Sisterchicks in Gondolas! (24 page)

She was ready to leave before I was because I’d gone looking for Netareena. The perky bird had escaped from the kitchen like a wise soul the minute she saw me with the box of matches trying to light the burner. And that was before the coffee bubbled over.

In my search for our flighty friend, I meandered through the dining room and into the open sitting room. I dearly missed the deep voices, the prayers, and Malachi’s reading of the Psalms. The ceilings in these rooms may have been painted with pastel clouds and cherubs and the walls covered with frescos and tapestries, but in my mind’s eye I saw them invisibly washed with the Word of God that lives and abides forever. His Word alone is eternal. That was a curious thought in this place of antiquity. There is
old, and then there is eternal. I felt hungry for the eternal.

Sue felt hungry for good coffee. Or so she told me when she found me alone in the sitting room, deep in my morning meditations.

“I was looking for Netareena,” I said.

“I have her.”

“You do? Where?”

Sue held up one of the cloth shopping bags we had bought the first day at the grocery store.

“You didn’t put her in the bag, did you? Say you didn’t.”

“Don’t worry. It’s not like I’m going to try to get her to produce eggs for me so I can sell them on the street. She was on the kitchen counter, and the bag was the best way to scoop her up.”

“So what are you going to do with her?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking of taking her with us.”

“Back to Dallas?”

“No, to San Marco Square. I thought I’d let her go there with all the other birds so she wouldn’t feel alone.”

We stood in the sitting room and argued. It would have been a much friendlier argument if we had at least sat in the sitting room and discussed the options calmly.

With each reason I presented on the side of leaving Netareena as she was, alone in the apartment, Sue became more passionate about taking the timid bird out of there.

“She needs to get out of these familiar surroundings,”
Sue said. “She has to go be with other birds so she can remember who she was before she had a major setback.”

I gave up. It didn’t matter, really. Sue was talking about Netareena as if she were a person and not a little fallen sparrow. I knew our argument would matter even less after we had some coffee and one of Lucia’s breakfast rolls.

Thus began our final full day as guests of Mama Venezia. With Sue’s “bird in the hand,” or should I say, “bird in the bag,” we made our sweetly familiar trek to Lucia’s.

She was surprised to see us. I think because we walked through her door nearly three hours later than our usual visit. Most of her morning offerings already had been snatched up. However, two fresh baci were waiting for Sue and me. Lucia presented them to us with a glimmer in her amber-flecked eyes.

The night before, while Steph had joined us for after-tobogganing gelato, I had asked her to write a note to Lucia in Italian for me. The sentiment was a simple thank-you for her kindness, along with my address, “Just in case you ever come to Dallas and want to stay with someone who speaks about six words of Italian.”

Steph thought the note was “gracious” and “sweet.” Although she didn’t know Lucia and had never been to that panetteria, she was sure Lucia would appreciate the gesture.

Steph was right. When Lucia read the note, she got
teary-eyed and came around the counter to give Sue and me big Italian mama hugs. Both of us wore a dusting of pastry flour on the front of us the rest of the day.

Paolo wasn’t quite as mushy when we showed up at one of his outdoor tables and ordered cappuccinos like pros. He flirted with us and brought us extra sugar cubes. At least we think his string of Italian was flirting. He could have been chewing us out for bringing our own breakfast rolls.

We had gone for the same table where we had sat almost a week ago on that first Sunday morning in Venice. We even sat in our same chairs. The same violinist was standing in the same pocket of shade and playing the same Vivaldi tune.

“He’s gotten even better,” Sue said as she sipped her cappuccino.

“I’m not surprised, if he’s been playing it every day.”

Sue looked across at him with a look of admiration. “I don’t think he’s been playing that piece every day. I think he’s been honoring that piece of music every day. He embraces it; he loves it. That’s why he’s gotten better.”

I would have brushed off Sue’s philosophizing that morning, but her own words made her cry. Her tears were silent and ceaseless. Those are the deepest kind. I know because I had cried tears like that over my frozen milk when we ordered our first breakfast gelato here. My tears were incited by something simple—the look. That kind
and encompassing way that Sue looks at me to let me know she accepts me just the way I am.

I felt much more whole this morning than I had that morning. So much had happened in such a short time.

I longed to know what was causing Sue’s tears now. What had changed in her this week? What was it about the Vivaldi music that got to her the way it did?

“What piece is that he’s playing?” I asked.

Sue spoke through her tears.
“Four Seasons
. He’s playing ‘Spring’ right now.”

“A time of new beginnings,” I said more to myself than to Sue.

She nodded and added, “A season of refreshment.” The tears kept coming; she didn’t try to stop them.

One of the parts of our ebb and flow that had worked so well during the week was that Sue and I let each other just “be.” I’d made an effort to stop being bossy and to honor what she had asked earlier. I didn’t “diagnose” her, and I had put aside my great ambition to fix her. But seeing her pouring out so much now in deep tears, I didn’t feel that I could stand back and just let her be. I needed to coax the truth out of her heart.

“Sue, what is it?”

“The music. The bird. God sending goodness and mercy out to follow me. All of it.”

I didn’t understand. Why would any of those things make her cry?

She reached into her bag and pulled out her notebook where she had been listing the gelato ratings. “Read this.” She opened to a page where she had written a single verse.

“Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”

The first part seemed rather harsh. I wasn’t sure why Sue would have written down a verse about repenting and sins being blotted out. I looked at her for an explanation.

“That verse was on Malachi’s list,” she said. “It was one of the passages he read yesterday morning. I saw the reference when you showed me the list that fell out of his Bible.”

“You glanced at the list one time and remembered that reference?” I knew I shouldn’t be surprised. To Sue, it must have been a piece of the puzzle to help decode her life map.

“I looked it up last night,” she said.

“When?”

“After midnight. I couldn’t sleep. I’m glad you didn’t hear me get up. I went into the sitting room and took your Bible and my flashlight and notebook. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” I smiled to myself. Every worthwhile woman’s retreat I’d ever attended listed on the brochure that we were to bring our Bible, notebook, pen, and flashlight. I always thought it odd to list those along with
sunscreen, bath towel, and spending money. As if we weren’t old enough or responsible enough to think to bring those things.

Listening to Sue, I knew why women needed to have those tools at hand whenever they went on a retreat. In the same way that I’d written down the message “You’re not done yet” so many months ago, Sue had written down this verse.

I felt as if I were just beginning to see what it meant for me not to be done yet. I was ready for what was to come next. After all that had happened this week, I could see I had entered a new season. A springtime of beginnings.

Now Sue was seeing something clearly. Something about this verse had sliced into her heart like a two-edged sword during her midnight encounter with the Spirit of God.

Understanding now the source of her stream of tears, I leaned forward. “Tell me, Sue. I want to hear. What is it?”

Her words came out low and lean. “I need to turn back to God. I need to trust Him the way I did before Jack’s accident.”

I nodded. I knew such trust was a process that involved a lot of forgiveness. I’d gone down those steps before. I’d gone through years of processing. I probably could have “tobogganed” down those steps a lot faster if I had been willing to jump into the process of forgiveness as easily as I’d jumped on the mattress last night. But for the
most part, I took one step at a time, carrying all the weight of my anger and disappointment with me.

Sue, it seemed, was ready to jump. She had solved the biggest piece of the puzzle. Turning back to God all the way, trusting Him no matter what. I understood those steps better than Sue realized.

“I’ve seen it this week in your life, Jenna. It doesn’t matter what goes wrong with the plan for life, does it? We still can start over. We can go back to God anytime.”

I nodded, even though she didn’t need my affirmation. She had grasped onto truth and wasn’t about to let go.

“It’s all so obvious to me now. God is great at visual aids, isn’t He?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant.

Sue gave a little sniff and turned her eyes toward the violin player. “Four seasons? Spring? Beginnings? It’s like God knew that if I didn’t catch what He was trying to tell me in the verse, then He knew I’d hear it in the music. He’s inviting me to enter a new season. A season of refreshing.”

I smiled as the high violin notes rose on the morning breeze and came washing over us.

“But first,” Sue said, the tears beginning to flow once more, “I have to turn back to God. All the way.”

I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze, conveying the deep-hearted understanding I had for her and for what she was saying.

“Go ahead, Sis. Jump into the deep end.”

I
’m not sure Paolo knew
what to do with the two crying, praying, laughing women who occupied the corner table that morning. He brought us a second round of cappuccinos at no charge and left a stack of square cocktail napkins for us to sop up our tears.

The violinist kept playing, as if mysteriously motivated by our emotions. Sue explained to me why she thought of the musician as honoring the music, embracing it, and loving it. She told me that echoed what she wanted to do when she returned home to her husband.

“I want to honor him, embrace him, and love him—and get better at it every day,” she said.

With awkward words I told Sue that I believed it could be well with our souls even when it might never be well with our circumstances.

She nodded, and that’s when I knew that, for both of us, a season of refreshing definitely had come. And it came, as Sue’s verse said, from being in the Lord’s presence.

By the time we had pulled ourselves together and were ready to take our swishy, sightseeing skirts to San Marco Square, the morning was almost passed. Sue had been checking periodically on Netareena in her protected sack and periodically fed the bird crumbs from her baci, making sure the bag stayed in the shade.

“It’s time to let her go,” Sue said, as we rose from the café table, leaving behind a pile of used cocktail napkins.

“Do you still want to take her to San Marco Square?”

Sue paused. Her argument earlier that morning had been that Netareena needed to be around other birds. She needed to get out of her familiar surroundings and remember who she had been before the trauma hit her. I hadn’t understood at the time, but now I could see that Sue was projecting her own experience on this little wounded bird.

I think Sue saw it, too. Whether her initial aspirations for Netareena had been subconscious or deliberate, Sue now seemed to have a different view of what needed to be done for her small charge.

Bending down and opening the mouth of the shopping bag, Sue gently shook it. “Come on. It’s okay. You can come out now. This is a good place to start over.”

Netareena emerged from the sack with a string of little
hops. She paused in the brightness of the full sun for only a moment before flapping her wings and taking off.

“Fly! Be free!” I called out as she flew to the top of the lone tree in the middle of Campo Apostoli.

“Now I’m really ready,” Sue said. “Really, really ready for anything.”

We hiked across footbridges and down narrow alleyways, caught up in a crush of sightseers all the way to the Piazza San Marco. Even so, our first impression, as we stepped into what Napoleon had dubbed “the most beautiful living room in Europe,” was how stunning the square was. The arched-front buildings on either side lined the huge plaza in perfect symmetry.

Sue and I stopped to take it all in. I wasted no time in pulling out the camera and attempting to capture the magnificence. Ahead of us was the rocket ship bell tower that Sam said had once been a lighthouse guarding the opening of the Grand Canal. Directly behind us was the clock tower. A huge white statue of a winged lion with his paw on an open book stood on a wide ledge atop the fourth floor. Above the lion on the clock tower’s roof was a gigantic bell. Two grand statues of bronze men stood on either side of the bell. Both of them held long-handled anvils poised to strike the bell on the hour.