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17 Mama Mia I phoned Dad to wish him Happy Birthday. The operator answered: "Welcome to Canada." Those were great words to hear first thing in an Italian village. It was 10:00 p.m. in Canada. I thought it would be easiest to reach him in the evening. After two rings he answered. Aunt Myrt had told him to go home and baby-sit the phone because she had a feeling I was going to call--so much for my big surprise. Dad surprised me with some news of his own. Mom had been in the hospital since mid February. She went through a bad spell with fluid in her lungs. At that point the doctor's didn't figure she was going to live. They drained it out before she suffocated and I guess Mom figured Hell could wait. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and had already started treatment. Dad said she was still low on white blood cells and was taking estrogen pills for the type of breast cancer she had. She was still in the hospital and had had two chemo treatments with more on the way. My cousin Deb, bless her, was going to the hospital to feed Mom every morning. Dad said that Mom wished us well, and didn't want us to come home. I was more than a little shaken by the time I hung up the phone. Someone close to us getting gravely ill, or passing away, had been our worst case scenario when we planned our trip and knew it would take us away from family and home for so long. A woman with a Yorkshire dog was waiting by the phone. I thought she wanted to use it, but when I hung up she promptly invited us for coffee. Sharon's eyes lit up just thinking about that caffeine rush; we hadn't had any since leaving Bruno and Iole's. Lorenza brought out cookies and a bottle of wine for our Buono viaggio. Dimpling one cheek with an index finger and making a corkscrew motion, Lorenza used a hand signal to indicate the wine was good. It was the Italian way to say sweet or very good. Maybe the motion indicated a dentist's drill. With little mystification, we learned Lorenza's mother was Sardinian. Lorenza's gift for hospitality had been inherited. She looked up a work in our dictionary and pointed to the word "duty." She felt it was her duty to be hospitable. I enjoyed her duty very much. The house we were in was Lorenza's summer home. She said she liked it because the village was serene and tranquil. "How about those infernal church bells?" I asked. Her house was situated right below the bell tower! She said she didn't even hear them anymore. Lorenza lived in Genoa. "Come and stay with us in Genova," she said, handing me the bottle of wine as I stepped out the door. "When can we expect you?" Boy, I liked those Sardinian genes. Unfortunately, we would be in Genoa that night and she would still be in her mountain hideaway. We had a vast view over the edge to the mist and fog enshrouded valley. Blossoming fruit trees were in the foreground; overlapping mountain ridges in the background. We continued to climb, as the woman we had met the night before had mentioned. Why were people always right about the uphill? We crested the mountain and had a view to either side. There wasn't much traffic, until we descended to the flats again. Then it was intense all the way to Genoa. Through Genoa, which we happened to hit at rush hour, traffic was overwhelming. Mama mia. Whizzing motor scooters, driven by teenage girls, were the worse. They zipped in and out of traffic, coming inches away on both sides of us. It wasn't even organized confusion--it was insanity at its finest. The scooters raced from stoplight to stoplight, but instead of waiting in line they squeezed through to the front. The light turned green and off the scooters raced at full throttle. The cars passed them, the next light would turn red, and the scooters would wriggle their way to the front of all the cars again. I thought that if they did that in America, they would have been throttled. I finally took a break from the mayhem as all my circuits were overloaded. From the relative safety of the sidewalk we watched the madness pass. It reminded me of a joke Bruno had told: "I was driving in Rome the other day and I hit a penguin." "There are no penguins in Rome." "Oh God! I must have run over a nun!" Traffic was nearly still as busy an hour later. I got back into the maelstrom and immediately took a wrong turn. That calmed things down for a bit. Leaving Genoa we found the burbs just as hectic. It was still the Italian Riviera and densely populated. We were never farther than a stone's throw from a town. I stopped to get water at a gas station and asked to use the washroom, but the station was closing. With a two-hand signal (probably an entire phrase) --thumb and index finger hit against the palm--the guy told me to get lost. I said, "Canada. Non capisco," and used the washroom anyway. |
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