So we never doubted the existence of God, and Dad never got to see Mom miss a train and get taught the lesson she so richly deserved to learn. You can’t fight God.

When we got off the bus in Paraggi I ran on ahead to the Pensione Biea. Dad called after me, “You can’t choose your own room. You have to wait until we get there.”

Rachael and I were probably going to get the Outside Room again. You had to leave the main part of the pensione to get to the Outside Room. It was a room that had been added on and had its own staircase and entrance. It also had no water pressure in the shower, and no toilet. The room was higher than the water tank, so when you turned on the shower tap it made a sucking noise, then spit at you. For some reason the bidet worked though, so we had clean bottoms and feet. Also I could run water in the bidet after I peed in it at night. Once I thought of doing the other thing, what we called “Big” rather than “Little.” (“Little” was to pee so you can guess what “Big” was.) But I knew it would not go down the bidet drain and I’d be punished.

Because we were a family of born-again, Bible-believing, fundamentalist Reformed Christians who Stood on the Word, we had euphemistic names for everything embarrassing. My mom would whisper to my sisters that she could not swim that day because she was “Off the Roof.” Mom had a whole parallel universe of phrases that turned almost everything imaginable into either a moral lesson or de-fanged its passion and left it—sex for instance, or ovaries or wombs, whatever—as harmless as a faded Victorian lavender-scented postcard. “Greetings from Montreux!” “I’m Off the Roof today,” “She has a Female Problem,” “Did you go both Big and Little?” “Is your Little Thing sore?” “You should wash under the little protective flap of skin God created to keep your Little Thing clean.”

When my “Little Thing” was “naughty,” it would stand up. It was part of “God’s beautiful gift that you must save to unwrap at Christmas—Marriage,” as Mom would say.

But this was 1962. My “Little Thing” wasn’t connected to my brain yet, and would go up and down for no particular reason. I was ten years old.

When Bible-believing fundamentalist Reformed Protestants go on vacation in Roman Catholic Italy, surrounded by unbelievers, they must witness to the truth.

When everyone else in the Pensione Biea was being served their antipasto at the evening meal, we had our heads bowed while Mother said grace.