G is for Giraffe

At last, there is a giraffe in my bathroom.

One wouldn’t think it would fit. I have, after all, a very small bathroom—one that barely fits me, let alone me and a giraffe.

Me, a bunny, and a giraffe.

I met the giraffe at an art party last summer. Sioux and Aidan painted it together. I had to bring it home. It stands on one of those circus stands that elephants often stand on. I don’t think this is normal behavior for a giraffe.

Normal or not, I wanted that giraffe in my bathroom, black tongue and all.

You can’t see the black tongue.

Sunday we finally got it in there. There was a hammer involved. Sometimes one has to be firm with a giraffe.

There are other giraffes in my house, but not many. They are not usually obvious, but they will come out for a party. One lives on a coaster. Two are camouflaged in glassware: one on a beer mug, one on a shot glass. (Those two traveled all the way from Kenya with Alison just to be with me.) They do not like to come out when there is a hammer in sight. Even hammered people make them jittery.

The giraffe in my bathroom is learning to nose the faucets on and off. I’m happy for this show of independence, as it’s all I can do to keep up with feeding it 140 pounds of leaves and twigs each day. I have to keep up, though, to keep it out of the cotton balls, Q-tips, and tampons. Replacing those items can get really expensive.

H is for Highland Games

Overheard at the games at Skye in 1997, just as the weight-over-the-bar event was getting under way:

Little girl: Is he a strong man, Mummy?
Mummy: We’ll see.

I is for Italy

Yesterday we placed a phone call to Italy.

A decade ago, Tim’s job was such that he would make biannual trips to Verona to check color separation on the catalog. On four occasions, I was invited to come along. By invited, I mean that the company in Italy invited me. They bought my plane ticket and treated me as their guest, complete with weekend trips to Venice or Florence.

I know it was business, but in the end, it was more than that. Proprietors Pier and Sergio were good to us beyond business. Their kindness and generosity—their personal interest and time—exceeded anything they had to do to make the client happy. And without them, it’s possible I may never have gotten to Italy.

After maybe a half-dozen years, things changed—the economy, the technology—and Tim’s company stopped using the Italian separators. Pier and Sergio were close to retirement age and would soon be moving on themselves; still, it was a sad ending.

They call us every Christmas.

This year, Pier called while Tim was away, so I was the only one to get to talk with him that evening. (Did he later call Tim at work? I think so.) Pier had a small stroke a couple of years ago and is doing well now, but he’s given up golf, a passion of his, because he can’t play at the level to which he’d grown accustomed. (Those frustrations await all who live long enough to enjoy them.) Pier lives near Milan, and now that he and Sergio are retired, they rarely see each other.

Sergio recently sent a Christmas card (the Piazza Bra and its holiday star) and included photos from his 70th birthday party. There he is with his wife Anna and his four grandchildren—Francesca, Alice, Alberto, Giovanni—and they are standing in front of his new house, the one he and Anna were planning ten years ago. It is a happy, beautiful picture.

We went away for the Christmas holidays, and I left a detailed message on the answering machine as to when we’d be back, knowing in my heart of hearts that Sergio would call while we were gone. And he did, within a couple of days of our departure. He said he’d call again January 2, the day I’d be back in my office. We beat him to the punch.

Tim always calls, and Anna always answers. Tim doesn’t speak Italian, and Anna doesn’t speak English, and it always works out fine. Sergio was home, and we had a wonderful conversation, catching up just a little, hearing each other’s voices. Sergio may visit the states this year. I so wish we could get to Italy.

I am ridiculously fond of Sergio. He is a lover of life and humanity. He is devoted to his loved ones. I used to think I would name something after him were I ever to have occasion: a child, a pet. We recently drank a bottle of Prosecco called Sergio, which I had bought because of its label. I kept the bottle.

I realize this post is beginning to sound like “I is for sergIo,” so perhaps I should reiterate that I is for Italy. Italy is Verona: the Piazza Bra, the Arena, and their beautiful shooting star and markets at Santa Lucia. Verona is the Porta Bosari, Piazza delle Erbe, Juliet’s balcony. It is Castelvecchio, the Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore, and Sant’Anastasia. It is all the hours I spent alone, walking and exploring while Tim worked. It is Pier and Sergio each time wondering if my unfortunate delicate traveling constitution was actually a pregnancy. (It never was.)

Italy is Venice, where I felt I must have lived a previous life: It felt so familiar and right to wander the streets and bridges. Italy is Florence, where the art overtook me and the marble Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore astounded me and where I climbed the campanile. Italy is Siena, where Sergio and Anna took us one day to wander the beautiful streets and see the piazza and have a pastry in a famous café. Italy is northern Italian pizza, the most perfect in the world. Italy is my daily fix of gelato (more often than not of the nocciola variety).

In fact, in all this time that I haven’t been posting, I’ve been planning to write “I is for Ice Cream,” a topic I expect I could go on and on about. One of the stories I would have told had to do with Sergio, although, sadly, I was not there to witness it. One hot July day, Tim was with Sergio and Anna, and I believe they were in Verona, near the Arena. They stopped for gelato, and Sergio ordered “three balls” of it. This proved to be too tall an order, and the balls toppled onto him. “Cioccolata disastro!” he exclaimed. It is an expression Tim and I use to this day.

I [is temporarily for I Just Can’t Seem to Blog]

I hope it won’t be too long before I can get back to this. Lately, each day has contained its own seed of sabotage. I is also temporarily for intentions. I do have them. Perhaps after the holidays, there will be some follow-through.

J is for Just Another Guy

For Mali, on the occasion of her 365 finale

Years later, we met for dinner. Would we even recognize each other? Sfuzzi (the restaurant) was still new and still hot, tucked into Union Station’s beautiful mezzanine. Maybe it was 1990.

Our chumminess quickly resurfaced as we caught up: work, marriages, this, that.

After, I suggested a walk—maybe to the Vietnam memorial, which I’d never seen at night. Had he been there? No. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Let’s go, I said. We can leave anytime you want.

We walked the length of the wall and back. Black granite, black sky.

He pointed to a name.

“That guy was a real asshole,” he said. “But no one deserves to die that way.”

K is for Kris

Saturday morning, after a night out to see an excellent production of The Elephant Man, Tim and I got up and headed to the Holiday Food and Gift Festival, where I was determined to complete a made-in-Vermont gift basket for someone on my list and where, we hoped, Tim could fulfill his need for a-little-somethings for his hard-working coworkers, a-little-somethings that would perhaps balance the gifts of sugar that would be heading everyone’s way, some savory-little-somethings-in-jars. I, for one, wanted that part of holiday planning to be fini so I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

But when we pulled up to the venue, we both had to pee.

“Is there a bathroom here?” Tim asked.

“There must be,” I said, and then I remembered having been to this particular one-holer before and I knew exactly where in the store it was. We headed there.

The door was closed, and we could hear someone was inside.

We waited. This little nook contained kitchen sale items, so we looked at them. We waited. We waited some more. We bounced around a little.

Should we knock? I hated to resort to that. But it did seem to be taking someone a terribly long time.

Then, we heard a strange noise. It sounded like…wind chimes. What the…? I had no recollection of there being wind chimes in that small bathroom, and really, when one thinks what wind chimes would mean in a situation like this, well, one wants to stop thinking that one is going to be the next one in that room.

Was it a kid messing around? More chimes.

I was just about to knock, thinking maybe this person has no idea anyone is out here waiting, when the door opened. And out stepped Santa Claus, donned in the requisite garb and sleigh bells.

“Ho ho ho,” he said. “Have you been good?”

Tim and I began to chuckle. “Well, we’ll be better after we get into the bathroom,” I said.

“Sorry. I forgot how long it takes to change into this thing. And I’m running late. My pipes froze this morning.” (I wonder how often Santa uses that believable excuse?)

After we’d relieved ourselves, we had a very nice conversation with him. For the record, Santa’s a great guy.

When you’re desperately waiting for a door to open, sometimes there’s no predicting who’s gonna do the opening.

L is for List

Snow tires
Take begos¹ to Paul²
Groceries
Post office
Work out
Read final page proofs
Send cx to SW
Prep final-page packages and FedEx
Update museum log
Send batch 2 of workbook and invoice
Query where rest of chapters are
Answer e-mail
Go through mail
Prep recycling and trash for dump
Try to read blogs
Try to post blog
Move 40 pounds of birdseed
Feed birds
Make Thanksgiving grocery list
(Fewer than 6 weeks til Xmas)
Make lists for tomorrow
Breathe

¹Polish stew with sauerkraut-potato-kielbasa base
²Who had a hip replacement 8 days ago