Why I Believe in God

Day 2!

Oh, did you think I was going to start off this NaBloPoMo business with something cute and fluffy? Perhaps a heart-warming anecdote about my adorable children? They are adorable, it's true, but forget that, we're going straight for the heavy stuff, man. 

OK, J/K. I didn't intend things to veer off in a serious direction at all when I first started writing this, but then once they did I thought it would be funny to really oversell it in the title. (Here is also where I insert my Language Warning - read no further if you want to avoid a word that rhymes with "spit" - although I've made you think it now anyway so might as well keep going, bwahaha.)

I was brainstorming ideas of what to write about this month when I realized that neither Josh nor I ever recorded the story I'm about to tell. Possibly because we were still suffering from PTSD for months afterward, but it's still a shame. Because it is a pretty good story, in retrospect. At the time, it was hellacious. If you've heard it in person, my apologies, but I'm telling it again here so posterity can enjoy, too. :)

Once upon a time about five and half years ago, Josh and I went to Europe. We found out we were having a baby, panicked that our window of opportunity for childless fun was closing forever, and did the responsible thing, which was to blow invest a good portion of our money on a three-week-long international vacation. (Yes, yes, I know. But YOLO! Even before YOLO was a thing.) It was a shoestring-budget backpacking trip, hitting all the finest seedy youth hostels in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Italy. Some of them even had private bathrooms! Luxury!

Anyway, this is a story about our trip home from Italy, the final stop on our trip. We had spent a couple nights in Rome, and our flight out the next morning left about 6 AM. For our last night on the continent we decided to stay at a cute little B&B only about a mile away from the airport, which was way on the outskirts of the city, about an hour from the city center. Genius idea, right? Cut out some of the travel time in the morning! 

We asked the owner of the B&B about getting a cab to the airport in the morning, but he discouraged us, explaining that a cab would cost us about 40 euros even to go such a short distance. It really wasn't far at all, it was totally walkable, he assured us! Since we were already scraping the bottom of the barrel of our trip funds, all it took were a few charming, impassioned Italian arm gestures and we were sold on the idea. He even drew us a "map", if two perpendicular lines can merit that designation:

Looks pretty hard to mess up, right? We went to sleep without too much worry.

When we woke up the next morning about 4:00 AM, we woke up with a smidgen of worry because it was drizzling rain out. Our worry escalated another smidgen when the drizzle turned into real rain by the time we left. Not the best conditions for walking a mile in the dark. Too late to call a taxi now, though. Off we went.

When we came to what we thought was the intersection where we were supposed to turn right, though, we hesitated - it didn't look especially busy for a road supposedly leading to the airport. But it was at least paved and two-laned so it was plausible, and if we had continued straight, the sidewalk would have disappeared. Plus, look at that map! Is there any ambiguity at all in that map about whether or not to turn right? I submit that there is not.

We turned right and soon began walking with a little more urgency, hoping to see a sign for the airport that never appeared. Meanwhile, the rain decided to kick things up a notch to hurricane-level downpour. We had our trusty cheap umbrellas we had picked up in Scotland, but at this point the umbrellas were about as useful in this rain as they would have been in a swimming pool.

So, just to recap, here we are, on a remote road on the outskirts of Rome. Walking. In the wee hours of the morning. In total darkness. In a deluge possibly not seen since the days of Noah. Also we are carrying 25 lb backpacks. And our flight to London leaves in less than an hour. If we miss our flight to London, we also miss our flight from London back to America, and we do not have the funds to buy another set of plane tickets home. Not only are there no cabs out that we can flag down, there aren't even any other cars. Are you stressed out yet? Because my palms are getting sweaty just writing about it again. 

We were praying so hard at this point, every other thing out of our mouths was a "Please God...Please, Please God...Let us find a taxi." I have never prayed so hard in my life, it felt like launching a million tiny threaded missiles upward into a concentrated point of pure will. At the same time, I was sure my prayers were being rendered completely ineffective since every other other thing out of my mouth in between the prayers of "Please God, Please God," was "Oh shit...Oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."

In the midst of our urgent walking we finally stumbled into a residential neighborhood, where, by the grace of God, we found a working taxi. *cue Hallelujah Chorus* Did God inspire that taxi driver to be right where we needed him at that precise time? Did God have a butterfly flap its wings billions of years ago, setting off a chain of events that led to that taxi driver being right where we needed him at that precise time? Why did He allow me, if indeed it was something he "allowed", if not orchestrated, to find the thing I needed when I needed it, but not others in equally dire or worse circumstances? I have no idea. I don't "get" God a lot of the time. I believe he works through people, and people are terrible. The mystery of how and why and to what extent he operates in our individual lives is...well, a mystery.

What I do know is that I live in America still - I didn't have to cobble together a hut out of found objects and begin life as a squatter in Italy five years ago. And whatever the cosmic formula that led to that miracle - which I am happy to label as such - I am grateful for it. :)

Back to the story...once we got into the cab, we quickly discovered that our original "map" was lacking a few crucial details. 

It's fitting that the new map is an "F" shape, for FAIL. On the way to the airport we retraced our steps and passed the intersection where we originally turned right, where we listened to our instinct that it would be foolish to continue where there was no sidewalk. That instinct proved to be right as we soon found out that had we kept going straight, we would have been walking along the equivalent of I-95, or whatever interstate highway you live near that would be batshit *insane* to walk down.

In conclusion, what is wrong with Europeans? I know they walk a lot more than we do, and I wish it were different here, but down major (and majorly unsafe) roadways??? I will be charitable and hope that it was really just this one guy, our cartographer. He was clearly a little addled since he couldn't draw a map with more than two details, so I suppose I shouldn't put it past a person like that to walk into 60 mph traffic.

And that is the story of how Tessa almost grew up speaking Italian. 

THE END.

(I promise not all my NaBloPoMo posts will be this long-winded. *whew*)