Santa Margherita was where the summer vacation really began. The smells were right. Gardenia, ferrous oxide from the rusted train tracks, and a hint of urine. Not ammonia-rich, real, stinking, French-style urine, but the subtle Italian variety: a faint apology for the need to relieve oneself in a corner by the ivy-covered wall next to the fountain at the end of the platform.

If we had been rich we would have taken a horse and carriage all the way from the station to the Pensione Biea in Paraggi. We took the blue diesel bus instead.

Mom sat in the one unoccupied seat. The girls and I straddled the luggage. Dad stood staring out the back window. He was still in one of his Moods because Mom had almost made us miss our connection in Milano. She did that every year. She always needed to get something important she had forgotten to pack for the vacation. So she would rush out of the station and cross the road to the shops opposite to get what she needed.

Every year Dad said the same thing. “If the train leaves before you get back we’ll just go without you!”

We children would sit, hearts pounding, praying for Mom. “Dear Jesus, please get Mom back in time. And if she’s late please speak to Dad’s heart so he won’t leave her at the station.”

God answered our prayers. Mom would make it back, but God would not go so far as to make Dad forgive her for making us all nervous wrecks and for risking spoiling “the few precious days of vacation I need so badly!” as Dad said.

Dad knew his rights. He had a highly developed sense of personal grievance. He believed that Mom was in a conspiracy to destroy his life and give him ulcers. He even blamed her for his toothaches. He believed she was in league with bus conductors and train engineers the world over to see how close she could come to making us all miss our travel connections. And how she could prove to Dad that the Lord was more on her side than on his, since the buses and trains were always just late enough so that we made them in spite of her having taken a long bath or gone shopping when he told her there was no time and she had to hurry or we’d miss the train-bus-boat, whatever.

There was no time according to the schedule. But for Mom schedules were irrelevant because angels from heaven always made the buses, trains, or boats late so we could catch them.

We knew this was a miracle and that Mom was more spiritual than Dad because the buses and trains that were late were usually late in Switzerland—that clockwork state run by chronographic fascists—yet when Mom needed a little more time to, for instance, finish shaving her legs, even Swiss trains did not run on time!