The following post is set to this music.

The international wing at JFK from whence depart budget flights across the pond is an uncouth place. We found cheap, well cheapish, flights to Italy for September and found ourselves standing in a line ready for a girlfriend’s trip of a lifetime. We have a history with flying on airlines that go out of business after five years and therefore found ourselves staring with shock at gate agents who were ripping slips of paper which the airline had not yet figured out how to perforate, to say nothing of scanning a quick boarding pass on one’s phone.

No matter, one endures for a trip to Italy and we prepared to board our red-eye near midnight. I have a memory of this place which I can’t forget; a beautiful young mother struggling for hours with a stroller and a baby who was a few months old. She was all alone and it haunted me. Why was she traveling alone to Italy? I hoped it wasn’t creepy because I kept an eye on her for all those hours, wanting to be able to help if things got to be too much for her. Traveling with a child is tough, I’ve observed, and there was something in her gentle bravery which struck me as lovely. Also, if I’m honest I have to admit that I wanted to whine about the conditions of the airport and couldn’t with her dealing with so much more than I with fortitude. It is one of my failings that I was not born rich and wish I had been, and it would be obnoxious for me to complain about a little discomfort when I had the privilege of traveling to Italy.

Hello Roma!

We took a taxi from the airport to our neighborhood and nearly died at least once, maybe twice. Reports of driving in Rome are not exaggerated. Fortunately we four girls were so well wedged into a small car so that there was no harm done anytime there were violent changes of direction.

We settled into our Airbnb and had a lovely little night of sleep in which we fancied we had beaten jet lag and got up to make our jaunty way to a little espresso bar we had passed on the way in. The reports of men in Rome are not exaggerated either. Cheeky.

Breakfast on our way to the Vatican. When in Rome…

The Vatican is full of artifacts and maps and halls and guards. I didn’t see many religious people about which could probably be attributed to a weekday and no mass happening at the time. It really is a beautiful spot and gives one a sense for the vastness of the Catholic empire.

In 2015 when Kerri and Mia and I visited Italy we came to the Vatican and searched in vain for the Sistine Chapel, only to find it after walking about 13 miles and finding it…closed. We had had an upsetting day. One of us was groped, another had an encounter with the selfie stick guys, and we had all been pursued on the street by what I think were probably handsome young Italians, but which I cannot remember because I was trying hard to get us away from them.

This time we actually got in and stood amidst the whispering crush of people. Every now and then a voice would bark loudly through a loudspeaker, “silence! This is a HOLY (pronounced ‘holly’) place!” This announcement did little to bring about a sense of holiness and the whispering would cease for five seconds before resuming. Imagine living in Rome and being responsible for yelling every now and then at everyone ogling one of the most beautiful works of art in the world.

Though it didn’t foster holiness in me, the work itself did bring me metaphorically to my knees. I fancy myself as an amateur dabbler in the arts and next to Michelangelo I am an ant. A tiny little ant who can be diligent but who will never aspire to such works as this. Do you know I have quite a sense of how famous I will never be these days? It’s like when you are fifteen you think perpaps there is a chance you may have a sliver of genius and at twenty-five you begin to suspect it’s a lot of work and finally at thirty-five you begin to settle in to work that will probably never be this recongnizable.

I was moved to see Adam’s finger reaching out to touch God’s finger.

I may never understand why Michelangelo thought he needed to paint God with buttocks.

A fond memory I shall always have of the Vatican is of a woman frantically rushing through one room to another calling loudly “Sam! Sammmm!” Poor woman, I have almost lost people at the Vatican and it’s an awfully big place but I met eyes with the guard for that particular room and we both flashed laughter until he passed his hand over his face and became grave and still again. Maybe this is how you work at a holy, er holly, place in Rome and enjoy it.

When in Rome, one eats pizza. This was the place where Grace had the utter audacity to order coffee before she finished her final two bites of pizza. *sign of the cross. The shock and offense written across the waiter’s face was anathema. He gasped and verily refused. One does not order coffee until one’s food is finished. Italian set stock by their digestives and even more stock by consuming things in the proper order. We did not make that mistake twice!

Rome was my first true battle with jet lag. I’ve had skirmishes before. In Ireland where we would get to sleep at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and get up just in time to attend the lavish breakfasts in the room overlooking the bay, in Paris where we regularly went to bed at 1 o’clock in the morning and slept until 11 a.m to get up and go down tiny cups of espresso at cafes with striped awnings. At the end of it though, I could always sleep and have never in my life spent entire sleepless nights, until Rome. I walked myself through every single remedy I knew: I counted sheep, counted portholes in a ship, breathed deeply and to a certain count, meditated to scripture, listened to Psalms, read Psalms, rubbed magnesium lotion on my feet and legs and calves and well, whatever wouldn’t stop jumping. Could I have reached inside my brain and rubbed that too I would’ve. Adrenaline coursed through me and I was frantic. I am pretty sure I even told God that if he loved me he would let me sleep. I played brown noise, pink noise, white noise, and I cried. When grey dawn crept across the Roman sky I lifted a gritty soul to my maker and asked him how I was supposed to survive a red-eye flight and now this?

I felt a deep kinship with the little mother in the airport. Was this her nights? Did she ever sleep?

Sleeplessness comes with a personal battle. It is odd how spiritual it felt to me and I’ve heard others talk about how hard it is. I nod my head to agree now. It’s kind of hell.

Morning came and I took probably the first cold shower of my life and prepared to go to the Coliseum feeling like I would almost welcome a stray, ancient lion to come eat me. However this post has gotten long and I wanted the biting memories to subside a little before writing about the wonder that is the Coliseum. Of all the places I have traveled, it is still one of the most meaningful to me for its Christian history and I want to devote a whole post to it.

Meantime here are some scenes of Rome which I enjoyed.

GRANDPA TAKES A MIDDAY SMOKE BREAK

THE TREVI

VIEW OF THE CITY

UNKNOWN STREET NEAR THE VATICAN

ANCIENT BUILDINGS WATCH THE PROTEST PLACIDLY

GELATO EVERY DAY

PEACE IN PEACH

There is above the city of Rome a park in which there is perpetual autumn. It is a place of memory and where people reflect on hopes to become and hopes deferred. It carries with it secret regrets and redemptions and if you are lucky as to stumble into it quite by accident on a gloaming night it takes you in and tells you about peace and chances and new mornings. It knows about being fifteen, and twenty five, and thirty five and a hundred. It knows about sleepless mothers and people giving up dreams of how life should be for how it is. It is not a place of glory but a place to go when you don’t feel quite yourself and need a reminder that there is a larger story for which most of the time, we will be asleep.

If by some chance you spend one extra night awake, if by some chance the baby won’t sleep or the brain won’t quiet or you are about to be fed to lions the next day, you know with acuteness that man is both foolish and wise, grand and humble and whatsoever state you happen to find yourself on that given day, therewith to be content.

Ciao bella.