When this first started I was quite comfortable in our little apartment. We have plenty of food, water, our usual glitchy internet, and toilet paper. What more could we need for a couple of weeks? During the week My Boy was home from school due to a cancelled school trip we went grocery shopping every day. I calculated how much food we would need for two weeks, a rather arbitrary number, and we shopped. We could only buy as much as we could carry home. That really cuts down on the hoarding possibilities.
The restrictions started slowly, like the frog being slowly boiled alive. You can get used to a lot when it comes on bit by bit. The schools closed, then the museums, then other businesses bit by bit. You know it is serious when they finally closed the coffee shops completely. The grocery stores, pharmacies, and a few other "essential businesses" are still open as well as the banks and post offices. People are getting creative to stay open. A couple of pizza places are no longer restaurants, they are now bakeries that also will sell you a little pizza on the side. A store that sells mostly sun glasses and trinkets is now a tabbacheria, a tabacco shop, an essential business in Italy. A carteria, paper store, is open. Their main business is stationary, art, and party supplies. They also sell packaging for food and most importantly right now, cleaning products.
You need to carry a self declaration in case you get stopped by the police. It basically says that you understand the restrictions and states your reason for being out and that you have not tested positive for the coronavirus. You can only go out for limited reasons, but these restrictions are widely ignored. People debate whether you can go out for exercise or not. The head of school contacted the police to ask. At that time it was allowed as long as you were alone. If you violate the rules you could get fined or jailed. I heard of one teen out spraying graffiti who was arrested, but mostly they just tell you to go home.
Recent restrictions include no face to face contact with delivery people. (Not a problem since I usually tell them to leave it in the elevator for me. No need to walk downstairs unless I really need to.) No more than two people per taxi and no one in the front seat. All taxi drivers and bus drivers must wear masks and gloves. I don't know where they are going to get the masks. All of the pharmacies are out. The one that sealed the deal for me is when they restricted travel between towns by all public and private transportation "unless for non-differable and proven reasons of work, or for matters of absolute urgency or health." I'm going to call the trip to the airport absolutely urgent and hope the taxi drivers agree.
At this point I had been thinking of coming home for a day or so. I could see things tightening down. The time to leave is while you still can. Borders in the EU are closed. Although I don't know exactly what they mean by that. To avoid problems we chose a flight that goes directly from Rome into the US. Many flights stop in the UK or an EU country before going on to San Francisco. Airports in the North of Italy are closed as well as one of the two airports serving Rome. Although that is more for lack of flights, than government restriction. The original order was to expire on March 25. At first I naively thought that it really might only last that long. Last week the premier hinted that it could be longer and more official announcements would be coming. Monday morning brought news of more travel restrictions effective immediately. We immediately started booking flights.
A couple of factors leading up to this was our living situation. We have a great little apartment with a sliver of a balcony out front and a tiny little utility balcony overlooking the courtyard in back. It's a place to hang laundry and store mops. Being inside for two weeks was starting to wear on us a bit, especially My Girl. My introverted Boy and I were actually OK but the idea of another month inside when we had other options was not looking good. Our friends live next to a farm with puppies. If we lived next to a farm with puppies I might feel differently.
I also worried about what might happen if we got sick. Most likely we would get mildly sick. John thinks we already had it when we had the flu a few weeks ago. The symptoms are the same. There is no way to know at this point. My Girl has mild asthma and the flu hit her particularly hard. The health care system here is stressed. In the North the hospitals are overflowing. Recently patients have been sent to hospitals in Germany in an effort to relieve overcrowding. There are a lot fewer patients here in the South, but the reports say that the health care system is also less robust. New facilities are going online as existing buildings are converted into hospitals and medical staff are coming in from across the world. I think things will be OK, but I felt more comfortable facing that possibility in the US.
Not least of all, John has been in California since January for tax season. He didn't plan to come back until mid-April, but that got pushed forward long ago when the travel restrictions started going into effect. He needed to get the essential work done before coming back to Rome in case he couldn't travel back and forth easily. We don't have Italian passports. So at this point it is unclear if he would be able to come into the country. By the time the schools are open and we are ready to come back I imagine that the borders will be open as well. The Italian economy is taking a huge hit without the tourists. I think they will want to let people back in as soon as it is reasonable to do so. The question is, will anyone want to come to coronavirus central?
So we are taking a brief pause in our European adventure. We'll be back when the schools open. No one can guess when that will be. The Premier hinted that the restrictions will be rolled back slowly. Does that mean weeks or months? It is impossible to know. The evening we bought the tickets they announced the second day of fewer deaths. They called it a trend. Perhaps the crisis is peaking. It could just as easily be a blip or a correction from the previous record high days. Cases in California are still increasing so we may get to experience coronavirus peaks in two different countries. Who knows how bad it will get in either place.
So after a fruitless trip to two pharmacies and no masks I decided to make face masks. I had seen a lot of pictures and posts about this. I didn't worry about masks while we were here and pretty isolated from people, but being in airports and on planes felt a lot more risky. I wondered if it would be worth the effort. I found an article about different household fabrics that made me think that it would be. Homemade masks are not as effective as surgical masks, but they are better than nothing. The irony is that we have N95 masks in California. My husband bought them the last time the smoke from the wildfires was bad. I remember thinking that I should have grabbed a few to bring with us, but the thought passed and it didn't seem to be that important. Who could have predicted a global pandemic that would cause a shortage of protective masks? So we spent the evening making masks out of a pillow case. The straps are strips of lycra My Girl brought to make dresses for her Lego mini dolls. We put wire from paperclips around the nose. My Girl was very into the craftiness. I felt very Macgyver.
Irish eyes smiling.
My Girl is excited to go. She will miss the online interaction with her friends at school. She will still do the work, but because of the time difference will most likely not attend the video conference classes. My Boy was fine here and will be fine there. It will be strange going back to California. Rome feels like home. We have renters in our house so we won't be going home exactly. California has it's own version of restrictions with stores closing, but the big difference is that the personal restrictions don't have the same weight of law. Now that we have decided I'm also excited to go as long as I know we can come back. I'm not ready to be done yet.
In other news...
We continued our celebrations this week by making ravioli on Ravioli day. Every well stocked Italian apartment should come with ravioli making tray things! I don't know enough about Persian food to properly celebrate Perisan new year. My friend said it is all about eating a lot and visiting family. So we learned about the day and ate a lot of our home made ravioli and had a zoom family party with my brothers my parents and the cousins. It was a lot of fun and a little crazy. We made French bread twice for French bread day. We all took showers on water day. We watched puppy videos on Puppy Day and played balloon volleyball for Goof Off day. We are packing to flee a center of global pandemic on Tuberculosis day. I bought saffron for paella day later this week so I'll take that to the US with me so the celebrations can continue.
Children are making signs like this to hang from windows and post around. This sign is in the building lobby. It is a great reminder that everything will be OK.
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