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Among Friends |
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| Kindness keeps the world turning 'round Compared to my grandparents' generation of World War I and the 1929 crash, and my parents' generation, which endured the Depression and World War II, I've had a cushy life. I've never gone without food or shelter. My college education was paid half by my parents and half by money I earned from easy-to-get part-time jobs. I've spent the past 40 years being paid to do work that I love. Now it's crunch time for millions of us, including my privileged and mostly untested generation. The flushing sound we hear is our global economy going down the toilet. With our peak earning period over, my husband and I face old age with a disappearing nest egg, a house plummeting in value and retirement dreams evaporating. It is time for us to tighten belts, eliminate extravagances and get down to basics: plant a bigger garden, use the library, carpool chores, rediscover chess and checkers, and go to bed and get up with the chickens we intend to raise. We went ahead with the trip we'd been planning for two years -- a vacation that might be our last -- and traveled halfway around the world, far from the false security of home, friends, dog and the local ATM. As we sightsee through history, we fend off psychic blows that will have created a vastly different America when we return to it next week. Depending on CNN to give us the gist in English of what, in any language, is all bad news all the time, we are nonetheless sustained by unexpected, precious moments that remind us that no matter how awful it gets, there will always be universal kindnesses. The day Iceland went bankrupt, I gave up trying to grasp how an entire country could go broke and packed a picnic. Already convinced there was nothing better than driving in Italy to take our minds off our troubles, my husband and I wound up under an old olive tree, munching a ham sandwich and drinking lemonade in the front yard of the simple stone house where Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452. Preparing to leave Vinci, we noticed a small wedding party gathering on the villa's porch. Along with a few curious cyclists, strolling villagers and tourists, we stayed long enough to hear, in both English and Italian, a middle-aged couple promising to cherish each other. The ancient vows synonymous with love and hope moved us to tears. An hour later, lost in a maze of super-highway exits and entrances, we waved frantically at a burly driver about to climb into the cab of his 10-ton truck after filling it with diesel. Scowling at the interruption, he hesitated, then came over to the curb where we idled with traffic zipping by at 90 miles an hour. "No Inglese!" he said, waving his arms. "No no no!" Then, spotting the map in my lap, he leaned into the car window and pointed to an intersection I'd circled in red ink. "Yes! Si! Lucca!" I replied. "Luke-a, LUKE-AH." "Ah!" He turned and trotted toward his truck, gesturing me to follow him. I was half out of the car when he started up his big engine, stuck his arm out the window and indicated we should stay on his tail. Through three terrifying roundabouts and 6 miles, we hugged his banged-up bumper like a guppy to a whale. He pulled over at the freeway entrance, came back to our car and pointed to the "LUCCA" sign. Got it! Babbling gratitude, I tried to give him a 10-euro bill for his trouble. Removing his dangling cigarette and rearing back in offense, the trucker placed a calloused hand over his left breast: "Cuore." "From the heart" needed no translation. We were on our way, another universal kindness not to be forgotten. That evening, back at the beautiful farm where we were staying, the second-grader who'd attached himself to my husband ran up with his small foam-rubber baseball and bat. "Catch?" he asked my husband eagerly. The day before, Dean had helped the boy refine his beginner's "throw, hit, catch" techniques. Now, they went off together to play baseball until the last light of a very good day fell off the horizon. As long as we share universal kindnesses, the end of the world is postponed. |
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