Michael and I sit in Trattoria Gigi toasting our on-time arrival in Lucca, and we made it he says, “By the hair of our chinny chin chin.”

I said, “By the skin of our teeth.”

You get the idea.

From Saturday morning to Tuesday afternoon, I felt like a bubble with no control. Bouncing along during our trip from Wimberley to Heather’s house to DFW to Heathrow to Leonardo da Vinci Airport to our limo to Rome to the Beehive Hotel to the train station to Pisa to our limo to Lucca. All the while wondering when the bubble would burst, and all our plans go awry.

I close my eyes and remember Michael’s raincoat billowing out behind him as he raced down the train track trying to find the first-class section of the train going from Rome to Pisa, with a young boy leading the way, crying, “HURRY! HURRY!”

Of course, it did not do any good for them to hurry because it was impossible for me to run pulling forty pounds of suitcases; I did squeeze a lot into the small space allowed. Looking back the boy saw my dilemma and headed towards me. He took the suitcase. Running.

I ran. Close at his heels. Kind of.

In the grand scheme of things we really had allowed ourselves more than three minutes to catch the train. But somehow there was a muddle in the middle of all the time changes once we arrived in Rome, with my phone saying local time was one thing and Michael saying local time was another based on info on the plane. I insisted my phone must be right — it was a computer. I was wrong. So instead of the anticipated boredom, standing around for an hour waiting for the train to Pisa, we had three minutes of heart-stopping suspense.

Once we were seated, our young friend helped to stash our suitcases then turned to Michael with his hand out.

Michael gave him three euros.

He turned to me, hand out.  Me? I had no euros.

I pointed to Michael intimating that he had the money, not me.

Mike held up his hands as if to say no mas.

 The boy’s hand remained stretched outward, palm up, not moving until Michael dug in his wallet and pulled out another ten euros. His help was worth way more than that, and I believe he was wise enough to know it.