Daily Archive

I’m in Venice with my daughter, and Joy got her passport and arrives tonight. Munchkin asked what I want for my birthday, which is today, and what else could I possibly want? Another day like yesterday? I am beyond blessed to have life, my family, work that sustains me, and time to enjoy this beautiful world. On top of that, I get to be in this city, created by artists–and I don’t mean Titian and Canaletto, but the masons, architects, road-builders who surrounded themselves and the generations to come with beauty. I will add a thank you to forward-thinking politicians and the people who elect them, because I saw workers repairing some infrastructure under the street yesterday, and they had pulled up the stones whole and were saving them to replace. It would probably be cheaper to replace them with asphalt (or else why did we do it, in the US?), but instead, the skill to lay stone has been passed on, and the expense has been taken on, in order to keep this city one of beautiful stone streets.

Yesterday, each of us went out when she woke up, though it was well before 8 am and it took a long time for either of us to find a place that would sell us food. (Text from me to M: “I am leaving in search of food and perhaps daughter.” Response from M: “Lmk if u find food and the daughter will probably appear.”) Even though this carving was too far away for good resolution, I had to take a picture. St. Mark is the patron of this city and his symbol is a winged lion, so images of lions are everywhere.

Later, on a street so narrow that I could put my bent arms out and touch either side with my elbows, I saw a ruder version. At least, the doorbell looked like a stuck-out tongue to me at first. On getting closer, I decided it was more like a lion sucking a pacifier.

I eventually found a cafe that was open, got a latte and two croissants, and texted the munchkin. While I sipped and waited for her, I drew a window on the other side of the canal:

It was low tide when I left the apartment, as you can see from this photo of the steps down to the canal.

Later, when we ate outdoors, the tide was almost at its height and lapping around our feet.

The main activity of the day, between meals, was our walk to, and up, the Scala Contarini del Bovalo. Bovalo means “snail” (though the more usual word is the one I know, since it’s the same in Italian as in Spanish: caracol) and it became the nickname of the Contarini family after they built this loggia and spiral staircase. That can’t have pleased them, because apparently they chose their building spot–at a rather out-of-the-way cul-de-sac–so that they and their ill-gotten gains would go unnoticed. So said a tour guide we listened in on. Or rather, Munchkin listened in. I caught the 20% of words that were identical with Spanish, and so got some of what she was saying, but Munchkin’s Italian (honed on reading The Lightning Thief, the first of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books, in translation) is getting better with each day here, and she translated to me afterwards.

We had a struggle turning our tickets into admission, as I had bought them online and thought having them in my email would be sufficient. Good plan, except I was having trouble accessing email, and so after a long, fast, sweaty walk, we feared we wouldn’t get in. Italian bureaucracy worked against us; I could show them the email but not the attachment, and they had to have the QR code to admit us. But Italian kindness worked in our favor: they did considerable digging to find our reservation on the who-knows-which website on which I made it, and finally entered their wifi password so that I could access the attachment afterwards, being the souls of patience the whole time.

Once admitted to the spiral staircase, we photographed each other looking pensively into the distance.

Having her face entirely concealed by her hat was apparently more pensive than M was asking for, so I asked her to give me some more poses and got this. Now that’s the kind of drama that made Orson Welles choose this as a setting for his Othello.

We had intended to continue to a park with calisthenics equipment, being that M is missing her three-times-a-week gym routine, but my leg was beginning to twinge, I was hungry and tired, and it was a mile back to the apartment, so we parted ways. She went on to her park, and I made my way back through the tourist-crowded central streets, stopping to refresh myself with the first gelato of the trip. “After Eight,” a.k.a. mint with very large, dark-chocolate chips. Exquisite.

I have had increasing sciatica flare-ups over the past several months, and I asked my doctor for a steroid injection before I left, scared that I would end up sitting in our lodgings all summer while J and M explored. The injection was astoundingly successful, but not quite 100%. It’s okay. The twinge, which was a daily event pre-steroids, didn’t start until I had walked 11,000 steps yesterday, and even with another 7,000 on the day, it didn’t get any worse. I’ll call that a win. Credit modern medicine, or else the gelato.

So, this is 55. The leg is still a little grumpy, but I’m about to head out in search of a canalside mocha, to be enjoyed while reading Mansfield Park. I don’t have to contend with any real-life Mrs. Norrises to speak of. Life is good.