Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  Etna erupted not long after we left the island, but an even bigger blast occurred several months later, in September 2007, with lava spewing thirteen hundred feet into the air before coursing thickly down its side like drool from a Saint Bernard. I have no idea how the housing development fared during the fireworks, but I did read that Sicily closed its airport for the day as a precaution, and farmers on the mountain leaned their hoes against the shed for a spell. Within twelve hours it was business as usual. No biggie.

  IT WAS noon when we reached Messina. I dutifully followed the “Traghetti” signs to the ferry terminal, a route that led us down a wide, handsome street lined with lush green palms waving languidly and an assortment of yellow-and-white Baroque buildings.

  The ferry terminal was very different from the one at which we had disembarked. For starters, there was a huge lineup of cars and people, and a festive quality pervaded the quay. People were stretched out on the front of their cars squeezing in a few minutes of sunbathing. Well-marked ticket kiosks with streamers looped along their canopies, as well as cafés and souvenir stalls, were all doing a brisk business. There wasn’t a truck in sight.

  The biggest surprise was the fare: It was double what we had paid on the way over. It was suddenly clear that our maiden voyage to Sicily had been made by cargo boat.

  Onboard this very modern ferry the atmosphere was genteel. It was kitted out with a two-storey car park, comfy padded seating in expansive lounge areas, bright, clean washrooms that didn’t require a sailor’s key to access, some shops, and a few cafés serving a wide selection of sandwiches and pasta. All these conveniences for a mere thirty-minute passage.

  We barely had time to gobble down a panino and a drink before it was time to join the mad dash back to the ferry’s parking garage. We shuffled to the elevator and waited patiently for the lift while our fellow passengers scurried around us as if a fire alarm had been sounded.

  Based on our speedy drive to Sicily down Calabria’s west coast, I assumed the return trip to Alberobello would be just as quick and we would be home by nightfall.

  Everything went swimmingly until we drove off the ferry at Reggio di Calabria and I made a wrong turn. In Italy, wrong turns can undo you. Before I could figure out what had happened, we were plunged into a crowded, gritty, labyrinthine suburb with an air of desperation and poverty.

  Mom pressed the button to raise the automatic windows, and I engaged the security locks on our doors. It took us a good half hour to find our way out. When we eventually rejoined the autostrada it was another quarter of an hour before it dawned on me that we were heading up the east coast of Italy instead of the west.

  The eastern portion of the coastal highway—despite being called an autostrada—was a plodding two-lane road that forced us on a slow march through every single village— some of them prosperous and well-tended little places such as Pilossi, Brancaleone, and Locri, with cheerfully painted balconies and landscaped front gardens; all of them without any sign of a living soul.

  In some parts of Calabria only thirty miles separate the east and the west coasts, but the differences between the two are substantial. The west is pastoral, majestic, and more sedate; the east has a scrubbier terrain but also a flashy resort-like feel. In the west you see olive trees and firs; in the east everyone has an orange or lemon tree in the front yard. The life seems more hard-won in the west, easier in the east.

  Road construction and heavy truck traffic dogged our progress the entire way. We were forced to take detours that drew us into an interior land of wild dill, stone farmhouses, farmers threshing the fields, and sheep grazing on hillsides. It sounds idyllic, and under normal circumstances I would have found the journey pleasant, but with an incontinent and discontented passenger beside me it was torture. I could sense Mom’s longing for the familiar surroundings and the somewhat dull routine we had carved out for ourselves back at the trullo. I was anxious to get back, too, if only to relinquish the grind of driving all day. It felt like my ass had been permanently glued to the driver’s seat.

  After four and a half hours of stop-and-go traffic, in which we covered less than a quarter of the distance we had done in the same amount of time a few days earlier, it became obvious that home was another day away. The sun began its quick dip to oblivion, and we resigned ourselves to a hotel for the night. We stopped in Catanzaro Marina and, finding no practical accommodation, surrendered the contents of our wallets for a small suite at the Hotel Palace.

  May I ask a stupid question? Why do so many first-class hotels exude low-class attitude? Does it have something to do with making the guest feel grateful to be in this rarified atmosphere, or is it an acquired snobbism on the part of the hotelier who could just as easily be working at a Travelodge?

  The front desk staff of the Hotel Palace regarded my mother and me the way most people would greet Martians, something you do not expect from an establishment that bills itself as “an international hotel.” The bartender refused to smile at me, despite my repeat business, which I conducted entirely in Italian, and the chambermaids averted their eyes.

  The coup de grâce was our departure the following morning. After settling the bill of 218 euros (suite, small dinner, and big breakfast), I went to retrieve our car from the hotel’s parking lot across the street, only to discover that it was boxed in by two other cars. The hotel summoned its parking attendant, one of those older middle-aged men who believe that a pimp roll, a baseball cap, and a stained T-shirt will fool the ladies into thinking he’s thirty years younger. Well, perhaps very drunk ladies.

  Sloppy Joe grumpily swaggered out to the parking lot and a few minutes later returned to the hotel lobby, made quick eye contact with me, and then skulked into a back room. No one said a word.

  Several minutes passed until curiosity got the better of me. I walked outside to our car and saw that it was still somewhat blocked in—enough that I feared I would do damage to the surrounding cars if I tried to wriggle out of our spot.

  I returned to the hotel’s front desk to ask for assistance, but I got only shrugged shoulders and indifference. No one offered so much as to carry our luggage out the front door. This is what passes for five-star service these days?

  So, picture this, if you will: A harried, middle-aged woman fumbling with three unwieldy bags (well, four if you count my mother), and an old woman on the verge of an asthma attack, leaning heavily on her cane, and with what breath she has apologizing for not being physically able to help her ragged, middle-aged daughter.

  “Look at this!” I finally screamed in the parking lot. “How the fuck am I supposed to get the car out of this spot?”

  “Never mind,” said Mom. “Just get in the car and leave it to me. I’ll guide you out. Trust me.”

  And didn’t she do just that. Good ol’ Gimpy.

  As we exited the parking lot I flipped a finger at the Hotel Palace and gave Mom a high five with the other hand.

  “Great work, Mom. You know, that was probably the finest example of teamwork that we have ever experienced.”

  “No, there are others,” she smiled. “Your memory is short.”

  We got lost going out of Catanzaro Marina, but a gas jockey—thank God for Agip gas stations—provided excellent directions that got us across the narrowest part of Italy and onto the Reggio di Calabria–Salerno a3. As soon as we hit the autostrada—and I have never been more pleased to see a superhighway—I unclenched my sphincter and floored the accelerator pedal.

  Zipping past the rugged landscape with its panoramic vistas and tunnelled mountains—I loved the tunnels in Italy—I concluded that the west side of Italy’s southern end is more picturesque than the east.

  Too bad it wasn’t as breezy a drive up the coast as it had been down. It seemed that Italy’s construction workers had decided that this particular Thursday was a perfect day to begin the work week. Amid this flurry of construction I couldn’t figure out the reason for all the half-finished villas we saw during the entire time we were in Ita
ly. Some looked as if they hadn’t seen any action in several months.

  May I just mention here that Italian work crews are a very smartly dressed lot? Rarely did we see anyone wearing jeans or mud-splattered T-shirts and boots. Most wore dark slacks (not dirty ones, either) and a polo shirt topped by a navy sweater. They all looked so presentable and clean—even those driving dump trucks and front-end loaders.

  Here is another roadside observation for you: Road construction in Italy does not require the crew to rip up a six-mile radius to complete a project. There is a reverence for the land that you don’t encounter on North American work sites. Italians have road building down to an art—after all, they’ve been perfecting it for three thousand years—whereas North Americans have been building roads for maybe two hundred years and feel compelled to haul out every vestige of heavy equipment to construct a shuddering tangle of cloverleafs and turnpikes. Italy still uses its hands and tries not to disturb the land, while North America bulldozes the daylights out of everything in its path. I suppose North America is sort of like the short, chubby guy who owns the flashiest car: He has to make up for his shortcomings somehow.

  The Italians have not, however, found a way to perfect traffic flow, and so, like anywhere else on the planet, dust-clogged construction zones and snarled traffic go hand in hand.

  It was dark by the time our car crawled up the long driveway to our trullo. I turned off the ignition, said a silent prayer of thanks to the travel gods, and checked the odometer: We had covered nearly a thousand miles in four days.

  8

  Alberobello, Matera

  OVER NIGHT, a mysterious, itchy infection sprouted around my eyes, and by the time I awoke the next morning they were swollen and virtually sealed shut. I had also contracted Mom’s cough and runny nose, and my throat had a sandpapery quality that augurs the onset of a cold.

  I staggered to the bathroom mirror to examine my condition. A serious misjudgment of the distance between my face and the mirror caused me to bash my nose against it’s surface, which triggered a nosebleed of Biblical proportions.

  I groped around for some toilet paper to staunch the flow.

  Really. Could things get any worse? I had imagined looking glamorous and worldly during my trip to Italy. I had fantasized about sashaying down a charming cobblestone Italian street of imposing Renaissance and Baroque buildings. A warm breeze would cause the fabric in my long, white, multigored skirt to flutter gently; the sleeveless top (in matching white fabric) would show off slender, tanned, and toned arms decorated at the wrist by a stack of thin silver bangles. Large silver hoop earrings would catch a glint of sunlight and sparkle against my dark hair. In those dreams my hair was a deep chestnut brown, lush with a bouncy curl; my eyes were dark and sultry, enhanced by a hint of kohl around the edges and mascaraed lashes. My lips shimmered with a cranberry gloss. My body was smooth and tanned from top to toe, its color and texture like Baileys Irish Cream. My breasts would sit up high and firm. Italian men would halt their conversations in midsentence as they watched me stride by. Like the Girl from Ipanema, I would be regarded by one and all as an exotic, mysterious creature.

  In reality, I was exotic and mysterious in the way the Creature from the Black Lagoon is exotic and mysterious. My eyes were crusty, my hair was thin and frizzy, and my body was a pudgy billboard for the sweets I had stuffed into my maw the previous Christmas. If I so much as sashayed in this condition it might very well bring Italy to its knees in laughter.

  I assembled a grumpy list of afflictions I had endured on this trip: rainy, cold weather; mediocre food; my mother’s bouts of incontinence; colds; strategizing my mother-daughter showdown; and now a painfully itchy eye infection and a nosebleed.

  There was no one to telephone for help, and come to think of it, nothing with which to telephone. I had no choice but to find a clinic or hospital.

  On the bright side, we were in an area of Italy that was so off-season and so off the tourist radar that I could drive into Alberobello practically blind and the odds were I wouldn’t hit anyone. We followed the universal blue “H” signs and found Alberobello’s ospedale behind a service station. Never one to pass up an idle wheelchair, Mom grabbed the first one she encountered at the entrance to the hospital and used it as a walker as we made our way down the hall to the reception desk.

  Without asking, the hospital staff pounced on Mom, incorrectly deducing that she, not me, was the one in need of medical assistance. I hastily explained the situation as best I could—Jesus, did they think I actually looked this bad all the time?—and was shown into an examination room. Three medics, a woman and two men dressed in fluorescent-orange stretchy pants and dark navy fleece jackets, appeared. They stared into my eyes, prodded the areas around the lids gently— not one of them wore latex gloves, by the way—then stood back, gravely holding their chins, to consider the situation.

  I tried to be helpful: “Mi fanno male gli occhi,” I said, explaining that my eyes hurt. “Allergica alla primavera,” I added, offering some medical history that might suggest this was a seasonal allergy.

  The three nodded silently and then proceeded to confer most intently with one another. There was a lot of gesturing, heated discussion, serious looks, and more thoughtful chinholding. At one point it looked as if they might convene a medical conference on my behalf. Amid their raised voices and wildly waving hands the word “infiammazione” (inflammation) was spoken a few times, so I knew they were heading in the right direction.

  They were very nice—at least when they weren’t shouting at each other and gesticulating randomly—and soon they presented me with eyedrops and sodium chloride, with orders to bathe my eyes twice daily.

  “No charge,” the woman said proudly. “In Canada, all is no free, eh?”

  I was in no mood to argue, but for the record, my experience in Canada as well as other countries—England, Spain, and Hungary immediately come to mind—is that small amounts of medication, enough to last the duration of the holiday, are often dispensed to travellers at no cost.

  The medication worked a treat almost instantly. It was cause for raucous, riotous celebration.

  “Let’s go for lunch,” I said to Mom.

  We drove to Green Park, an agriturismo that had been recommended in an information package at our trullo. But when we arrived, it was closed. I pressed the buzzer and waited for a young man to appear. The park was not just closed that day; it was closed until after Easter, he said.

  There are so many disappointments for the off-season traveller.

  “WHY DON’T we ever stop and tour around,” Mom wondered aloud one afternoon as she padded around in her white sandals in the kitchen of the trullo. She had brought with her the same useless wardrobe as I had—on my advice.

  “Well, let’s see,” I said, looking up from the map that was spread out before me. I had been reviewing a list of places I had hoped to visit but somehow knew I would not be able to on this trip. “You’ve been unwell since we arrived and you’ve had no desire to get out of bed, you can’t walk, you shit at inopportune times, and you expect someone to always be nearby with a wheelchair. Except for at the hospital, have you seen a wheelchair here?”

  I did not want to sound mean, but someone had to acknowledge the elephant in the corner. And yes, a wallop of resentment was gathering within me. We still had four more weeks in Italy, but I just knew I would not get to experience the passeggiata, the traditional evening stroll Italians of all ages engage in each night. I would not get to hike the hills or take off for a full day without worrying about my mother worrying about me. I would not be able to explore some of the farther-flung towns without leaving her alone in the car. Or tuck into those great Italian meals I had heard so much about, unless the restaurant serving it was accessible for someone with a walker. Because I had to be constantly vigilant to my mother’s needs, I knew this was the most relaxed I would be on this holiday, and that wasn’t saying much.

  My resentment was also about my lack of
sleep. Travelling with my mother was not a restful experience. Her illnesses and various health issues worried me. When she awoke, I awoke; when she made fitful utterances in her sleep, I awoke; when she shifted in her bed, I awoke. It was like being a first-time parent with a highly sensitive radar tuned to the needs of a newborn.

  Granted, being incontinent on the Continent was no picnic for Mom. It was an awkward, shame-inducing inconvenience. And yes, people don’t plan to get sick on holidays—that just happens.

  At the same time, incontinent resentments were beginning to spill out of me. Mom had misrepresented her disabilities to me. She may say that she’s “perfectly healthy,” but that’s not the reality. Call me a pessimist, but puffing wildly after walking ten paces or showing signs of acute distress after scaling three steps does not indicate good health.

  Mom could not see, or rather she refused to admit, that our lack of excursions was entirely due to her inability to get around and her preference for staying in bed. When she gets bored, it somehow becomes my fault.

  I was prepared on this trip to modify my normally hyper-speed pace to suit her, but I was not prepared to sit and stare into space for six weeks, move only when my mother wanted to move, and go to bed when she wanted to go to bed, which is what I was more or less doing.

  And then there was the sticky issue of moral accommodation. Growing up, my mother had exerted strict control over everything I did, said, wore, and, without success, thought. She was not flexible about my desires or wishes. Now she wanted me to be flexible with her. She didn’t ask this outright; she considered it my duty as a daughter. It just didn’t seem fair. And yet I did it, like all daughters do, out of a sense of duty, and partly to prove to her that I was a good girl.

  What are the expectations of adult children, and who sets them? Had I already unconsciously set them for my children? Are you allowed to refuse the expectations, or are they considered obligations that come with being part of a family? During rushed, infrequent visits with friends, I had listened to them talk about juggling jobs, emotions, children, grandchildren, and elderly parents. They adore spending time with their grandchildren, but spending time with their parents is another story. Grandchildren are giggly and cute, and they generally do what they’re told. Elderly parents are often grouchy and demanding. They dribble from various parts of their body. But who can fault them for their crabbiness? They’re experiencing loss on a daily basis, the type of loss that awaits us younger ones who are next up at bat: loss of strength, dexterity, memory, eyesight, hearing, independence, mobility, control of their bodies. What’s more, everyone is trying to rip them off. The worst part is that their partners and dearest friends are dropping like flies.