My Life in Italian Isolation - letter from italy

letter from italy

My Life in Italian Isolation

Sitting 1 meter apart, staying away from family, keeping the kids out of school — extraordinary times are requiring extraordinary measures.

Two people walk in Rome's Piazza Navona on Tuesday. | Andrew Medichini/AP Photo

          

By SILVIA SCIORILLI BORRELLI

Politico

03/11/2020

                    

Silvia Sciorilli-Borrelli is the Italy correspondent for POLITICO.

ROME—When news of Italy's nationwide lockdown first circulated late Monday night, I was attending my uncle’s 70th birthday dinner. After severe coronavirus containment measures were implemented over the weekend in Lombardy, my parents offered to host the dinner at their home (600 kilometers away from the epicenter of the outbreak) to avoid dining out.

We sat 1 meter apart from each other, as per the health authorities’ guidelines, five on each side of the 2-meter-wide table. It was a first. During the main course, I apologized and said I had to turn on the television. By the time Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that the whole country was being shut down, the guests — all, excluding myself, in their sixties and seventies — had lost their appetite and the celebration was over.

“We are running out of time,” Conte said.

Doctors have described the situation in Italy as warlike, with hospitals on the brink of collapse and intensive care unit staffers having to choose whom to save from death due to a shortage of mechanical ventilators.

My uncle lost his wife last year due to a sudden pulmonary infection. I can only imagine what he was feeling as incessant talk of coronavirus patients unable to breathe on their own dominated conversation on his birthday

I left my parents’ house wondering when I’d be allowed to return. My mother has multiple sclerosis, she can’t walk and her general health has significantly deteriorated over the past two years. one of my best friends in Milan scolded me earlier on Monday for going to my parents' instead of self-isolating with my daughter in my own apartment. Her partner is a doctor up north: “You’re a journalist, you simply don’t understand,” she said, implying I was putting my older family members at risk.

I called my mother’s doctor in the morning asking whether I could visit her. She suggested I avoid contact with her for a while. As a journalist, I can continue to move around freely for work. The doctor said it’s not safe for her to be around my father either.

He’s currently the mayor of a medium-sized town in the region of Abruzzo and has spent the past two weeks meeting people locally and in Rome to work on coronavirus contingency measures. As in many other places down south, the local hospital was severely downgraded a few years ago to rein in public spending. And now, with an elderly population and very few intensive care units available, local authorities like the one run by my father are scrambling for solutions.

I called my mother to tell her I couldn’t join her but that I’d stop by to leave a face mask she can wear during visits by her physiotherapist. I called about 12 pharmacies in Rome: sold out. Just like in the rest of the country.

Eventually, one of our family friends, a 44-year-old recovering cancer patient, offered a spare mask for my mother.

By then the physiotherapist had informed us she was suspending her work until April 3, the time the emergency lockdown is scheduled to expire. I decided to take the mask over nonetheless.

As I waited for the elevator, it warmed my heart to read a sign put up by two young residents offering elderly and disabled neighbors help with grocery shopping and medicines. Journalist friends in Milan said they spotted several similar signs up north too.

After dropping off the mask, I raced home to my 32-month-old daughter in record time. Rome has become a ghost town; it took me nine minutes to drive 7 kilometers — a distance it usually takes at least twice as long to navigate under the lightest of traffic.

At home, my daughter was wide awake way past her nap time, playing in her flip-flops and underwear. The nursery has been closed since Thursday, and it will remain shut at least until April 6, two days before the scheduled one-week Easter break. I wonder if she thinks we’re on a holiday.

As parents, we’re all in the same boat. We’re not supposed to rely on grandparents because they face the biggest risk from a coronavirus infection, so we’re left with a binary choice: not working or hiring childcare. Many of those who can have opted to take holiday, either because they can’t afford the extra childcare or out of fear that childcare workers will bring the virus into their homes.

Playgrounds are a no-go zone, and we’ve been advised against organizing play dates in our homes. Keeping kids indoors in early spring in Italy is almost impossible to fathom.

I’ve been sharing frustrations, home entertainment tips and even recipes with other parents in several WhatsApp channels. Everyone is coping one way or another. Some high schools across the country are offering online classes, while other students are sent homework via WhatsApp on a daily basis.

According to a poll by La7 television, most parents support the government’s decision to close schools. Yet there’s a general feeling of dismay over the poor communication by politicians in recent weeks. Many parents in my WhatsApp groups are wondering if we’ll be compensated for the lost nursery fees. The government has suggested it will support families who have had to incur extra childcare costs with “babysitter vouchers,” but nothing specific has been announced.

As cancellation messages from event organizers, airlines, my dentist, my osteopath and even my manicure salon pour in, I wonder how all these businesses and professionals will survive without the revenue they are losing.

The government has promised companies relief on salary payments, and Deputy Finance Minister Laura Castelli has announced a nationwide suspension for mortgage and loan payments. But I can’t help envisaging an economic catastrophe looming ahead.

My last thought before I get back to work is about my husband, who works in London (where few containment measures have been implemented so far). He won’t be able to join us anytime soon given the travel restrictions in Italy and the mandatory quarantine measures the British government has implemented for anyone returning from the country.

Given the very different coronavirus polices in the U.K., I wonder if he realizes the magnitude of what we’re going through here.

I don’t think families have been separated in Western Europe on such a large scale since World War II and the Cold War. Maybe doctors are right. We are in a warlike situation.