I am in Rome. Not in Rome exactly. But on a hill outside Rome. The hill overlooks a lake. The lake used to be a volcano. On the other side of the lake/volcano is a castle and a little town.
My family is here for a wedding. Our longtime dear friends’ daughter is getting married today. Friday we all flew in from various places and checked into the hotel, which is actually a monastery that dates back to the 13th century. I hadn’t slept at all on the plane.
Mainly, this was due to how packed in we all were and then there was the guy in my row who had a cat in a carrier under his seat, and at some point during the night flight he said, Sorry! because his cat had just pooped in the carrier. But who needs sleep when you are in Rome for a weekend-long wedding?
We arrived just in time for lunch, which was spread out on tables that overlooked the lake. The scene was like something in a movie, the kind with the stone veranda and the tablecloths and the gardens and the pasta and wine, and then suddenly, Meryl Streep comes whirling out singing. On the plane (before the cat incident) I was reading the book Taste by Stanley Tucci, which is about his love affair with Italian food, so I knew that the pasta was only the first course, and there would be many more courses, and I was right. Grazie, Stanley Tucci.
Can you believe we are in Italy, we kept saying to each other. (No, was what I was thinking.) It was the wine and the zero hours sleep. That view of the lake. I couldn’t get over it. The castle and the cute little town on the other side.
The next day we all hiked through the forest and walked on precariously narrow roads to see the castle up close. Apparently, it’s a big deal because the pope uses the place as his summer home. Twenty thousand steps later we were back at the monastery for more pasta and several other courses. The placemats had words written in Italian, and I tried to parse it out. Something about eating and living was my guess. Which seemed like a nice sentiment.
But then I went on the monastery tour and learned that the place was briefly a kind of health center in the early 1900’s and their motto was EAT SLOWLY AND CHEW WELL. In the cute little castle town, I drank a cappuccino and slowly ate and chewed very well a cannoli and snapped a picture of a sign outside a gift shop that said, Earth without Art is just EH.
I walked with my best friend, the mother of the bride, and had a flashback to a million years ago, when we were young mothers, chasing our little kids around the backyard and filling their plastic sippy cups with chocolate milk, and now here we all are, wandering the cobblestone streets and clinking our wine glasses.
Last night her daughter made a toast and for a brief jet-laggy moment, I could see the chocolate milk sippy cup instead of the champagne glass. Outside the window was the suburban backyard and the other little kids shrieking on the swings. And then it was back to where we were, where we are, in the ancient monastery.
Cheers, we said.
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| Lunch on the terrace |
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| View of the lake and the castle at night |
