I have been MIA with the blog posts because we had the absolute privilege to recently travel to Italy for 10 days. Getting back into the routine of life has been slow moving, so for my first post back, and in honor of our recent Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to highlight 2 things that happened during our trip that made me thankful and gave me faith in other people when traveling with L.
L is what we would call a “seasoned” traveler…..due to family living out of state, he has been on a plane once a year since he was 9 months old. Even so, we have had our fair share of great travel moments and stressful moments due to how L’s disability presents itself. For our recent trip, he knocked it out of the ballpark, helping his fellow travelers with navigating the airport and walking around the cities we visited (navigation is one of his hidden talents). He tried lots of new foods and new experiences and overall had a great time. There were 2 specific situations that I wanted to highlight that show how there are people all over the world who “get” our kids.
The Universal Language of Cooking:
When we were in Florence, we were able to attend the Giglio Cooking School to learn how to make a full Italian pasta meal. This was an early morning activity, and L does not do well in general with early mornings, so right off the bat he was already looking for an “escape route” to get out of cooking. But the head of the cooking school, Marcella Ansaldo, was not going to let that happen! She quickly “read the room” and began engaging with L and getting him to do things that I could not get him to do at home (like separating the egg white from the egg yolk, with your hands….sensory nightmare!). She was so patient and kind, yet firm and she fully believed that L could do everything that she asked him to do. And the thing is, he did it without a fuss or frustration. She said to me “cooking is good for all people, it is good for their coordination and for learning to follow directions. It gives them a sense of accomplishment when they can sit down and eat what they have created”. As you can see from these pictures, he was so proud of his final product, and exclaimed that it was delicious!
The Tour Guide who made the extra effort
While traveling, the tour group had different local guides in each city. Overall, they all did a great job in trying to engage L in the history and what we were looking at. If you asked L where his favorite place to visit on the trip was, he will tell you it was Venice. When you ask him why, he will say because of all of the water and because of Federica, our tour guide.
She had what we called a “magic bag” where she would pull out visuals and maps to help explain to L where we were going and what we would be seeing. There is a lot of history and she was going way, way, way back, but she presented it in such a way that it was engaging to L. At one point, we were in St. Mark’s Basilica and she was discussing a specific marble that was on the wall, and L said, “there is a heart in the stone”. Sure enough, there was a heart within all of the veining in the stone and Federica said that in all of the years she has done this tour, no one has ever seen that (thank you to all of the years of doing the Hidden Pictures in the Highlights magazine!). She also loved how excited he was when we went to the Doge Palace and visited the prison; again he was seeing carvings and items that she had not been aware of. At the end of the day, because he had not had any gelato yet on the trip, she wanted to take him to her favorite gelato shop in Venice for a special treat (this happened to him again in Tuscany with our tour guide their too!).
While these may not seem like big things, they really did mean a lot to us. We are so used to strangers making either initial harsh judgements on L and his abilities (or his perceived lack of), or on the flip side completely ignoring him and not trying to engage because they don’t think he “gets it”. It’s hard enough dealing with this on your home turf, never mind traveling to a foreign country with a language barrier. While this trip and this overall experience may not be the norm, out of our 7 tour guides, I can say that only 1 went the non-engagement route. The other 6 all did an amazing job on reading our situation and fully engaging L so that he could enjoy the experience like everyone else in the group. This was a great example of what inclusion is and can be. And because of that, L has nothing but very fond memories of his trip, and can’t wait to go back to Italy one day!
#Life Without a Filter 