Yes, dear friends, the blog is back! Until I retrieve my remusandrome.com domain name from google, you can find my ramblings on life between Remus and Rome right here at romeandremus.blogspot.it.
Since the last post a great deal has transpired- our family left the goats, bees, and green pastures of Assaf Acres and returned to a busy life in Rome; the bambini continue to adjust to full immersion Italian at school; mamma has been transformed into a beast of burden with the daily baby and backpack carrying to and from school; papa multitasks round the clock while still finding time to whip up gourmet dinners; Rome continues to both inspire and sadden us.
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| Rome, a home away from home |
Life and Death in Rome and Remus
Despite the ordinary routine of work and school, life set against the dramatic backdrop of the Eternal City offers a pageant of human drama on a daily basis. Take today, for example: we returned from school in the dark and under the drizzle of a January late afternoon with a stroller laden down with trinkets from the "Chinese shop", variety stores on nearly every block in Rome that are the only affordable places to find housewares such as doormats and alarm clocks. As we passed in front of the school gate we saw a man, probably Peruvian, crumpled and crying. A man and woman stood beside him with what appeared to be identification papers, presumably to identify and aid him. I thought I caught the smell of alcohol wafting from him as we passed. It was a heartbreaking sight under the rain. The children of course wanted to know why he was there and to satisfy their questions we created a possible back story for him to explain his despondent expression.
An hour or so later papa returned home with a wet coat and a pale face. He, too, had encountered a tragedy on the trail back home at the same time. As he and a colleague were exiting the office a motorino sped past at a high speed on the wet street, running directly into the side of an elderly woman crossing the street. At first they saw only the man and attended to him but then noticed a small shape in road of a coat. Tony held his umbrella over the woman as she slowly regained consciousness and the ambulance arrived for both. Incredibly, both driver and pedestrian survived but undoubtedly with a shattered hip and other injuries.
Unfortunately today's episodes were not unique during our time living in Rome. Shortly after I first began writing from Rome in 2002 I heard the sickening crash of a motorino against a barricade across from the eighth century Vatican City walls. This driver too had been taking a corner at a high speed and was dead before my roommate and I brought the priest next door to administer last rites. A few months later Tony was again the first on the scene at a traffic accident near the Vatican involving a motorino and a bus, playing the role of guardian angel as a first responder to the driver. Last week, Maya and her classmates apparently saved the life of a young motorist through the intercession of their prayers. The brother of one of the nuns at her school was struck by a drunk driver and proclaimed dead at the hospital. When his sister shook his arm and spoke to him, however, he regained consciousness, telling her that he had had a vision of twenty-eight child angels telling him to return to life.
Needless to say, we have sworn off transportation via motorino for ourselves and certainly for our children (believe it or not, I have seen my children's classmates transported to school on the back of their parent's motorino, which is, apart from the danger, a very common and practical way for Romans to get to work in the morning and find a parking space in this congested city).
Needless to say, we have sworn off transportation via motorino for ourselves and certainly for our children (believe it or not, I have seen my children's classmates transported to school on the back of their parent's motorino, which is, apart from the danger, a very common and practical way for Romans to get to work in the morning and find a parking space in this congested city).
But Rome is not all danger, death, and drizzle this January. The sun peeks through the gray clouds every now and then, the grass is still green, and we are having an extremely mild winter compared to what we would be suffering through if we were back on the farm in Remus. When the rain lets up we can put on our rubber boots and explore the two glorious parks next door- the landscaped Villa Sciara full of statuary and the immense Villa Pamphili with its towering umbrella pine trees.
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| A family of fauns at Villa Sciara |
While I still plan to occasionally post on Remus and Rome related themes on this blog, I'll be posting more prolifically on my new blog on the website of our new adventure, thekirkoscaravan.com. You are cordially invited to follow this blog if you are interested in its running themes of family traditions, homesteading and nature study, storytelling and theater, and the four cycles of life that the Kirkos Caravan studies--liturgical, sanctoral, the natural seasons, and the human life cycle.
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| Love captured in Rome, with ZouZou looking on |
