My Cultural Moment in the Rehab Joint

Sometimes you’ve just got to take cultural solace wherever you can find it. There’s not much of that on the physical therapy floor of the nursing home where my mother is now in temporary residence, to flex her new hip.
But on our first day here, I was reminded of my previous hipster post, where I mentioned that I was looking forward to my mother’s ascent “from hospital hell to the purgatory of a nursing facility.”
When I left my mother’s new transitional digs, I overheard an elderly visitor ask the medication nurse’s name.
“Divina,” she replied.
“Divina Commedia,” he quipped.
I couldn’t help quoting the first line of Dante‘s magnum opus: I had spent a whole college year reading it all (sort of) in Italian. Next thing I knew, Virgil (just kidding) and I were reciting the next two lines together. (His Italian was a whole lot better than mine.)
It was the only time I smiled all day, especially since the lines were so apt for the situation in which I found myself:
In the middle of the journey of our life [middle age?]
I discovered myself within a dark wood [“una selva oscura”]
where the straight way was lost.
The “selva” is getting a little less “oscura” each day, and the way to go forward keeps getting slightly clearer. I’ve even discovered a computer that I can use here, on which I am composing the current post (and on which I looked over the final version of my latest Wall Street Journal piece, appearing tomorrow).
When I happen upon someone named Beatrice, I’ll know I’ve finally made it to Paradiso.