Monday

My dream faded as I became aware of the morning. Had I been punched in the face? Had too much to drink the night before? I risked a quick glance from under my eyelids and saw that the crack of light that usually escaped from our otherwise room-darkening internal wooden shutters wasn’t yet present. A yawn and slight body stretch. No, nothing broken. I turned onto my back. A heavy head, but I then remembered that no, no alcohol was consumed the night before. I reached over to push the button that backlit my watch. Five o’clock. For the next couple of hours I lay there, awake, and aware of the slow start to my Monday.

            If you’ve ever lived in a foreign country, chances are good that at a few points along the way you experienced some resistance to your new culture, some sense of, say. . . exasperation. But even if you haven’t, I would venture a guess that all of us have had those days where, although there are no catastrophes or seriously life-changing events, everything seems to go wrong. Like Monday.

            Nikolai had been home sick for three days with a high fever and we were starting to feel the effects of worrying about our little guy and caring for him. Once more Monday morning the thermometer read 40.2 C, and again he was listless and clingy and didn’t have an appetite. We kept trying to call the doctor but apparently she was going to be on the evening shift. She was our third pediatrician since October and this was something like Nikolai’s eleventh health issue that had kept him home from school. All told he’s missed half of school since mid-September and on Monday it was immediately apparent that another home day it would be.

            At various other times this year I’ve had my moments of perversely enjoying the necessity of waiting in endless lines only to then have to wait in another endless line, realizing in that and other situations such as getting jostled repeatedly in a crowd or getting cut time after time in less formal lines (and what was a line, anyway?) that that’s just how things happen here, that I was experiencing but a couple of the so-called cultural differences and somehow getting a first-hand view into a different way of perceiving and acting in situations which I, as an American, had a different way of perceiving and acting in. It was all quite fascinating.

            On Monday, however, I had no such perspective, and it’s probably a good thing I waited to write this until Tuesday.

            Italy is expensive. Lucca, at least, is no cheap place to live, as we were finding out more and more. I’d learned to avoid translating euros to dollars after a couple months of incredulity, but even in euros our costs looked sky high. Monday morning, after we got back from a trip to the post office to pick up a package and were charged sixty-five euros just to take the package (which bore its own hefty postage from the US), I happened to notice a slip of paper in the entry way with the letterhead of Niko’s school. Another notice of payment due for his lunch, and of course it was in euros but for some reason I quickly reverted to my currency translation ways and calculated that his barely eaten meals had amounted to one-hundred twenty five dollars this month besides the enormous sum we’d already paid for his year at this institution when all of the public schools said they were full back in August. Oh, and we were late to pay again. I found a line in the letter that seemed to refer to us, in bold and underlined, saying that parents need to get in the fee on time.

            That Monday wasn’t just about Niko being sick, either. I was feeling draggy and hyper at the same time, and directionless, so many plans and projects to work on but unable to start any, my various knee and hip problems bothering me more than usual, the incessant pounding and rumbling of motors from the construction site next door driving me insane. Finally, in mid-afternoon, I decided I needed a break and told Lauren I was going to head for a jaunt on my bike down by the river.

            Before leaving I decided to check my e-mail. I should’ve known better. Another notice from Niko’s school! This time they were also requiring payment, but now above and beyond what I had dreamed of. This time it would be one-hundred fifty dollars because the heating company determined that they went above their allotted amount for the winter and per Article X Number 123 they were passing on the cost to the parents. Another bill I hadn’t looked at peaked out from under the computer. It was our very own energy bill for just over two months. After looking at the figure, I knew that at all costs I had to get out of the house for some exercise. While we don’t keep the house baking hot we admittedly haven’t gone the Italian way of suffering as long as possible before starting to heat the house, of using hot water bottles at night to allow house temperatures in the low 50s F, of wearing three sweaters during the day. So now we would pay for keeping this high-ceilinged house warm enough so we didn’t shiver to the tune of twenty-five hundred dollars. Yes, you read that correctly.

            I had about an hour before the pediatrician would start her office hours at four, when we would bring Niko in to see if he had something more serious than a bout of the flu. Out on the bike, weaving around traffic, I eventually made my way to the Serchio. Go to the right and follow a paved path (which it turns out is actually a very narrow road with no shoulder) or go to the left on the dirt/crushed stone path. Yes, you guessed correctly, I went left. Sure, it was a bit bumpy, but there were no cars. Although my hip still hurt to turn the pedals, and my knee wasn’t much better, I think I started to feel my forehead relax, started momentarily to forget about Niko being sick, to stop wondering if this time it was something worse than the Scarlet Fever, Strep Throat, several day Diarrhea,Vomiting episodes, or Asthma complications he’s already had here. I was inching—rolling—towards relaxation. But boy, it sure was bumpy, and especially from the rear. After a few more seconds I looked back at the tire. Sure enough, I had a flat. After removing the rear wheel, unseating the tire and removing the tube, I began searching for the puncture and eventually found it, the result of a thorn from a bush that was still sticking through the tire casing. I patched the hole and attempted to inflate the tire once more but my frame pump from twenty years ago just wasn’t cooperating. A man passed on the trail with his little dog, nodding to me and smiling, saying something about getting stranded himself. A couple of kids walking with their grandparents and dog glanced in my direction and headed away. I tried this and that before remembering about Niko and seeing that I would already be late. After forty or so minutes in an operation I normally could take care of in ten I had the wheel back on and the tire pumped up and ready to go. The man with the dog walked back past me and said I should stick to the road, that this path had lots of thorns. I thanked him for the advice, readied to mount my bike, and saw that the tire had become flat again. Out of cement and patches now and without a decent pump, I was stuck.

            When I eventually made it home, it turned out that Lauren had gotten in touch with the doctor, who said to come by at 7:30pm. We got Niko in his footy-pajamas, brushed teeth, and headed out. There were several people ahead of us at the Pediatricians, but when we came in our doctor indicated for us to sit right outside her office. Maybe since we’d called we would get to go right in at 7:30pm, going in front of the others who were already waiting? We heard snatches of conversation from inside, several times increasing volume in the way that would make you think they were wrapping things up, here’s the prescription, take the drops two times a day for five days… Finally, when the door did open, the doctor ushered in another family, and so on. One hour later we were finally admitted to her office.

           

          Thankfully on off days there is always the next day to look forward to, and sometimes it’s even possible to admit to oneself that absolutely everything on that off day wasn’t so horrible after all. I couldn’t, for example, close without saying that those grandparents, out for a walk with their grandchildren and dog, had returned from their journey and saw me walking my bike down the nearest road. The grandpa was also a cyclist, he explained, though he said he didn’t do it too much anymore. I explained what had happened, that I’d already patched it once but that apparently the tube had more holes and that my pump was nearly shot. He told me to relax, that he lived just down the road. It would be okay. The eight year old boy and five year old girl were extremely interested in this man who spoke in a funny accent that their grandpa was helping, the girl stealing glances now and then, the boy asking his grandpa about the bike I was wheeling and recounting his own experiences with bikes. When we got to their house and I’d taken off the wheel and extracted the tube again the grandpa offered me one of his own, first checking it for holes in a tub of water. In the ensuing re-mounting and pumping up of the tire he literally pushed me out of the way at times so he could try his own methods. By that point in my turn of fortune, though, I’d recovered enough to recognize it just as his way of action, gestures completely normal that would probably go unnoticed by any Italian. When I profusely thanked him he brushed it off and laughed, saying that of course he would do that, that it was completely normal, that I must be joking to offer him so much thanks. I also couldn’t go without saying that this Pediatrician, this third one, is a great doctor and spends enough time with each of her patients, which does mean longer wait times but much-needed attention once you do get in her office. Niko has seen her a few times now and says, “I like that Doctor!” And, somehow, she has refused payment for her services every time we’ve gone. By the time we got in to see her Niko’s fever had gone down and he was joking around, bouncing on and off my lap. She checked lungs, ears, throat, and concluded it was just a bout of the flu and that he should be better by tomorrow and if not to bring him right back. 

       It had been one of those days and I looked forward to resting my head on the pillow and pulling the covers up, looked forward to a solid night of sleep and the dawn of a new day but by that point, I had to admit, things weren’t so bad after all here in Lucca. Bills would eventually get paid, Niko would eventually recover, and we still had three months of new days, each one holding its own set of situations—not ones we always planned or hoped for, but ones from which we would surely continue to learn.