Everybody's here

The limo driver pulled up to the address where I was waiting out front of the Trastevere apartment. There was barely enough room between the cafes and parked cars for Rebecca and JJ to open the car door but out they popped anyway. I was anxious to see them. It had been four weeks since we left and my youngest son seemed to be a head taller. Hi dad he said as the words cracked between alto and baritone. His voice had changed when we were gone. Before emerging from the limo Rebecca had looked at me from behind the car window. After the long day of travel I could see she was tired but happy to see me and to have finally arrived.


The flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam had not been a pleasant one. A boy had gotten sick every half hour the entire trip. Neither Rebecca nor JJ got any sleep. It was about 6 PM on a Thursday in Rome and the neighborhood was beginning to come alive again after the mid-day shutdown. There’s a lot of graffiti here Rebecca said as we entered the ground level hallway and headed up the two flights to the apartment. The door shut behind us and the world outside disappeared in favor of the building’s interior and Nick, Domo and Sal waiting at the top of the stairs.

This is nice she said as she toured the place. It was a long narrow flat with two large bedrooms side by side at the front of the building, a large living/dining room in the middle with kitchen and two bathrooms at the other end. The larger of the two bathrooms had French doors that led to a small balcony where a washing machine was tucked into a corner and a clothes line extended out over a sea of other clothes lines and adjoining balconies. No architect, not even M.C. Escher could conceive of the number of angles where everything met. Hey there’s a foot washer in this bathroom said JJ. Funny that’s what Nick said when he saw his first bidet a month ago.

Earlier that day I had gone to the market to stock up a bit on food. The supermarket was a couple of blocks away and I passed it a few times not really understanding where the front door was. I finally found it and went inside which was even more illogical with a series of dead end chambers connected through skinny blind aisles and random stacks of food and supplies. Having spent the past two weeks eating healthy in Greece I proceeded to load up with a variety of fruit and vegetables. When I got to the checkout stand I received an Italian tongue lashing from the clerk who promptly sent me back to weigh each piece, bag it in plastic and put a printed sticker on the bag which identified the type of fruit or vegetable it was and the price. I checked and rechecked the Italian names of what I was buying. Since there were three different kinds of lemons and six kinds of tomatoes I continually ran back and forth to the weigh station monopolizing the area to other patron’s consternation until I miraculously got it all done. I went back to the checkout and gave the clerk a big smile and handed her my neatly bundled and labeled treasures. She laughed and said something in Italian I did not understand.

I got a watermelon and served up slices to everyone. A quick shower and change of clothes and all were refreshed and ready to strike out on the town. The three boys went their way and we adults went ours. They say all roads lead to Rome and it’s kind of like that in Trastevere. At first Rebecca was wondering how we would get in touch with the boys but after about a half an hour of running into them several times she got the picture. As night began to fall and the crowds got bigger we made our way to one of Alessio’s favorite restaurants, Augusto’s. Sal explained that you had to order each course separately and only after you had finished one course could you order the next. After a month of not speaking the language it was a relief to not have to worry about it. Sal did all the ordering in Italian and I just ate and drank and enjoyed the company of my newly reunited family.