Important life event

It is a day at the tail end of June. The sun’s rays are perpendicular to the stones and cement we walk upon. The cloudless sky rains heat down upon our heads and the paving throws it back up against our bodies. The sky is deep blue, hazy with pollution. The humidity curls my hair in ringlets easily three inches shorter than its dry length. My six year old niece has the same hair. We walk with fairy clouds of curls at the crown and wet rolls stuck to the nape of our necks. My sister’s hair cannot hold even a spit curl, her hair hangs lank and damp. She pushes it off her face with the back of her hand, molding an uneven ridge of hair that wavers along her hairline and sags above her left ear.  The baby in the stroller has fine golden wisps of hair that are held with pink and red Velcro clips. They are not needed today; her few strands are stuck to the top of her head, which looks smaller without the jaunty tufts she usually sports. My son’s hair is cropped against his skull and does not trap the sweat. It rolls freely over his face. He has a Boston Red Sox ball cap and the baby has a shade. The rest of us have only hair.

Rome is a wonderful city to walk. We have been walking to our destination for hours and have made many stops along the way. We have walked to a café half a mile from our apartment for breakfast, when the day was still relatively cool. We drank espresso and chocolate and picked an assortment of quartered sandwiches from the display case by pointing at whatever looked appealing; we gave the one that proved to be anchovy paste to the baby. We are still laughing over our slyness. We have stopped at several little parks to play; we have waded in ancient fountains. We have had corner store lemonade and take out gelato. We are finally here.

Sweat holds my clothes against my skin with surface tension; they make a ‘spuck’ sound when I pull them free. The momentary pleasure of air against my damp flesh is not worth the clammy wetness when I release the fabric but I do not stop ‘pinch-shake-release’ repeating. We stand in St. Peter’s Square, on cobblestones surrounded by loggias surrounded by stone buildings. The heat is intense and increased by the confined space and the number of people. The baby sits up in the stroller. Her pink onesie is stuck to her like plastic wrap to a roast and she is shiny with sweat. We fan her with maps and guide books from my green and black nylon messenger pack and substitute lemonade for nutrition. We fan each other. I wish for shorts and a tank top but am wearing a tan cotton cargo skirt, a short-sleeved white linen shirt and strappy black Dansko sandals. We are all wearing sleeves as a mark of respect but this is also a requirement for entrance. Like me, my sister wears a short sleeve shirt, hers blue check with darker blue buttons. She wears beige capris and has a tortoiseshell headband plopped like a tiara on the top of her head. She has given up on it and her hair. We wish the baby’s Velcro clips held more than a wisp of hair; we would have them off her and on us just that quickly. My curly niece wears a purple, pink and peach paisley sundress and my son wears a red and blue cotton shirt with cargo shorts. We look very American. The line to enter the Basilica is long but moves steadily. I am eager to enter and anticipate the shade as much as the antiquity.

It is glorious. Cool and shadowed, candlelit and splendid. The age is not oppressive here and neither is the heat. There is music and part of the music is the thousand-voiced choir of tourists and art lovers, religious pilgrims and ancient world connoisseurs.  There are people relating oral history and plaques with written history but St Peter’s history is more immediate and I feel it through the soles of my shoes, through my fingers, through sight and scent. We move through the space as part of the crowd, as a member of our small group and alone as individuals, each of us dazzled and eyes-wide. We are here for more hours. When the baby scolds us, we ply her with biscuit fragments, chocolate drops and bottled lemonade. When we are drooping with heat and fatigue, we drop our final coins and light our final candles and return to the sun in the Square.

We have sat on grass or stood but the baby has been strolled all day. She is restless and ready to run. We chase her across the stones of the Square. She screams with excitement, waving her arms at the pigeons and rushing them. These pigeons are bold and familiar; they move out of her way but do not take flight. We crumble the rest of the biscuits and she scatters the crumbs. The pigeons surround her and she is the one who flies, running for safe harbor. We sit; the heat from the stones confines me to the smallest space my flesh must cover. It is harder in a skirt and I pull the fabric to my bent knees and balance my feet on my heels to keep the stretched length of my legs suspended above the bricks. We speak about food in a desultory way, who wants what to eat. Reality is, we will eat what we come across as we walk back. We follow a different route and come across a bus stop papered with maps and routes. We identify a bus line that will take us a good piece of the road home and have only waited a short time when the bus arrives. We are hungry and hot, disheveled, tired but happy. It has been a singularly wonderful day. 

Discussion

I gave this to my husband to read. He has degrees in English and journalism and can give constructive feedback on the structure of writing as well as the content. He was not present with us in Rome and I wanted his opinion on how well I recreated the day and the experience for someone without knowledge of the city or the climate. His reading found no issues with the technical aspect. He said it was descriptive, the metaphors were appropriate and made sense, it did a good job of inviting the reader into the story and was at least somewhat entertaining. He had no criticism of the content and did not suggest that I add or delete anything. He thought each sentence added to the substance of the story. Even after explaining qualitative research and reading the assignment directions to him, he was not clear on just what I was trying to achieve so felt that his ability to give more criticism was hampered by this.

As with the first assignment to describe an animal, once I got started it was difficult to find a stopping point. I think I made good choices for topics, picked what had real meaning for me and so enjoyed the writing process and the result. I treasure this day on its own and as part of a fabulous trip. We still laugh at memories of feeding the baby anchovy paste, splashing in Trevi, (and at least one other), Fountain, chasing each other through the loggia of St Peter’s Square and lighting candles for a world of relatives in the Basilica. Writing this took me some time. I spent time in recollection, time to construct the story in outline, time to fill in details and time to polish the finished product. I think it was time well spent.