A few days something crazy happened to me. One of a mother’s worst nightmares has come true. I know, probably in one year I will laugh thinking of this, but on the moment that it happened, it wasn’t pleasant at all! I was at my mother’s home with my 3 and one and a half year old children, we were playing outside on the balcony. As I gather the things that were scattered on the ground, the youngest enters the house and closes the French window leaving me and my daughter stuck outside. And yes, before you ask me, I’m alone at home with the cell phone left inside. At first my son thinks it’s a game: he chuckles, he even seems to mock us eating chunks of pear left over the table. He seems to have fun watching me me swing the arms and scream to ask him to pull up the handle. But he’s only one and a half years old, obviously he can’t. If only I had one of these door locks, all of this wouldn’t have happened! But now it has happened and neither I nor my 3 years old daughter are McGiver, so we immediately give up using hairpins and hooks to try to open the sturdy door.
Now we must prevent the little one from going to other rooms with the risk of getting hurt. So in front of me there are two choices: let myself go and give up or find a solution to keep my son in sight until my mother returns. But…wait! I am a tour guide, I’ve already experienced similar moments when, due to some unexpected events, I found myself in unpleasant situations at the Vatican or at the Colosseum: lines under the elements, detours with forced routes (By the way, if you want to avoid all this, you should try to come now or in the low season, between November and March) … Even in those moments I could have given up abandoning myself to despair or trying to remain positive and solve the problem, not ruining the experience for my customers. I chose the second option.
I am a guide, I entertain by profession, now I have to do it for my most important client: my son. So I start singing to him the whole repertoire of Coccole sonore that comes to mind. At the beginning he cries because he realizes that he is alone. Then he finally calms down and begins to participate in ballets, games and songs. I keep doing this until my mother arrives and magically reopens the French window and brings us back.
All is well what ends well!
Why am I telling you all this? Because I’ve always thought that since I became a mother I have also improved as a tour guide. Well, the opposite happened on that day: my tourist guide experience made me a better mom.