Meeting up with Friends

We spent four days in Florence while my mom and sister where here, and added to our list of unimaginably lucky encounters. We walked down the street where Nay and I lived ten years ago and rung the doorbell of the building master, Danila Falcone. While Tom peered up at the shutters and my mom futzed with Clare, I scanned the side of the building and saw a black-haired head pop out of a distant widow. Danila, who was wearing a wildly printed top of blue and red, looked mildly annoyed, perhaps expecting someone had mistakenly pushed the button for the apartment of 6 college girls above, but then her face broke into joyful glee as she slowly recognized our motley group.

She buzzed us in and by the time we climbed the stairs to her apartment she met us at the door wearing a white shift (albeit inside out). I felt bad that we had popped in on her so suddenly (definitely not good Italian manners), and was more than a little embarrassed that she had changed her clothes in the minutes we had ascended the stairs. Her inside-out pockets drooped out from her waist, but we didn’t care, just offered kisses all around and sat in the formal dining room. Clare got busy rapping on her glass curio cabinents and scratching her antique wood table while we shared tidbits of news and gossip. WE had been in infrequent contact since 1996, but on our last trip over for our honeymoon in 2001 she had been in Trieste dealing with a sick family member, so we hadn’t seen her personally in a decade.

We didn’t want to inconvenience her for long so we agreed to meet the next night for pizza. The re-vamped Danny Rock (once a kitschy and greasy hangout for American kids) was rocking with laughter as Danila and Gaetano (her husband) blended into our noisy family for an evening of laughter and magnificent calzones, cheeseburgers, crepes, and of course, pizza. It’s wonderful to reconnect after all these years, wonderful to know that some things never change, and that everything’s always changing. I’m amazed at how people who haven’t really talked for years and years can still marvel in each other’s joys, accomplishments, and sorrows.

One of the funnier things that Danila mentioned was that she was mad at her son for taking his own apartment, just 200 meters from home. Keep in mind that he’s 27 and a DJ/mixer that works only in the evenings at local discos, but the Italian culture promotes Mama’s boys that stay at home for as long as possible. We see it as absurd, and she sees it as an affront to her motherhood. He promised to some home for one meal everyday, but she says that since she doesn’t really like to cook, she can’t imagine that he will other than to save money!

And on the sadder side, Gaetano is losing his memory. She says after he retired that he just gave up on remembering details and dates. They’ve had him tested for Alzheimer’s but found no evidence of the disease. They didn’t travel much before because they were waiting for him to retire, and she’s a bit bereft that now that they have the time and money he can’t fully enjoy the trips. That doesn’t stop them much though. They’ve gone to South America, China, and are dreaming about Africa.

I hope to have as much vitality as Danila when I am her age, but it is sad to see the effects of aging on their partnership. I’m taking it as a sign: do it all now! Don’t have the money? Save, earn or borrow it! Don’t have the time? Make it! Don’t have the energy? You’re spending it in the wrong places! Don’t have the cajones? GET SOME!

P.S. the other extraordinary meeting we had was with Lenay’s old flame form 10 years ago. We searched all the leather shops and finally found him at one called Poker on the piazza Santa Croce. Imagine, after 10 years finding two people out of your past! If mom didn’t have the pix on her camera, I’d post ‘em. More on that later.