Highlights and Reflections

++++In my experience, what Europeans do best is that they linger, they savor, they relish . . . they absolutely luxuriate in their moments. The Europeans seem to realize that the flourishes and details are what makes life so delightful and meaningful. When my husband and I eagerly purchased several pastries from a bakery in Rome and I mentioned that I needed them to-go, I was so utterly amazed and enchanted, when we got back to our hotel room, to find out that our delicacies had been carefully wrapped up like a gift, tied up in bright red wrapping paper and a pretty gold ribbon. It was a poignant reminder that we can always give ourselves little gifts throughout our days, and that our every days carry so many precious gifts with them, if we take the time to unwrap our precious moments. Perhaps by carefully wrapping up our delicacies, the bakers were saying, “Slow down. Notice and savor what you are about to experience. Unwrap it intentionally and carefully. Appreciate the many parcels of beauty, and joy, and sensations that you get to partake in, every single day of your life. Be thankful for your many, many beautiful gifts, large and small.”

++++My husband and I are not typically “tour people.” We are both independent, stubborn, reluctant to take orders, and a tad manic when we are on our adventures. In this past trip to Italy, we averaged walking over 20,000 steps a day. (Our children have lamented to us, more than once, “Some people like to relax on their vacations.”) However, our well-experienced travel agent insisted that we had to take a few guided tours in order to get into the sites which we wanted to see, in an efficient, “inside scoop” sort of a way. And so we agreed to take a tour of the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica, and the museum that houses Michelangelo’s masterpiece, “David”, and a few other short, “required” tours. (The statue of David was, surprisingly to me, enormous – in most regards. Ahem. “David” is almost 17 feet tall!!) Our tour guides were a colorful bunch and quite proud of their profession. They were all multi-lingual and apparently, tour guides in Italy are required to take six different tests in order to achieve their touring licenses. The “tour guides” were distinguished from our “tour leaders” and “drivers” whose main job was just to shuffle us along, and to make sure that no one got lost. Apparently “tour leaders” can get fined thousands of dollars if they offer up any information about different sites, as that is a job which is entirely devoted to the highly adept “tour guides.” Our first tour guide (in Rome, a tour of the Coliseum) was a lovely young woman, who unfortunately, I cannot remember her name. She was beautiful and proud of her Roman heritage and had one small tattoo of some artwork that her two children had created. She was enchanting and dedicated to giving us a thorough history lesson. Another tour guide was Larisa, in Florence, who was highly dramatic, artistically snobby, and animated in a Jessica Rabbit sort of a way. Larisa was utterly horrified when I touched the “lucky boar” in the center of the city. “Don’t touch it!” she exclaimed with her dramatic flair, nose up in the air. “It’s full of bacteria. A true Florentine would never touch it!”

“I’m not Florentine. I’m an American tourist. I’m touching it,” I said, staring back at her, like a defiant child. (Larisa didn’t know me well enough to know that I am willing to put my life at risk for anything considered “lucky”. I will, without hesitation, stop traffic in order to pick up a lucky penny.)

Our most interesting tour guide was in Sienna. He was “Uncle Paulo”, an older, elegantly dressed man (the theme of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, “Arrogantly Shabby” comes to mind when I think of Uncle Paulo) who made his opinions about everything and everyone be known. He didn’t care for modern buildings, modern art, scantily dressed women (“Practically naked, can you imagine?!), nor dancing children (“I hope that they are teaching those children to learn, and not to just dance!”). Everything that disgusted him, he would declare and then for extra flourish, add the question, “Can you imagine?!?” So, how the tour ended, was something that we will never forget, nor will Uncle Paolo. A proud man, Uncle Paulo wanted to keep the tour efficiently on time, so he decided to take us on a short cut through a park, which happened to be hosting a bike race. He had wrongly assumed that the bike race would be over, but it wasn’t. So Uncle Paulo had to shuffle us through a bike race, where only a couple of us at a time, would duck under the safety ribbon, run across the street, right after a motorcycle had passed, indicating the last racer of that particular racing heat. When we all finally and safely, yet a little ruffled and harried and full of nervous giggles, reconvened at our tour bus, Uncle Paulo was obviously deeply chagrined. “This is quite possibly the worst mistake of my life! Can you imagine?!?”

I felt sorry for him. We all did. We all reassured Uncle Paulo that these are the stories that make a vacation. These little “snafus” are the things that you remember with a smile on your face, once you’ve survived them, and they are happily in your past. (I’ll save the story for another blog post in which my husband purposely bought an unusually green colored piece of luggage, specifically for this particular trip, only to have accidentally picked up the wrong piece of luggage when we arrived in Rome. It turns out that my husband picked up the suitcase belonging to a young Texan, who had also purposefully purchased the same unusual green colored, piece of luggage for his trip to Italy. These are the stories that make our trips and experiences so memorable and amusing and idiosyncratic to each of us, for years to come. Can you imagine?!)

++++I am, I realize, unfortunately American-centric, and I noticed in myself, complete surprise when I noticed Italian people with Down Syndrome or other conditions. I had to giggle at myself, to notice that I seemed to think that somehow all human experiences were somehow limited to just us Americans. I was deeply moved when were sitting in an outdoor cafe in Rome, having dinner next to a beautiful Roman family, whom I won’t soon forget. They were a young couple, with a beautiful little girl. The husband was so attentive to his little child and also to his lovely wife, who was in a wheelchair and was making constant involuntary movements and sounds. I don’t know what her affliction was exactly, but it rendered her completely dependent on her loving husband and unable to care for her little girl, as I am sure she wished that she could. The husband affectionately fed his wife dessert, and gently wiped her mouth after each bite. I found myself praying for this lovely family, and being in awe of them, all at once, in a constant stream of emotion. They were so young to be dealing with what they were experiencing, and yet they were so brave, and resilient, and determined to make the most of the moment. It was one of the moments when the Universe was giving me a reminder lesson that “the human spirit” is a Universal thing which resides in all of our bodies, no matter the race, religion, ethnicity, or condition that our individual bodies are currently in.

++++We were picked up in a car outside of our hotel by the tour company who was going to take us through the Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica (which is also unbelievably enormous – it could house more than two American football fields). We were told that we had to pick up one other family on the way, and we arrived outside of a hotel where a lovely Chilean woman and her daughter jumped into the car, giggling at the husband/father who was running towards the car from the sidewalk. He was a lovably rumpled middle-aged man, whose glasses were missing one of their arms, making his glasses perch, perilously and crookedly, at the end of his nose. The Chilean family were delightful and I felt an instant kinship to them. The husband was a lawyer, the wife had raised their four children (just like me!), and their 19-year-old daughter, a graceful young woman, was the youngest of their four children and the only girl. (just like us!) The mother and I bonded easily. She had a no-nonsense, intelligent sense of humor and a twinkle in her eyes. So, I was taken off guard, when telling each other about our children, that she mentioned that one of her sons had died. That’s when the sparkle in her eyes faded, but the beauty of her vulnerable soul still glowed.

We met Mohammed, our guide for the Vatican experience (he was the first to admit the irony of it all, being a man of Middle Eastern descent, who reminded me of a younger version of the game show host, Bob Barker), at a cafe which was below ground. As we were shuffled down the stairs, my Chilean friend, giggled, grabbed my arm, and suggested that perhaps we were being kidnapped, and that’s when my stomach turned a little, considering the idea of that perhaps not-too-far-out-of-the-realm possibility. It turned out that Mohammed was an excellent guide, with a lot of connections, so we got to see quite a bit of everything, in all of the right places and at all of the right times. When we got to the Pietà, Michelangelo’s masterpiece of Mary, holding the body of Jesus, who had just been removed from the cross, I was instantly moved to tears and I was entirely entranced for a period which felt eternal and timeless. I have honestly never seen a more beautiful work of art in my lifetime. When I turned to exclaim and share my unbelievable flow of emotion and excitement to my newfound Chilean soul sister, I noticed that she was no longer nearby, nor with our group. She was far away in a corner, and she was sort of crumpled, and small, and dark, and sad. I walked back to her, and I put my arm around her. I had no words. But I purely understand the universalness of a mother’s heart. It is amazing to me that Michelangelo was able to capture the intensity and emotion of a mother’s broken heart, forever in a slab of marble. He captured the vulnerable, defenseless, yet still armored, resilient, purposeful heart of a mother, to the point that I have no doubts that the Pietà must be nothing but Divine.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.