Dear Aunt Vinnie,
I'm sitting with Dan at a little table at a caffe in the Piazza della Rotonda in Rome, trying to write you a quick aerogram with a pen that a nice German woman at the next table has lent me. She saw me fumbling in my purse for one and kindly stepped over to give me one of hers. At any rate I think I'm supposed to give it back by the time she leaves (she keeps looking over to see how much I've written!), so this letter may have a certain slapdash quality. My apologies for that. Once we get to Siena I will have recovered more fully from jet lag and have more time for a longer letter. But I did want to let know you we'd arrived safe and sound--more or less!
The trip over was really an ordeal. Delay at JFK; then a truly horrifying bit of turbulence somewhere over the Mediterranean--one of the captains said something about air pockets. And then at Fiumicino there were armed soldiers lining the corridor has we were walking towards customs! An Italian woman who was sitting close to me on the plane said it had to do with the Red Brigades, a terrorist group who has been active here lately--kidnappings and the occasional bombing and such. Rather scary, I have to say! Since I've been ill I don't really care a great deal about what happens to me, but I'd hate to think that my children might be deprived of their mother and father this early in the game! By the way, I know that as an intrepid, fearless traveler yourself, you're the one person I can tell this to in the family without worrying you too much.
Anyway now that we're here in Rome and have seen how wondrous and beautiful it is, none of the unpleasantness we experienced getting here matters. I was so jet-lagged and achey after we got to our hotel that I was not sure I should have made the trip, but after I'd had a good rest--on a too-narrow bed that has a big valley in the middle!--I woke up to the sound of bells ringing, looked up and saw a couple of pigeons flutter across the evening sky in our window, and I was so glad I had come. Since then it's been nothing but enchantment. That night we went down and ate at a little trattoria near the Piazza Barberini, which is close to our hotel, and walked through Piazza Navona, which was all lit up with lights. There were people out walking; children were swinging these odd tubes that street vendors here sell--they make the most haunting, lovely sound. There was a breeze from the direction of the Tiber. And I just felt--well, freer than at any time since I've been sick. Today we've seen a little of the foro Romano--just the part near the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (I was too tired to go much further)--the Piazza del Campidoglio, and just a little while ago the Pantheon: truly the most soft dusky magical light inside imaginable! Tomorrow we tackle the Vatican, if I feel up to it: can't wait.
I can't thank you enough for all you've done for us--keeping the children while we're gone. It's beyond generous of you--truly saint-like! But I know that you're the one person who understands why I felt the need to take a trip like this now, while I still can. I hope this little period of wellness lasts a good long time--maybe it will even be permanent--but as you know the doctors aren't very optimistic about my long-term prospects. (Party-poopers!) So I have to live as well as I can while I can. One part of me thinks I'm a monster of selfishness for spending some of this precious time away from my children rather than with them, but now that I'm here I know I was right to come. Please give them my love and tell them that Mommy is thinking about them every hour, every minute. I'll be writing them a group of postcards once I get finished with this letter--and judging from the amount of room I have left, I guess I am finally done (and not a minute too soon--the German woman is making as if to get up and looking very meaningfully over here!). Damn--some of what I've written may end up under the folded flaps of this aerogram. Most of my meaning, I think, will be clear, however. Dan sends you his love (he has truly been an angel to me during this trip). And of course you know you have mine.
Con tenerezza (to use an Italian expression!)
Patricia
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