First, a Break: Part II

And the Magical Healing Power of Myth

Jul 02, 2025

My therapist said, with a smile, at the end of our session last week, “This is a gift.”

I got a wheelchair the day after I broke my ankle. Crutches would never do on our terracotta floors, irregular with the settling of 325 years. I didn’t need another buckled road to navigate. But, with temperatures at 35 Centigrade / 100 Fahrenheit, heat that is making international news, I needed a good night’s sleep and the only air conditioning in our home is in the bedrooms, all on the second floor. This is not unusual in Italy, where only about half the homes have AC.

Our home is built rather like a fortress against the elements with walls 24 – 30’ thick, punctured by the most elegant screened French windows, each with a solid shutter to block out either the heat or the cold. An architect friend who has visited said, “It’s textbook passive solar design!” All this to say, it’s built for this. In fact, it was originally built as the summer villa for the Marchetti family from Pistoia. So, up here in the hills, it was cooler than in the stoney heat of the city. But, trust me, I haven’t lived in this kind of heat without air conditioning for….maybe 45 years. I remember one summer in a beach house on Isle of Palms where I put a little window AC in my bedroom, but the rest of it was just sweaty and salty and simmering…with heat and love and friends and shrimp and very cold beer and very good grass. I was 26 years old. I could live without AC.

The summer I lived on the beach on Isle of Palms, SC without AC. The summer of 1979. On my way to work at RTW in Charleston, the chic clothing store.I kind of love all the keys to my life around my neck.

So, we can manage downstairs during the day if we follow the breezes that pick up mid-afternoon and blow directly from the south to the north through the home. Bruno finds the prime spot on the cool terracotta in the Ingresso – Entry. His curly black hair blows in the breeze as it whispers through the tunnel created between the front door and a window on the south. Like nomads throughout the day, we begin in the Salone Grande with wide open south facing view of the valley to see what the day brings. An hour later, as the sun begins to warm the room, I move to the Study, a darker room in the northwest corner that won’t get any heat until the end of the day, where I write or work or study Italian.

Later, it’s up the stairs for a nap in the cool and shadowy bedroom, the beams overhead feel like they help to shield us from the heat of the sun on the tile roof. Dinner is in the Sala di Pranzo – or Dining Room - because it is also on the north with little light which is rather nice for dining, especially in the winter with the fireplace crackling with light. It’s very cool, as in temperature. I want to lie down on the terracotta floors like Bruno does each night when we eat.

But, the home is 500 square meters. I learned that you can pretty much take that number times 10 to find out how many square feet. A little more than that, but close enough. Technically, I can say it’s the largest home I ever owned and I wasn’t looking for it. It found us. Kind of like a large Bernese Mountain dog that you didn’t plan on adopting, but then you learn the dog had already settled on you. Before this home, the largest was 2400 square feet and we had teenagers and their friends living with us. We have also lived in 450 square feet in New York. I liked to say it had 11-foot ceilings, so “it had volume” as I raised my arms above my head for emphasis. That’s making lemonade out of lemons. But, now here we are and I have to make lemonade again, or maybe limoncello, because I live here in Italy, in a big old casa in a wheelchair.

I’ve mastered the Terre Piano, the Ground Floor, zipping around, almost able to do a full 360 in my chair now for the tight turns. But then, there is the climb to the Prima Piano (second floor in US) where we sleep, which started this whole slightly distracted story. How would I climb the steps?

The second and long run of steps to the bedroom. I sit on the step, grab the railings with each hand, push with my right foot and pull myself up with my hands. Going down, same thing in reverse.

They are stone. Hard. A bit daunting when I look up the long run of them. But, then I remembered when my son, Alexander, only 5 years old, broke his leg and, in his cast, scooted around the house and up and down the stairs for the 60 days he wore that badge of courage. So, going backwards, I lift myself up the steps. When I get to the long run of steps, there are slim metal railings almost growing out of the plaster walls (and the only kind of railings I have seen in the old Italian palazzos and villas) and I use them to hoist myself up each step while pushing with my right foot. My stepson, Collin, said, while watching me one day, “You are going to be so ripped when this is over.”

I have sore and bruised palms from applying the brakes to my wheelchair and lifting myself up and down the steps and occasionally pushing along the floor at night when I have to go to the bathroom. This is the most wretched thing I do all day. I don’t have my wheelchair upstairs as it would be useless. The bathroom is up 3 steps. Then it’s scoot, scoot, scoot through a dressing room with terracotta floors and drag myself into the bathroom, then up to standing on my right leg by grabbing the toilet and bidet. It is treacherous, but solidly trumps a bedpan. Lee would help me, but he really can’t, other than to maybe give me a hand to pull me up and “spot” me as I lower myself onto the stone floor to scoot back to bed. I know this is quite an attractive thing to imagine.

Let’s just say, I have the moving around mostly settled. I wear only cotton pajama bottoms with elastic waist and a tank top or knit t-shirt. Make up… I managed it for two days and I admit to feeling better when looked at myself on a Zoom call. Thank god Lee doesn’t need a trophy wife. No Lauren Sanchez Bezos for him. So I have let go of some vanity. But now, there is the mind….that whirling dervish of a mind, spinning and spinning….

On the day after “we” broke the ankle, (like the “we are pregnant” idea) I woke up imagining, I guess, that life would pick up where it left off. I was clearly still a little in shock. I soon noticed that I just couldn’t NOT notice the thousand little things that I would do if I were on two feet, without a thought, with the swipe of a hand, a swoop to pick something up, to move it six inches where it would look, you know, nicer. A flower to cut for a vase, the ones that are starting to brown and droop, the water spots on the marble in the Soggiorno that need the Marmo cleaner and a rag, the pillows, jeesh, the pillows that need to be fluffed up after Miss Bea burrows into them, the dishtowels that need to be tossed in the laundry, oh, and the recycling, wow, it’s bulging, and the dust, with the windows open all day and night, the dust that is settled like fine sand all over the furniture, the receipt, for what, do we need it, and that prescription needs to be put away in the Prescriptions envelope before we lose it, the plants that need to be watered in the heat, every day, please, and, oh, god, that refrigerator! What is growing on the berries, the grocery list, I’ll send it to you by text and can’t forget the laundry spray when you go, when were the dogs last out and we need to make their grooming appointment but can’t do it by phone because we won’t understand them so let’s stop and make it in person. The Bathrooms. Need. Cleaning. Bruno peed on the floor, need to spray it and wipe it up, dust bunnies under the bed. And the two vet appointments this week who will take them. Returning the rental car and picking up the next one. Laundry is piling up. I need a fresh washcloth and towel and all my makeup and some deodorant brought down to the powder room so I can clean up here. The Bathrooms. Need. Cleaning.

Does anyone happen to have a key to let me out of this prison of my mind?

There’s a little fracture in more than just my leg.

The first couple of days don’t go very well. I am tired and resentful that I can’t do what I want to do and mad at Lee for not seeing what I think needs to be done. He is tired and resentful for my nagging and judging. He is limping along like the one with the broken ankle trying to keep up with the demands of running our life, a task we efficiently approached as Divide and Conquer, as many couples do. Work with your fucking strengths or something like that.

But here I am. Unable to do what I am good at – seeing the details, seeing the relationships and how the cogs will all fit together to work. Seeing beauty and creating it. And here he is…having to do what he is not good at…seeing details of almost any kind. My husband has a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology which is a deep dive into the work of Carl Jung, can wrangle a group of 24 six-year-olds into happy and productive chaos with a sweet song on a recorder, he has the richest inner life of anyone I personally know and is the most loyal of friends. And he is, to play with this idea, my Emotional Support Human. But no one ever said Lee was good with minutiae or seeing what is physically in front of him unless it has to do with the safety of a child. He still puts his arm out in front of me when we are at a crosswalk as if I were one of his six-year-old students.

Even over caffe, that one sacred time of the day we are present for talk and a daily ritual of appreciation, the wheels in my mind started to spin. I see the yellowed leaves on the plant, the flowers offered at Aphrodite’s feet, drooping in disrespect. The fingerprints on the glass table… Be Here Now whispers Ram Dass from the Otherworld. But I can’t stop seeing what needs doing. Lee is defended. Who can blame him?

I could wash out the little Bialetti coffee pots if I parked myself at the sink in the kitchen thanks to a shallow sink basin, but I couldn’t make the coffee over a hot stove. I could let the dogs out and watch from the door. But I couldn’t pick up their mess. I could get myself upstairs, but I couldn’t carry my computer or anything that I might need.

On the first full day after getting my cast, he logged 9,256 steps and 19 times up and down the 27 steps – at our home with one short trip to the grocery. His new exercise program is, unwittingly, Functional Exercise. Every day. Vacuum, mop, dishes, help me with dinner prep, set the table, and clean up after. Manage all dog business. Go to town every other day to replenish the larder. Water all the very thirsty plants outside. Do the laundry in the Upper Laundry Room without AC in 100-degree heat. If you think it’s hot downstairs…..Move things around the home for me, ALL DAY LONG. Honey, could you please move my basket (with phone, computer, journals) to the Salone? Now, the bedroom? I need to cool off. Now, the Study? Could I please have a pitcher of water? Is it wine time? Could use a little snack with wine. Could you please straighten out that rug so I don’t trip over it? Could you please not leave the vacuum in the middle of the hall – I can’t get around it. Could you please bring my shot (not whiskey!- it’s time for it. Then he injects it for me because he’s a Type 1 diabetic and very adept at giving shots. Could you …. please….could you….please……could you….please?

Wouldn’t you just want to accidentally push me in the wheelchair down the stairs into the cantina / wine cellar?

And still…this is marriage. In sickness and in health….

On Day 5, I had an idea. We are both refreshed from sleep!!! Over coffee, I tell Lee, “Let’s name my wheelchair. You know, like Carolyn named her car Athena. Isn’t that the best? “

“That’s funny. Okay. What are you thinking? “

“Well, I like the idea of Athena , but maybe I shouldn’t copy. But, let’s just look it up and see what Athena represents. You know we have Aphrodite here, who is The Queen (referring to this slightly wacky sense that Aphrodite energy has been with me since I was a child – a passion for beauty, creativity, love - and we have a beautiful statue of her in the Salon, to which I pay my respects with roses from the garden and give little alms of gratitude almost daily lest she feel unappreciated ) so it will have to be someone she can get along with. Aphrodite can be a little jealous.”

“Don’t you even think about bringing another goddess into my sanctuary.” - Aphrodite (aka Venus)

Lee smiles, getting all this, and gets on his computer to ask ChatGP about this potential relationship. His question went something like this: How would Aphrodite feel about living with Athena?

We learned, not surprisingly, that bringing a woman as strong as Athena into the space could cause some conflict because Aphrodite prefers to maintain her position of prominence, both energetically and there on the sacrestia in the most beautiful room in our home. Even though Athena presides over different energies, there is a story of the competition for the affection of Paris which involved the two of them. Aphrodite won. I guess I would say that is no surprise. But I wouldn’t want Athena hanging around and deciding this is the time and place to act out any resentment about that ancient wound. You know what I mean?

“No, no. I get it now. It has to be a male god. Not another female goddess. There is plenty of that energy here. Ok, so let’s ask about a good companion for Aphrodite. I think we need a new energy here that we can tap into that Is something we share, maybe. Or that this particular time needs – some order out of chaos. I feel kind of overwhelmed by this. I need clarity, calm, wisdom. Pazienza. Patience! To balance the feminine energy in here that is so beautiful.”

Lee writes: What male god would be the best companion for Aphrodite, a compliment to her energy? Chat GP answered… He reads the response silently first.

“Wow. This is amazing. Ready?”

Then he reads this to me quoting ChatGP:

“Beautiful question — and truly profound. (I notice he particularly likes this compliment.) When Apollo and Aphrodite energies are alive within a single person or space, the result can be magnetic, elevated, and deeply human. It’s the rare and radiant alchemy of mind and heart, clarity and allure, discipline and delight.

“Okay! I like this. What else?” I asked. He goes on…

“Now this is what they say it feels like to embody both energies. Wow.”

🌗 How It Feels Inside the Person

You feel anchored in your truth but open to wonder and connection.
You don’t abandon reason for love — or love for reason — you live in the balance.
Your inner world is like a temple with candlelight: sacred, sensual, and wise.
You crave beauty that means something, pleasure that’s conscious, and relationships that elevate.

“That’s what we need! We need more balance.”

Lee and I can both be interior, passionate, and philosophical, in love with beauty and ideas and art and, well, in love with love. If given the choice to balance a checking account or talk about what art we want to see the next time we go to Florence….or what our dreams from last night meant, well, the talk wins every time.

But I am longing for the wise logic and clarity of Apollo to manage the mental and physical vitality we need to find our way through this Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole riddle when up is down and down is up and neither of us know exactly who we are or who we are becoming.

For us, this kind of conversation is like the angels just cued up a strings quartet.

Apollo is represented by the sun, by order, with a love of music, especially the lute and harp, of the laurel wreath, of marble. So, as we do, woo-woo, we put a beautiful bowl in the Salone with the image of the sun, found lute and harp on Spotify, and put a marble bowl near Aphrodite with shells, which she loves and reminds us of Bottecelli’s Birth of Venus (the Roman name of Aphrodite.) You never want to dis your god and goddess so I make sure Aphrodite always has fresh flowers, incense nearby, and plenty of silent gratitude for this life she has bestowed upon me, one of such beauty, extraordinary love, and the capacity to never, ever be bored because there is simply so much to create.

The bowl we placed on the table in the Salone in honor of Apollo.

For Lee’s part, I’ll leave the analysis of how this is a gift to him for his own time in self-reflection. All I know is at 6:00 last evening, he delivered to me an artistic plate of meats and melon for apertivo along with a bottle of Prosecco.

Now, with the tempering of Apollo’s wise clarity, maybe Lee and I can keep up with this casa with kindness and respect for each other along the way. And find that we, each of us, can and do embody and hold within us both the energies of Aphrodite and Apollo. Now, let’s watch them dance together.

A Renaissance Life

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