I knew what he was asking. Stephanie and I had talked on the phone a few years ago when they were on a year-long global trip, and she had confessed that the family togetherness had taken a toll on her sanity. They ultimately powered through to the other side with a marriage stronger than before their travels, but it wasn’t without a lot of work. That evening I had hung up the phone and vowed that when we started our journey in a few years, we’d remember their struggle and what it took for them to make it out alive. We weren’t immune.
Four months ago in Chiang Mai, Kyle and I spent hours walking up and down our neighborhood street while the kids watched a movie. We confessed grievances about each other’s personalities, our struggles working together, day in and day out for years, and what would be our mutual dream scenario with the kids and our careers back in the real world. That night became the impetus for a collection of chats—marriage intimacy while navigating slippery New Zealand roads, a particular child’s speech delay while on a Ugandan porch swing, vocational unhappiness over wine in Kenya, theology in Singapore.
Passport stamps became icons for gathered wisdom. Every time we crossed political borders, we collected more conversations, more honesty, more willingness to take risks. Each heft of our backpacks marked commitment for one more day married through congested markets and frenetic metro stations. Our affection has been dirt under fingernails, translating foreign maps for the one in the driver’s seat, late-night dripping clotheslines in guesthouse bathrooms.
“Here’s the truth,” I told Ryan. “We’re actually doing well. No one’s more surprised than us. Your experience has stayed on our minds constantly. And it’s made a difference. So thanks for that.”
“Glad to be of service,” Ryan laughed. He put his arm around Stephanie and kissed her forehead.
The French are known for their sensuality, but tonight we pay for our roast duck and asparagus pizza, we walk to our car parked under Lourmarin’s fog through mistral winds, and I think of that conversation last week with Ryan and Stephanie. I think of people who think we’re crazy for traveling the world with a gaggle of kids. I think of our long talk in that Thai neighborhood. The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “Love doesn’t mean gazing at each other, but looking, together, in the same direction.”
Kyle stops me before he unlocks the car, and he kisses me, newlywed-style, under a lamppost on a foggy night in Provence.
16
ITALY
It is hard to leave France, but it means being in Italy, a handsome exchange. We cross the French-Italian border via train and watch chiaroscuro shadows dance on Tuscan hills. Barreling through the countryside at 223 miles per hour in an aluminum tube is a spectacular way to remember how loud a herd of traveling children can be, particularly when the only seats left are in the business carriage. The train stops in Milan, and men board in smart-cut suits, cross their legs, slip on tortoiseshell glasses, snap open the morning’s issue of Corriere della Sera. I pull Reed onto my lap. We are surrounded by class. A painting whirs by out the windows.
Both of our families, all eleven of us, will share an oversize apartment in Rome. We leave the train station and walk six blocks to our apartment, a trail of adults and children in backpacks, several of them crying and gnashing their teeth at the weight they carry. Our apartment is on a Roman side street in an ordinary neighborhood, but still a stone’s throw from the density of it all: Colosseum, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Vatican City. Ryan and Stephanie already explored the city with their kids several years ago, so we plan to divide and conquer for most of the week.
Our apartment’s owner is waiting inside when we arrive, and she laughs at the sight of us.
“Che bello! Bambini che viaggiano!” she says, clasping her hands and pinching our kids’ cheeks.
We feed our kids cheap pizza we picked up from the neighborhood street for dinner, and it tastes like fare from our favorite artisan restaurant in Bend. The next morning, the five of us walk down our gray street to hop on a tram. We are meeting friends we first met when we visited Italy last summer, an American family who lives in nearby Perugia.
They know of a public park where we can picnic on pizza. I sense we will eat a lot of pizza this week. But when in Rome . . .
We enter a family-run pizzerie, and Dan rattles off an order for the lot of us while I inspect the options behind the glass. This pizza is rectangular and thick, like focaccia bread, with toppings like prosciutto, peppers, and fig. The man behind the counter slices oblong hunks, weighs them on a scale, and wraps them in paper.
“You pay by the gram,” explains Dan.
Traditional Roman pizza is paper-thin and charred on the edges, but this is pizza al taglio, thick, rustic, and handheld. Although Italians dispute which city invented this style, it is popular throughout the country as an easy takeaway fast food. Dan says it’s his favorite because he grew up in Venice. I’m not sure what this means.
Dan and Bethany, his wife, and their two young girls have skipped a day of school and work to show us their favorite Roman spots, so we walk toward the Circus Maximus, now a public park, to start our day with lunch.
We pass a caffé, and Bethany asks, “Would anyone like a quick coffee before lunch?”
“I’m always up for coffee,” I say. We walk into the coffee bar and I order a macchiato, an espresso served in a small demitasse cup with a layer of foamed milk on top. Unlike the giant American chain’s counterpart, a true Italian macchiato is a cross between a straight espresso and a cappuccino. And unlike American coffee shops, Italian coffee bars aren’t filled with patrons who stay for hours to chat, let alone work from their laptops.
Coffee bars have a literal bar—people quaff their coffees standing elbow to elbow at the counter, debating the latest neighborhood news. They can also opt for soft drinks or alcohol, and everything is consumed quickly, a hit of caffeine or a buzz before moving on with the day. Most caffés have a few tables for patrons, and they charge extra for the seat.
We swig our coffee and, as we leave the bar, Dan says, “Don’t worry, we’ll get more coffee in a few hours.”
The nine of us settle on a grassy hill overlooking the Circus Maximus, a decaying stadium built around 50 BCE and last used in 549 CE; it was quarried for building materials soon after and eventually morphed into a market garden in the 1500s. At the turn of this millennium, it was still being used for public events—the Rolling Stones played here in 2014. We munch on blocks of pizza and talk about expat life while the kids roll their bodies down the hill toward the Circus.
“They’ll want to watch out for old stones,” Bethany warns.
“What—like ancient Roman Empire stuff?” I joke.