Biblioteca

Take 1:
Find the Viterbo Library.  On a walk I search near Porta Fiorentina, phone in hand to discover this library.  An Italian colleague told me about it in September, and I want to follow through on finding it and getting a library card.  So often I ask questions and/or express interest in what people share with me, e.g. a performance, a library, a hiking trail.  There is not enough time to follow up on everything, but I want to follow up at least some of the time (also not to seem entirely pathetic).  My colleague Danieli tells me, "They charge for a library card.  Ten euro.  Gotta discourage reading as much as we can," he says, making fun of Italy the way only an Italian can.

I go out Porta Fiorentina looking for the library, but there's just the park and a huge intersection. When I look at my phone, I realize that Danieli meant the Porta Fiorentina train station, a few blocks from there (from where we have caught the train to Rome, most recently, Connor and Hannah and I running back from the platform in hopes of seeing Mary, who was running behind when my colleague Dave saw her and offered to drive her to the train station to catch the 2:56pm Rome train to meet my dad and Jacqueline -- yes, I was being ambitious on a Friday afternoon -- and Dave got her there with two minutes to spare before the train pulled away with the four of us on it, Dave the hero driving away in his car).  Across from the train station there is a building with approximately five entrances.  Five different doors, each on an adjoining building, claim Biblioteca Viterbo Anselmo Anselmi.  I don't know which door to try, so instead I just read the hours.  The library closes daily for lunch.  It's lunch time.  I'll have to come back another day.

Take 2:
Two weeks later I am still determined to get a library card here in Viterbo.  I'm not sure exactly why: the kids read in Italian for homework; I have three Italian books I work on slowly and sporadically and with some luck I'll finish one by the end of 2019; our apartment has a few Italian versions of Geronimo Stilton and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Mary even found the Italian version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on a bookshelf last week -- a gift since she needs to read a science fiction or fantasy novel in Italian for school by the end of the month.

But still.  Even though we don't need books, I need to go the library, check it out, get a card.  At home in Waltham the library is a staple of our lives: we get books and movies, do work there, bump into acquaintances and friends, bring neighborhood buddies.  We also have a deal with our children that if they get themselves there via bike or feet, they can play on the computers there.  The kids check out double digit numbers of books at a time, reading them all, accumulating fines that we pay monthly, seemingly never annoying the Children's Room librarians who know them, what they like, which books to hold for them.  The library is a blessed, safe, homey, cozy place for all of us.

I don't hold such a high expectation for the Viterbo Library.  But I think that going and getting a card, visiting some, will ground us more, connect us to the community or teach us something new.  And we can take out some children's books to learn Italian, too.  Sebastian said to me a few months ago, "We need little kid books.  Just a sentence a page so it's not overwhelming."  I feel the same.  As much as I want to see what's going to happen with Teresa in my four euro Nicholas Sparks novel, I could really use the pick-me-up of actually finishing an Italian book, no matter what it is.  Go, Dog, Go would be pretty good (a P. D. Eastman favorite at home).

I pick a door with Viterbo Biblioteca Anselmo Anselmi in white letters.  I don't know which door and building to choose, so I choose the first one, the one closest to the main road.  I walk a set of stairs, then another, then another.  Finally I see a sign that says Biblioteca.  That's it, a sign.  An elevator in front of me, a door to the left, and a door to the right.  I try the right: the door opens and there in front of me is a desk with two librarians and even some books nearby.  We might be the only ones there: these two librarians behind the desk, me, maybe twenty books.  I'm wondering, Is this it?  I mean, I didn't expect a big library, but...We greet each other and I explain that I would like to get a library card.  The computer is down, they tell me.  Come back another time.  I ask about cards for the kids, and they show me to the Children's Room.  There, in beautiful Italian, the librarian tells me again that the system is down, but she gives me papers to fill out for each child to apply for a library card.  Cards for children are gratis, she tells me.  Whenever I don't understand and give her a baffled look, she immediately switches to English with ease and clarity.  But unless I show utter confusion, she sticks with Italian.  I love her for this.  I don't know whether she is being polite by speaking in Italian to me or kind or just not even thinking about it.  I speak my Italian, and she speaks hers until English is necessary.  It's such a kindness.  She even writes in on the forms that ask for addresses for the kids and then, underneath, for me, "Come sopra," (As above) to save me rewriting my address four more times.

I promise I'll come back.  There was no one else in the Children's Room either; I'm thinking she might remember me and the four forms she gave me.

Take 3:
At least a week goes by.  I write down "library" on my list of things to do.  I have to make this errand part of one of my walks or I won't go.  Mary and I have filled out forms for me and all four kids.  I get to the right entrance of the right building, the right staircases and floor, and finally, the right door and desk.  The system is up.  The librarians recognize me, take my form, photocopy my passport, and explain that I can use the computers but the kids can't.  No problem (in my mind).  They even give me a tour: they show me the movie section, the stacks, the periodicals.  In the children's room, the bilingual librarian patiently and methodically enters all the kids' information into the system while I browse.

An hour and a half I leave with five library cards, the movie Roxanne (thinking we can watch it as a family in English or Italian and with the other subtitles), and two children's books: Pizza Pietro and Perche non dormi, Machietta?  Pete's a Pizza (William Steig) was a favorite of the older kids years ago, when they had a babysitter who would act out the story with them, carrying them to the couch and putting cheese/pieces of paper and pepperoni/checkers on them.

These are books we can read and finish.


Take 4:
New deal with kids: if you read the books that I brought home from the library, you can come back to the library and choose a movie.  (The limit here at the Viterbo library is three items per checkout, and you may keep items for thirty days.  In Waltham, no limit of items and two weeks.)

On snow day number two (and today makes number three in the last two weeks), I force the kids on an excursion to the library.  There's no snow.  It fell.  It melted.  The mayor called a snow day.  (Kids are wondering, Maybe we should stay for another year?)

I go for my walk and tell them, "Meet me in one hour at Porta Fiorentina."  On my walk I listen to a podcast on This American Life.  This one I've had in my inbox from a colleague at Thayer: it's on libraries.  The timing is perfect.  The stories are beautiful.  I'm teary.  And I'm feeling good about my forced field trip for the kids.  (This American Life on libraries)  (And I'm still getting a tutorial on how to do links and hyperlinks from colleague at home, so that link is my latest accomplishment -- yes!)

The girls meet me on time.  On the way up the stairs I say to them, "Just to tell you, this won't be like home."

They look at me.  They laugh.

"We know."

I think, Of course they know this.  It's January: they know not to expect anything to be the way it is at home.

We walk out with five movies and nine books.  This morning, snow day number three (seriously, it's 35 and sunny at the moment and supposed to start raining at 3pm), Sebastian and I read Il Tempo per Sognare.  I hear Mary and Daniel reading it now.  Poor Theo has so much to do that he lies down and dreams that there are ten Theos to help him, only to discover that more people means more work.  I've read it twice now and I have about ten words to look up.  (I'm lazy in looking up words.  I skim over what I don't know when I can't figure it out by context or Latin or roots.  Daniel looks up every word he doesn't know.)

Mary tells me that she's reading a library book because it's easier than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I tell her how I didn't know all the words and still have ten to look up.  She says that she doesn't either, and while she wants to know all the words, she shouldn't really be reading a book for which she does know all the words.

Oh, right.

Take 5:
No idea.  But feeling sure there will be one.