Saving Italy

(I’m tidying up my electronic files and discovered this one was left behind a few years ago…)

We made our way to the crown jewel of Venice—the top of the Rialto Bridge that slices across the Grand Canal. The aquamarine water churned below us, and boats of all kinds dashed helter skelter across the rushing water. Black gondolas with curved tips steered by with men in striped shirts poled and oared with the precision of threading a needle. Lacquered speed boats rode low in the water with tinted windows and hidden occupants going to even more secret destinations. My least favorite, the vaporetto (government water taxis), chugged up and down the canal picking up and dropping off passengers in a smog of diesel fumes. The commotion, the fervor, the energy was intoxicating.

Paul squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. It was our signal born of twenty years of marriage where we had to sneak around our three children to have some semblance of a love life.

Before we met, I felt seasoned by life and was sure, even as a single mother, I knew what I was doing. I could work all day, drop one child off at baseball, pick up the other child from art class, get us all home, take the pantyhose off, feed the dog, pop the frozen chicken cordon bleu in the oven, put peas in the microwave, and crack the lid on the 1-minute rice. In 18 minutes, we sat down for dinner. Later, after the homework and brushed teeth, we all went to bed. In the space between the efficiency and the certainty however, I was lonely. I read books in the silence, a cat laying at the very end of the bed my only companion.

Then it all went to hell. We met, dated, and got married all within a year. There were three kids to haul around, a new house with acoustics that made it sound like I was the one playing Call of Duty, a fenceless yard that caused us to cajole and beg the dog to come in from the night, homework was forgotten, and cavities happened. Life was no longer lived with a precise certainty, but I was happy. A husband lay beside me each night.

That brings us to our 20^th wedding anniversary trip—three weeks in Italy. The children are grown, I’m paying the dog sitter $75 a night for peace of mind, and there is a nine-hour difference between Europe and Washington state. Everything is in place. An open-ended, lazy schedule has allowed for plenty of time for…hand squeezing.

“Where are your pills?” Paul looked up from the toiletries bag he was unpacking.

“Here,” I held up my daily vitamins and apple cider vinegar pills.

“Not those,” he said. “You know…the medicine.” He gave me his little boy it’s-almost-Christmas-morning face.

“Oh no,” I sat down on the edge of the bed and twisted my socks in my hands. “I forgot that medicine.”

Paul’s face looked exactly like it did in 2011 when Michigan beat Ohio State scoring 40 points in the game. Coach Urban Meyer had let him down that day. Now it was my turn.

I have chronic bladder infections caused by narrow ureters that hold onto germs and turn them into infections. These infections aren’t the kind where you just take some drugstore pill that turns your pee orange. My bladder infections cause me to scream in childbirth-like pain and, as Paul drives me to the emergency room, I yell at him that it is all his fault for injecting germs into my ureters.

It was an untenable situation until a kind, elderly doctor wrote me a prescription for Macrobid, an antibiotic, and leaned into whisper, “Take one after intercourse. It’s enough to kill the infection in its early stages. But,” he cautioned me, “no more than four in a day.” Right.

So, what does all this have to do with Venice? Everything. Absolutely everything.

The next morning while Paul was still sleeping, I decided to find a pharmacist in a city with maze-like corridors, twisting waterways, and bridges to somewhere that become nowhere. The faded Italian lettering on the sides of the buildings was meaningless to me. I opened up Google maps without a lot of felicity; I’m a give-me-the-directions kind of girl. And, I have a history. I get lost everywhere. I went to a mall in Thailand and forgot my phone; I wandered around Notre Dame in circles and finally collapsed in a Chinese food restaurant and cried; I took the wrong staircase to our resort in Zihuantanejo and ended up in a secret drug meeting in the jungle run by the cartel (I think). Hence, Paul doesn’t trust me to go anywhere in a foreign country by myself. But, this was important. Italy would not be Italy if…well, you know.

I somehow made it to the Rialto Bridge. I waded into the mass of people swirling around the coffee places, elegant stores, and tabbacci shops. On my phone screen I looked at the picture of the Farmacia Morello. I ignored the address. Landmarks. I needed landmarks. Google answered my prayer. Basilica S.Maria Gloriosa dei Frari rose out of the melee, and blessings of all blessings, the Farmacia with the bright green cross stood across the street.

“May I help you?” A young man with a nose ring and curly black hair leaned forward and I cleared my throat.

“Macrobid? Do you have it?” I stood up straight and tried to look respectable—not like a foreign hussy.

“That medication is an antibiotic. You need a doctor note,” his eyes were kind above the nose ring.

“I have a prescription. The medicine is at home. I am on vacation,” I paused for effect. “with my husband.” I tried my best to look rational. He knew that I knew that we were playing the let’s-not-talk-about-what -we’re-really-talking-about game.

The pharmacist studied me for a moment with his head titled to the side. “Okay, okay.” He hustled behind the counter bending to grab a white box. “I give you Macrobid.” He handed me the box. “Seven euros.”

“Seven? I echoed.

“Yes, ma’am. There are twenty pills. Will that be enough?”

“It better be,” I muttered. “Grazie.” My head held high, I sashayed out of the farmacia. I could tell he knew it wasn’t just about sex; it was about the Call of Duty, the recalcitrant dog, and those subsequent visits to the dentist. We’d put in the time then, now was the payoff.

So, that is how I saved Venice. And Florence. And Tuscany, Rappallo, and Rome.