We arrived by train in suffocating heat with bags in tow. Our apartment was an oven with the sun baking its windows, and it took time to crank the air and cool it down. In the process we repeatedly blew the electrical fuse and learned by trial and error that we couldn’t both run A/C and wash clothes at the same time. But as we settled in, a late afternoon rain showered the city and cooled it off, and a pleasant breeze swept over the Arno. By the time we stepped out for dinner, all had been transformed and refreshed.
Exploring Florence was like sifting through a treasure box. We’d walk its typically urban streets with its bustling traffic and gray scenery, and these otherwise ordinary routes would transport us from one beauty to another like connect-the-dots. Here a busking violin, there the sculptures and fountain of Piazza della Signoria. Here a creamy affogato, there a hand-painted deck of cards in an artisanal paper shop. Here Michelangelo’s David, there truffled gnocchi. It was a breathtaking hunt, and every day I fell in love with something new.
Florence is a city of contrasts. You rush, and then you wait. You step from noisy streets into silent galleries. The white marble stands out against the most vibrant colors of paint, saturated pigments of startling scarlet and blue. Beggars sit cross-legged beneath opulent palaces. And while the locals treat both the beautiful and the mundane with the same nonchalance, I found myself often on the edge of tears.
But that’s not entirely the city’s doing.
Florence is where we learned about the flash flooding back home. It was Friday, July 4th, our last night in the city, and the first text came just before dinner. That evening Mitchell bought small slingshot rockets and ran around the piazza sending them into the sky and catching them. Camden bought a red leather purse. Ellie a clock. The family rode a carousel. But all the while my heart was grieving.
I couldn’t sleep that night, so I was still awake at 4:48 A.M. when I learned that little Lila whom I’d been praying for died in the floods. Along with 26 other campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, and 120+ people regionwide. I cried.
I went to our rooftop terrace to listen to worship music, and I watched the sun gently bathe the city in a sepia wash as it rose. Across the Arno, the stone banister of the Piazzale Michelangelo sat silent and empty. Occasionally a pigeon would coo and then fly, stooping to settle on the statuary of the adjacent library. And I stood there in my pajamas with my puffy eyelids, arms raised to the clouds, unable to sit still beneath the weight of both praise and lament.