A Bridge Between ~ Northern Italy Come Hell or High Water by Velia Pola

Description

In the middle of the night in a darkened airport, a tiny voice inside her head taunted her. “Do you know where your mother is?” The voice began to shriek. “I am the caregiver.”

Traipsing off to visit her 91-year old father’s ancestral village in northern Italy, the author, more Peter Pan than Mary Poppins, is an unlikely caregiver and in over her head escorting her elderly parents. In an endearing memoir, alternately light hearted and soulfully tearful, the family travels far beyond the picturesque backdrop of northern Italy, breaking ground on what has become a universal journey for millions of adult children—caring for the parents who raised them. They barely keep their heads above water in Venice, do battle with Comacchian eel on the Adriatic coast and play a harried game of hide and seek in Ravenna. They nourish their bodies and souls in Emilia-Romagna, best a belligerent agent in Bellagio and reflect on love and loss in winter's shadow on Lake Como. From Venice to Savona, vivid landscapes and historic venues blend with lessons from the author’s childhood in a crash course on aging with grace and determination.

As a generation of baby boomers confronts the long-term care of their parents, A BRIDGE BETWEEN transcends the role of travelogue to become a socially relevant love story of devotion, acceptance, and the evolution of familial relationships.