Living with monks...Chapter One

Living with Monks...Chapter 1

Last Saturday we begin our newest(and possibly) strangest adventure. we had to vacate the lovely apartment at Capigtinano and move to San Cresci where we would stay for the final week in the countryside. I don't know but a modicum about the Catholic church so I asked what I should call the monks with whom we are living. Evidently, they are not "padre" (father) or "papa"... that's  reserved for the pope...so it is  Giuseppe and ???( the other one who is away illuminated manuscripts or some such).  Giuseppe , as far as I can tell, never wears a habit, hair shirt or anything like that. He usually has on linen pants, a tee shirt and his only English words are, "Oh, my god!". He is very nice and appears to accept these two American women and baby pretty well though he wan't so keen on Betsy bathing Rider in the kitchen sink!

THE BATH

I should digress to explain why we'd even need to bathe the baby in the sink: we have a true European bathroom. That is, it is down the hall and is tiled from top to bottom so one can shower, brush your teeth and go to the toilet all in the space of a phone booth ( some people possibly remember phone booths). The positive...it's easy to clean. The negatives...it's hard to keep your toilet paper dry when you shower and some people might not even fit into the space that comprises the shower. The third negative is that you have to be a gymnast to bathe the baby in this bathroom. Anyway, we've been giving him a bird's bath but tonight will try out the small basin  that Giuseppe gave us.

The room we have has a large, double bed and a set of bunk beds plus a pack-n-play. The ceilings are 14 feet with long , shuttered windows and lovely views of the Apennines. There are two chairs about the right size for midgets or small Italians and ten feet of armoires which are all filled to capacity with sheets and blankets as is the one dresser. I have to believe the stockpile is a result of gifts to the church and not because they have that many "guests".There are religious items in abundance as one might expect and many knick knacks that I presume have been gifts to the previous priests and monks. This church is without a priest as the last one died a year or so ago so it is staffed by the two Benedictine monks who came to help with restoration and ,by design, haven't returned to the order. I understand a supply priest says mass one a month and there are often weddings but no other services on a regular basis.

Home , Sweet, Home #2

Since there are two other empty rooms on the hall, we asked if we could put Rider's crib in the room next door as he doesn't sleep very well in the same room as us. He's so sociable and wants to be in on the action and we're not usually ready to go to sleep at 8:30. With a little help from Lynn, we negotiated the deal for ten extra euros a night. Seems like a deal for the church as they weren't going to rent the room anyway and all we did was move the crib into the room! Nevertheless, everyone is sleeping better.

OK, the other downside to all this is that we are up some twenty-one pretty steep, stone steps and we have to have work with four keys to stay here. One key for the cucina (kitchen), keys for each of the bedrooms and a key for the door to the hallway on which our bedroom is located. We are not using the key for the kitchen or Rider's room and , today, I decided we'll also not use the key to our room but we're required to use the hall key as it is to the outside.  Also deserving a mention is no Internet nor phone service.

We've already had a key incident that isn't quite resolved. After a fitful moving in process on Saturday morning, we took the train into Florence for an easy afternoon of shopping and strolling. Rider had his first carousel ride and loved it,

Always liked blue horses!

we window shopped the frightfully expensive Ponte Vecchio and ate in the indoor food mart ( and bought wild boar salami). The market was much like the Eastern Market in DC.

Just the place to buy salame di Cinghiale al Tartufo

 We bought trinkets in the Duomo market and generally had a pleasant afternoon though the train ride back was too long through our own choice...it was either sit in the dirty and noisy Santa Maria Novella train station or spend longer on the clean and comfortable train. Rider made friends with a darling, seven month old Somalian boy named Mohammed. It is consistently amazing how babies gravitate to one another....they sat in the aisle and communicated with gestures and grunts and touched one another's feet.

Rider on the Firenze train

We got back to the estate just in time for dinner. That is a plus for moving to the monastery, we are eating meals at Capitignano though we take our breakfast foods with us.

Meals al fresco..perfecto

 Anyway, dinner was over after nine and Rider was toast so we piled into the car bound for our new home only to discover, upon arrival, that we couldn't find the outside door key and the monk wasn't home. Disaster!

Much searching ensued to no avail so we went back down to Lynn's to seek help. She couldn't get him on the phone either so we proceeded to prepare for a long night in the vacant room ( the girls were staying overnight in Florence) over the kitchen. By now, I was feeling a bit like Cinderella or another character in a  fairy(?) tale.  After rearranging the room, baby proofing and the like, he was just drifting off when Giuseppe called back and we decided it would be best to wake up in our own space so we undid everything and trekked to the monastery. By the time we collapsed into bed, we didn't care where we were!

So we are now on day three at the monastery and it is an adjustment but we'll make it. The key has not been found so we have to presume that somehow it was lost in Firenze and will never be found. Evidently though it is not an easy key to replace so we don't yet know the damage for this debacle. Still, accidents happen.

Life VERY quiet and we could slip into the sanctuary to pray at any given moment if we so desire. Now, how many of you  could say that?

San Cresci