Florence in the Rain

It was raining really hard, and for some reason we kept bumping into Filipino people in Florence. It's not something I'm used to, but it evokes strange emotions in me: I feel at once safe, at home, and then a little nervous, because suddenly I feel like they know everything and that I have no privacy. This time we were on our way to the goth bar, bumping into one of the student areas with communism posters and girls with nose rings.

And on a long street we trailed a Filipino woman taking her son home from school, and from behind I thought, "Oh, she must be about my age, but I look so much younger." It must be the child, no? Even when I go to Asia, people remark that I look remarkably young. Perhaps once you give birth, the child sucks the life out of you and makes you grow heavier and wrinkled and frumpy. At about this age many women, like the woman in front of me, start to cut their hair short and perm it into strange feathery layers, something I could never quite understand, but which I know would age me 15 years in a moment.

In the rain we could not hear her words, but she was not walking the walk of a relaxed and happy woman. She was lecturing her son, but about what I don't know. She veered suddenly into a calling center. We got lost looking for the bar, and then we turned the corner and saw her again in the window. (Why do people still go to calling centers in this age of skype?) Her son was playing and sitting at a table, and she was calling someone. I never saw her face, but how did I know? her son's face? What was she doing here? Was she born in Florence?

What were her dreams? As a young child, what had she thought her future would be like? Did she read poetry and drink wine until she passed out on the weekends? Did she love passionately and sing songs? What was it that she wanted to give to her son that she never had, and what expectations did she have for her child that he would most certainly reject or not fulfill? Would her son, growing up in Europe, ever understand her or her culture? Would he grow up and think of himself primarily as a European, only to be happily delighted, confused, dismayed, elated and surprised to fly to Manila and be surrounded by millions of people who looked like him and reminded him of his parents?

In the rain, passing by, she was a blur, gone forever. We proceeded to go to a bar where everyone wore black and played sad, sad chanson music. I suppose I have not been drawing enough lately. I need to practice more. You get so lazy once you have a good digital camera, but photography is so fun for me, with so few expectations. There's room for both, I guess.

Walking back, through the heavy rain we ran into a little Italian rebel girl with punk rock patches... she was not holding an umbrella. She was too cool for that. I was so happy to see a girl like that... there will always be girls like that, headstrong and defiant and always wearing a little too much make-up and going about things their own way. If I ever have a child, and I am not sure that I ever will, I want my daughter to be like that, free of fear from the world and a little too wild to keep everyone happy.

My happiest moment was when my husband turned to me and said that he, too, loved the Uffizi. He is not an uncultivated person, but I know that going to museums is a drag for some people. Enjoying something so beautiful and with such history at the same moment as another person... it's really a great thing. We hiked up the hill in the Boboli gardens, thirsty (why do I always feel so thirsty when I travel in Europe?) and trailed by snarling, fighting British couples dressed much more fashionably than us. They did not persevere... we lost them when we reached the hill, then took a side detour and found another set of gardens that gave us what we were looking for, one of the best views in the city! It was a great moment. There was a weird episode where I was trapped in a mysterious elevator, but that's a story to tell on another day. So many had tried, and while they did not fail, they ended their journey early for some strange reason.