How would you feel? If a good looking man in suits, drove his Mercedes, came to you and helped you dump your garbage..............
Another blessing we received was that we had our own garden, a backyard and a little shed. We knew there's a small balcony but we didn't expect the house would have a garden since it's a 2nd floor apartment. So we considered that as a surprised bonus from God.
The garden was nice, we could access the garden from a swirl stairs on the balcony. It was also supposed to be easy to maintain as plants grew only on the right and left sides of the garden, there's a little shed, some pots of flower and most part of the soil in the middle was covered by white small stones, where a Tuscan style metal garden table and two metal garden chairs were set with a black parasol.
As we arrived in month of August which was happened to be the hottest month of summer this year in Italy, plus the location of the house that surrounded by private and public gardens, where there were many ponds with static water inside. The combination made perfect for thousand mosquitoes to grow and live happily.
Though we loved the garden and have used the balcony many times, we also realized many weeds have overgrown our flowers. I decided to wait until beginning of September when the temperature was much cooler, to do a clean up. There were still a lot of mosquitoes, so I went down to the garden wore complete outfit, a thick long jeans, a shirt inside, a jacket, a hat, socks and sport shoes, just enough to protect myself from nasty mosquito bites. Or at least at the end I was succeed to get just two bites instead of ten to fifteen bites. In short, I finally did all the clean up, uprooted weeds, cut wild branches, chopped down some unwanted wild trees, swept and collected all green rubbish, put them in one spot, to be thrown in the garbage dump (there's one like this in every area, with 3 to 4 different containers, for green, for plastic, for glasses and for general household trash, where all trash will be picked up regularly by city cleaners) in our neighborhood later. I actually asked Jos to help to lift and to bring them there.
Unfortunately, the man of the house was a bit reluctant to do it and was consumed by his new tasks. I felt sorry to see him overwhelmed by the high level expectation of his new work and how busy he was lately with his until midnight preparations. So I decided to handle this 'garbage dumping' by myself. To made it easier, I put them in a box and lifted it up all the way through that narrow swirl stairs to our apartment before brought it out to the garbage dump, which happened to be not so easy job, coz it's heavy, but I made it, with lot of sweats streamed down my forehead.
I brought the box full with weeds, to the garbage dump which located five minutes walking distance from our place, thinking that I would just lift the box with one hand, open the lid of the container with another hand, turn the box upside down, then dump all the weeds in at once, "that's easy!" I thought. Five minutes later I arrived at the garbage dump just to realized that I couldn't open the lid with only one hand coz it's too high and too heavy, and the box full with weeds was also to heavy to be lifted with only one hand. Then I was puzzled, stood right there next to the container, tried to figure out the most efficient way to solve the situation. I thought, I had to throw the weeds bit by bit into the container, coz there's now way I could dump it all at once. So I thought to just do it and not wasted more time. Then.........
A black Mercedes stopped near one of the container, an Italian man in black suits, bald but looked good and neat in his middle age, came out of the driving seat with a little plastic bag filled with some rubbish. He walked toward the container 'for plastic' and threw his trash in. Then he turned to me, said something in Italian....somewhat I understood as, "Do you need help?" and I stubbornly said, "No, I'm fine, thanks". But then he walked passed the container 'for green', gestured toward me with his left hand, an Italian hand gesture to say, come here, ...and he said in English,"Come, come!" Immediately he pressed the outer handle at the back of the container with one of his foot, and said something in Italian which I understood as, "hurry up! It's open now, I hold the lid for you, dump your garbage in!" I was so stirred up, so I lifted the box with both hands, turn it upside down in the open of the container, dumped all weeds inside and it was done in seconds. The man in black suits, gently smiled. I said, "Wow, grazie, signore!" He smiled again, "Ciao!" he said walked back to his Mercedes, drove, and parked his car at the office nearby, then walked and disappeared in one of the building.
I walked happily back home with an empty box in my hand. Thanking God for what just happened. "Could he be another angel you sent to help me, Lord?" I was just helped by an angel in suits driving a Mercedes while I was sweaty and at the garbage dump. So I smiled and said,"Thanks Lord!" Though I didn't know his name, he was a good looking middle age man in suits, driving a Mercedes, work at the office nearby our house. One thing I learned that day, garbage containers have opening handles at the bottom that you can just press with your foot.
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