Walking home.

It's been a while since I've posted here, due to work changes and other writing projects. I haven't had time for book reviews, though I've been reading plenty. But then another trip to Italy nudged me back to this forum to share some recent insights on travel, family, and home.

We went to visit our son, now a sophomore at a university in Rome.  He has adjusted very well to Italian life--is renting an apartment this semester, loving pasta pappardelle, riding the city bus.  As we followed him over the pitch black cobblestones of Trastevere, heading hither and yon with a Prosecco buzz, I felt a tremendous sense of well-being and accomplishment.  For him, and for us. Successfully navigating outside of America, for a year, or for a week.

On this trip, we once again visited one of the friendliest book stores I've ever encountered--the "Almost Corner Bookshop." Last year, the manager had recommended the Elena Ferrante series, starting me off with My Brilliant Friend. I subsequently read all four books, but that first one was the best.  This time the she recommended several titles to me, including Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I didn't select either of these, because I wanted something more lightly-themed to read on the trip. However, the book I bought, which shall remain nameless here, was a disappointment, and I've since placed the two passed over on my reading list.

I really feel like emailing the bookshop lady, thanking her for her help and the good conversation.  I wish I could pop in and tell her, but Rome is so far away now that we are home in Florida. Still, I feel like I should tell her how good it feels to find common ground over books in a foreign country.  The "Almost Corner Bookshop" felt almost like home to me.

I should confess the trip wasn't all smooth sailing, but what trip is?  For some reason, I had great difficulty with doors over there.  The automatic door in our Rome hotel stalled, with me inside. In the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Museum in Venice, I waited outside a bathroom for close to ten minutes thinking the door was locked, until a staffer breezed past me and went right in.  Darn it--I had been pulling instead of pushing. Then, I couldn't exit a gallery because I kept pushing on the right door instead of pulling on the left one.

And, even though our family got along well on this trip, there are always those little flare-ups that occur.  A son using mobile GPS versus his father with an old school map, both pointing in opposite directions.  Me shushing them when they shared the Florida/Georgia game score while a sextet tuned up for a concert.  So, of course, they returned the favor by making fun of my door issues and the occasional stumble on uneven pavement (not due to Prosecco, I promise).

Still, we achieved a comfort level with Italy, and with each other, on this trip--skill in finding bathrooms, riding the train, communicating. Buon giornos and buona seras came naturally as greetings. The landscape of palm pines, stone walls, even the graffiti, felt familiar to me from the time we landed until we flew away. Seeing our son comfortable in this environment made us comfortable too, with him, with his friends, with his choice. 

I reread my post from last year about dropping off our son in Rome ("Walking Away"). The key theme, that you have to leave a place to truly understand it, rings especially true right now.  For after this trip, I can see that is exactly what has happened over the past year to each of us.  You see, next semester the college student is coming home to continue his studies in Gainesville, Florida.  He succeeded in Italy--learned a language, made good friends, navigated an international city--and now he wants to return.  The Sunshine State's heat and palm trees and gators are a bit like a siren call to its citizens, I think.

But Italy has a bit of a siren call herself.  The evergreen foliage, sun baked stones, priceless rubble, yellow October light--I can't get them out of my mind.  They seem so familiar now, as if I've known them before.  Of course, I've known them from previous trips, but the images are stronger in my head this time around.  Maybe it's because, as my husband said, we won't likely return for a visit, now that our son is heading home. This trip should be the last for us, so these mental pictures need to last.

Maybe that's the reason the silhouettes of the palm pines and the neon Coop store signs and Neapolitan novels keep cycling through my mind.  These fairly new memories continue to connote adventure, beauty, time, choices, success.  

And now, ironically, a trace of what I can only call home. 

Our Roman Spring

 The Roman grave of John Keats with his poetry.

As I’ve mentioned before, the best way to prepare for a trip is to read something really good about your destination before embarking…not a travel guide or websites or anything produced by an app. I mean a really good story about a key city or person related to the trip, no matter how tangential.

Take Rome, for instance.  After many conversations, our family decided to visit our son’s number one college choice there. To prepare, I continued my search for books about the city and came up with a number of hits. (I’d already read The Borgias, a biography by G.J. Meyer, http://bestbookseverread.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-happened-to-rome.html.) I visited a bookstore near our home and found two more on the list: The Marble Faun (by Nathaniel Hawthorne), and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (by Tennessee Williams). I ended up reading Williams’ book—Hawthorne’s had minuscule print and thick pages.  My eyes weren’t up for it.

Roman Spring is a novella about a widow of a certain age losing her looks and her mind in the Eternal City. Karen Stone’s lavish apartment and terrace overlook the Spanish Steps. A few days into our trip, we finally made it to the top of this landmark escalier. (In a roundabout way, because construction hindered foot traffic, and we ended up ascending via a side road by accident).  Near the top of the steps, not 10 feet away was an absolute match for the terraced apartment described in the book. I pointed out the balcony to my husband.

“What’d you say? Who lived there?” he asked. “Someone famous?”

“Maybe a character in a book I just read. It’s really, really neat to see it!”

I think he sighed--he’s used to me choosing fiction over reality...and the more imaginatively off-topic a subject is, the more I gravitate toward it. For instance, several months ago my son and I watched the Rob Brydon/Steve Coogan film The Trip to Italy (twice), which made me want to visit the Protestant Cemetery in Rome to see the poet Shelley’s grave, which then made me want to see his friend John Keats’ grave, which led me to re-read my favorite poems by them and then reminisce about all the Romantic poets. (It’s amazing how poetry makes more sense at age 48 than 18). Of course, on our Rome trip we had to go to the Keats-Shelley House beside the Spanish Steps and see where Keats died of consumption at age twenty-five. Now I’m really keen on tuberculosis fiction.

As one would expect, on our trip we also saw the usual obligatory Roman things: the Colosseum, the Forum, Bernini sculpture, some baths and fountains, and more fountains and baths. These were beautiful in their relative antiquity, old, older, and oldest. But, for some reason, what remains most lively in my mind about our Roman spring, is Keats and Karen Stone enduring on opposite sides of the Piazza di Spagna, unseparated by time and reality.