Threshold - III

My mother enters the military hospital in Vicenza. (III of V)

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My mother was admitted to the military hospital in Vicenza where the United States maintains a NATO airbase. It was like going through a space time warp. The military gates were a science-fiction portal.

A step past the checkpoint gate, and it seemed I’d walked onto a movie set of America. The roofs were normal like they were supposed to be. They weren’t built from red upside-down gutters back and forth that looked like poor people’s homes. They were straight and neat and trim and grey. Everything was square. They had yards like normal yards and chopper style banana-seat bicycles in driveways – they had driveways — and swing sets and American toys scattered on lawns. The trees were American.

Stores sold Twinkies and Life cereal and Lucky Charms. They had American movie theaters and white chalk outlines for baseball fields and popcorn in red and white tapered boxes, and in the little American town center everybody spoke English — American — without strange acce…