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Moments of Grace

Mar27

I put down the book I was reading. My husband, Arnie, fresh from having taken a shower, stretched out next to me on our bed. We talked about our day and who we had seen and talked to. I told him what our children, Niki and Tammie and I had done that evening. Then, yawning, Arnie turned to his side.  He said, “I’m tired.” Then he fell instantly asleep.

Placing a bookmark in my book, I set it on the bedside table. The lamp’s light made our pale peach bedroom walls glow a warm, happy color. I glanced over at my sleeping husband and experienced a moment of total appreciation for the love we shared. In that blessed moment of realization, I leaned against my husband’s warm body and breathed in the scent of his freshly showered skin. I very clearly remember thinking, “Remember this! I may not always have this for as long as I’d like.”

After my husband died in 2007, I remembered that moment with especial tenderness and recognized it as a moment of grace. Memories like that one gave me comfort amid the loss.

A moment of grace is a time where a person is totally aware of the preciousness of what is possessed. Sometimes it is a moment of respite between the troubles of the past and whatever future troubles that we might have come. My husband and I had weathered the loss of an infant and had raised another one with a handicap, but that was all behind us. We anticipated growing old together. I had no idea that soon a radical change would take place in my life. I never dreamed that Arnie would die at such a young age as 56.

Now, looking back, I recognize that I have experienced these special moments of grace on several occasions through the years. One of these moments happened when I packed and moved out of my childhood home. I stopped at the door of my bedroom to look back and remembered my growing up years. I was happy to be a young adult, but the future felt both exciting and scary. Another moment of grace in my life happened the moment my first baby was placed in my arms. I looked at her and understood, “This baby needs more care than the average baby, and I’ve never been a mother before!” Sadly, Christy only lived two months.   

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Fancy Fish

Mar20
Sprouted chia seeds in a tray.

I held up the clear-sided, water-filled container and stared intently at the beige snail shell rolling around inside. It looked hollow. I said to the salesperson, “This snail shell looks empty, like no one is at home inside. Could the little snail be dead?”

Shaking his head, the salesperson responded confidently, “No. It’s alive. That’s a mystery snail. You don’t see its foot because this type of snail has a little trap door that can be closed when they want to hide.”

Snails with trap doors! I’d never heard of anything like that before. because I decided to buy it because I think snails are fascinating. I would just have to watch to see if it eventually moved. Turning back to examine the various betta fish for sale, I wondered which one to buy. There were small reddish ones with small fins. I figured they were females. One black betta had long, dreadlock-appearing fins. Two of the fish had large, fan-like fins. The fish I picked to take home was black with white fins. Its ruffled white pectoral fins reminded me of Victorian lace as it fluttered nervously when I picked up the small container it was in.

My daughter, Niki, gave me a small aquarium for Christmas. It was equipped with a water pump and three seed growing trays to cover the top of the tank. In the trays are specially coated “growing” rocks. Wheat grass and radish seeds were included in the kit. The sprouts from these seeds can be harvested and eaten in salads. The water pump keeps the rocks constantly damp, which makes them a perfect place for seed germination. I loved this setup because it would keep my cats from trying to go fishing whenever I wasn’t looking.

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Dead Fish Omen

Mar13

While helping a surgical patient take his afternoon walk, I noticed the delivery girl from a local floral shop delivering plants and flowers to our hospital unit. Later, when I returned to the nurse’s station to chart, a beautiful bank of flowers lined the front desk. Deciding that my charting could wait, I began to deliver the flowers to their specific rooms.

One arrangement caught my attention. It consisted of a large, clear glass vase filled with water and topped with a bareroot peace lily, secured so that it would neither sink in deeper, nor fall out. In the water among the plant’s white roots, was a lone betta fish.

Holding the vase up, I commented to a nurse, “Look, this is the latest fad. People have been giving these fish and floral arrangements as gifts to our patients for the past month. What do you think of it?”

The nurse studied the fish and the greenery above it, before answering, “It’s pretty, but I always forget to water house plants. Neither fish nor plant would do very well at my house.”

I carried the vase into the room that was written on the gift tag, and announced, “Someone loves you and they’re saying it with flowers!”

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The Trip that almost Didn’t Happen

Mar6
It’s hard to imagine what we would all have missed!

Feeling indecisive about what to pack and what to leave at home, I stood at the foot of my bed inspecting piles of clothing that I’d placed on the bedspread. On Saturday, three days from now, my daughter Tammie and I were leaving on our long-anticipated trip to Rome. Excitement and nervousness coursed through my body. It seemed surreal that the time to leave was now so quickly approaching.  

Our flight to Europe would take off from Minneapolis airport. Since my daughter had come to Wisconsin a few days ago to attend her cousin’s wedding, the plan was for me to go back with Tammie to her home in Saint Paul. After the trip was over, Niki, my other daughter, would drive to the Twin Cities to take me back to Central Wisconsin.

I could hear Tammie getting ready for bed. She called out, “Are you packing? We’ll be leaving right after I finish work tomorrow afternoon.”

Pulling a suitcase closer to me, I answered, “I’m trying to pack.” A moment later when Tammie walked into my bedroom, I explained, “I’m not getting anywhere with packing because I’m trying to imagine what I’ll all need for the next two weeks. That’s how long I’ll be gone from home, between going to Rome and my staying at your place a few days before the trip and a few days after.”

Nodding, Tammie suggested, “Pack two suitcases. One for everything you will need while in Rome and the other one for what you will need while visiting me.”

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Taxi Cabs

Feb28
All metered taxi in Rome are white.

I opened my eyes to a dark room. The sound of traffic was sporadic out on the street below our apartment windows. Wondering what time it was, I turned on the bedside light and slipped on my glasses. The watch on my wrist showed ten minutes to five in the morning.

A flood of emotions washed over me. Today, my daughter Tammie and I would be traveling back to the United States. I felt sad that our wonderful vacation was over; looked forward to returning home; was nervous about taking a taxi to the airport; dreaded the long flight across the Atlantic Ocean; and realized that after waiting for hours in various airports I’d be totally exhausted by the time we arrived home.

Slipping out of bed, I padded into the kitchen to make tea. As the water heated, I prepared for the day. Tammie’s alarm clock went off by the time the tea was ready. Uncharacteristically, she immediately got up. Our plans and responsibilities for the day that lay ahead were affecting her as well.

With our luggage lined up by the door of our apartment, my daughter and I took turns checking all the rooms to make sure we wouldn’t accidentally leave anything behind. Earlier, I had washed the dishes and put them away, bagged up the wastepaper baskets, and hung used bath towels neatly over the edge of the bathtub. Satisfied with our efforts, we pulled our luggage out into the hall and locked the apartment one last time.

When my daughter and I arrived at the Rome airport eleven days earlier, we had taken a train to the city, then rode the Metro to a station close to our apartment, then walked the two blocks to our destination pulling wheeled luggage. For our return to the airport, Tammie and I agreed that taking a taxicab was a better plan. The ease of doing this outweighed the cost.

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Restaurant Ratings

Feb21
A five star meal of wild boar at a restaurant in Rome.

“Where are we eating tonight, Tammie?” The afternoon was growing late, and I felt hungry. Reading could no longer hold my attention.

Studying the screen on her phone, my daughter questioned, “What are you hungry for? There are dozens of restaurants within walking distance of this apartment. I’m checking for the ones that have the highest ratings.”

Shrugging, I commented, “Ratings don’t mean anything if the chef is having a bad day. As for what I want to eat, I won’t know until I see a menu.”

“Well, I know what I want to eat,” Tammie confided. “It’s on the menu at a small, four-and-a-half star-rated restaurant a few blocks from here. They also offer beer and honey marinated wild boar ribs, which I know you’d like.”

Tossing my book aside, I asked incredulously, “Are you going to order what I’ve heard you call the most iconic Roman noodle dish, pasta Carbonara? You can’t! Well, you shouldn’t! It’s made with dairy products.”

Waving my objections aside, my daughter assured me, “I can’t visit Rome without trying carbonara. Don’t worry, I’ll take Lactaid and I’ll be all right.”

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Ticket, Please!

Feb14

On our first full day in Rome, we spent an enjoyable afternoon sightseeing and exploring stores near the Vatican. When my daughter Tammie and I were tired, we decided to stop at a restaurant for a meal and return to our Airbnb apartment until it was time for us to board the nighttime bus tour. Glancing around, Tammie shared, “Let’s find a tobacchi shop, or a public transport machine to buy tickets for our bus and Metro rides for tonight and tomorrow morning.”

Looking down the street, I questioned, “How are we going to find a tobacchi shop? There are so many store fronts, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Tammie assured me, “Tobacchi shops are all over. You can spot them easily because they always have a large blue or black sign with a huge letter ‘T’ hanging over their door.”

We spotted one of the iconic tobacchi signs at the same time, just half a block away. Before stepping into the store, my daughter mused, “Let me think, we need tickets to get to the bus terminal tonight and tickets to return to our apartment. Then, we’ll need tickets to and from our pantheon visit tomorrow.” I nodded in approval. Tammie was good at planning ahead and she knew how to use the public transport system. Compared to her, I felt like a country mouse visiting the big city for the first time.

I followed my daughter into the tobacchi shop and looked around. Like many shops along the streets of Rome, it was small, but offered a vast array of services. Besides selling transport tickets, this store served as a mini post office, a place to pay utility bills, buy phone cards, stationary, candy, trinkets, and lottery tickets. It appeared to be a cross between America’s 7-11 store and a gasless gas station.

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Roasting Chestnuts

Feb7
The chestnut shells looked charred from the grill.

My daughter brightly chirped, “The outdoor market we’re visiting is just a short walk from here.”

I chuckled. I’d heard Tammie say, ‘It’s just a short walk from here’ every day, sometimes several times each day, since we’d arrived in Rome a week and a half earlier. She especially liked to share this information within moments of stepping out of a bus or subway car to reassure me we wouldn’t be walking a long distance. Often, the two blocks felt like miles to me.

Each small shop called to me as we passed, “Stop and shop!” I was drawn to a leather purse, a table runner, and a bottle of Limoncello. Although I’d shopped every day for the last ten days, everything looked fresh and interesting as though I was seeing it all for the first time. Tammie laughed at my enthusiasm. I grimaced and admitted, “You know what’s going on, here, don’t you? We’re flying home tomorrow, and this is our last day of vacation.” Pausing, I continued solemnly, “One summer day when your grandma had terminal cancer, she shared with me that the sky had never looked bluer, and the tree leaves never looked more vibrantly green to her.”

My daughter nodded in understanding of my analogy and added, “Knowing she’d never experience another summer, she wasn’t taking anything for granted.”

The narrow Italian street we were walking, came to a large open, cobblestoned, oblong piazza, filled with water fountains, statues, and crowds of people. Tammie asked, “Do you remember this place?”

Amazed, I looked around and exclaimed, “We visited this place on our second day in Rome, but we entered from the side furthest from where we are now.”

Pointing to a side street, Tammie announced, “The open market is one block away. I can see some sales booths from here.”

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44 B.C. Crime Scene

Jan31
Crime scene In Italy, over two thousand years after the crime.

I looked forward to seeing the spot where Brutus killed Julius Caesar, but every time my daughter Tammie and I talked about going there, she kept talking about, “Santuario dei Gatti di Torre Argentina” which could be found at the same location. “It’s a cat sanctuary,” she excitedly informed me. I had the distinct impression she was more interested in seeing the cats than seeing the famous Emperor’s historical murder site. The incongruity of the two sites sharing the same space was lost on me.

My interest focused more on the 2,067-year-old crime scene. Not knowing what it would look like all these years later, I wondered with a chuckle, “Would there be a large ‘X’ marking the spot where it happened, and yellow tape cordoning off the area?”

When we arrived at Largo di Torre Argentina (Tower Square), the place managed to surprise me. It was a large open space the size of a city block, surrounded on all four sides by tall, solid buildings, some of which were ornately decorated. Within the walled-in block there were many ancient pillars and paving stones below street level, which dated back to the Curia of Pompey, the Roman senate building, the very spot where Caesar is believed to have been assassinated. Also contained within that block were the remains of four Roman temples built there in the centuries following the crime.

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Reaching New Heights

Jan24

The outskirts of Rome fell behind us as our bus merged onto a busy highway north of the city. I leaned forward to peer out of the window, eager to see what the Italian countryside looked like. For the last seven days, my daughter Tammie and I had been exploring the city of Rome. Today we were leaving ‘The City of Seven Hills’ in the Lazio region, to visit Orvieto and Assisi in the Umbria region and to stop for lunch in the Tuscany region.

Rows of pale green olive trees marching alongside the road flashed by. Vineyards with vines pruned to increase production, dusty tobacco fields, hay fields and harvested grain fields dotted the countryside. Clumps of extremely tall pampas grass, and an Italian high speed train shooting through the countryside fascinated Tammie and me.  Driveways to farmhouses that were lined with Italian balloon pine trees or palms made us want to stop to investigate. Mountainous ridges formed our horizon to the left and right. The highway appeared to be on a flat plain between them.

The medieval town of Orvieto was our first stop. Our bus drove uphill as far as the road went. Getting off the bus, we entered a vehicle called a funicular, which is a cable railway system used on steep slopes. Funicular systems have two counterbalanced carriages called cars or trains. They are permanently attached to both ends of a haulage cable, which results in the two cars moving in opposite directions at the same time. As one goes down, the other goes up. The unusual name, funicular, is from the Latin word for rope (cable). 

Getting off the funicular, we hadn’t reached the city of Orvieto, yet. There were still two flights of stairs to climb. I wished the funicular had continued up this slope. As I ascended, I counted each step, and the grand total was 48. Our guide explained that medieval towns were built on hilltops because enemies were unable to launch surprise attacks on them and the towns were more easily able to defend themselves.

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