We Miss You, Kevyn .. Tanti Auguri a Brad

We miss you Kevyn!

Today is Brad’s 64th birthday: we are humming the Beatles tune under our breath. 

We didn't do much, though, because I’ve just come off a week-long bout of stomach flu and I’m, well, drained … but, after dinner, we went to a wonderful little organ recital by Livia Mazzanti at a local church, Chiesa Santa Lucia del Gonfalone. 

Also, to over dramatize at bit, we’ve been in a multi-week period of second-guessing and disorientation. We miss our condo and our stuff. We miss our friends. Learning Italian is super slow, so we can’t talk with people or even ask for simple things when we go to a store. And tea time is now 16:00, I only weigh 70, and I don’t know much many quarter cups are in a bottle of milk.

I keep getting lost when I go out alone (a few weeks ago, it took me three hours to get home).

Physical therapy for my knee (and the preexisting hip instability that probably caused the injury) has also been slow and frustrating. It seems that I just need to move, walk, step, and stand a different way, that’s all … On the plus side, I can now traipse long distances with only the usual tourist leg-and-foot aches, thanks largely to my cheerful and patient trainer, Claudia, who is learning English very quickly!

No, Claudia, those are toes, not fingers on my feet ... 

The EU rules applicable to Brad are more complicated than we understood. We know, for example, that he has a right to stay in Rome with me (since I’m a EU citizen, being Irish-born). But we learned too late that, after his 90-day American tourist visa expired on December 10, he can’t travel by air to most European countries (the “Schengen” ones) without a final “carta di soggiorno” from Italy. He doesn’t even have his carta interview until late January, but we planned a trip to Vienna in late December with the kids. So now he’ll either have to take the overnight train (no, wait, the holiday trains are already booked!) or we’ll eat the expenses and just stay in Rome. (First world problems, I get that.)

It's also been a struggle to establish a routine or find what seems like the right balance between time-at-home and time-out-touring. And here I wanted to see every corner of Rome and blog about all of it and set up our finances perfectly and take up piano again and speak passable Italian and have a regular spiritual practice and row on the Tiber and …

The election still feels like such a shock (for most, but not all, Italians we meet too). We voted by email; took photos with our iPhones of filled-in ballots printed from the King County elections website and emailed them back. Washington state is liberal that way. I swapped my Clinton vote through TrumpTraders with a Stein-supporting hipster in Pennsylvania, meaning I voted for Jill and—I hope—Evan K voted for Hillary (although it is an honor system and his one vote didn't do anything). I also gave Jill money for the recount efforts ... have some second thoughts about that but I needed to do something. I’m going to scream if I read one more news piece comparing Trump to Berlusconi and now Renzi is out too … Right after the election, we joined a candlelight vigil outside the American embassy protesting Trump’s positions …

Not to mention that our condo tenants broke the lease (thankfully, the property management company we hired found a new tenant quickly), we had issues with mail delivery (the change of address we filed with USPS before we left Seattle didn’t take but thankfully Ger, my wonderful sister, offered to step in to have our mail forwarded to her for re-mailing to us), and it took forever to get faster internet service in the house (just happened about a week ago).

Worst of all, two weeks ago, our dear sister-in-law, Kevyn Love, died after a horrible reaction to an antibiotic she was taking after knee-replacement surgery. She had battled many health issues in recent years and always stayed strong, with the kindest and most generous spirit. She and Curtis (Brad’s brother) were very much in Iove. It is such a shocking blow for him and the whole family.

Have you had a time when nothing seemed to go right, and how did you handle it? I'm getting back onto a blogging schedule and have lots to tell you about, including the Brigidine nuns we happened upon one evening doing vespers, the Love exhibition at the Bramante museum, watching the super moon rise from the Gianicolo under the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, seeing Martin Scorcese at Mass, visiting the Jewish Ghetto, traveling to Puglia for a “sagra” in Noci and seeing the “trulli” in Alberobello, seeing Shahzia Sikander’s show at MAXXI, and so much more!