to do before the morning, but now, just me singing a lullaby to my son.
“The stars are shining their brightest light,”
I feel like crying, my very own Madonna of the Tears weeping over two children so wonderful I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve them. No, I won't cry, I’m going to enjoy this moment, not rush. My Giulio, the little boy who picked a flower for his mommy, the little boy who loves his mommy even though she isn’t perfect and who one day will see her faults better than he will see his own, but that hasn’t happened yet. Not today, not right now, not while I’m singing this song. I’m just a mommy singing to her boy, with his little arms around my neck and his breath in my ear.
“Now goodnight my Giulio, goodnight.”
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The Power Mommy
I had to go to England this week for a business trip. OK, fine, I'm going to drop the cool and hopelessly blase' tone and say--Finally! I'm 29 years old and this is the first time I've ever been able to say the words "business trip" in a sentence pertaining to me and my work! It also makes my job seem very time consuming and important, which it really isn't. Well, it does take up a lot of my time as all jobs do, but it has its highs and lows. I mean it's like one minute they need me to be the company representative talking to the head of a huge international corporation about some very tricky problem, and then we finish on the conference call, I wipe the sweat from my brow and go back downstairs to where I answer the phone and do various mundane office tasks. It sounds like I hate my job, which I don't. I find it for the most part interesting, there is a ton to learn, much of which would prove useful if I ever decide to go work somewhere else. And I like my colleagues, who are a good looking, very Italian bunch, most of the women hopelessly skinny and sexily dressed, but who do wear jeans everyday, yet another bonus to working here.
What I wasn't expecting on Tuesday afternoon though was to be asked if I could be able to go to England the next morning because we had a problem and they needed us to go to the client in person to express our extreme availability and willingness to resolve the problem. They needed me to go to make sure that we were very clear about what was going on, and that our company and my colleague understood everything they were saying to us. So I'm not a translator exactly because my colleague does speak English, but a translator who is also apparently closely following and deeply involved in the project. Which I kind of am, at least when it comes to dealing with this client, just don't tell them that I also answer the phone. You can imagine Lorenzo's reaction when I called him. In the past seven years I have done little more than ask him if he could pick Giulio up from school, and now I was asking if he would be OK on his own for at least 36 hours with the kids. He initially panicked, but when I pointed out that he would be at work on Wednesday, Livia at school and Giulio at Giusys (with another fever!!) and by Thursday I would be home he relented. "Sure, go. Make sure they pay you a ton extra!"
So Wednesday morning found me traveling to the north of England with another colleague, luckily one who I work with a lot so there was no awkwardness and wondering what to say. Our trip was uneventful, and yet for me really strange. I could not remember the last time I had flown alone, well, actually, I can, it was when I flew to the US the summer I was pregnant with Giulio. It was so strange not to be sherpa-ed out with a bag, a diaper bag, three winter coats, a stroller and Giulio's backpack. I went to the bathroom on my own. There was no wiggling child on my lap who I had to keep amused while we sat on the runway, or frequently fed from beaten up cracker packs from my bag. When we boarded the first plane and they immediately announced that we would be waiting 40 minutes to take off my first thought was that we would miss our connecting flight and NOT how to keep my children from getting us thrown off the plane while we waited. I just sat and read my book. There were no awkward diaper changes in the confines of the airplane bathroom, no trying to eat from a try and not letting a baby spill my water, and no pained looks from my fellow passengers when I sat down next to them, in fact no one even knew that I had children. It was all so wonderful and yet I was missing my kids like crazy. In the airport cafe before our flight I saw a family with two small children the same age as mine, the eldest boy even had a hair cut like Giulio's and had the charming habit of exhaling "aahhhh" when he finished drinking a glass of water like they do on soft drink commercials to show that major thirst has been quenched, and which Giulio and Livia do as well. My heart flipped watching him and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Yes, I had been away from my children for under three hours and I already missed them.
Our trip was long and rather stressful, as I think most trips involving connecting flights are. The fear of the unknown delay keeps you stressed out and on your toes. Plus the sprint for your connecting flight, sweating under your wool coat and avoiding tripping fellow travelers with your suitcase confirms my belief that you should be in good shape to fly. The worst part was that after almost nine hours of being on the move when we finally arrived in Northern England all I wanted to do was put my feet up and have a stiff drink and instead I had to pull it together and concentrate more than I had all day, cause we left the airport and went directly to our client's offices. I felt like I was moving underwater. I hadn't been too out of it however to notice the new slogan for Northern England that met us as we came down the gate: Passionate People, Passionate Places. My colleague gave me an alarmed look as I let out a snort of laughter. My grandparents were from Northern England, my grandfather was a Yorkshireman through and through and while there are many lovely adjectives I could use to describe him and the people from the village where my mother grew up, passionate is not one of them. Kind with a dry sense of humor, yes. Passionate, no. It would be like getting off the plane in Italy and finding our new motto was Serene People, Serene Places.
We got a taxi and headed off for our meeting, and it was there that I realized why my company had asked me to go to. For one thing, due being rather tired himself, my colleague Enzo's english became extraordinarily contorted, so that I was translating in my head from Italian into English to understand what he was saying. And I noticed that 9 times out of 10 when anyone from the English company said anything they directed it at me. After three grueling hours though, we were done. We staggered out of there, got a cab and headed to the hotel where I found myself for the very first time in my life in a hotel room entirely for me. I felt like I should call someone and mark the grandness of the occasion but I decided I couldn't afford it and instead went to take a shower. The room was, if nothing else, delightfully warm, and I reveled in the carpeted floor, though in showing what an Italian I have become I wouldn't walk around on it barefooted and instead kept my slippers on the whole time.
Finding a place to eat proved challenging. Italians are the worst people in the world to go abroad with because the quality of the food always disappoints and disgusts them. On the flight earlier we had been given sandwiches which included mustard on one and mayo on the other and my colleague kept making faces like someone had thrown up on his shoes, and when I scarfed them down, commented on how all these foods with "sauces" weren't good for you. Yes, I agreed, eating mayo at every meal would cause long-term damage, but I didn't think one sandwich was going to do much harm. Plus this was coming from a man who insisted on smoking a cigarette before we could get into a taxi or go to a restaurant. When I suggested Indian for dinner I got the same vomit-on-shoes-look as before, but in the end we agreed on a Japanese restaurant that had been recommended to us. There Enzo was in for another shock. As we sat chowing down on our California rolls and bad white wine a group of about 20 young women, none older than 21, came in for a group meal. They were all in various stages of undress wearing shorts, halter tops, mini dresses, bare legs and stiletto sandals, apparently they would be hitting the clubs after eating. Enzo couldn't stop looking at them. Not because they were beautiful or sexy, but because he couldn't understand how they could walk around in February so scantily dressed and not get ill. Italian women dressed for a night out in winter will always be wearing tights and often a wool undershirt to protect themselves from the cold, it's a almost like a sign of character and good moral upbringing. I still remember how I got chastised when Giulio was a baby for letting him run around without an undershirt tucked in under his clothes in early September. What do these women wear when it gets hot? Enzo wondered. It didn't seem worth it to point out that there was little variation in the weather from summer to winter, if one waited in Northern England for the right weather to bust out with your mini-sundress, well, it almost wouldn't justify the price you paid when you bought it. As we walked back to the hotel after dinner we passed a woman in a t-shirt walking down the street. As Enzo started gaping yet again I couldn't help but add "Now you understand how England conquered half the world and built its Empire."
Back in the hotel, it was still strange to be alone, though it was an alone-ness that I relished for about 30 seconds before passing out into a sleep induced coma, not stirring until almost 9 hours later, the most I had slept in over week. I rolled over, opened my eyes, and thought, "Today I will see my kids again." The thought alone made me leap out of bed and start packing my meager suitcase. I said a brief prayer for decent connecting flight times, on-time departures, no fog in London or Milan, and a lack of traffic going to or from the various airports. I was woman on a mission: a mommy coming home to her babies. Move the heck out of my way.
What I wasn't expecting on Tuesday afternoon though was to be asked if I could be able to go to England the next morning because we had a problem and they needed us to go to the client in person to express our extreme availability and willingness to resolve the problem. They needed me to go to make sure that we were very clear about what was going on, and that our company and my colleague understood everything they were saying to us. So I'm not a translator exactly because my colleague does speak English, but a translator who is also apparently closely following and deeply involved in the project. Which I kind of am, at least when it comes to dealing with this client, just don't tell them that I also answer the phone. You can imagine Lorenzo's reaction when I called him. In the past seven years I have done little more than ask him if he could pick Giulio up from school, and now I was asking if he would be OK on his own for at least 36 hours with the kids. He initially panicked, but when I pointed out that he would be at work on Wednesday, Livia at school and Giulio at Giusys (with another fever!!) and by Thursday I would be home he relented. "Sure, go. Make sure they pay you a ton extra!"
So Wednesday morning found me traveling to the north of England with another colleague, luckily one who I work with a lot so there was no awkwardness and wondering what to say. Our trip was uneventful, and yet for me really strange. I could not remember the last time I had flown alone, well, actually, I can, it was when I flew to the US the summer I was pregnant with Giulio. It was so strange not to be sherpa-ed out with a bag, a diaper bag, three winter coats, a stroller and Giulio's backpack. I went to the bathroom on my own. There was no wiggling child on my lap who I had to keep amused while we sat on the runway, or frequently fed from beaten up cracker packs from my bag. When we boarded the first plane and they immediately announced that we would be waiting 40 minutes to take off my first thought was that we would miss our connecting flight and NOT how to keep my children from getting us thrown off the plane while we waited. I just sat and read my book. There were no awkward diaper changes in the confines of the airplane bathroom, no trying to eat from a try and not letting a baby spill my water, and no pained looks from my fellow passengers when I sat down next to them, in fact no one even knew that I had children. It was all so wonderful and yet I was missing my kids like crazy. In the airport cafe before our flight I saw a family with two small children the same age as mine, the eldest boy even had a hair cut like Giulio's and had the charming habit of exhaling "aahhhh" when he finished drinking a glass of water like they do on soft drink commercials to show that major thirst has been quenched, and which Giulio and Livia do as well. My heart flipped watching him and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Yes, I had been away from my children for under three hours and I already missed them.
Our trip was long and rather stressful, as I think most trips involving connecting flights are. The fear of the unknown delay keeps you stressed out and on your toes. Plus the sprint for your connecting flight, sweating under your wool coat and avoiding tripping fellow travelers with your suitcase confirms my belief that you should be in good shape to fly. The worst part was that after almost nine hours of being on the move when we finally arrived in Northern England all I wanted to do was put my feet up and have a stiff drink and instead I had to pull it together and concentrate more than I had all day, cause we left the airport and went directly to our client's offices. I felt like I was moving underwater. I hadn't been too out of it however to notice the new slogan for Northern England that met us as we came down the gate: Passionate People, Passionate Places. My colleague gave me an alarmed look as I let out a snort of laughter. My grandparents were from Northern England, my grandfather was a Yorkshireman through and through and while there are many lovely adjectives I could use to describe him and the people from the village where my mother grew up, passionate is not one of them. Kind with a dry sense of humor, yes. Passionate, no. It would be like getting off the plane in Italy and finding our new motto was Serene People, Serene Places.
We got a taxi and headed off for our meeting, and it was there that I realized why my company had asked me to go to. For one thing, due being rather tired himself, my colleague Enzo's english became extraordinarily contorted, so that I was translating in my head from Italian into English to understand what he was saying. And I noticed that 9 times out of 10 when anyone from the English company said anything they directed it at me. After three grueling hours though, we were done. We staggered out of there, got a cab and headed to the hotel where I found myself for the very first time in my life in a hotel room entirely for me. I felt like I should call someone and mark the grandness of the occasion but I decided I couldn't afford it and instead went to take a shower. The room was, if nothing else, delightfully warm, and I reveled in the carpeted floor, though in showing what an Italian I have become I wouldn't walk around on it barefooted and instead kept my slippers on the whole time.
Finding a place to eat proved challenging. Italians are the worst people in the world to go abroad with because the quality of the food always disappoints and disgusts them. On the flight earlier we had been given sandwiches which included mustard on one and mayo on the other and my colleague kept making faces like someone had thrown up on his shoes, and when I scarfed them down, commented on how all these foods with "sauces" weren't good for you. Yes, I agreed, eating mayo at every meal would cause long-term damage, but I didn't think one sandwich was going to do much harm. Plus this was coming from a man who insisted on smoking a cigarette before we could get into a taxi or go to a restaurant. When I suggested Indian for dinner I got the same vomit-on-shoes-look as before, but in the end we agreed on a Japanese restaurant that had been recommended to us. There Enzo was in for another shock. As we sat chowing down on our California rolls and bad white wine a group of about 20 young women, none older than 21, came in for a group meal. They were all in various stages of undress wearing shorts, halter tops, mini dresses, bare legs and stiletto sandals, apparently they would be hitting the clubs after eating. Enzo couldn't stop looking at them. Not because they were beautiful or sexy, but because he couldn't understand how they could walk around in February so scantily dressed and not get ill. Italian women dressed for a night out in winter will always be wearing tights and often a wool undershirt to protect themselves from the cold, it's a almost like a sign of character and good moral upbringing. I still remember how I got chastised when Giulio was a baby for letting him run around without an undershirt tucked in under his clothes in early September. What do these women wear when it gets hot? Enzo wondered. It didn't seem worth it to point out that there was little variation in the weather from summer to winter, if one waited in Northern England for the right weather to bust out with your mini-sundress, well, it almost wouldn't justify the price you paid when you bought it. As we walked back to the hotel after dinner we passed a woman in a t-shirt walking down the street. As Enzo started gaping yet again I couldn't help but add "Now you understand how England conquered half the world and built its Empire."
Back in the hotel, it was still strange to be alone, though it was an alone-ness that I relished for about 30 seconds before passing out into a sleep induced coma, not stirring until almost 9 hours later, the most I had slept in over week. I rolled over, opened my eyes, and thought, "Today I will see my kids again." The thought alone made me leap out of bed and start packing my meager suitcase. I said a brief prayer for decent connecting flight times, on-time departures, no fog in London or Milan, and a lack of traffic going to or from the various airports. I was woman on a mission: a mommy coming home to her babies. Move the heck out of my way.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Superman meets Power Ranger Filippo
The kids are doing better. Giulio, after five days of fever, vomiting, and painful canker sores in his mouth, got up and started teasing his sister. He then proceeded to ignore me when I told him to stop so I knew right then that he was feeling better. Unfortunately, though he is better, schools are closed Monday and Tuesday for the Carnevale holiday, so Lorenzo has taken some vacation time to stay home with him, vacation time he had asked for weeks in advanced as soon as I saw them on the academic calender. It's this last minute, the night-before stuff that is killing us. Tuesday evening we stood there in the kitchen as Lorenzo tensely sliced yellow pepper and Giulio lay forlornly on the sofa. WHAT were we going to do? That morning I had gone to work late, Sig.ra Pala had come upstairs like the angel she is and stayed with Giulio until Lorenzo came home at 1. She also mended Lorenzo's uniform pants while she was there, but Sig.ra Pala is a busy woman, she certainly couldn't stay with Giulio for two days in a row. Lorenzo had already taken 3 days off the week before and once this week and while there is no risk of him being fired (he has the equivalent of tenure) his boss hadn't been happy that he had needed to stay home with his kids those days. It seems that caring for your sick children shouldn't really be the parents' responsibility, it's our responsibility as parents to find someone else to care for them. And apparently Lorenzo and I had let the side down because there we were at 7 pm on a Tuesday, the next work day less than 14 hours away and we had no one to stay with Giulio. Lorenzo called his colleague whose mother-in-law babysits children during the day and apparently, normally she would be happy to watch Giulio but unfortunately she had the flu. Join the club.
I ran through a mental list of people I know and then started running through the actual list of people I know on my cell phone. My female friends all work, the one I did try and call wasn't home, Terry downstairs was home because she has hurt her knee and is on sick leave, but she wasn't going to want Alessandro exposed to Giulio. And then it came to me, Giusy. Some of you may remember Giusy as the woman I flagged down from kitchen window to come upstairs and be with the kids for 10 minutes until Lorenzo came home because I HAD to leave for work. Giusy has been taking care of Alessandro in the mornings while Terry works, but as I mentioned, Terry isn't going to work right now. And Giusy had told me that if I ever needed anything all I had to do was ask. People offer things like that all the time, most of the time you know that if you did call them ready to cash in on that favor they would be seriously put out. I decided to think that Giusy had been sincere and meant it when she offered to help so I went downstairs to Terry's to get the number. Thankfully Giulio was, in Giusy's words, welcome to come and she hoped he would stay for lunch too, and Giulio, in spite of his illness, was quite pleased to be going to her house. And so we lived to fight another day, and the day after that when Giulio went back again, still ill but loving Giusy's house with its two firetrucks to play with, (Giusy's husband Angelo is a retired fireman.) I still felt awful leaving him with other people, he was sick and I couldn't (well, I probably could, but right now it is all about giving a good impression at work) be with him. On Friday Lorenzo was on for the night shift and so was able to be with Giulio during the day. Giulio spent the day with me on Saturday and I was so happy to be able to spend the whole day with my kids, enjoying them and cuddling with them and playing with them, but my son wasn't feeling the love, he spent much of the day asking if he could go to Giusy's.
In any case, Giulio recovered just in time because Saturday there was the Carnevale party at the church down the street, the same party we went to last year. Giulio has been asking for weeks to "go" to carnevale. Here's a typical exchange:
"Mommy, I want to go to Carnevale."
"Not yet Giulio, Carnevale hasn't happened yet."
"Please Mommy. I really want to go."
"Giulio, it hasn't happened yet. We have to wait for it, like your birthday or Christmas." He pauses for a second, thinking this over.
"Mommy? Can we go in one minute?'
Seeing that he was much better I used the party as a way to get him to eat all his dinner, though he still has these painful canker sores which make eating really hard. His costume this year was Superman, a kind of homemade concoction using blue long-johns, red rain boots, a pair of old red shorts and a cape that was handmade by my mom's best friend and given last year as a Christmas present, because all little children need capes, don't they? What made the costume so great was the Superman "S" which Lorenzo had handpainted on the front of the shirt. He found the logo on the computer and doing the kind of mathematical equation that one finds on Algebra tests but rarely in real life, adapted the size of the logo to fit on the shirt where he traced the outlines and painted them in. It was a true labour of love.
Livia was a ladybug, which for some reason has been deemed an appropriate costume for girls before moving into the princess costumes. She'll be a ladybug next year too, different costume, but same thing. My mom finds them and gets them on sale for us after Halloween, which is the best time to buy a costumes, though we weren't lucky this past year with Giulio, which is how the whole Superman thing came together. Livia wasn't thrilled with the costume, she cried and kept trying to pull it off without success, before resigning herself to the inevitable. The little headband with the antennae was a no-go however.
We walked to the party. Inside we found about fifty kids running around hurling confetti at each other, scooping it off the floor while parents sat on chairs along the walls and watched. There was a table loaded with food at one end and this year they hired a band for the event: three middle aged men with keyboards who seemed to have been hired to keep the over 50 group happy. We sat down next to Filippo's parents, comparing our health bulletins of the last few weeks. Filippo had scarlet fever, but only missed two days of school thanks to antibiotics, while another woman had two kids with re-occurring bronchitis, and a bout of scarlet fever thrown in for fun. As both these woman have many family members around to help, they couldn't truly feel my pain. Giulio began the party kneeling on the floor scooping up confetti and ignoring the children who kept asking him to play, including one darling little girl from his class dressed as a princess in a yellow dress who brushed dust off of Giulio's blue long johns and who Giulio barely even acknowledged. He finally got into the swing of things when Filippo, who was a sword carrying Power Ranger, presented Giulio with his own plastic pitchfork type thing to run around with, truly the finishing touch for the Superman costume. We stayed later than we planned, so glad to see Giulio running around acting like himself that it was after 11 when we left with the party in full swing, so today the kids are healthy but cranky. At least they can still go to school when they are cranky.
I ran through a mental list of people I know and then started running through the actual list of people I know on my cell phone. My female friends all work, the one I did try and call wasn't home, Terry downstairs was home because she has hurt her knee and is on sick leave, but she wasn't going to want Alessandro exposed to Giulio. And then it came to me, Giusy. Some of you may remember Giusy as the woman I flagged down from kitchen window to come upstairs and be with the kids for 10 minutes until Lorenzo came home because I HAD to leave for work. Giusy has been taking care of Alessandro in the mornings while Terry works, but as I mentioned, Terry isn't going to work right now. And Giusy had told me that if I ever needed anything all I had to do was ask. People offer things like that all the time, most of the time you know that if you did call them ready to cash in on that favor they would be seriously put out. I decided to think that Giusy had been sincere and meant it when she offered to help so I went downstairs to Terry's to get the number. Thankfully Giulio was, in Giusy's words, welcome to come and she hoped he would stay for lunch too, and Giulio, in spite of his illness, was quite pleased to be going to her house. And so we lived to fight another day, and the day after that when Giulio went back again, still ill but loving Giusy's house with its two firetrucks to play with, (Giusy's husband Angelo is a retired fireman.) I still felt awful leaving him with other people, he was sick and I couldn't (well, I probably could, but right now it is all about giving a good impression at work) be with him. On Friday Lorenzo was on for the night shift and so was able to be with Giulio during the day. Giulio spent the day with me on Saturday and I was so happy to be able to spend the whole day with my kids, enjoying them and cuddling with them and playing with them, but my son wasn't feeling the love, he spent much of the day asking if he could go to Giusy's.
In any case, Giulio recovered just in time because Saturday there was the Carnevale party at the church down the street, the same party we went to last year. Giulio has been asking for weeks to "go" to carnevale. Here's a typical exchange:
"Mommy, I want to go to Carnevale."
"Not yet Giulio, Carnevale hasn't happened yet."
"Please Mommy. I really want to go."
"Giulio, it hasn't happened yet. We have to wait for it, like your birthday or Christmas." He pauses for a second, thinking this over.
"Mommy? Can we go in one minute?'
Seeing that he was much better I used the party as a way to get him to eat all his dinner, though he still has these painful canker sores which make eating really hard. His costume this year was Superman, a kind of homemade concoction using blue long-johns, red rain boots, a pair of old red shorts and a cape that was handmade by my mom's best friend and given last year as a Christmas present, because all little children need capes, don't they? What made the costume so great was the Superman "S" which Lorenzo had handpainted on the front of the shirt. He found the logo on the computer and doing the kind of mathematical equation that one finds on Algebra tests but rarely in real life, adapted the size of the logo to fit on the shirt where he traced the outlines and painted them in. It was a true labour of love.
Livia was a ladybug, which for some reason has been deemed an appropriate costume for girls before moving into the princess costumes. She'll be a ladybug next year too, different costume, but same thing. My mom finds them and gets them on sale for us after Halloween, which is the best time to buy a costumes, though we weren't lucky this past year with Giulio, which is how the whole Superman thing came together. Livia wasn't thrilled with the costume, she cried and kept trying to pull it off without success, before resigning herself to the inevitable. The little headband with the antennae was a no-go however.
We walked to the party. Inside we found about fifty kids running around hurling confetti at each other, scooping it off the floor while parents sat on chairs along the walls and watched. There was a table loaded with food at one end and this year they hired a band for the event: three middle aged men with keyboards who seemed to have been hired to keep the over 50 group happy. We sat down next to Filippo's parents, comparing our health bulletins of the last few weeks. Filippo had scarlet fever, but only missed two days of school thanks to antibiotics, while another woman had two kids with re-occurring bronchitis, and a bout of scarlet fever thrown in for fun. As both these woman have many family members around to help, they couldn't truly feel my pain. Giulio began the party kneeling on the floor scooping up confetti and ignoring the children who kept asking him to play, including one darling little girl from his class dressed as a princess in a yellow dress who brushed dust off of Giulio's blue long johns and who Giulio barely even acknowledged. He finally got into the swing of things when Filippo, who was a sword carrying Power Ranger, presented Giulio with his own plastic pitchfork type thing to run around with, truly the finishing touch for the Superman costume. We stayed later than we planned, so glad to see Giulio running around acting like himself that it was after 11 when we left with the party in full swing, so today the kids are healthy but cranky. At least they can still go to school when they are cranky.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
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?
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?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, December 7, 2007
The Gift
Giulio and Antonietta have made peace. After a week of torment Giulio came flying out of school one afternoon with the news that he and Antonietta were now friends, and the peace has held. Yesterday he sat at the kitchen table eating cookies with Nutella spread on top and talking about school.
"What did you do today, Giulio?"
"I played with the trucks."
"Was Filippo there?"
"Yes. And Antonietta and I are friends. I want to go to her house, Mommy."
"Did you play together at school today?'
"Yes." Then there is a pause as Giulio chews for a moment.
" Antonietta and I are friends, but me and Camilla no."
And so it goes. Giulio however doesn't seem the slightest bit unhappy that he and Camilla aren't friends, there is no yearning here! But seeing that Camilla lives across the street from us, and I actually know her mother, and that the times Camilla has come in our yard to play they have gotten along just fine, I'm hoping that this will pass. And knowing Giulio it will.
Eugenio has started running again. I knew me beating him by 10 minutes was too much for an ex-marathon runner to bear, and so at least twice a week we have started running together, including our second race two weeks ago, 11 kilometers of killer, muddy, hilly roads. He led in the beginning, I pulled up even towards the 6th kilometer and we ran together until the last 2 kilometers when I pulled ahead and beat him by 2 minutes. The race was characterized by the large groups of elderly walkers who did not take kindly to panting joggers trying to pass them on the narrow path that cut through woods and wound around a lake. I ran fearing for my ankles. There was the usual lavish "refreshment" afterwards, including tortellini in broth at 9:30 in the morning, and a box of cookies and a chocolate bar for every participant, no picture frames this time. This Sunday we have a 14 kilometer, so this may be the one where Eugenio beats me, I know it is simply a question of time.
Part of what helped my training so much was a visit from my in-laws Lucia and Antonio, which instead of being the customary 3 days lasted an entire week because Livia got sick and had to stay home from the nido. My in-laws, who are always at their best when someone is ill, stayed on to take care of her so Lorenzo and I wouldn't have to miss work. Having two people present who were handling all the cooking and most of the childcare left me with plenty of time for long runs around the neighborhood, breaks that were also necessary for my sanity. I like my in-laws, but we have very little in common. I come from a largish city in the US, they both come from small towns in Southern Italy, I enjoy food and like eating, they are obsessed with food and spend most of their waking hours planning, preparing, eating, or cleaning up meals. At 7:30 in the morning I would be in the kitchen preparing breakfast and Lucia would come in, say good morning and then ask me if I would prefer meatballs or steak for lunch. This would be before I'd had my morning coffee.
Antonio, in what was meant to be a purely loving and generous act brought us a whole prosciutto crudo. Prosciutto is ham, but in Italy you can get prosciutto cotto, which is closer to what we think of as ham in the US, and then there is prosciutto crudo, which is "raw", the meat has been smoked and aged but not cooked in an oven. Both are delicious. In my house we usually eat prosciutto at lunch, along with pasta as a kind of poor man's second course.
When you go to the supermarket or butchers to buy prosciutto they never have it ready, pre-sliced to be grabbed by the handful and dumped on the scale like they do at Kroger's. Instead they take from the shelf this whole prosciutto, put in on the slicer and carefully slice off pieces, laying them beautifully one by one on the paper sheet next to the slicer. They then weigh the amount, fold it up, put it in paper bag and hand it to you as a long flat package the size of a copy of "Newsweek." When I buy prosciutto I buy around 100 grams, which is around a quarter of a pound. As it only lasts about 2 or 3 days before getting a bit funky, I try not to buy any more than that or I will end up throwing it away before it is eaten. When my father came and lived with us for 3 months last year he had the staff at our supermarket in stitches because once when he ordered prosciutto he asked for 500 grams, or a little more than a pound, which seemed to the staff an enormous amount to buy at one time.
At any rate, here was Antonio with a 10 pound prosciutto for us to eat. Prosciutto crudo will keep for a long time if stored properly, but it has to be sliced correctly to get the slices at their correct thinness, and while I like prosciutto, I've never wanted one of my very own. For me, getting a quarter of a pound of the stuff three times a week was about as far as I wanted to go in my level of commitment. Now suddenly here was Antonio proudly displaying his ham and talking about how he would teach me how to slice it with the knife he would leave with us, and how we could store the ham in our storage area in the basement, it was nice and dry down there, wasn't it? I had images of myself staggering home after a long morning, hungry for lunch, getting to my apartment and then remembering that if I wanted any prosciutto I was going to have to go back down three flights of stairs and slice it myself with a knife. The thought alone made me feel tired. Then there was the question of the amount. My children (of course) won't eat prosciutto crudo, they only like cotto. That left Lorenzo and me the task of eating this thing every day, needing to consume it whether we wanted to or not before it was no longer edible. Lorenzo voiced his concern that perhaps a WHOLE prosciutto was too much for us to eat, a suggestion that was waved away, weren't your in-laws from America coming at Christmas Antonio asked. THEY would want to eat prosciutto, they would be so happy to be in Italy eating this wonderful ham, and we could also share it with our friends and neighbors......while I couldn't think of any friends who would fly over here to have a slice of ham, I realized that in the close vicinity of our apartment there are at least 3 or 4 people of a certain age who would certainly relish the chance to have some of this prosciutto. People who were born before or immediately after the Second World War have very particular ideas about what tastes good and what foods should be appreciated above all others. Our neighbor Piero would certainly love a few slices of this ham, as would Eugenio's dad who lives on the other side of the fence from us. Eugenio's dad drives up into the mountains to pick wild mushrooms, rather than buy the ones they sell in the store. They would taste this prosciutto and appreciate how it had been aged, would know that they were eating an excellent piece of meat, and they would be grateful to Antonio for letting them try some, even if their own fridges were stuffed with the same kinds of ham. But for Lorenzo and myself it was different. For Lorenzo slicing his own prosciutto is something he has little interest in doing, let alone storing it in his basement. Young men in Italy today may enjoy eating good food, but they don't necessarily want it sitting on top of their clothes dryer. As for me, well, I come from a place where the word "ham" always has the words "honey-baked" in front of it, I certainly didn't know what to do with this fatty leg of meat which I had only ever seen handled by the butcher when I buy cold cuts. In the end we convinced Antonio to leave us a plate of sliced prosciutto but to take the rest of it back to Rome with him, where he would certainly get much more pleasure out of it than we would. He was offended, and rightly so, no one likes their gifts to be refused. But now in the fridge sits that same plate of prosciutto, all but untouched since Antonio left it there. My excuse for not eating it is that he didn't slice it thin enough.
"What did you do today, Giulio?"
"I played with the trucks."
"Was Filippo there?"
"Yes. And Antonietta and I are friends. I want to go to her house, Mommy."
"Did you play together at school today?'
"Yes." Then there is a pause as Giulio chews for a moment.
" Antonietta and I are friends, but me and Camilla no."
And so it goes. Giulio however doesn't seem the slightest bit unhappy that he and Camilla aren't friends, there is no yearning here! But seeing that Camilla lives across the street from us, and I actually know her mother, and that the times Camilla has come in our yard to play they have gotten along just fine, I'm hoping that this will pass. And knowing Giulio it will.
Eugenio has started running again. I knew me beating him by 10 minutes was too much for an ex-marathon runner to bear, and so at least twice a week we have started running together, including our second race two weeks ago, 11 kilometers of killer, muddy, hilly roads. He led in the beginning, I pulled up even towards the 6th kilometer and we ran together until the last 2 kilometers when I pulled ahead and beat him by 2 minutes. The race was characterized by the large groups of elderly walkers who did not take kindly to panting joggers trying to pass them on the narrow path that cut through woods and wound around a lake. I ran fearing for my ankles. There was the usual lavish "refreshment" afterwards, including tortellini in broth at 9:30 in the morning, and a box of cookies and a chocolate bar for every participant, no picture frames this time. This Sunday we have a 14 kilometer, so this may be the one where Eugenio beats me, I know it is simply a question of time.
Part of what helped my training so much was a visit from my in-laws Lucia and Antonio, which instead of being the customary 3 days lasted an entire week because Livia got sick and had to stay home from the nido. My in-laws, who are always at their best when someone is ill, stayed on to take care of her so Lorenzo and I wouldn't have to miss work. Having two people present who were handling all the cooking and most of the childcare left me with plenty of time for long runs around the neighborhood, breaks that were also necessary for my sanity. I like my in-laws, but we have very little in common. I come from a largish city in the US, they both come from small towns in Southern Italy, I enjoy food and like eating, they are obsessed with food and spend most of their waking hours planning, preparing, eating, or cleaning up meals. At 7:30 in the morning I would be in the kitchen preparing breakfast and Lucia would come in, say good morning and then ask me if I would prefer meatballs or steak for lunch. This would be before I'd had my morning coffee.
Antonio, in what was meant to be a purely loving and generous act brought us a whole prosciutto crudo. Prosciutto is ham, but in Italy you can get prosciutto cotto, which is closer to what we think of as ham in the US, and then there is prosciutto crudo, which is "raw", the meat has been smoked and aged but not cooked in an oven. Both are delicious. In my house we usually eat prosciutto at lunch, along with pasta as a kind of poor man's second course.
When you go to the supermarket or butchers to buy prosciutto they never have it ready, pre-sliced to be grabbed by the handful and dumped on the scale like they do at Kroger's. Instead they take from the shelf this whole prosciutto, put in on the slicer and carefully slice off pieces, laying them beautifully one by one on the paper sheet next to the slicer. They then weigh the amount, fold it up, put it in paper bag and hand it to you as a long flat package the size of a copy of "Newsweek." When I buy prosciutto I buy around 100 grams, which is around a quarter of a pound. As it only lasts about 2 or 3 days before getting a bit funky, I try not to buy any more than that or I will end up throwing it away before it is eaten. When my father came and lived with us for 3 months last year he had the staff at our supermarket in stitches because once when he ordered prosciutto he asked for 500 grams, or a little more than a pound, which seemed to the staff an enormous amount to buy at one time.
At any rate, here was Antonio with a 10 pound prosciutto for us to eat. Prosciutto crudo will keep for a long time if stored properly, but it has to be sliced correctly to get the slices at their correct thinness, and while I like prosciutto, I've never wanted one of my very own. For me, getting a quarter of a pound of the stuff three times a week was about as far as I wanted to go in my level of commitment. Now suddenly here was Antonio proudly displaying his ham and talking about how he would teach me how to slice it with the knife he would leave with us, and how we could store the ham in our storage area in the basement, it was nice and dry down there, wasn't it? I had images of myself staggering home after a long morning, hungry for lunch, getting to my apartment and then remembering that if I wanted any prosciutto I was going to have to go back down three flights of stairs and slice it myself with a knife. The thought alone made me feel tired. Then there was the question of the amount. My children (of course) won't eat prosciutto crudo, they only like cotto. That left Lorenzo and me the task of eating this thing every day, needing to consume it whether we wanted to or not before it was no longer edible. Lorenzo voiced his concern that perhaps a WHOLE prosciutto was too much for us to eat, a suggestion that was waved away, weren't your in-laws from America coming at Christmas Antonio asked. THEY would want to eat prosciutto, they would be so happy to be in Italy eating this wonderful ham, and we could also share it with our friends and neighbors......while I couldn't think of any friends who would fly over here to have a slice of ham, I realized that in the close vicinity of our apartment there are at least 3 or 4 people of a certain age who would certainly relish the chance to have some of this prosciutto. People who were born before or immediately after the Second World War have very particular ideas about what tastes good and what foods should be appreciated above all others. Our neighbor Piero would certainly love a few slices of this ham, as would Eugenio's dad who lives on the other side of the fence from us. Eugenio's dad drives up into the mountains to pick wild mushrooms, rather than buy the ones they sell in the store. They would taste this prosciutto and appreciate how it had been aged, would know that they were eating an excellent piece of meat, and they would be grateful to Antonio for letting them try some, even if their own fridges were stuffed with the same kinds of ham. But for Lorenzo and myself it was different. For Lorenzo slicing his own prosciutto is something he has little interest in doing, let alone storing it in his basement. Young men in Italy today may enjoy eating good food, but they don't necessarily want it sitting on top of their clothes dryer. As for me, well, I come from a place where the word "ham" always has the words "honey-baked" in front of it, I certainly didn't know what to do with this fatty leg of meat which I had only ever seen handled by the butcher when I buy cold cuts. In the end we convinced Antonio to leave us a plate of sliced prosciutto but to take the rest of it back to Rome with him, where he would certainly get much more pleasure out of it than we would. He was offended, and rightly so, no one likes their gifts to be refused. But now in the fridge sits that same plate of prosciutto, all but untouched since Antonio left it there. My excuse for not eating it is that he didn't slice it thin enough.
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