Why I'm Going to Rome ...

Brad and I have been talking bi-weekly Italian classes in Seattle with the Dante Alighieri Society of Washington  since Fall 2015. At the end of the most recent quarter, our teacher suggested we each do a presentation in Italian.  To help me understand it myself, I decided to talk about why I wanted to spend a year in Rome. Of course, it must have begun with my early childhood in an Italian neighborhood in The Bronx. Here is my 4th grade class from March 1966, 50 years ago to the month.  (I'm the girl on the left standing closest to Sr. John Agnes.) So many of my friends and neighbors were Italian and the boys I first had crushes on (John Minicucci, back row fourth from left, and Nicolas Cimenti, second cross-legged boy on left in front, for instance). Brad and I ended up getting married in New York's Little Italy and spending time on our honeymoon (luna di miele) in Venice. Then Lily studied Italian in college and spent a quarter in Rome. I went to visit her during Holy Week 2011. That definitely appealed to my inner Catholic but I was also captured by the contrasts of the place: modern and ancient, sacred and profane, beautiful and ugly, noisy and contemplative, very good and very bad. Not to mention those fountains everywhere,  running since ancient Roman times. In 2014, Brad and I spent a few days there. He loved it too. One evening, after a long day of walking and sightseeing, we stopped for wine at a small café. I looked tired and the waiter asked, "What’s wrong? Is Rome too big for you?" I said, "No, I think it is too small because I want to see very corner of it." "Oh," he said, "for that, you need one year ... " then, pausing, added "with no job!" He is il cameriere che ha cambiato la mia vita! I came home from that trip and started to contemplate retirement seriously for the first time in my life.