@syzhang - Tumblr Blog

無

A temple visit starts at a gate. But with no walls or doors, most gates here have a more symbolic purpose. A gate marks a moment: the act of arrival ends, a new journey begins. At Fushimi Inari, hundreds of red gates flow up from the temple to the sacred mountain. In superposition, they stream like frames of a film. Crossing through them, I remember the Zen Master Dogen’s claim that there are more than 64 billion moments in a day: blink, and that’s a hundred of them.

Despite the climb, we are all feeling lighthearted, and I realize a cloud has been lifted: Eliza is at her sweetest, because she knows this is our last day together on the trip. She’s mindful of the starts and ends of things. For her, as for me, the present takes on a savor of longing.

The first time I saw a Kuromi stuffy in Kyoto, with her glowering eyes and bunny-eared jester hood with a pink skull on it, I said to BJ, “My Melody has an alter ego, how very Japanese.” He quipped back, “How very Eliza.” Indeed, we’ve never been sure which Eliza we’ll get on this trip: the one with the pink bow, or the one with a spade tail.

In quantum physics, superposition posits that all possible states coexist without collapsing into one. Much of motherhood is holding onto this belief. For mothers and daughters, more often it’s a tangle. When we stood in the room of mirrors at TeamLab, a geometric series of mother-daughter pairs stretched to infinity, and in them I saw the past catching up to me, the future rushing to meet it, My Melody and Kuromi alternating until one forgets which is which. She has a levity that I never did. A few mornings ago I was trying to calm her fears about spotting a large bee, and all of a sudden she started to dance around, fluttering her hands like little wings and waggling her butt, before bopping it on my hip: “Bzzz… sting!”

It was definitely her Kuromi doppelgänger later that day in a Kyoto tea garden with me—bringing kids to a Zen setting is like bringing a cigarette into a Michelin kitchen. I had to dig deep. Lately, the memory I reach for is this: a couple months ago, each kid in Eliza’s first grade class was asked to notice one kindness from a classmate, write it down on a slip, and give it to them. Eliza took an extra two weeks. So that she could notice something for each of the other seventeen kids, so that she could hand out all her slips at once, so that no kid would be missed. I still can’t tell this story without tearing up.

With a breath, I reached for our last warm moment. I reached for being a bee. I fluttered my hands, waggled my butt, and bopped her—reluctantly, she smiled. “There she is.” I felt like I had located the talisman that restored the My Melody universe, for a bit. Since then, we’ve done this maybe ten times a day.

This morning BJ took the kids off to Tokyo Disneyland while I stay a couple more days in Kyoto. On the way to breakfast Eliza asked me, “Are My Melody and Kuromi friends?” So now I owe her that story when we meet back up again.

I’m writing this in a Zen rock garden whose river of raked stones is a stream, on the shore of which a large boulder represents a mother tiger shepherding her cubs—smaller boulders—across the water. But Eliza, sometimes I feel like I am swimming upstream, without the memory or instinct for it. I blink, and a hundred moments pass. Maybe with words, though, I can mark one—holding all your multitudes—with a red gate.

In a long line of poets and artists who have made their way to the Yoshino mountains for over a millennium, the poet Basho came in the spring of 1687, to follow in the footsteps of an earlier poet he revered (Saigyo, 1118-1190). His pilgrimage partly seeded my own. Basho began his walking wanderings at age 40. The Narrow Road to the Interior, a book ostensibly about the rural landscape along his journey, is equally about Basho’s journey through his own interior. I was keen to see the Yoshino mountains that so transfixed him when he came, when thousands of cherry blossom trees spilled over in a riot of color.

But any lines I write on Yoshino will be quite different than his. For one, I’m not a lone wanderer or a hermit. For another, as soon as we arrived, our host—without any of the ambiguous qualifiers or gentle demurrals typically employed here in delivering bad news—said, “You can do this hike, but all the cherry blossoms are down now,” pushing his palms down onto the desk, as though to put a further damper on it.

And so I found myself in the aftermath, atop a mountain clearing, standing in one of the last sparse patches of trees still flowering, a lone petal clinging to my forehead from what was, admittedly, a glorious shower of them. Both kids were grumpy from having been made to march uphill to the bus stop, and it was only downhill from there because in the rush to catch the bus, we forgot snacks. A more poignant allusion to midlife could scarcely exist. Back in town, every storefront seemed to be plastered with posters advertising the sights I’d missed by a matter of weeks.

Where to go, in poetry or philosophy, then? I could follow Japanese poetry all the way back to its Chinese roots and, like Li Bai, drink wine and contemplate the moon instead. I could find Zen in the dissolution of attachment, or a more wistful Japanese romanticism in preferring the image of a thing to the thing itself. I could coin new compound words, cued by the ways kanji can stack in endless new combinations. “Aftermath” has a less-used definition: a second reaping, a new grass growing after harvest. I propose “afterbloom”: when a missed connection to a supposed peak moment sets one’s life in another direction.

Or I could return to Basho: “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” We made a journey on Japan’s oldest gondola to a guest house that predates Basho. An attendant wiped down our suitcases for dust before bringing them in. We change slippers between rooms. Kaiseki dinners arrive in a private room—tofu, mushrooms, fish, pickles, dozens of small dishes—culminating in the perfect strawberry custard mochi made from local kudzu. We sleep on tatami mats, wake to birdsong, and at 6:30am attend a temple opening ceremony with chants and drumbeats punctuated by giant conch horns.

But all this recedes next to the sense memory of Leo curled into me at dinner last night, in that blue hour between sundown and nightfall, rain beating against wooden roofs and fog rolling in over the hillside, the warm weight of his body as he impishly declared, “Only one course to go until dessert!” before settling further into my lap, on such a night, in the afterbloom.

“Mom, I’m going to move to Kyoto one day.”

“Hm, is it so you can be a train conductor?”

“Mom, how did you READ MY MIND?!”

Easy to do when that mind has been on one track since arriving—to this country, and for that matter, to this planet. Maybe this is the privilege of anyone who has continuously known a child: through his growth spurts, I marvel at how everything from Leo’s appearance, to his temperament, to his particular interests, have formed a direct line traceable back to his baby days, when one of his first words was “train.”

Japan by rail has been a treat for us, with two train enthusiasts in the family. With sheer efficiency, cutting-edge technology, and at times, nostalgic charm, this vast system conducts tens of millions of riders daily. Our favorite rides include a Shinkansen bullet train, bridging Tokyo and Kyoto in one-third the drive time; the driverless Yamanote loop around Tokyo where the kids huddled at the nose pretending to co-pilot; and the historic Randen line, a purple tram that trundled through an old Kyoto of wooden residences and temples to reach the bamboo groves of Arashiyama.

Though not naturally inclined to trains myself, I’ve benefited secondhand. Leo’s head in the crook of his elbow pressed to the bullet train window, a blur of buildings and power lines stranding Mt. Fuji in stillness. His little body bouncing like a pinball between exhibits at the Kyoto Railway Museum, arm ratcheting as though pulling a lever. The way he waltzed out of the gift shop with a bag overfilled with a new Shinkansen stuffy, t-shirt, socks, notepad, and model train. Enough to know I had a hand in this shining moment he might remember, if not in its specifics, then in the imprint of its happiness.

There is also a satisfaction for me in learning when anyone is animated by a deep, abiding interest. For E.B. White that was boats. He thought about them while waiting anywhere, including for the train or at the dentist’s office. For FDR it was stamps. Even in the darkest nights of the war, he would find peace after spending time with his collection. I imagine that for them, these were safe harbors to return to. I would wish that for my kids.

And yet, to go so fast and true in one direction, what does it take? Bamboo, the fastest vertically growing plant, bursts upward in springtime to compete for sunlight. But to achieve this telescoping, its stalk is hollow, its cells preformed from the moment of germination and merely inflated. The Shinkansen is the world’s fastest train, but requires its own dedicated track, one that cannot be shared with other trains—such specialization is costly. These strategies certainly have a place in the world. But I hold the question.

It’s been a joy to see Leo’s joy these past couple of days, down to the way he’s been taking his stuffy train everywhere and planting “Shinkansen kisses” on us. And if my own joy has an extra flavor, it may be tinged by something else I carry, too. There was almost a trip to Japan when I was young, but it didn’t happen. In joy that’s redemptive, refracted… there’s a bitterness to the sweet, like many of the desserts here.

Textures of Tokyo, the list:

The color palette of clothing: salarymen and women stream past, on concrete boulevards and through subway warrens, clad almost exclusively in black, navy, beige, and gray—the colors of utility, of conformity; of UNIQLO.

People reading print media at Starbucks. One man uses a ruler to underline passages in a book.

A zoo that is otherwise sparsely attended except for one exhibit: the pygmy hippo, an internet phenomenon of ugly-cuteness. Of course, then, a press crew of locals with cameras raised stand around waiting for it to show itself.

A cartoon cherry blossom that says, “Don’t touch me!” A cartoon vending machine flexing its arms: “I can dispense drinks even in a power outage!”

Is there anything more awkward than white people posing in kimonos?

Eliza is now a Sanrio fan. I tried to sell her on Keroppi but she is her own person. Her favorite is My Melody, the rabbit.

Leo, in the train shirt I got him with the Shinkansen on it, finally sees one in person.

BJ: “I just love Japanese gardens. Those three trees, on that little island, placed so perfectly like that.. doo doo doo!”

Running the Imperial Palace loop and its surrounding moat, circling the perimeter between antiquity and Ginza’s high rises.

Things eaten: yuzu sorbet, fresh mochi with a microseasonal Japanese strawberry meant to be eaten that very day, basque cheesecake for breakfast, strawberry Pocky, red bean sesame donuts; Matcha teas and lattes and everything; Japanese-French bakeries with beef curry buns; endless sashimi; a shrimp-themed restaurant with spicy shrimp wontons, a dumpling that’s one giant prawn folded into a pleated wrapper, shrimp ramen with a broth so concentrated, it reminded me of my second-favorite childhood Maruchan flavor but reduced to its essence.

Our sleep, like Humpty Dumpty, had a bad landing. At any point in the night, at least two of us are awake. At 5am, we break out the tablet in our shared hotel room—large by Tokyo standards—to keep the bickering at bay until we can go out for what we’ve come to call “double breakfast.” Starbucks is the first to open, but we like the banana bread better at the other place. By 8am, we’ve eaten twice. Nothing to do is open yet.

Long nights, fractious kids, overcast skies—truth be told, it’s had me feeling rather gray. The color of shadow. Of the gap between ideas and reality—the dream of vacation and the actual experience of it. At every turn, the refined manners of our Japanese hosts call my attention to our more churlish moments.

BJ searched my face mid-subway ride and, because he is him, offered to take the kids for the morning. I vacillated for two stops. I debated him as a means of debating myself. Do I miss the kids and the science museum on our last shared day in Tokyo? But if I stay and can’t rise above the shadow, won’t that be worse? What would I even do by myself, with no plans? I pictured two parallel timelines unfurling. Then the train car doors slid open and I stepped off.

Alone on the platform, I remembered a 24-hour onsen that a colleague had recommended. It was a long subway ride away. Which meant 40 minutes of reading a Murakami novel (Colorless Tsukuru) to myself in near-total silence, followed by two hours of getting a massage and soaking in thermal waters overlooking Tokyo Bay.

Color returns in brief snatches: at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, the sun played hide-and-seek. When out, sunlight pressed down on me like a warm weighted blanket as I sank into the bright green lawns. At TeamLab Borderless, the yuzu sorbets set down before us in the darkened teahouse grew branches then flowered on the black tablecloth. Various rooms immersed us in phoenixes, blossoms, and ocean waves—as well as other images more conceptually strange. Eliza broke out into dance several times. My first sense of true wonder on the trip came in entering a tunnel of LED light strands, dangling like icicles, stretching to seeming infinity. Dazzling arrays of colors shifted in time with the music. I was an astronaut on an alien planet witnessing a first rain.

The way out of gray can be tricky. Anchoring to set coordinates risks disappointment; absence of aim, stagnation. The only solve I’ve found lies in the space between competing desires: to go and to stay; to live for oneself and for others. And, with the help of a partner, to course correct when needed.

Eliza’s favorite thing on her first day in Tokyo was, unquestionably, the “bunny cafe!” It was located on the third floor (cats on four, hedgehogs on two) of a narrow, nondescript building in Akihabara, Tokyo’s former electronics hub turned otaku haven turned novel experiential cafe district. Pet, maid, idol, butler, vampire, gaming—you name it, there’s probably a cafe for it. There’s probably a cafe for fantasies you haven’t even had yet, for the unmapped terrain between your heart’s true desires and your mind’s escape hatch. As a pleasure quarter it echoes the “floating world” of Tokyo’s Edo-era past, where teahouses and courtesans conducted patrons to an alternate reality for a time.

But let’s get back to the bunnies. What I had not envisioned was spending thirty minutes trying not to sit down in a dimly lit, dingily shiplapped enclosure smelling of barnyard, while four bunnies hopped (and pooped) all around us. The rest were dozing in cages. The attendant stood just outside the gate, jotting notes on a small notepad. I felt like the one on display, a side act, a Non-Player Character in Eliza’s game. And yet, the look on her face! Her delight in spoon-feeding crushed strawberries to a gray French lop so kawaii it has its own Instagram fanbase… I would do it again.

In contrast to this hutch-like cafe, KidZania—where we went the next day—is an indoor amusement park the size of a small IKEA. A city operated by kids, it has 50+ stations where kids sign up to act out slightly outdated versions of real adult jobs (firefighter, baker, scientist, etc.), as though they are on a live-action set for Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? Eliza started the day as a Breakfast Attendant at a hotel (LOL). First, she donned a hairnet, service uniform, and functioning key card badge for pantry access. Then, over thirty minutes—while I watched from the other side of the glass—three adult guides herded her and eleven other kids (receptionists, cleaners) through a choreography so prescriptive that the croissants tray had to be set down in the exact spot on the banquet table as depicted by the diagram. Each child’s task was carefully assigned to foster collective success. It was civic indoctrination via cosplay. Leo emerged from the subway conductor station announcing, “I like the Seattle Children’s Museum better because they don’t tell me what to do.”

Play has a role in preparing kids for practical life. But also, for such an elaborate fantasy to be constructed around so mundane a vision as a hotel breakfast spread—that seems a bit sad. And then there’s the irony that when these jobs are overtaken by AI, we adults may end up doing exactly this: playacting at work. I’m not sure we can brace our kids for what’s coming when we can’t quite see it ourselves. Maybe the more honest task is just not to forget that they’re already here, living—not rehearsing.

Cherry blossoms in Ueno Park, the kids playing nice together—two reminders of mono no aware, the impermanence of things :)

A few weeks ago I found myself standing before The Starry Night at the MoMA. I stood before it for some time. And when I left, a question followed me: What kind of person looks upon a clear night over Arles and sees not serenity, but a welter? In parts of the canvas—roiling cloud-waves and whorls of starlight—the paint was scraped on so thick as to form ridges, as on a topographical map. To trace those lines with my eyes was to surrender to a sense of turmoil and unremitting bleakness. He was one month into checking himself into an asylum, after the ear thing. Perhaps he could not have seen differently, or acted otherwise.

Recently I learned about the phenomenon of clear-air turbulence: rough air unladen by moisture is invisible to radar, yet capable of dropping a plane the height of a skyscraper. It’s easy to forget that the earth’s atmosphere is an ocean of air, filled with invisible waves made visible, only sometimes, by telltale cloud formations. In my cloud-spotting book a drawing of fluctus clouds, a kind of cloud shaped by choppy air, resembled The Starry Night.

“Wow, there’s turbulence,” says my son moments after throwing up at 30,000 feet. He’s now wearing an adult-sized women’s pajama top as a nightgown, courtesy our flight attendant. We’re on our way to Japan. I’ve always wanted to go in the springtime; always felt a pull to the land of monks, samurai, and geisha—figures who hold the public imagination. Is it because, in any age, there is a pleasure to pledging one’s life to faith, a lord, or a lover? As a kid, I wanted to be a wuxia hero or a samurai, to live by a code.

Confucius claims to have been without doubt at 40. If only moral certitude were a door prize at midlife. But, the more I live, the more questions I have. Yesterday I turned 40. I went on a run, a long one, breaking into a sprint to crest Kite Hill—to be over the hill now, with triumph. I concluded the run at the UW Quad. Mid-depletion, its cherry blossom canopies no longer looked like cotton candy. (“Flowers are only flowers because they fall.”) A sharp breeze sent a flurry of petals swirling against blue skies. It was all beauty and grace, a live dance between the seen and unseen.

Entries in the family lexicon:

Jumping photos: Eliza discovering and then trying to hone this art at every turn. Three family members vying to capture Leo’s hang time in the air, as though it were a rare wildlife phenomenon

“UGH!”: pronounced UGG, like the boot, though preferable at least to its alternative,“This is the worst day ever!!” cried out in anthem

Holiday dumplings: my mom, discontent with the local offerings, insisting on making Christmas dumplings from scratch, Leo then proceeding to eat these for four lunches and dinners in a row

“Half Dome!”: my dad’s reflexive and repeated utterance (a running wink between BJ and me) when we visited Yosemite, reprised a decade later with the same elan as he spots and points at a smaller, ruddier version at Canyonlands

My mom, seeing Arches for the first time, had the same reaction I did fourteen years ago: what she had envisioned as a compact playground of arches kept unfurling before her. My kids, not yet savvy to perspective, wagered that distant windows in the rock were shorter than them—only to scamper up to a window the size of a cathedral and be blasted by gales rushing through it.

These iron-rich layers were shaped by forces long ago and legion. From below, a massive dome of salt—remnants of ancient oceans—pushed up and up until it cracked the surface of the earth, forming ridges called fins. Those fins were then frozen and thawed again and again, buffeted by wind, whittled to arches, turrets, windows, and pedestals. They exist in a state of equipoise that they will one day exit.

Being with my parents in Moab, I’m thinking about the story of red rock. The places where puddle became fissure, fissure became hollow, and an arch emerged, soaring, suspended. Pushes and pulls, frictions and tensions, amassed in now load-bearing structures. But when it comes to family, there is little point in excavating all that. Only in witnessing the present configuration in which we stand.

We stand in the amphitheater of Delicate Arch, wind whipping so hard that sand stings our cheeks—possibly eroded fragments of the arch itself, speeding toward us. We stand at this summit, despite Leo’s protests, despite my parents’ doubts that the arch, so diminutive from its lower viewpoint, would be worth it—and it was.

It’s a good thing I’m not a Jane Austen character, for bad things befell them in Bath. (The town did not agree with the writer, a feeling sadly mutual.) By contrast I fared better—I dare say much better. My day in Bath was as bright as the town’s moniker—“Lantern of the West”—a name bestowed on account of Bath Abbey, whose glass-to-wall ratio exceeds that of any other church in Europe, and whose oil-lit chandeliers, back in the day, blazed in a collective conflagration, their light streaming forth from soaring windows into pitch dark hills.

This notion of Bath as beacon—I experienced it, or some variation of it: a UNESCO town awash in pale winter light, the air diamond-bright and nipped by frost. Block after block of cozy bookstores and cafes beckoned. Sun-blanched limestone swept, glowing, across the Royal Crescent in clean Georgian lines. Every ridge in the fan vaulting of Bath Abbey etched in sharp relief.

The floor of the abbey is now geothermally heated by the same hot spring that, back in Roman times, supplied the town with its name and principal attraction. This same source, today, warms the rooftop pool where I took a sunset dip. Steam rose from water’s surface to mingle with spires, and wreathed in it, I tried to submerge as much of myself as possible, each time a cold wind blew. Before night fell, I found a new Robert Macfarlane children’s book (fittingly, Firefly, about illuminators), and sampled a lively beaujolais nouveau on the first day of its season.

Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in a particular direction. A double necessity then: to get on the move, and to know whither. - D.H. Lawrence

If only I could show them to someone who knows, this moon, these flowers, this night that should not be wasted. - Matsuo Basho

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. - “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

Rome, part 3 / Conclusion

Our last day in Rome was a struggle, to be honest.

The plot thickened on my stolen bag and its contents. We remembered the tracking feature on my AirPods. BJ walked over to where the dot landed, in central Rome: it was the Gucci store, or apartments above it.

I called 112, no answer. Rome has two law enforcement branches: polizia (the municipal police) and carabinieri (the military police). It used to be that you dialed 112 for one and 113 for the other, but nobody, not even locals, could tell the difference. Now, 112 supposedly handles it all.

Night fell. The dot slipped to the city’s outskirts. As I traced the thief’s midnight errands, asymmetry gnawed at me: they might know my name, my face, my children’s faces - where I live - but more likely they ditched all that, not caring a whit. Did they know I had their location?

Surprisingly, the dot resurfaced at Gucci the next day. There we headed. My heart galloped: fear, of confrontation; hope, beyond reason. Nothing turned up. The store workers suggested we go to the carabinieri station, in the piazza where we had gelato the day before.

BJ and the kids lunched on pizza while I went in. An officer showed me into a room, handed me a form. I told him my story. After 15 minutes of nodding vaguely, he turned to Google Translate.

We passed his keyboard back and forth, clacking. I studied the wall and its the framed prints: carabinieri officers and helicopters set against backdrops of Seurat’s promenade, Monet’s poppy fields, brushwork blended in.

I pointed to the dot on my phone, still static. He said he couldn’t leave his post, nor send anyone. Then pointed to boxes that I had missed. I restated: my possessions are there - findable, retrievable, but maybe not for much longer. He shrugged. “You should call 112.”

“I did. Yesterday. No one answered.”

“That is the only number. Or 113. It is the same.”

After all this, to be back at 112 again… it’s Catch-22, had Kafka and Heller co-written it. Petty theft in a city of holy pilgrimage. Futile paperwork in the seat of once-efficient empire. The feckless officer, heir to one of the most formidable military forces of all time. And finally, the gauche parody and posturing of the station’s artwork, in the city where Michelangelo painted. Farce, the common theme.

The final twist: just as I was trying to let it go, back at the apartment, I was scrolling through iPhone photos - when my stomach dropped. There it was - my bag - slung over my chair in a gelato pic.

Here’s what we know now: I didn’t leave my bag behind at lunch with the broken glass. It continued on with me to gelato, at a fancy cafe in one of the nicest piazzas in Rome, where it was then lifted, right in front of our faces. The same cafe where we, unwittingly, had just returned for lunch. A stone’s throw from the police station, whose indifference might as well have been complicity.

With sweet vindication came sharpened outrage, at the theft, but also the broader context. What brushes we’ve had with Italy’s systems and services over the past month - car rental agencies, hospitals, law enforcement - have left us feeling aggrieved and uncertain. “Better to visit than to live here,” the car rental guy said, as we were returning our SUV. He wasn’t joking.

—

The “peak-end rule” posits that our lasting impressions of an experience are shaped not by its average, but by a mix of its most intense and final moments. (Empirically proven: a longer colonoscopy is remembered more favorably than a shorter one, as long as it ends more gently.)

But what if the peak and the end contradict each other?

Memory softens the pain of childbirth - an evolutionary design, or we’d never do it again. But elsewhere, no such mercy. Recourse lies in the work of choice, of mindset. Fortunately, on this path, a pantheon of guides.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, drawing from the lessons of Stoics before him: “Be like a headland: the waves beat against it continuously, but it stands fast… whenever something happens that might cause you distress, remember to rely on this principle: this is not bad luck, but bearing it valiantly is good luck.” Much of Meditations is self-examination, exhortations to himself to live up to principles and ideals. And yet, in this he was perpetually thwarted, by his duties as emperor and its attendant demands - politics and war, acts of violence. What endures, and endears, is his unflinching honesty and resolve to do better.

An Aristotle quote I’ve held close: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not a virtue, but a habit.” These words propelled me, sleepless and with no AirPods for music, to run 9 miles to blow off steam. The Tiber’s waters rushed faster the further I ran upstream. The rising sun flashed through trees. Another Japanese phrase surfaced: komorebi, the dappled sun that shines through foliage, shifting interplay of darkness and light.

—

After my run, our last day proceeded to unfold. It is here, at the end of this entry, that the part I wish to remember truly begins. With moments of delight:

BJ and I pick out a new leather cardholder for me. In the exact design as the one I got in New York twelve years ago, same sliver of Italian craftsmanship. But while the old one was gray, this one is green, like a new leaf.

We buy Eliza and Leo 4 euro kiddie sunglasses and all of a sudden, strolling around, we feel like we’re in a family rock band. The kids find a bunch of azalea petals on the ground, collect them into the bouquets, and pretend to marry each other, holding hands.

I return to the Roman Forum, to an overlook BJ discovered on one of his walks. I listen in to part of a tour led by a particularly eloquent guide - the vista, his words, brought scale and significance to life.

BJ and Eliza’s not-so-secret hand signal is to each hold up one cupped hand, together form a heart. This gesture stands in for connection, for apology and repair, in moments throughout the day, whether they are sitting next to each other or miming from a distance.

Good things eaten - Epicurus again: a hearty American breakfast of waffles, eggs, and bacon. Pina colada grattachecca slurped from plastic chairs that our legs cling to in the humidity. A relaxed dinner of focaccia, meatballs, roast chicken, chicory, potatoes, and pesto pasta. For dessert, the sublime gelato pairing of Indian mango plus lemon vanilla custard - my best one yet.

Walking hand in hand as a family along the river one last time. Eliza, though she says she’s too tired to dance, gets up and joins Leo anyway.

—

Now, midair again over Greenland, Eliza sleeps sprawled on my lap. She was so sad last night that we are leaving. It showed up in a funny way. On our evening walk, we sighted for our first time in Rome a different, and fancier, drinking fountain. Unlike the nasoni, this one was modern and massive, had dual taps for still and sparkling. Unfortunately, we didn’t have our bottles to fill them. Eliza was overcome. Undone by the sudden realization that no plans we could make or barter would have us back at this spot tomorrow, to see through this small, specific task. Finality, no longer mere specter, was water slipped through her hands.

I held her hand. Told her this happens to all of us: trips end, often with wishes not fully realized. And in a way, isn’t that the beauty of it? Maybe she’ll return to Rome one day - after all, she did toss a coin into the Trevi Fountain. And when she is back, she’ll have a mission waiting, an idea already planted. Just as I did with the Pantheon.

Rome, part 2

Italian waiters are invariably kind to our kids. They ruffle Leo’s hair and ask, “What’s your name?”, then turn to Eliza with a “How old are you, princess?” They seem genuinely interested, even though they’ve no doubt had an exchange like this hundreds of times before, will have it hundreds more times yet.

This morning at a cafe, Leo was mid-tantrum. “Eliza got a toy and I didn’t!” Never mind that he’s actually two toys ahead. This is a kid who, dreaming of grievance, shouts “not faaair!” in his sleep. As we try to contain the wailing with straight talk, a waiter swoops in. He promises a surprise. We wait, in suspense. He returns with a chocolate cornetto, sets it down, divides it in half, then, with a raised finger, vanishes again. When he comes back, he sprinkles powdered sugar on top with a magician’s flourish.

Later, at lunch, Leo drops a water glass on the concrete sidewalk. The wait staff doesn’t bat an eye, but I am flustered. We were eating in a posh district, and I had just been admiring the Italian woman at the next table - tan, clad in a blouse and pants of bronze silk, a living statue - when the sound of shattering glass and pinpricks on my legs snapped me back. In the ensuing scramble to brush off tiny shards from our feet and bags, make our apologies, and exit, I leave my bag behind. It’s half an hour before I realize. Too late. My wallet and new camera were inside.

Suddenly, the peaceful rhythm of the day fractures, a kaleidoscope of emotions erupting: denial, anger, blame, acceptance, then anger again - who says grief is linear? We retrace our steps in 99-degree heat, while my mind races. If only Leo’s glass hadn’t dropped. If only we hadn’t let him pour his own water for the first time. If only we had chosen a different lunch spot. Any change in this chain of ordinary events might have altered its end. But isn’t that how misfortune usually strikes? I tell myself: we are safe, unhurt. Our kids are fine. These are the things of true consequence. And yet… I had waited 9 months for that camera, and my last picture, of the Pantheon, was still on it…

—

For all my awe, the Pantheon seems destined to be the emotional nadir of my trips to Rome.

My first time here was on a breakneck backpacking trip with my college best friend: 20 days, 10 cities. On our last day in Rome, we made it to the Pantheon, 5 minutes before closing time. More than the Colosseum (site of such savagery), more than the Roman Forum (a shadow of its past), the Pantheon held my attention: nearly 2000 years old, largely intact. My perfectionist streak flared, and I stewed in the delays that had prevented us from arriving sooner. Looking back, I'm embarrassed at the fuss I made.

—

Even before the theft today, that memory flickered as I stepped into the Pantheon again. Seventeen years are a blip for this monument, which has withstood - figuratively and literally - the waters of time: floods, wars, tyrants.

Once inside, like others, I look up to the domed ceiling and the skylit hole in it. The oculus is 27 feet in diameter. Birds fly over and occasionally through it. Rain and snow float in with the seasons. Sun casts a beam like a spotlight, a crepuscular ray. This materiality of light reminds me of a “Sky Space” installation by James Turrell. He, too, carves out patches of sky, with this his prevailing thesis: “The sky is no longer out there, but it is right on the edge of the space you are in.” And: “You are looking at you looking.”

The oculus brings the sky, boundless and receding, to a discus within our grasp. It invites communion with the heavens by shaping light, its perception, and us as the perceivers.

Before we leave, we set our phone on the marble floor for a timed portrait. We link hands, lean in. The resulting image, backlit by the dome’s eye, reminds me of Matisse’s “The Dance.”

—

There is a Japanese concept - ichi-go ichi-e: “one time, one meeting.” Drawn from the rituals of the tea ceremony, it holds that even if the same people meet in the same place time and time again, it’s never with the same confluence of circumstances.

In today’s Pantheon visit and subsequent loss, I see it, and myself, anew; clarity strikes. My mind turns to the kids. The time this week when Leo left his backpack in a taxi and I berated him for it. The time months ago when Eliza lost the purse I got her from France, and I piled my own distress on hers. All the times I’ve met their mistakes and losses with frustration rather than gentleness.

Sometimes we just want consolation, no matter who is right; no matter if the loss is big or small, real or imagined. We yearn for someone to place something sweet in front of us, as though we were children again.

And so the exhortation: to choose to be what David Brooks describes as an “Illuminator” - is to choose the gentle indulgence of taking someone’s side, softening for others the experience of being alive. We are the sheet of film in a pinhole camera. The light enters.

Rome, part 1

To be back in a city again - it’s an espresso shot, a defibrillator shock - a rebirth in an interstellar burst, as Radiohead would put it. At night, when the heat finally breaks, mountains and oceans of people surge around us - all of them catching the good vibes train. Even our kids, weary from a long car ride, revive to dance along the riverbank.

And not just any city: Rome, the eternal city. Our trip’s final act. Site of holy pilgrimage and sweaty fiesta - all at once. Just as in the chiaroscuro paintings that Caravaggio honed here, one thing seems to exist in sharp contrast with the next.

The sleekest cars, the slowest traffic. Ever since I gave Leo a toy model as a gift, he’s been grabbing my hand and announcing, “Mom, look, a Fiat!” every time he spots one - which is often. Our resident ”things that go” expert, he catalogs them all: mopeds, modern and vintage Fiats, micro-Citroens, “baby” garbage trucks, a tuk tuk so tiny, it’s like a clown car. But no matter the conveyance, progress through traffic stalls. At mid-day, it takes forever to make our way home by mobile sauna, i.e. the city bus. Leo still likes it.

The harshest sun, the sweetest relief. Eliza is melting. Her nonstop cries of “It’s so hot!” have me taking out my phone to read Meditations every time I, too, might boil over - on the bus, at the Colosseum, before Marcus’s statue in the Vatican, in the Sistine Chapel, for Christ’s sake. We seek shade, playing an hours-long version of Bluey’s shadowland game. Succor comes in the form of really good gelato (basil lime for the win!). And, despite all the baroque fountains we take him to, Leo likes the nasoni best: little taps, ~2500 of which pepper the city, always running, a pit stop to splash one’s face. The moment we step into our apartment, the kids fall to the ground, prostrate at the altar of “air conditioninnnggg.”

The oldest edifices, the freshest graffiti. We are staying in the Trastevere district (as it turns out, one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Seattle, Rione XIII, was named for this). Julius Caesar lived here. And Cleopatra. It’s full of medieval houses and cobblestone streets, walkable, sprawling with open-air cafes and trattorias, draped in jasmine and ivy and twinkle lights - and covered with graffiti on most its surfaces. Its relaxed attitude toward this seems only to enhance the neighborhood’s appeal, and reaffirm its nature as palimpsest. I sleep through the nocturnal party tide that floods our street with beer bottles, gelato cups, and napkins; by the time I leave for my morning run, power washers and street sweepers are already working to erase the evidence.

Once-a-quarter-century penance, nightly debauchery. 2025 is a Jubilee Year, a year of Catholic pilgrimage, declared by the late Pope Francis. At the Vatican, we watch a procession of priests in dark holy robes climb the steps to St. Peter’s Basilica, chanting in Latin, bearing their cross upward. (After them, feet dragging, our crew is not so spiritually uplifted.) This year, they will be joined by an estimated 35 million others, similarly seeking expiation from sin at journey’s end. How many of those millions are reveling in ways even Dionysius would bless, in the streets of Trastevere, tonight? I, for one, can’t wait to sip a Negroni.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs