Last week I left one lockdown in Florence, spent the night in another in Amsterdam, and am now in another in Los Angeles.

The feeling of traveling to be with family for Christmas is usually a familiar one.

This time?

There was little that was familiar about it.

Living alone and dealing with addiction during a pandemic isn’t easy.  I heard a guy was stopped by the vigili (municipal police) during lockdown and asked to hand over his autocertificazione, the slip of paper he needed to have filled out before leaving home that stated who he was and where he was going.  Presumably he would have declared to be heading for the pharmacy, to a doctor’s appointment, or to buy food, or another one of the essential reasons for not staying home.  Instead, what was written on the slip was “looking for drugs.” I’m hoping they let him off with a warning… for being honest?

I can so relate with that guy.  I’ve had to invent ways to manage my own addiction.  Since I live alone, I’ve had to get creative, and a bit sneaky. 

…Once my clients saw their name on the sign I was holding, introductions were made and I, showing my best smile and Italian hospitality, quickly got them seated in the van in hopes of getting ahead of the traffic that would soon clog the windy Amalfi Coast drive. Before we were even able to exit the port, before I could start what I would eventually call my “theater on wheels,” I heard one of the younger 30-somethings of this group from New Orleans say with her southern drawl:

“Well, I guess we gotta fuckin’ n**** for a president.”

I imagine if you’d have been sitting in the passenger seat, you’d have seen me turn pale as a ghost, gripping the steering wheel for dear life, still as a stone, staring straight at the road, speechless. Like what happens to someone in the movies when they see a monster but have nowhere to run.

A doctor mentioned that on the island of Sardegna they have identified a plant that might help with the treatment of diabetes. And that this plant grows in a specific area where the population has a high incidence of the disease.

Coincidence?

Maybe.

To me, it made perfect sense that nature - to which the human species does belong - would sense an imbalance and then move to correct it, offer up some kind of antidote right where it’s needed.

Mostly… I like to think of things working this way.

…I’d had a run in with her elderly father a few years back.  He kept parking in my spot.  I’d have parked in his, but given the limited parking space available to the building, the big van I used for work would only fit in MY space.  When I pleaded with him, saying “Mi scusi, ma… I’m sorry, but I have this big vehicle because it’s how I make a living as a single mom of three kids” he didn’t miss a beat, retorting 

“Well, I’m sorry but I’m a retired 91 year old surgeon and I have to enjoy my life.” 

What does one say to that?

It caught my eye because it was out of place: a big, speckled gray mass on the ground across the back of a bench at a Los Angeles public bus stop. It only took a few seconds for me to then realize there had to be a person there, completely wrapped up in blankets, sleeping - or at least hiding - even though it was late morning. 

Homelessness isn’t as much of a thing in Italy as it is in Los Angeles, where in normal-non-Covid times, I’d go to visit both my mom and my transplanted kids who have - for now - forsaken their Italian upbringing and a pre-Covid 24% Italian unemployment rate for potentially brighter - at least financially? - futures in the USA. 

Like everyone else that morning I walked right by that gray blob.  I had coffee to get and a granddoggy to walk.  But then I detoured…

What I saw is that when the Italians were told to stay at home and to only go out for medical reasons, for food, to walk the dog, or to take care of the elderly (oh, and for cigarettes… the Italian gov’t having the monopoly on tobacco), they said “Va bene” (Ok), and kept saying “Va bene” for a good 2 months.

What I know is that these people are generally not the type to blindly obey, given they are known to consider many rules - like speed limits, stop signs, paying taxes, matrimonial fidelity - as suggestions and tend to follow them only when it is convenient to do so.

What I ask people - given that the numbers of new COVID cases continue to diminish - is “are you surprised that we managed to do this?” They almost always answer with a wide-eyed, emphatic “si” often accompanied by the hand gesture of palms together, hands bouncing up and down, signaling “come on… no one would have thought we could do this.”

What I see now is…

It’s Memorial Day today in the states, but here in Italy it is just a normal Monday, except not really because, well, things haven’t been normal for a while with the pandemic and all. In pre-covid years, even though Memorial Day has never been an Italian holiday, it has always been recognized by official ceremonies held at the Florence American Cemetery where Americans and Italians gather together in honor of the 4,399 American military buried there and the plaque commemorating another 1,409 who went missing during WWII, fighting for our liberty and freedom. This year, with the cemetery closed due to the coronavirus, we are left to creating our own personal remembrance ceremonies to honor those of the Greatest Generation who fought not for fame or fortune but because it was the “right thing to do.”

So today, my ceremony will be held here in the form of a story that revolves around one of those ceremonies held at the Florence American Cemetery and an Italian woman named Miriam who knows how to weave memories into poetry and prose.

It’s not about the bike crash, how I clipped the curb and went flying, landing splat on the sidewalk of a virtually deserted downtown Florence on my first foray out after two months of lockdown.

It’s about the couple who stopped to help me, just as if it were the old days when we knew we didn’t have to fear being in close proximity to strangers.

~~~~~~~~~

It’s not about how I told them not to call the ambulance because I was afraid to go to a hospital in these COVIDian times.

It’s about the volunteer paramedic who had to take my temperature before getting my wracked body into the ambulance, how he exclaimed in frustration “Eccoci!” (Oh Great!) when reading the thermometer, not - as I sat there fearing in that moment - because it showed I had a fever, but because it was a new electronic thermometer configured in Fahrenheit when here in Italy we use Celsius, and how he was relieved that I could tell him the reading of 96.8 was below normal.

~~~~~~~~~

It’s not about how they assured me there were no more COVID patients at the hospital they were taking me to.

It’s about how the paramedic walked me into the ER of the frescoed hospital founded in 1288, the oldest still active in Florence, gingerly holding my arm just as my Dad had done when he walked me down the aisle.

….

I passed by blackberry bushes and thought of how they will bear fruit later in the summer if we’re lucky enough to get rain. And I wondered what our world will look like then, just one season away. Will things be better then? Or so bad that many of us will scamper into these hills to gather what food we can from the wild? The mind does go to these extreme places sometimes. It’s as if it sends up a little test flare and distress call: mayday mayday mayday.