La Galleria Borghese is a classy place. Fancy. Complicated. You have to book your tickets in advance and get there a half hour earlier and then you STILL have to wait on a really long line. It houses the Caravaggio masterpieces as well as the show stopping Greek mythology sculptures of Bernini, so you sort of just have to cope with the fancy complicated-ness of it because it is most definitely worth it to see The Rape of Persephone and the way Bernini's made Hades' fingers actually press into Persephone's leg, as if it were made of real flesh and not of stone.
Seconda wasn't terribly bowled over by Bernini but she was fascinated by a painting of Jesus being taken down off the cross, the kind of painting you get so used to seeing in Rome, that you almost don't look twice anymore.
Seconda: Oh does that man have a booboo?
Me: Yes, do you know who that is? Its Jesus.
Seconda: Oh my GOD!! Look at his BOOBOO!
Me: Do you know what happened to Jesus?
Sec: Yes. Once upon a time there was a little baby named Jesus and Mary was his mother. And one day he was running and running and running TOO Fast and then splat! he fell on the floor and got BLOODY.
Primo: That is not the story of Jesus at all. Don't you know Christmas?
Tomorrow we head out over to Terracina, the charming beachside town about an hour south of Rome, near where my mother was born. Kids are wildly excited, not just for the beach, but for the bombas, which I can only approximate in words as a donut stuffed with Italian creme or Nutella, and served piping hot and dusted with sugar. Imagine eating that while high and that is the experience of eating the bomba, even when sober. The drugs are in the bomba.
Point is, we're headed to Terracina, which is halfway between Roma and Napoli. Today we've been talking about Napoli and tonight Primo told me, when he was going sleep,
"Do you know how I imagine Napoli?"
"No, tell me."
"Like MON-opoly."
He is right. Only with more pickpockets and better pizza.
A picture speaks a thousand words. Which is convenient when you don't have the time to write but ten yourself since you're too busy stuffing your face with gelato and trying to cure your children of jet lag.
We have made it through the Red-Eye Flight. We are in Rome.
What can I say about the red-eye flight? I think they should give it a name more befitting of its horrendousness. Red-Eye-Popping-Out-Of-Your-Skull-from-Exhuastion Flight. That's be more accurate.
Not for the singles out there. Those people had it DOWN. There were a few rows of empty seats in the back of the airplane which I scouted out early, and was planning to take over when the flight took off. Except that somehow the singles beat me. By the time the seatbelt sign turned off, the singles were already lying down over all three seats, covered by blankets and wearing actual SLEEP MASKS. Shit, the people don't screw around. And around halfway through the flight, I started to regret that I'd dropped the ball. The sleeping did not go well.
First off, I had this totally erroneous thought that because we took off at 5pm and arrived at 8am, that we'd have a whole long night to sleep, so it wouldn't be a big deal if the kids waited til midnight to fall asleep. Once on the plane, however, I realized that we took off in NY time and arrived in Italy time, and we were actually totally being robbed of a night's sleep. This is when I started getting serious about shut eye. We divided and conquered - David took charge of Seconda in the two seats in front and I was in charge on Primo in the two seats behind.
We tried everything. Putting Primo's feet on top of the trays and his head on my lap. Putting his head on the trays and his feet on my lap. Giving him both our seats while I hovered in the aisle. Finally, with 3 hours left til touchdown, I hissed, "If you don't go to sleep right now you're going to be up all night and then want to sleep when its morning time and I won't let you! I'll pinch you awake!" Which made him cry and shriek, "DON'T PINCH ME MOMMY!" waking all the other people who had been asleep for hours. Penitent, I decided to try one last thing -- laying the blankets down on the floor of the aircraft between our seats and David and Seconda's seats in front of us, and Primo lay down there, diagnoally with his head at my feet and his feet at David's feet. That did the trick and I managed to get a whole two and a half hours of sleep. TOTALLY enough for me to manage a crazy 3 and 5 year old who've been up all night, in a foreign country.
But now we're here and thanks to the jet lag, my kids are both going to bed at 2am local time every night. You know what they say - when in Rome . . .
I’m outta here, folks. Taking a real, bona-fide vacation, the first one in many moons. Where to?
To the mother country!!
Roma, bella Roma!
Lots of memories in Rome, the most recent being the conception of my darling daughter. Yeah, I’m bringing some pretty powerful prophylactics this time around because we don’t need a Terzo in the picture at present. All that red wine, and rolling rs, and gelato con panna, it can make a couple do crazy things.
So Primo’s been to Rome when he was about a year and a half old, but this will be Seconda’s first time ANDRome’s first time meeting Sec. There is no way that the eternal city is ready for this little firecracker.
We’ve been brushing up on our Italian in preparation for the trip and today she informed me:
“‘Grazie’ is how you say grits in Italian, so if you’re hungry for grits, you have to say GRAZIE!”
Here’s what the kids are looking forward to about Italy:
Eating gelatos every day topped with free panna (whipped cream).
Eating bombas with massive amounts of crema packed inside.
Staying up later than remotely reasonable.
Scratchy alley cats.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to:
Eating gelatos every day topped with free panna (whipped cream).
Eating bombas with massive amounts of crema packed inside.
Eating pizza with paper-thin crust and crusted carciofini on top.
Drinking the only perfect cappuccino in the world.
Villa Borghese with the kids, standing in the center of the Pantheon, lighting a candle and saying a prayer at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, going for a midnight dip at the beach on Ferragosto, and basically everything else except the jet lag and having to chase Sec around while Vespas and Smart Cars dart past.
Here’s what David’s looking forward to:
The gelatos, the bombas, the pizza and the cappuccino.
Having adventures as a family.
Drinking Nastra Azzurro.
(“And the BJs” he just said, sitting next to me on the couch).
So for the next two weeks or so, you’ll be hearing a lot of radio silence over here, interrupted maybe by the occasional dispatch from Rome.
I have a confession to make. I am totally, one hundred percent obsessed with Bethenny Getting Married. Moreover, I defy you to tell me you’ve watched ten minutes of it and don’t feel the same. I’m not sure if they managed to slip crack cocaine into the soundwaves or what (see how much I know about how TV works) but that is some highly addictive shit. It should come with a warning.
If you haven’t had the guilty pleasure of tuning in, I’ll break it down for you. In a spin-off of the Real Housewives of New York City, Bethenny Frankel (neither real nor a housewife but definitely from New York City) is affianced to handsome and kind of corny Mid-Westerner who is endowed with as much good-natured appeal as she is with its opposite. She is in her second trimester when he pops the question and then she has to (no choice, just HAS to) plan a huge, over-the-top wedding at the Four Seasons in a month’s time. Highlight of the wedding episode: after getting into the Amsale wedding gown, but before its time to walk down the aisle, Bethenny finds she has to pee. Walking through the crowd before her big bride reveal moment seems like a really shitty option. A better option? Having two assistants help her hoist up her couture gown, and pull down her preggo panties so she can pee in a bucket on national television. A month later, she has to have a baby, and when packing her hospital bag, she thinks it wise to put in THONGS, for postpartum use. She has a deranged, homicidal dog named Cookie and is constantly referring enigmatically to her dark, troubled childhood.
“Stop right there,” I know you’re saying, “you had me at, pee in the bucket.”
It is, I would venture, a near-perfect piece of reality programming: Bridezilla meets A Baby Story meets Real Housewives. I watched two episodes in a row last week and I felt afterwards like I needed to read the whole Wall Street Journal, cover to cover, as an antidote. I didn’t of course, letting the dumbing down influence of shitty TV work on me, unabated.
I got David to watch it with me once and the whole time he was like, “Why is her face in the shape of a figure 8? I’ve never seen a face shape like that before!”
And right there, is both why I love my husband and why I love the show.
What follows is the best Seconda story ever, the one that most exemplifies her – the good, and the bad. However, if you work for PETA, I’d advise you to skip this post.
Last Saturday afternoon, David went out to do some grocery shopping and our good friend Lou dropped by. I was talking to Lou and trying to keep Primo from hitting him over the head with pillows so I didn’t notice for a few minutes that Seconda was nowhere to be seen, or heard, There was a Sec silence which I know from experience means trouble. So I peeked into her bedroom and saw her little feet sticking out from under the tent which cover her bed.
This should have sounded the alarm in my head.
Sec is quiet + Sec is hiding in her bed = something is being destroyed.
And, in fact, the alarm did sound. But she was giggling and moving around so I could tell she was all right. I figured it was my furniture or belongings that were probably suffering and while this level of suspicion usually prompts me to intervene, on this particular Saturday I was friggin’ tired. I’d spent a morning at the beach saving her from being swept to sea. The kid doesn’t give me any downtime in between intervention-worthy incidents and I needed some. Plus, I had a guest over and I felt like being a decent host.
So I said to myself, “She’s getting older. Just because she is quiet does not mean that she’s making mischief. Aren’t I EVER going to be able to trust her?”
And the answer, of course, is “No.” Or at least, not for a very long time.
I went back in the bedroom a few minutes later, when I couldn’t quiet the nagging feeling within me. As soon as I walked in, I knew something had happened with the fish. The fishtank where Mr. Black and Mr. White-- hey, the kids named them -- have been living and thriving for the past 8 months or so, is located on top of a dresser and next to the dresser is a toy chest which usually has a big pile of books on it. When I went into her room I saw the pile of books on the floor and Sec standing on the chest.
“Honey?” I started, anxiously, “What are you doing?”
She turned to me with a shit-eating grin on her face. And I mean, from ear-to-ear. The grin was so blatantly guilty it was as if the words “I DID SOMETHING BAD” had been written on her gleaming teeth in permanent marker.
“I saved the fish!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. Then she turned her attention to the tank, and I did too, dreading what I’d find.
There was Mr. Black, our dear pet, belly up at the top of the water. Dead as a doornail.
My first thought was. “Maybe he’s not dead, but almost dead, Maybe I can save him!” What do you do in these situations? I mean, you can’t do CPR on a goldfish. You can’t call the vet. The fish was belly-up. The fish was a goner.
“What HAPPENED?” I cried, trying to remain calm
This sent Sec running away, to hide in her bed tent. I followed after her, taking deep breaths.
“Did you touch Mr. Black?” I asked.
She smiled and shook her head “No.”
“Honey,” I ventured, sweetly, “Mommy’s not going to be mad, OK? Just tell me the truth. Did you take the fish
out of the tank?”
She grinned and nodded “Yes.”
“And then what did you do with him?”
“I put him in my bed!” she exclaimed with delight, “I wanted to snuggle him!”
“In your BED?”
She nodded, unable to repress her glee: “Mommy, when I put him down, he went flop, flop, flop!!”
And she began to demonstrate with her body how the fish had thrashed about wildly, this way and that. She didn’t know the poor thing was meeting his Maker, she thought he was finally PLAYING with her. She probably felt like she hit the jackpot, like FINALLY, after all these months of being a total snooze-fest, this fish is the life of the party. “This is more like it,” she probably thought, “All he needed was to get out of the water.”
I’m not going to lie: I was dismayed. Downtrodden. My daughter just takes such a joy in destroying things – knocking over block towers, scribbling on her brother’s painstakingly-penned drawings, smashing lipstick on the floor, throwing jewelry in the air conditioner-- I just felt sad that now we had fishicide to add to the list.
Of course, she didn’t really MEAN to kill him. Seconda adores animals, beyond anything I can possible relate to. David, Primo and I are highly apathetic to pets, but it is really her abiding passion. She stops every single dog on the street and chases butterflies and cuddles friends’ cats. She even cozied up to these two big gray rats that Primo’s friend kept as pets (“Oh my cute little ratty!”). She wants a pet she can play with, I understand that.
But the fact remains that she scooped our goldfish out of the water with her bare hands placed him on her pillow for a while and then, when she heard me coming, grabbed him and tossed him back in the water, where he was currently floating.
I gave her a talk about how fish can’t live outside the water, how she had hurt Mr. Black and how she had to prepare herself for the fact that this was probably a booboo he couldn’t recover from.
“I think we’d better check on him.” I said,
We walked over and there, in the tank, was Mr. Black REVIVED from death. He was swimming around! Not with a lot of vigor, admittedly. He looked dazed and horrified, like he’d seen something no fish should ever have to see – two blue eyes getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer and then one chubby hand with green nail polish looming over the water. But he was swimming.
It was a fish miracle.
We went back to the living room, where Lou was now having a pillow fight with Primo and tried to forget the incident. But we are definitely buying a top for the fish tank. And if I could locate on, I’d get Mr. Black a fish therapist.
Nicole is a parenting writer who contributes essays and articles for magazines like Parenting, Parents, American Baby and Babble. She lives in Brooklyn with three children, one husband and a morbidly obese goldfish.
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