“Well—yeah,” she says.
Kyle asks Dan about Italian culture. Yes, it really is run by the Mafia in certain pockets. Yes, Italians communicate with their hands, and each gesture has its own distinct meaning (point your finger into your cheek to tell a waiter your food was delicious; brush the tops of your fingers underneath your chin to tell your friend I don’t care). Except for university years in Texas, where he met Bethany, Dan has lived his entire life in Italy, growing up in the outskirts of Venice. His parents live in Milan and another brother lives elsewhere in the country. I ask Bethany if it was hard to follow him back to Italy when they married.
“It was hard at first,” she says. “But we’ve lived here so long now, it’s home. The States feel foreign.”
They share their upcoming family travel plans: once the school year ends, they’ll take their girls camping through Scotland and explore Paris and London. They’ll drive through Tuscany, the Alps, the French countryside with camping gear in the trunk. This is their road trip to the Grand Canyon, their visit to Chicago and New York.
Before we left for our year of travels, we received a smattering of criticism when we announced our trip around the world. Most people we told found it an amazing idea, but a few wondered why we’d invest money in something the kids wouldn’t remember later in life. For a split second, I’d second-guess our sanity, wonder if we should wait until the kids were older.
“I’d say the best thing my parents did for my brothers and me was raising us with a normal family life and traveling a lot,” Dan says. “We didn’t have much money, but we always went on family vacations. Always. We’d go to the Alps in Switzerland or Austria every summer, and we did normal family stuff.”
I think of our expat friends who feel guilty about traveling because of the cost. They live somewhere exotic, they deduce, so why should they still feel the need to travel?
“My parents got a lot of flak for taking time off, mostly from the other expats in town,” Dan explains. “But they chose not to worry about them and do what was best for our family anyway. To this day, we all still get along great.”
The act of travel, the constant moving and shuffling of our bodies and backpacks, our dotted lines across the map, the simplicity of owning less to see more—these small acts are weaving our family’s tapestry. Threads of pliable spirits when the train is delayed, rubbing sweaty shoulders with people of different races, sleeping in close quarters, converting new currency every week—these fibers are becoming the heft of our ancestral fabric, the patterns we will show our grandchildren and say, “Here—this corner of the tapestry. This is why you are who you are.” We are learning presence, how to delight in each other’s mere existence, muster affection in spite of our quirks. As Hemingway says, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”1
Dan and Bethany lead us to the Pantheon and we spend a few minutes sampling a troubadour’s cello. The kids drop euros into his instrument case, then we find another caffé and another macchiato. Dan takes us to his favorite gelateria nearby, and I spoon lemon cream into my mouth and imagine the summer afternoon when the fruit was plucked from its tree. I taste sunshine.
We will not be in Rome as long as it insists, with its infinite arched alleyways and timeworn landmarks. Its trams lead us to places on a postcard; we survey the Colosseum and imagine gladiators and lions and bloody Christians. We walk through the Vatican and scratch the smallest country in the world off our list, spin around and gaze at the 140 saints carved as statues standing guard along the balustrade columns. We overwhelm our senses in the Vatican museum, gawk in wonder at Renaissance artistry and gape at Michelangelo’s offering to the Sistine Chapel. The boys keep asking about chapels one through fifteen.
I want my kids to understand the magnitude of this history but I don’t think I understand it myself. My brain, not yet forty, cannot compute the immensity of human talent, the red-letter vigor for contributing art to a broken and beautiful world. Raphael, Caravaggio, and da Vinci have painted operas with oils and have given us the gift of seeing them. We sample more gelato by the papal residence and marvel at our midday dessert’s opulence, its simplicity of milk, cream, sugar that mingle into a song.
Anthony Doerr says, “Rome is beautiful, Rome is ugly.” It is “American before coffee was ‘to go,’ when a playground was a patch of gravel, some cigarette butts, and an uninspected swing set; when everybody smoked; when businesses in your neighborhood were owned by people who lived in your neighborhood; when children still stood on the front seats of moving cars and spread their fingers across the dash.”2 It is the crumbling walls of the Roman Forum, and it’s a model in a see-through dress plastered on a wall down our street. It’s murky tobacco shops on every corner, and it’s strangers who smile at our children. It’s a fountainhead of historic innovation, and it’s 40 percent of the population in their thirties who still live with their parents. It is the world’s magnificence of architecture and divine devotion. It is throngs of Vespas, with drivers flicking each other off.
A trio of musicians play jazz outside the Roman Forum at sunset, pealing sounds more apropos on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. We toss euros into their upturned hats, then find a bar for dinner. There are four tables, and we sit at the empty one.
The cameriere takes our order—pasta, sparkling water—and when the table next to us clears, he takes a seat.
“It’s bellissimo to see children on holiday with mamas and papas,” he says, kissing his fingers like an Italian stereotype. “Usually in here it’s couples without kids. Or it’s grandissimo groups of kids from school.” He shakes his head at the chaos of the thought.
After our meal we say Grazie, ciao, and he waves, says, “Families, they are nice. It’s good to do things while they are young.” He winks at Finn. “They don’t stay so small. Mine are here.” He points to an imaginary spot next to him, above his head. “They grow big.”
Tonight, as I lie in bed in our Roman apartment, I scroll through photos from Beijing at the beginning of our trip. All three kids look like they’ve grown a foot and have lost some pudge from their cheeks.