Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Ecco la Roma... A father kvells.

Scholars pub

There are junctures in life that signal a turning point, when one knows something has shifted in a meaningful way. I’m not talking here about life’s normal milestones or disruptions: a birth or death, marriage or divorce, any of life’s big joys or traumas. Sometimes major shifts transpire in a context free of any precipitating events, when big things happen in small moments (if not in small places).

Such was this trip to Rome for me.

I went to visit my daughter Nora, spending her second semester of her junior year studying in Rome. I’d found a hostel in central Rome, a couple blocks from Termini, the main train station. The Beehive Hostel was an experience unto itself, particularly sleeping in a dorm room with seven strangers. I met many interesting folks: a teacher headed to a Harvard doctoral program in cross-cultural education, a biomedical engineer who studied at Johns Hopkins, a German student from Berlin who offered to house Nora when she passes through Berlin next month. The hostel experience, if privacy isn’t a necessity, is pretty cool that way (I’d actually last done the hostel thing with Nora on her 8th grade graduation trip to Alaska).

Every morning started with one of the hostel’s incredible breakfasts, crepes with strawberries and ricotta, French toast with kiwi fruit and homemade orange syrup, café lattes, all exquisite. Then I’d take a Metro and a bus from Termini to Nora’s campus in Monte Mario, a hilly neighborhood in the northwest corner of the city; and Nora would lead me around town. We covered a lot of ground.

We hit the Coliseum (I’d forgotten it was Jewish slaves that built that big puppy), the Roman Forum (dating back to the 6th century B.C.), the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and numerous other piazzas and chiesas (churches) including that really big one at the Vatican. Though I’d been to Rome briefly before, Nora had already been there for months and clearly had learned her way around. She was an amazing tour guide.

Though most days offered sunny, mild weather, we had a memorable day walking around in the rain in the shadow of the Coliseum. From there, we headed up to Capitoline Hill, the highest of Rome’s seven hills where Michelangelo designed the Piazza di Campidoglio surrounded by government palazzis (palaces). To stay dry, Nora wore one of those high-fashion pocket ponchos, essentially a red garbage bag with a hood. Given that Rome is one of the most fashion-conscious places I’ve ever been, her comical look was all the more comical. Everyone—seriously everyone—was dressed with a sense of style, seemingly unselfconscious yet sophisticated. And so many of them are nothing short of beautiful: men, women, young, old. I mean really beautiful. As a straight guy, for example, I have no problem recognizing a good-looking man. But doing a double-take as a man walks by is not the norm for me. It happened more than once. Same with women and children. From toddlers to senior citizens, just stunning. Add to that, it’s as if pasta, olive oil, ricotta, prosciutto, and lots of red wine are antidotes to obesity. It’s rare to see someone look even slightly chubby, much less seriously overweight. Why can’t we get this right in the U.S.?

Nora's rain gear

Capitoline Hill view

In addition to ruins in the rain, a few highlights stand out. We spent one night strolling around Piazza Navonna till after midnight, sipping Limoncello, a lemon liqueur from southern Itay. We cruised from fountain to fountain, piazza to piazza, just exploring side streets, little cafes, and new views. Nora had done little of that, instead often hunkering down with friends in various clubs or bars where, in many cases, you might as well be in a pub anywhere. Limoncello will forever be something I now associate with Piazza Navonna and Nora.

On another night, we were accompanied by two of her friends, Lauren and Nick. The four of us bar-hopped in Trastevere, a charming and quieter neighborhood across the Tiber River, lots of winding streets and alleyways. It was great fun with Nora and her friends, three college kids and me. Empassioned talks spilled forth about their futures, about relationships, about being gay and having kids (Nick’s gay), about all that life holds. I’ve always felt incredibly lucky for the ways Nora has included me in her friendships, and for how most of those friends are inclusive and open as well. This night was no exception.

One Trastevere bar, Café Artu, had a phenomenal swing jazz trio, rocking the house. Nora and I danced for the first time as adults together. Last time I danced with her, she was maybe eight. I got back to my hostel at 5:30 a.m. that night. It was probably back in my college days that I last stumbled in that late. Admittedly, I got lost. But getting lost in Rome is not too bad: Stumbling into a piazza and, hey, there’s the Pantheon. OK, turn right here. Now where am I again? Hey, there’s the Tiber River. I must be going the wrong way… turn around and head towards Trevi Fountain…Yup. All good.

Nora’s college had cancelled classes that week for a several-day conference on Italian feminism and how it intersects (or sometimes clashes) with the priorities of Third World women’s migrant and ethnic groups. We attended one afternoon of the conference which was held in the American Cultural Institute, a stunning old building in Rome’s Jewish ghetto (where Jews were confined in 70 A.D. after Titus decided Jews, like the new Christians, were unworthy to live amongst true Romans). After the panel discussion on feminism, they served wine and aperitivos, some of the most amazing finger food I’ve ever eaten, smoked salmon and fresh mozzarella, bruschetta, caviar, proscuitto and fresh fruit. We ate well.

On our last day, she and I took a train to the Umbria hillside town of Orvieto, an hour outside of Rome, a charming medieval town of winding alleyways and cobblestone streets, sitting majestically on a chunk of volcanic rock looking over a valley. It is also home to one of the best known Italian gothic cathedrals. Legend has it that this Duomo was built when a 13th century priest (skeptical that communion bread was, y'know, truly the body of Christ) was passing near Orvieto. During Mass that day, the bread bled--like blood--staining a linen cloth. The pope was in Orvieto and, upon seeing the bread/blood/body-of-Christ stained cloth, he decided a magnificent church should be built to house the miraculous relic. And Orvieto’s Duomo was born. By the way, the town of L’Aquila, devastated by the earthquake, was a larger version of Orvieto, a hillside medieval town. Tragic, the loss of life there, over 250 dead last I heard.

In my last day with Nora, I overlapped with her mother, sister, and mutual friends of ours from Barcelona who were just arriving for their stint visiting Nora in Italy. We spent most of my last 24 hours in Rome all together, like one big extended family. We ended the day with a stroll from Piazza San Pietro to the Spanish Steps, and one last meal together with a few Peroni beers. I said goodbye to the larger group at the Spanish steps after which Nora walked me to the Spagna Metro stop where I could hop the train to Termini to catch the airport’s Leonardo Express.

Hugging Nora goodbye was wrenching. It’s as if all our goodbyes were distilled into this single hug: twelve years of goodbyes twice a month starting when Nora turned six. I felt near tears as I descended into the bowels of the Metro tunnel system. A lump in my throat stayed with me all the way to the airport. On the previous day as Nora and I were en route to Orvieto, I told her about how her little brother Ezra was on the threshold of turning six so I’m increasingly face to face with the consciousness of a six year old. It’s given me a renewed awareness of what it must have been like for Nora at six, when I moved from Minnesota to Michigan. What we established as father and daughter in the next twelve years was remarkable. But it also means--and we figured it out, at least two flights a month for twelve years for nearly 300 flights that she or I took back and forth to see each other--that’s a lot of goodbyes to start logging at age six. It’s almost unbearable to think about now.

She later told me that when we parted at the Metro Station, she got emotional too, our farewell having tapped all those goodbyes she experienced through the eyes of a child. And she cried because we'd had such a wonderful time together.
I realized in that instant as we hugged goodbye that something had changed in all of these little moments with Nora in Rome: talking about her life, our past, her future, her relationships; walking through piazzas, sitting and sipping Limoncello; talking with her friends about their unfolding lives, their scripts unwritten; dancing to a jazz trio; strolling through the streets of medieval Orvieto. I was struck with the realization that at no time ever since I’d become a father 21 years ago had I felt so strongly that I was now parent to an ADULT daughter. She’s still my baby girl. Always will be. And, sure, we subsidize her college costs. But good God, she has become so grown up, smart, compassionate, and independent in many, many ways.

I’m profoundly grateful for the relationship I have been able to build and sustain over these 21 years with Nora. This new chapter of the father-daughter relationship was the defining feature of the trip for me. Not Rome’s sweeping arc of history, art, and architecture, not the columns or the frescoes, nor the gellati and the café lattes. But the intelligence, maturity, and beauty of this person, this adult who I once carried in my arms, minutes old, hours old, years old. This beautiful little girl/young woman who I’m lucky to call my daughter.

When classes are done at the end of April, Nora will join her friend Carrie and hit Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Croatia, and Greece. She’ll be back in the U.S. by the end of May and will rent an apartment in Chicago for her senior year. Her adventure continues…

I love you, Nora.

EPILOGUE: Amsterdam

My plane from Rome got to Amsterdam at midnight, leaving me with an 8 hour layover before my flight to Detroit. I could have taken sleep meds and passed out in the airport, but I was in AMSTERDAM. I hadn’t been there in 23 years. So I took a train into town to go explore. Having never been to the Red Light District, it seemed one of those things I should at least see if I was there. And what else was open between midnight and 6 a.m.? The Van Gogh Museum was closed. I checked. Seriously. It was closed.

So, first of all: a note about language. In Italy, my years of Spanish helped little if at all. And very few Italians spoke English. It was a struggle. In Amsterdam, I’d ask someone a question and they’d answer in perfect English. It was so good, my reflex was to say, oh, you’re American too. And then I’d hear the subtle, the VERY subtle accent. But their English was impeccable. Not just desk clerks in nice hotels. Bus drivers, students, random people on the train. Very different from Rome.

The Red Light District then… Wow. For about the first 15 minutes, I found it anthropologically interesting. Rows of windows or glass doors, like small storefronts in narrow alleyways or facing the canals, each of them with a bar of red neon light above the glass. Some of them had a drawn curtain in the window, letting folks know that a customer was being served inside. But when the curtains were open, you’d see window after window, with women in lingerie and spiked heels, sitting on a bar stool, dancing or leaning flirtatiously into the door, knocking on the glass to get the attention of passers-by, sometimes opening the door a crack to summon a prospective customer.

Red Light District

After 15 minutes, 10 minutes actually, the novelty wore off. Call me crazy but I don’t give a damn how sexy or seductive a woman is, if you have to PAY her to have sex, it has all the erotic appeal of toothpaste. I confess I did indulge, however, in the Red Light District. Yes, my big indulgence was a rather expensive falafel sandwich purchased in a little Lebanese shop just off one of the canals. Delicious. It was strange to see such lovely canals with old buildings along the waterfront—I even saw a dozen white swans on one of the canals—symbols of purity and fidelity, right? Aren’t swans the bird that couple for life? And juxtaposed against all that beauty, were reflections of red light in the water, groups of mostly drunken men walking back and forth “window-shopping.”

Amsterdam Canal

The libertarian in me applauds the Dutch for their openness to legalized prostitution and legalized marijuana (which wafted out of the hash bars in pungent clouds). I haven’t done research but I presume that both prostitution and pot in Holland are devoid of the violence and corruption associated with their American counterparts.

Ultimately, however, the whole damn thing felt sad to me. I felt sad for the women, most of whom I have to believe would chose other career paths if better opportunities were available. I wondered what they told their families, their parents, their kids, about what they did for a living. Having just had this incredible time with my daughter, after all, I couldn't help but be aware that each of these women was somebody's daughter. What kind of relationships did they have or could they have?

And the men… Jesus, sometimes I’m embarrassed by my BITs (Brothers in Testosterone). Clowning around like 6th graders who’ve found their first Playboy magazine. Except in this case, they get to chose which centerfold they want, walk into her little room, and have the curtain drawn. So they're even more giddy. In moments like these, I try to detach from my obviously critical voice here, to acknowledge that these judgments are, no doubt, rooted in my own hang-ups. They are also rooted in abstractions: academic, political, and philosophical belief systems that abhor a global market that’s commodified everything on Earth including women. Of course, the commodification of women long predates the global marketplace. It’s the world’s oldest profession, or so the saying goes.

But for me, I’ll pass. And I did pass. Except for the falafel.

American Cultural Institute, Rome

Santa Maria Basilica

Rome Flower shop

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

And Now It Starts...



Being at home with pneumonia, functioning at 50% if that, writing has been one of the casualties. But sometimes brevity is all that's needed and there will be so much writing about this day, this inauguration. I watched and alternated between tears and awe.

Ezra, my five year old, with whom I was at home as he recovered from chicken pox, summed it up nicely as we watched the inauguration: "Barack Obama's kids must be really proud of him."

Young and old, it's as if we are all children to this moment in history that embodies countless hopes and dreams for peace and healing and new beginnings, for an America that lives up to its promise and rights its wrongs.

We're all proud children of this moment.

That's all I got right now, coughing madly after every few words I type. And for this moment, that's enough. More's to come.