The first time I went to New York, I was a very young single mother off on an adventure, the girls with their father for the summer, me leaving the West Coast for the first time and without specific plans. Suddenly I was staying with a new friend, preparing for a spontaneous trip to India. I had no passport and so it was that I awoke one morning, took as many vitamins as I could find and slammed down three cups of espresso. I knew nothing of New York, merely had an amorphous image of towering buildings and masses of people; caffeine and vitamins seemed just the thing to take it on. A map or a bus schedule might have helped.
I appeared like nothing so much as a deer caught in headlights rushing headlong into harm…
I walked downtown, where I stood on the wrong corner while four buses to New York passed by on the other side of the street. Shy beyond all reason, I could not ask a stranger the obvious question, but eventually I made it onto the proper bus, where I sat wide-eyed with excitement. An older woman struck up a conversation and although I realized it only in retrospect, she must have done so out of alarm, for I am sure that I appeared like nothing so much as a deer caught in headlights rushing headlong into harm, just like me on that bus from Montclair, New Jersey, to New York City and my fate. The woman took me under her wing and got me to Rockefeller Center, where passports are issued. The kindness of this woman, and of numerous other strangers between New York, Geneva, Bombay, and Poona saved me from myself and assorted dubious fates that included Indian police, Monsoon floods, and stoning (in the village where I stayed, a woman out at night without a male escort was in danger of being stoned by outraged community members.)
“It is 8 p.m., not 8 a.m.,” I told the two confused girls.
I thought of this as I stood in a hotel in Milano, Italy, last Tuesday night. Tired from hours of driving but otherwise full of calm good spirits, I watched as two young American girls, heavy backpacks in place, tried to check out of the hotel.
“No breakfast, it’s finished,” the clerk told them.
They looked wounded, like something had been stolen from them.
“Then I guess we’ll just leave without it.”
“No, you are not to leave until tomorrow,” the clerk said.
“But we only wanted to stay for one night.”
It didn’t help matters that the clerk had the date wrong; he was beginning to confuse me, too, but it wasn’t long before I asked the right question. “What time do you think it is?” I inquired.
“It’s 8 in the morning,” they replied, “we can’t believe we slept the whole night and that they end breakfast so early.” They looked truly miserable and it was a joy to watch their faces lighten and begin to beam when I told them that it was dusk, not dawn, 8:00 in the evening, a gift of an extra day they thought they’d lost.
An hour or so later I passed them on the street, all of us heading for a nearby trattoria the hotel always recommends. I suggested we eat together. The waiter pointed gruffly to a dirty and cluttered table. We sat, at my insistence, at a nearby clean table. He gesticulated angrily, but I stood my ground and gestured, politely, for him to make the table ready for us. He was so angry as he cleared the table that the salt and pepper shakers kept falling over from the force with which he slammed them down. It was a long time before we received menus—2 not 3, and English versions—and longer still before he glanced at us again.
This was my last night in Italy, my second to last night in Europe; I was determined not to let this jerk ruin it. Plus, I felt obliged to take care of my new young friends who were terrified by my refusal to sit at the dirty table. Maybe I was even showing off, teaching them that you do not have to let yourself be intimidated into submissiveness. I asked—in Italian—for the wine list. “Italiano,” he said gruffly, patronizingly. “Si,” I responded, waiting.
I ordered a Dolcetto, not the most expensive but not the cheapest wine and then ordered as best I could the rest of the meal, letting the girls order their main courses. He wasn’t an overt jerk after that, though he never did warm to us and ignored us as best he could, leaving us to wait for the check for a long, long time.
We all need a good luck charm now and then.
While we ate, I asked them about themselves and entertained and shocked them with stories of my adventures and accomplishments and age, all with the point that look, you too can live an interesting life just by doing it, which was exactly what they were doing, I added, in spite of their first few disappointing days.
Tomorrow they could wake up and remember they’d met a nice woman who had taken them out to dinner and given them some good advice about navigating a strange place.
When the check came, against their protests I paid it. It was at this moment that the image of the woman on the bus and of all of the others came so clearly into focus. A lot of strangers have helped me along the way, I said, I welcomed the chance to treat them. Tomorrow they could wake up and remember they’d met a nice woman who had taken them out to dinner and given them some good advice about navigating a strange place. “You can use me as your good luck charm,” I said.
The next evening, after an astonishing polenta lunch in Bergamo with the Gran Maestro of the Ordine Dei Cavalieri Della Polenta, I was preparing for the night train to Paris, turning in my rental car and struggling with four heavy bags weighted with olive oil and pottery from Provence, polenta from Verona, and more. I needed a luggage cart and getting one is no easy matter.
Exhausted after nearly three weeks of travel, the strain of not knowing Italian was wearing me down. I put in my two 500 Lire pieces, hard to get in the first place, made a single wrong move and the rack closed down, taking my money and keeping the cart. There was an attendant who watched it all and refused to help me. In rude gestures, he kept saying it was not his problem, though as an attendant what exactly was his duty, I wondered. To make sure the machine stole as much lire as possible? I argued, I pleaded, I showed my 1000 Lire paper money. All I needed was change; he wouldn’t give it to me. Out of sheer frustration and the inability to curse in Italian, I suddenly burst into tears, placed my head on my arms on the coin box and simply sobbed.
A woman who had watched the entire transaction patted my arm, “No, no, no it will be fine,” she said warmly, “what do you need?” She slipped two coins into the box, pulled out a cart, and then turned to the attendant and read him the riot act in perfect Italian, turning occasionally to me and translating. Ahh, the kindness of strangers.