Moving to Italy: The Flu--Part 2

Marino and Rina were older, more vulnerable, and they had a bad dose of the flu. Just like us, they both ran high fevers and vomited, and the accompanying coughs echoed up the stairs to our apartment. But Marino's cough gradually degenerated into long staccato hacks. When Zio Silvio knocked on the front door  to see how we were, I heard Rina shuffle to answer it in her robe and slippers. She asked him to drive down to the bar in Gaminella to telephone for the doctor. Marino was too ill for her to treat. As I coughed and coughed upstairs, trying to rest while the children napped and George snored, it occurred to me that the children were getting better, but we adults seemed to be getting worse. In my weakened state, I wondered morbidly what would happen to the children if we all died. It seemed I was assimilating the Italian penchant for the dramatic.

The doctor arrived the next morning. He diagnosed my father-in-law with bronchial pneumonia. Since Marino also had a bad heart, the coughing and the fever had stressed his entire system and had left him very weak. The doctor ordered him into the hospital in Casale immediately. Marino resisted, but Rina persuaded him that since the rest of us were ill, there was no one to care for him properly at home. He had no choice. George and Rina would drive him to the hospital that afternoon to make sure he was admitted.

After lunch we all trooped downstairs to see Marino off. He looked pale and drawn as he shuffled down the stone hallway to the front door, leaning on his walking stick. As I had noticed with George’s relatives in California, to older Italians, going to the hospital meant you were going to die. With tears in his eyes Marino kissed each of the children goodbye. I am certain he thought he would never see them again. The children were not sure what was going on, but they stayed suitably subdued as they watched him hobble out to the car in the light rain. Zio Silvio and Zio Remo stood by ready to help. After the brothers shook hands and exchanged quick hugs, George and Rina settled Marino into the back seat. We watched from the doorway as George drove slowly out of the courtyard. All three were coughing as they rounded the corner of the house. Upstairs, the children and I gathered at the window to watch through the drizzle as the car slowly wound its way down the hill, across the bridge, and into a fog bank.

Hospitals in Italy at that time were a far cry from the facilities we were used to in the States. We had visited Rina's brother-in-law in the same hospital a few weeks before. We were shocked. George’s job in California as a social worker had required many visits to L.A. County General Hospital. As crowded and run-down as conditions were in Los Angeles, he said it looked like a palace compared to the Italian hospital. The "wheel-chair" was a couple of pieces of wood sloppily hammered together on wheels. The long ward in which his uncle stayed was lined with beds, but no curtains for privacy. While not required, it was strongly suggested that a relative stay day and night to help each patient. There was no bed for this unpaid nursing help, just a chair, and they also had to provide the patient's bottled drinking water. At lunchtime, the kitchen staff rolled a big pot of soup down the center aisle. They doled out the same thing to each patient, without respect to dietary needs. If the patient wanted something else, the relative could bring it. The medical equipment looked 50 years behind the times, and to top it all off, we never saw a doctor actually touch a patient. Standing aloof in a suit and tie, they directed the nurse to perform the examination. They seemed to be afraid they would catch something. Maybe the older Italians had reason to worry.

As George and his parents drove into the city, they dreaded their arrival at the hospital.  When they got there they were even more dismayed to learn that, because of the flu epidemic, the only available bed was in a hallway. Since my in-laws were American citizens, they were charged the “foreigners” rate of $30 a day— exorbitantly expensive in 1972, especially for hallway accommodations.

With no other option, George and his mother allowed Marino to be admitted and helped him undress. Still coughing and exhausted themselves, they left him lying on his bed in the hallway and drove home.

Moving to Italy: The Flu--Part 1

In February of that year at Gabi we caught the flu. I knew it was bad when James, my active four-year-old, who when ill usually fought to stay on his feet, instead lay still on his back. His fever stopped rising at 102 F, but he couldn't eat, and his pale cheeks sunk in. I watched him anxiously for three days, and then he got up to play quietly with his Legos and to eat a little soup. But that's also when he began to cough—a cough that heralded those to come.  We took him to the children's clinic and the pediatrician diagnosed Asian flu, a highly contagious strain that was sweeping the area. He gave us cough syrup for the symptoms, but told us we'd have to ride out the flu. 

Five-year-old Paul was next. His fever wasn't as high as James' and he got up after just a day in bed, but his cough was worse. Zio Silvio refilled the cough syrup prescription at the pharmacy in the village just as the two-year-old twins caught the flu. Luckily theirs was a mild case, but as they were getting over their fevers, George and I came down with the fever at the same time. Whether it was Italy or America, trying to monitor little children while we were both ill was very difficult. Day and night we coughed along with them, and soon our chest, stomach, and back muscles ached.

The children still needed care, even as our coughs worsened and our fevers roared. Though they were recovering, they had all lost weight, and I worried that their appetites were still not back to normal, especially James who had been the sickest of them. His face looked thin and his dimples deeper, even when he was not smiling. However, by the time we came down with the flu, he was jumping around and seemed to be recovering—even if he wasn’t eating well.

During the worst of our illness, George and I alternated watching them while the other rested. Of course it was a nightmare. Still somewhat sick and feeling grumpy after being confined to the house for eight days, the children poked, and pushed, and fought each other as we all coughed. I did the minimum—food and laundry—then lay immobile on the couch watching them and trying to verbally corral them while George suffered in the bedroom. When I couldn’t take any more, I woke him up for my turn to rest.

There was one good thing about that flu. George’s cough was very bad, and sometimes he struggled for breath between fits of hacking, but he still smoked. He would wait for a break in the coughing spasm so he could insert a cigarette to inhale. In the middle of one coughing fit, he looked at the lit cigarette held between his fingers, then looked at me and said, “What am I doing?  This is crazy.” He stubbed it out and hasn’t picked up another since. He lost another seven pounds with that flu, but after his recovery he substituted food for the cigarettes, regaining the weight, and then some.  

It was inevitable, of course, but soon the flu spread downstairs to my in-laws.

Moving to Italy: Winter Doldrums

Hi Newcomers: If you want to read this blog in chronological order from the beginning, you need to start with:
"Arrival" on the June 26, 2017 blog post.

During the months of January and February, George continued to look for a job.  Between interviews he used his time away from the fields to work on the next step in our on-going project to paint the house.  In spite of the newly-installed central heating, the walls felt damp as the moisture seemed to seep through from the outside to the paint we layered inside. I had asked about repairing the stucco first, but they had told me it would take too much of my in-laws’ money, and besides, that wasn’t the Italian way. The inside was much more important. And so we kept at our indoor painting project, sometimes waiting a week between coats. After the doors and windows were finished, we finally reached the walls.

Because of the high ceilings George stood on a plank between two wooden sawhorses to reach the upper half of the walls, while I painted the lower half. From his months of work around the land, George was in good shape, but for me it was tough going. Unused to the up-down motion, my arm muscles soon ached and my neck grew stiff from reaching up. In addition, the smell of paint permeated our heads and the house. I hoped it wasn’t harming the children’s lungs and brains, but we didn’t have a lot of choice. If we opened the windows to let out the fumes, the paint would never dry in the damp weather, and we would expose everyone to the bitter cold. I was learning that there is always a trade-off in life, no matter what we do. But it felt good to work with George to make the changes that we could. As my brush moved up and down the wall leaving a swath of clean color in its wake, I felt myself becoming part of the house, part of Gabi, part of the community.

Of course this was just an illusion. All we were changing was our little section of the community, of Gabi, of the house. This was never clearer to me than when we returned fifteen years later. The dampness had reasserted itself, soaking and curling all of the paint we had so carefully applied. The house and the community had been there long before we arrived, and they had survived our departure.

The doors we had scraped and repainted after years of neglect

 Our plans for supporting the family had evolved. When we first moved to Italy, we had envisioned just simply living off the land. In early November, George and Zio Silvio worked out an agreement to buy more cattle, rent more fields and work together to increase the income of the farm. Later, when we sat down to work out the actual “dollar” amounts, we realized our share of the farm income was not enough to support six of us. We couldn’t just “live off the land.”  The only way we could survive was for George to work locally to supplement our income. But he still couldn’t find work.

Maybe it was the recession—there were few jobs available—and maybe it was that George was considered “The American,” but the Italians in our area did not have employment that they were willing to give him. Although he interviewed for job after job, several as a translator at companies in nearby towns, nobody seemed to need his skills. George had left Italy as a child, and by becoming an American citizen he had given up any claim to his place as an Italian. No law prevented companies from hiring him, but there seemed to be an invisible wall that had been constructed to keep him out.

To most Italians we dealt with, the word “American” was synonymous with “rich.” Although Marino could call on his familiarity with older members of the community to get some discounts, he found prices quoted him for repairs were still higher than what he knew others were quoted.  And while the locals were eager to work for us, when it came to asking for job referrals, they simply shrugged. Family members seemed to be the only ones willing to help. Luigi had referred us to the chicken producer, and another cousin said his friend could get George a job. However, when George inquired he was told it would be “next month.” Each month that we asked it was always, “next month.”  We waited, then asked, and waited some more and asked again. Finally, we realized the job would never materialize. We couldn’t tell if the offer was sincere, or if it was social grease to keep the conversation turning. It was very difficult to convince the community that we really wanted to stay, that we really wanted to work, and that we weren't "rich Americans." We didn’t have the money to live there forever without working.