The Clinic

After my operation, for a few weeks I am in a clinic or struttura as they call it, named after a saint. The nuns who manage it recite their morning prayers before helping the inmates (I suppose that is what one can call them) begin their daily activities of coloring a line drawing of a flower. Kindergarten activities, you say,  but most of the guests are in their 80s and many already seem to live in another world.  Communication is at a minimum.

On the upper floor with its individual rooms the nurses or assistants have already wheeled their charges down and parked them in rows waiting for the physiotherapist to exercise a leg or an arm, but mostly they are passive participants. They are here since they have no other place to go. Children, if there are any, may just be too busy or sadly just don’t want to be bothered. Only one or two seem to carry on any kind of conversation.  They concentrate their attention on the colored pencils. Red here, or green perhaps. It does keep them busy and their minds more or less alert. 

I know only one well.  He sits at the same table every day and we greet each other when I enter.  He lived in the country in an old stone house with steep steps whose wife is now the sole caretaker of the many rose bushes rampantly covering the slope and climbing up the trees. He used to help me on my land in the country and refused to cut down a tree just because the owner said it obstructed his view of the town. When I needed to know the name of a wild plant and where to find the erba della Madonna needed for the magic potion I traditionally prepared for the feast of St. John, all I had to do was ask my Paul Bunyan. His legs at a certain point gave way and he now needs crutches. His powerful arms do nothing more than coloring a line drawing of a plant he once was on talking terms with.  

After my walk with a wheeled walker, I return upstairs to continue reading as I wait for lunch. There will be visits from friends, updating me on what is going on in the world. Occasionally I learn about who the nurses in various categories are, from those who clean to the professional nurse who can medicate where needed. I admire them all for their devotion to their work as they flit from one patient to another. Often they are too busy to tell me much about their families. I have baptized one nurse the  Principessa RapunzeI for her long hair. One of the others, no longer young, tells me that years ago they adopted a Ukrainian child when he was 18 months old. He is now eighteen. The other day in preparation for his driver’s license, he received what is known as his pink permit and could drive but with an adult in the car. Obviously she was the adult. It reminds me of when my son got his motorbike (was he 14 at the time?) and on his first trip down to Orvieto I followed in my car at a  respectful distance, just to be sure. I’ll have to ask him if he remembers.

So the days pass. I can read, but most of them cannot. Now I am back at the villa where I spent years alone before moving to Orvieto city when Covid began and I could no longer drive. There are good memories as well as others I would rather forget. That is life and I wonder what the memories of those coloring a flower and calling for the assistant to come and sharpen their pencils are.