The usual basketball match of Tuesday night? "Count on me" - 15 april 2009
FRANCAVILLA - For a week Grandma Fausta was not able to read newspapers or listen to TV updates on the end-of-the-world that saw her heroic protagonist (my mother-in-law saved my life, Camilla's and her daughter's and she is proud of that as if she had started a new life at 80 years of age) and she does not "exist" either, since she has no documents. That's why yesterday, after "Easter" had gone, we took - as we say in Italian - the bull by the horns: this is more important than going to L'Aquila, whose access roads are unbelievably clogged. No problem with the eyesight glasses: in a shopping mall we found a pair at an extremely discounted price.
For the hearing aids, however, it is not so easy. A friend of mine, a doctor in Chieti, Lello (who is already doing without his second brand new car, which he gave me: God bless him!), reported the matter to the manager of a well-known company in Pescara. Grandma Fausta was immediately visited: "My hearing prosthesis which cost 4500 euro - she said during the visit - is still in the house. My daughter says that not even the fire brigaders could get in, because of the high risk." The company has given her a prosthesis, restoring her back to normal, but only on trial for twenty days. The highly discounted price is 3900 euro. "I live on a pension and now as in war time, cash is like gold. It means I will stay half-deaf: after all that aid made me look so old...".
No way, I do not give up. I ask for information. Max - as always, Max - tells me that, according to a press release in the newspaper, the Red Cross of Pescara "will provide also hearing aids". I go there. Nothing: the Italian Red Cross doesn't know anything of hearing aids. I show them the newspaper which reports their press release: "We do not know, we're sorry" they say with great kindness but firmly. We'll find some other way, grandmother ... Problems, understandable, also at the Municipality of Pescara for a replacement identity document for our heroine granny. The bureaucracy wants two witnesses. Raffaella, her daughter, is not enough since the other son Maurizio (the sister wearing pants ...) has not one either. Raffaella calls me from my brother-in-law's mobile (she has already finished the nth recharge: who's going to pay for the thousands of phone calls?). I ask if I can speak to the officer, Mrs. D'Angelo. Listen - I tell her with a voice broken by my shattered nervous system - I am now far from there, to have the stitches on my broken head medicated, I am faxing you from here a photocopy of my identity card. Please try to be sympathetic. Thank you. " The document was issued on ... photocopied word of mouth. Thanks, Pescara.
Small and big problems, while the moral is not always very high and normal life seems far, far away. For the moral, here is the usual Cesare. He sends me one of his by now mythical sms messages: "Not only for us and for our children and for those who will come after, we do have to rebuild, but most of all for Celestino, Bernardino, Giovanni, Antonuccio, Lalle, Iacopo ... who enabled us to live in the L'Aquila where we lived!" with a reference to Pope Celestino V, Saint Bernardine of Siena, St. John of Capestrano, condottiere Antonuccio Camponeschi, Count Pietro Camponeschi nicknamed Lalle, Jacopo Notar Nanni, a great friend of St. Bernardine, a great trader in saffron and wool. Great Cesare. Mauro tries to get back to normality. At 8pm, he sends me the usual sms of every Tuesday evening for our basketball match ("even if the world falls... " we used to say) among us, bellied veterans, at the Salesiani gym. "Presence at basketball tonight, please ...". I reply at once: "Count on me."
For the hearing aids, however, it is not so easy. A friend of mine, a doctor in Chieti, Lello (who is already doing without his second brand new car, which he gave me: God bless him!), reported the matter to the manager of a well-known company in Pescara. Grandma Fausta was immediately visited: "My hearing prosthesis which cost 4500 euro - she said during the visit - is still in the house. My daughter says that not even the fire brigaders could get in, because of the high risk." The company has given her a prosthesis, restoring her back to normal, but only on trial for twenty days. The highly discounted price is 3900 euro. "I live on a pension and now as in war time, cash is like gold. It means I will stay half-deaf: after all that aid made me look so old...".
No way, I do not give up. I ask for information. Max - as always, Max - tells me that, according to a press release in the newspaper, the Red Cross of Pescara "will provide also hearing aids". I go there. Nothing: the Italian Red Cross doesn't know anything of hearing aids. I show them the newspaper which reports their press release: "We do not know, we're sorry" they say with great kindness but firmly. We'll find some other way, grandmother ... Problems, understandable, also at the Municipality of Pescara for a replacement identity document for our heroine granny. The bureaucracy wants two witnesses. Raffaella, her daughter, is not enough since the other son Maurizio (the sister wearing pants ...) has not one either. Raffaella calls me from my brother-in-law's mobile (she has already finished the nth recharge: who's going to pay for the thousands of phone calls?). I ask if I can speak to the officer, Mrs. D'Angelo. Listen - I tell her with a voice broken by my shattered nervous system - I am now far from there, to have the stitches on my broken head medicated, I am faxing you from here a photocopy of my identity card. Please try to be sympathetic. Thank you. " The document was issued on ... photocopied word of mouth. Thanks, Pescara.
Small and big problems, while the moral is not always very high and normal life seems far, far away. For the moral, here is the usual Cesare. He sends me one of his by now mythical sms messages: "Not only for us and for our children and for those who will come after, we do have to rebuild, but most of all for Celestino, Bernardino, Giovanni, Antonuccio, Lalle, Iacopo ... who enabled us to live in the L'Aquila where we lived!" with a reference to Pope Celestino V, Saint Bernardine of Siena, St. John of Capestrano, condottiere Antonuccio Camponeschi, Count Pietro Camponeschi nicknamed Lalle, Jacopo Notar Nanni, a great friend of St. Bernardine, a great trader in saffron and wool. Great Cesare. Mauro tries to get back to normality. At 8pm, he sends me the usual sms of every Tuesday evening for our basketball match ("even if the world falls... " we used to say) among us, bellied veterans, at the Salesiani gym. "Presence at basketball tonight, please ...". I reply at once: "Count on me."