Renting a Room

I lost 200 pounds this weekend.
Straight off the top of my shoulders.
In relief.
Last night, I was as light as a floating feather.
We have found what may be the perfect solution to my son's upcoming life here. At least for awhile.
Just like that.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, whomever, whatever force guides this life as we know it.
I am in humble gratitude.
We found a room for my son in a single Italian woman's flat a five-minute walk away from his job.
Literally, five minutes. In a very salt-of-the-earth, real, busy Roman neighborhood. Nowhere a tourist goes. Across from the neighborhood's outdoor market.
A divorced woman's home, I would think, or perhaps a young widow -- she didn't tell us -- with two children.
I know that doesn't sound that good immediately. Which is what I thought when we talked to her on the phone and she said she lived alone with her two children.
But it is better than good. I'll tell you why.
Turns out her two children, as she described them, are two teenage guys. One 17 years old and the other 13.
Card fanatics, she said. Computer fanatics, poker lovers, game lovers.
Excuse me?
Are you talking about my son? Or your sons?
Two cute, shyish Italian boys came out of their room to meet us. They smiled. My son smiled back and immediately started chatting to them in Italian. Their eyes lit up in what looked a lot like adoration.
First thing they wanted to know was exactly how tall he was in meters (he's really tall. And he needs to find out very quickly what 6'5" is in meters).
The woman and I walked around the apartment. Italian apartments tend to be large. Italians raise their families in apartments. This one was no exception. The playstation was attached to the TV in the big living room. A basketball hoop hung at one end of the large square entry foyer.
Don't need to tell you my really tall son can shoot baskets the whole day long.
The room wasn't fancy, by any means. The bed is a pull-out single sofa. Small closet. But, a small ensuite bathroom.
He doesn't have much, my son. He's a minimalist.
Room looked great to him. Perfect, in fact, he said.
As we walked around, (the boys stayed chatting), the woman -- cute and hip in that Italian way -- told me her sons had become quite attached to one of her previous young male Danish lodgers and had keenly felt his absence.
My son's really good with younger boys, having grown up the older brother. Fits into that role like into an old comfortable slipper.
She showed me the washing machine in the apartment. I said she could show my son how to use it.
"Oh god, no, I'll just do it," she said, in Italian (nothing but Italian here). "I'm doing it anyway."
Okay.
Later, before we left, I asked her what the hours of the family were, what their day was like.
She went through the morning routine before school and her job and then for the evening, she said, "we eat dinner late, about 8:30 or even 9." (like most Italians).
Italian families always eat together. There's no everybody-eating-their-own thing at their own time here.
Thank God.
My son's probably late hours flashed before me. And his five minute walk home at the end of a long day. And his internship, all in Italian, all complicated stuff, at a place he'd like to actually get hired.
I saw him coming home to this family. To this nice Italian family with no apparent dad, but I bet a very competent single "mamma" and two sweet-looking teenage boys. Who probably like nothing better than a night of cards.
Which is what my son is partial to as well.
Instead of an hour-and-a-half drive on Italy's lunatic roads to our side of the hill.
To an empty, cold house. To make himself dinner. And then get up at the crack of dawn to do it all over again.
"He's welcome to eat with us every night," she said immediately, with no prompting of any kind on our part. "Or if he doesn't want to, (I think he actually might want to, but let's not tell her yet) he can make what he wants, of course."
200 pounds.
Lost.
Dissolved like some sort of magic diet concoction.
Right there in the big square foyer.
Under the basketball hoop.
"I like it a lot," my son said, giving her his most charming smile. "I'll take it."