Piccolissima Serenata

It’s so hot on this Roman balcony that my tears evaporate as they hit my cheeks. I’m in Italy. Beautiful, stinking hot Italy.  It’s dusk. It’s golden hour. It’s so perfect that it hurts. 

In the last month of her life, as if knowing the end was nigh, my mother handed me a 5x7 white envelope with a handwritten letter and a cheque. Telling me that “although she wishes with all my soul that I could have had another trip with you, life had other plans. Please use this money to spend on memories. Go to Italy, toast to me and I will be with you.” 

Cut to 1 year and two months after that letter was placed in my tear stained hands, and here I am - toasting her with prosecco, some fresh figs (which she adored) and listening to Renato Carosone.  It’s a cheerful Italian song from the 50’s. I can hear her singing along off-key, like she did in the hospital those last days, when I played it for her on my phone speaker. We were outside on the cafeteria terrace in the sun and she was in a wheelchair, attached to an oxygen tank. She was bopping her head and smiling. Dying excruciatingly slowly and smiling. 

It’s been hard to feel her here, in the bustle of this city, full to its brims with other tourists. I’ve tried in churches- and nothing. I’ve been to ancient parks, under knowing cypress trees - and still nothing. I’ve heard someone call my name in the city confusion, more than once, but when I turn to see- there’s no one. 

She would be full of questions about my travels if I could call her on the phone. I wince because I can’t. But I allow my mind the cruel luxury of asking them to myself. “Bella principessa, ti stai divertendo?” She would use her jokey voice to address me in Italian and then switch to English. She’d ask me what I ate today.  I’d reply, “Mostly pasta” and she’d say, “Tanya, come on, have some steak! You need iron in that heat. I don’t want you to faint.” Then I’d show her the figs on the table.  She would bite her hand, as if to say she was jealous and tell me to sneak some home. 

Better still, she’d be right there on the chair beside me, peeling the fig and making sure I had more of it than her. All the while humming along to the music.  I’d have no hospital memory of this song to recall. Only a perfect, sunny moment on a Roman terrace. Me, my mamma and Renato Carasone. 

It’s so perfect, that it hurts.

Piccolissima Serenata