Lockdown Day 6

On my way to the car I come out into the silent empty medieval city and walk up a hundred or so stone steps to the Duomo, the doors of which are now sadly shut, masses cancelled and the bells, which kept us all company and marked the rhythm of our days, silenced. The spectacular view looking west over the gently rounded Apuan Alps is unchanged. The sky is a deep cerulean. The air is crisp on this clear spring morning, Sunday, the !5th of March.

I’m evading lockdown by escaping to our property in the country. Under the circumstances this is strictly forbidden as the State doesn’t want people traveling beyond their communities and/or risking spreading the virus through rest stops on highways, for instance, if they were traveling to their holiday properties. My heart jumped as I rounded the corner to see the police checking documents, you’re required to have an official self-certified affidavit as to why you are out in the car and where you are going. Fortunately, I could turn off before them and In this case zip out the back road with no one the wiser. 

As I drive I pass the beautiful light pink magnolia’s and the coral pink pesco bushes in early bloom, the rose pink camellia’s in full bloom. 

It’s our son’s 22nd birthday. This is the vast mountainside property he grew up on in the contrast of freedom and confinement. Freedom, in that he was free to go anywhere in the area, into the woods, down to the river, no traffic, no nosey neighbors, only the spectacular countryside. Confinement, because if and when he needed or wanted to leave to go to school, guitar lessons, soccer, gym practice or, most importantly, see his friends he needed someone to drive him, which was eventually the impetus for getting a place closer to town, It had its limitations but he had an idyllic childhood, I hope.  

I drive out here every few days to feed the barn cats we had to leave behind and do whatever maintenance is needed. It evokes mixed feelings of pride, joy and profound loss. 

Today I wonder what Pietro would think of this health crisis and lockdown. He would probably be very disturbed and anxious, as he always was in challenging times. He showed up at the door shaken and in tears to tell me about 9/11. It must have been the vestige of his difficult childhood in a large impoverished family immediately following the war. The existential threat of uncertainty.  He would also be of the gender and generation which is under the greatest threat from the virus. 

I’ve fed the cats. With guarded optimism, the extreme statistics seem to be leveling off, I pruned the wisteria and will sneak back, driving through the old town, to unload the firewood that I’ve bagged from the cords that Pietro cut, and we gathered and stacked over the years, and that I am still using in the small cast-iron wood stove my apartment, which murmurs and cackles to keep me company on these long evenings.