A Leaning Tower, a Lunch Lost: An evening in Pisa

We have four days left in Tuscany. Time to be tourists! As our flights draw near and the weather gets hotter I find myself feeling less of a need to always speak Italian within our family while in public or always wear pants and nice looking shoes. The shorts have returned, as have the flip-flops. We’ve even been visiting stores on the main drag and buying some of the typical tourist gifts for family back home.

        

      Last night we’d planned on going to see the Torre Pendente in Pisa. It seemed to make sense, being one of the most iconic structures in the country and sprouting out of the ground only a short train ride away. There was nothing to stop us. We’d spent some time earlier in the day riding around town, saying goodbye to a friend and packing. After our friend left Niko’s energy finally ran out. Within twenty minutes he was asleep on the couch. This is not normal for the little guy; he gave up naps months ago, so we thought we should hold off on waking him. The train we’d hoped to take was to leave in twenty minutes so I finally decided to rouse our slumbering five year old, but he resisted all attempts. We could wait another half hour, but that would be the latest train we could take, so we sat tight and he indeed was chipper and ready to go see the tower when we woke him. 

I’m sure you see where this is going, so I’ll cut to the chase. He felt worse and worse as we got to the station, I carried him all the way to the tower, he complained more, then finally, to everyone’s great relief, he lost his lunch while Lauren held him and tried to get him to a trash can and I stared down onlookers in the sea of tourists who were looking in disgust at the proceedings. That was that, though, and the little guy soon recovered, running around. It wasn't looking at the Leaning Tower and getting vertigo from the tilt that caused Niko's stomach to squeeze, but whatever bug it was seemed to have had the worst with him and set him free. He asked about the pictures we'd planned to take.

         That was the big deal, after all, this most touristy of things to do, and I was excited to get some shots of us contributing to the Tower’s demise or bravely holding it up if for only a few more seconds.

 

         So we posed and re-posed, realized that it was a bit harder than it seemed to get everything in alignment, but got our photos and marveled at the beautiful grass fields and the baptistery, cathedral, and tower (it was most entertaining seeing so many people from all over the world posing in various postures with the Tower as prop, too!).

         We rode our bikes back from the train station in good spirits and got back home before eleven and all found it hard to sleep until midnight, abuzz with all of the day’s new sights and experiences. 

In three days we’ll be headed down to Rome for our flight, which takes us to Zurich then Boston. What more sabbatical adventures will there be in seventy-two hours? Perhaps I shall recount some in my last post,  which should appear before month’s end. 

Racing through Oxygen, Roads, Medicine, Time

When things aren’t going well, it’s logical to think that they could only get better. The post on last Monday recognized the day’s difficulty but professed that “tomorrow would be another day.” And so it was. But that day Niko didn’t get any better either, still had a fever, and then, Wednesday night, around 11:45pm, alternated the barking cough of croup with wheezy inhalations, and it wasn’t going away. Tomorrow was another day, but not exactly in the way we were hoping. He’d had croup before, but this time was much worse than any other and our attempts to calm it at home were not working. Niko wasn’t getting enough air. 

            I’ve become a more aggressive driver over here, but at that time of night there were few other motorists to challenge my path. Suddenly very focused, we sped to the hospital in about six minutes when during the day it would take fifteen to twenty. We rushed right into the ER and the little boy was quickly given an oxygen mask with adrenaline. Of their six categories of severity he was put on the next to highest.

            I don’t want to dwell too long on that night, or on the fact that he has stayed sick for quite a few days after that, too, or that on the following Friday I got hit with the flu after a couple of weeks with a sinus infection. We set up a visit to Rome awhile ago and so it’s been a countdown to see if Niko and I can get better enough fast enough to make the trip, now two days away. I continue to be impressed with our pediatrician, who during Niko’s latest checkup to gauge the progress of his lungs also listened to my own health story and wrote me a prescription! Che bello!

             More and more tourists are visiting Lucca these days, the weather is getting sunnier and warmer, magnolias are in bloom and the pollution seems less oppressive than in the winter. So much to see and do and our time left is drawing short. We always would say, “oh, we’ve got plenty of time to do X,Y,Z”  but now, with three months to go, we realize that we can’t do everything, that our time is limited and choices must be made. In Italy for a year without visiting Rome? It would be a bit strange. So here we go, to the capital, possibly to return with plenty of stories and pictures to post. Isn’t it fascinating, as the sun sets, wondering in what ways “tomorrow will be another day?” Anything is possible.

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.   

La Scuola

Heading for Bikes Bright and Early: School is Finally Here!

“Dad, we were supposed to bring our own snack,” Ingrid began. We were biking home from her first day at the local public elementary school in the middle of September. Hmm, I wondered, will this lead to crisis, parental guilt trip? “But the other girls shared theirs with me,” she finished. Phew. Back at home in the kitchen, only after she’d wolfed down her mozzarella, pepperoni and mustard sandwich, Ingrid expanded upon her first day. “The teacher had me tell where I was from and then all of the kids got a chance to ask me something.” Ingrid was talking to us and not yelling. What a relief. Everything would work out.  What had we to fear, really?

            We’d arrived at school that morning a little after eight, looking around nervously at the other parents and kids crowded into the lobby, waiting for each teacher to come and lead her students off to class. This would be the fourth year our daughter’s teacher worked with the same group of students so Ingrid really would stand out as the new student of the bunch—besides being the only foreigner in her class (and, presumably, the school). It seemed that indeed all parents were present, many snapping pictures just like me. Four and a half hours later the crowd was back, our energy palpable—practically bursting in fact—as we all waited inside the fence on the grass or the concrete walkway  at the school entrance, eagerly looking for our children. First the youngest classes came out, led by their teachers. The teacher would bend over and take the first kid forward, looking out into the sea of faces with him until the student pointed at his parent—upon which this student's body would be thrown into a spasm of excitement, being of the younger grades—the parent waved, and the teacher would then set him free to dash off to his mamma or  papa or to his nonno or nonna. Then the teacher swept forward the next student to search for his genitori. So it went with the next student. And the next. I thought that maybe it was a first day thing, but the next day was identical and now, several weeks later, it still works the same way.

Awaiting La Maestra 

            After dropping off Ingrid we biked a few blocks north to Nikolai’s school, a private preschool. We’d hoped to have him go to the local public preschool but, after calling several local options, all of which said he could be placed on the bottom of a very long wait list, we realized he wouldn’t have a spot, and probably only would have had we secured him one at sign up time. In March. We had bought his new Topolino (Mickey Mouse) school slippers, his white grembiule with Ninja Turtle patch (white button up smock worn every day over their street clothes), toothbrush and washcloth, extra set of clothes, sheets for the pisolino (nap), etc. etc. So we were prepared. We’d had several months together day in and day out . We were ready to finally have a little respite, some time to ourselves. So why were we so nervous?

            On this, the first day for new students at the preschool, after we'd donned Niko in his new slippers and smock, we were permitted to cross the red line on the floor just outside the coat and slipper room and see him off down a hallway and into a room where various other youngsters were sitting, standing and staring, playing with toys, crying, or holding onto the teacher’s hand. We’d done it before, elsewhere, but seeing our youngest off on his first day didn’t seem any easier this day at this school in this foreign land.

Ciao, mi chiamo Niko 

           

              We biked into town, wandered, stopped at a café for the first time together since we’d arrived in Italy. The conversation didn’t drift far from school and the kids. It threw us off a bit, this suddenly new routine, this four hours with no kids until we had to go back to pick up Ingrid. What would we do with this time?

            Soon the time was up and after bringing the kids back home and hearing about Ingrid’s day we tried to get some information from Niko. In a totally new school with twenty-eight classmates instead of eight, immersed in a totally different language, away from us for the first time since early June, he must have been stressed out. It turns out there was so much that he didn’t understand or that he tried to understand through his own interpretation of events, which, reported through his eyes, sounded off the alarm for us, created doubt, made us wonder if we’d made the right decision, but after a couple of meetings with his teacher and the director of the school we felt better enough to try to stick it out.

            Unfortunately we haven’t yet gotten into a routine with Niko there because he began getting sick. Usually it was a fever that lasted a couple of days that kept him out of school. Then we’d send him back and after a few more days he’d have a chest infection, or just seem pale and very, very tired or especially cranky. He'd stay home for awhile before returning to school. Then he’d get another fever. One doctor we were finally able to see gave him antibiotics and cortisone and eventually whatever he had that time was cured, but then he got sick again, most recently, and we found a pediatrician who was not very happy we didn’t have an appointment or insurance but agreed to take our cash and pronounced that he now had tonsillitis and should spend two full weeks at home. Later we found out that extended time at home was a common prescription for children here in Italy when sick, and it does make some sense. Every time Niko went back to school he’d get sick again, so by keeping him out long enough to recover and building back up before returning we’d assure he wouldn’t get sick right away again. Hopefully. But two weeks! Now one week after that appointment he seems fine but okay, we’ll try to go with the advice—pretty much—keep him home another few days and try to sneak him back in at least on Friday, get one day down before the weekend so starting up a full week next week won’t be too much of an overload on his little system. Hopefully.

            The girls who shared their snack with Ingrid have continued to be nice to her. She attended a double birthday two of the girls had together at a bowling alley. After arriving by bike on a rainy day, drenched, the girls gathered around her in sympathy and tried drying her hair. Talk to Ingrid about school and she’d say, “I like it but why do we have to go Saturdays and why is their so much homework?”

Flipping Frogs

         Apparently at the school’s introductory meeting with the parents several others had similar questions about the latter. Lauren and I have gotten a lot of practice at trying to make sense of assignments half understood, or partially written down, even assignments where we understood the directions but could just barely understand enough of the Italian to figure it out. The Italian translation of a poem by Hermann Hesse with comprehension and expansion questions, for example, had me on my intellectual toes. And then there was the math. Geometrical figures of animals drawn carefully on graph paper on a Cartesian plane. Ingrid was to re-draw said animals, first flipping them mentally laterally, upside down, and laterally and upside down, then being careful to draw them neatly on the grid lines. When I’m focused I can have a decent eye for detail, but this one challenged me a bit. After a few night of this and lots of frustration on Ingrid’s part Lauren and I managed to explain it in a way she could understand. Or maybe she just got used to it. Now she says it's not that bad. I could go on with examples of novelty in school work compared with home, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of homework, much of it isn’t easy to understand, and we try to help Ingrid out as best we can. Luckily for us her main teacher speaks some English as well and occasionally translates instructions for Ingrid in class. She’s also very warm and caring about Ingrid and that, in addition to Ingrid’s acceptance amongst her peers makes it all worth it. It also doesn’t hurt that once or twice a week they have English class.

Ingrid gets ready for Pre-school and Niko for 4th grade

            We thought Niko would adapt to life over here more easily than the rest of us, but our assumptions have been challenged these first several months in many ways. He will get better, though, and he’ll stay healthy longer and he’ll probably be the family expert in Italian before we leave. In the meantime, he and all of us have been lucky to enjoy some family visits recently. Nonni play a big part in the lives of their grandchildren here in Italy. Ingrid and Niko notice that and have missed theirs, so they’ve especially enjoyed when their own grandparents have been able to visit.  Time with i nonni can be pretty good for a kid's immune system, too, and they don't ever seem to forget the snack.