Lisa Brockwell #15 Cortidro

Cortidro  or  My Italy….

Not the Italy Nigella knows.  Not

the spaces celebrated in design folios.

Not that place where people really know

how to live.  I find an old tube of ointment

in my bathroom cabinet, an unlikely amulet –

it takes me somewhere else, entirely.

To a motionless, fetid day. Forty degrees

by ten in the morning on the Padana Plain:

a fractious two year old with an eye infection,

tense multi-party talks with the in-laws,

and I’m covered in eczema, a stress

reaction to this pilgrimage – introducing

our new son to his family.  I retain

just enough sanity to know I’m fortunate

but  Room with a View it’s surely not.

After hammering out a diplomatic

understanding we take our leave for air.

The baby is crying, my head is thumping;

we cross six lanes of traffic, leave the suburbs

for the old city. Coolness descends. Silent

marble under porticos breeding deep, cold shade.

The doors of the Farmacia are wrought iron,

crafted by hand.  Inside, it’s like a crack den

for a nation of hypochondriacs – enough hospital

grade equipment to run a small intensive care unit.

Who knew it was possible to buy

this stuff retail? We distract our son

with an ultrasound machine, let him try on

an oxygen mask; we decide an ECG

is perhaps surplus to our requirements

and seek some help with our aliments. They are taken

seriously, of course. We are given

more than twenty minutes of the pharmacists time,

thousands of words are exchanged. Then the magical

tubes are produced, exclaimed over and packed.  

My tube of Cortidro remains with me.

I use it for the occasional bout

of tinea now, with warm and fond memories

of that most glamorous trip to Italy.