If you know anything about Malta, it has no mountains, physically speaking. It also has no rivers. It is a beautiful 122 square mile island with gorgeous coastline famous for its bays, sandy beaches, coves, and pristine waters. It is the 10th smallest country by area. The main island is mostly tan rock sparsely speckled with some shrubbery surrounded by bright blue waters. It is an island often used on screen for period pieces set in ancient times like the hit series Game of Thrones.
Our Maltese mountains were experiential circumstance.
"We cannot climb all the mountains we face in the same way and what matters most is who you have with you in the climb."
Marsaskala, Malta. I was newly pregnant with our youngest and our oldest had just turned one and was learning to walk. The 3rd of twelve addresses we would stay at in 2017 had steep and slippery steps up to the apartment building entrance. When you arrived to the top of the flight, the last step was just the same narrow width as all the other stairs leading up to it. There was no landing.
.The door to the building entrance would rarely open easily with the key that I had, and 90% of the time while approaching it I would prepare myself for war, jiggling, jolting, and no doubt cursing at that stupid door. So many times after fighting for parking on the street in the beating down Maltese heat, I would PRAY for that door to open easily so I wouldn't be stuck on that scary narrow step with all of my groceries and a wandering wobbly toddler.
A couple times the neighbor who had a veranda next the the stairs would hear my keys jangling along with my huffs, puffs, prayers and curses of frustration as I had my daughter pinned between the door and my bags of groceries as best I could attempting to get the stupid door to unlock. He would come out and help me. Kind soul.
Parenting is strategy boot camp. But in another culture it feels like it is preparing you for special ops. The strategies of life I had to think through and invent were overwhelming. Foreign culture, language, driving on the LEFT side of the road, new life and work roles...the list is pretty long.
We had only been there a few months and were still in process for residency. Nick was away in Italy packing up our much beloved apartment in Verona to ship on a freight liner to Malta (which later reached us over 3 months later.) I had just found out we were expecting that morning when Nick was scheduled to return back.
I walked down the road to where we last found a parking space for our car and loaded our one year old into the car to go pick up an intern and friend who was scheduled to arrive at the airport soon. They were coming to help us out with various things and to see what Malta was like. With our toddler all buckled in, I sat down in the driver's seat. The car wouldn't start. The battery was dead.
I unloaded our daughter transferring her to a stroller and wandered through the neighborhood in hopes I could find someone who had jumper cables. No one.
Fifteen minutes later I heard some hammering and followed the sound over to some construction workers...they didn't speak English but they spoke Italian! Yes! ...But what the heck are jumper cables called in Italian? I described them as best as I could...they didn't have any.
I then called our boss who lived about 30 minutes north of us with traffic. He was a hero that day. He graciously drives to the airport and picks up our friend who we had no contact with because she didn't have.a European SIM card yet! Can you imagine as a young 20-something girl flying from the US to Malta and arriving to the surprise of being picked up by a complete stranger?! Thank God his thick and friendly Kentucky accent helped convince her that this bogus circumstantial story was for real and that he would take her where she was supposed to go.
While I waited, Nick called from Verona. They wouldn't let him board the plane to return to Malta because his Italian permesso was not sufficient as they said it was when he left Malta. On his flight to Verona, he completely forgot his passport but they said he could enter Italy because he had a permesso di soggiorno (residential visa) and they reassured him he could return back to Malta with that same ID card. They were wrong. No passport, no return.
The next three days he spent making his way down as far as he could in Italy by Vespa and by boat. Instead of including his Vespa in the shipment, he rode it all the way from Verona to Civitavecchia (near Rome). However, because this Vespa was only a 125 cc Vespa, he could not ride it on the autostrada, so Nick had to take all the backroads all the way down. In Rome, he stayed with some of our Italian friends for a night, then boarded a ferry to Sicily. Then he drove it across the island of Sicily down to the port at Pozzallo.
Meanwhile I was on the phone with various organizations and shipping companies speaking in both Italian and English attempting to find a way to get Nick his passport so he could make it back to us in Malta.
Those three days were a huge blur of strategizing logistics in a cloud of sheer frustration and panic. At one point while on the phone with Nick who was volcanically unloading all the possibilities of how to fix the situation, I blurted out with huge tears, "I'm pregnant!"
I had a very calculated plan on how I was going to tell him, but I couldn't hold it in any longer. I was more than maxed out on ridiculous scenarios that should not really happen in real life.
Once Nick made it Pozzallo, Sicily, they allowed him to board the ferry but he would not be allowed on the island of Malta without his passport. So our friend babysat our daughter (in a country she had just arrived in a few day ago) while I took a bus, then a ferry from Malta to the Pozzallo port. I exited the boat. Found Nick in the long line of vehicles waiting to board and hopped on with him, both of our passports in hand, and we re-boarded the ferry to take us back to Malta.
The next day was Mother's Day.
So, are there mountains in Malta? Physical ones, no. Experiential ones? Yes. At least that is our story.
Now that it has been a few years since this completely insane experience, any time I feel like I have a "mountain" in front of me I need to climb, I remember this story (and a lot of others I have accumulated).
I can do hard things.
We can do hard things.
So can you.
