pull up a chair

when last we pulled up a chair, we were a gladsome foursome giddily gadding about the eternal city. unbeknownst to us, a fifth was among us. a red-ringed hanger-on who might have climbed aboard on the plane that flew through the night. or perhaps in the crowds in one art-ringed room or another.

but by nightfall one friday ago, a mere four days into our roman romp, one among us was lying flat on his back when he plaintively asked, “could you feel my head?” and suddenly the tiniest of sniffles i’d been hearing for the past two days, and the uncharacteristic naps that were beckoned mid-morning and again mid-afternoon snapped into sense, and a not-so-subtle hypothesis bolted into my brain: “this couldn’t be covid, could it?!?”

and with that, lickety split, i leapt out the door and wiggled my way through ancient streets and crowds thick with myriad tongues. i found myself a farmacia and in the clearest italian i knew, asked, “covid test?” the farmacista knew too. it seems the red-ringed word is universally understood. she handed me the prova covid, i handed her euros, and off i flew.

didn’t take more than a minute for that dreaded double line to flash into sight. bright purple it was, as my pictures of rome in quartet whirled down the drain. we had among us a covid-plagued fellow, the very one who had spent weeks and weeks planning and plotting. signing us up for this tour and that. and now, the poor chap was confined to a room at the back of the Airbnb, and i was moved to the couch.

i felt my heart crack.

i pictured a big pink eraser descend from above, dashing our roman holiday and turning our fine little appartamento into a quarantined clinica covid. i feared, right away, that the dastardly viral intruder would tear us asunder. that i, too, would be felled. and then boy 1 and boy 2.

i reached for my phone and dashed off a text to my beloved american doctor. as the sun set in rome, it was just reaching its midday peak in the states, so, lo and behold, she swiftly wrote back. told us they’re basically treating covid as a head cold these days, and that 24 hours after the fever broke or symptoms abated, our chief travel guide would enter the five-day mask-and-distance phase. and the rest of us should hope for the best.

without delay, the ailing one and i both reached for our phones to alert the dear friends with whom we’d shared the previous evening of rooftop aperitifs and a long and lovely roman dinner. and, belly flip-flopping all the while, i texted the sorry update to our boys, who’d gone out with a professorly friend for pastas and spritzes and whatever else might unfold on a friday night in glorious rome when you’re young and with nary a care.

i couldn’t sleep. so i lay there on my couch till the wee hours, listening for the boys’ signature voices and the clomp of their feet on the stone-cobbled street down below. when in they wandered, i confirmed that they’d seen the bum news spelled out on their phones. and we figured the weekend engagements — a guided tour of the colosseum and forum, as well as a lazy sunday lunch on our friends’ rooftop terrace (which had been the imagined highlight of the trip to little old me) — had gone up in vatican smoke.

but here’s where the story once again takes a turn, rises into the allegorical, and makes of one player a hero: assuming the boys would never in a million years awake for an early-morning architectural tour of ancient roman ruins, i’d already scratched the colosseum and forum off the list. so wasn’t i proven to be the fool when, with an hour to spare before the already-paid-for tour, the bedroom door cracked open and out strolled a towel-clad gent on his way to the shower. as he sauntered sleepily past me, he uttered only three words that soon set the tone for the day and all those that followed: “when in rome. . .”

and so we were off. if he, a boy who’d slept a mere few hours, could pull himself off the pillow to make good on his papa’s pre-ordained plot for the day, certainly boy No. 1 could follow, and i — who had originally declined a tour of what i referred to as “the ancient blood bath” and imagined instead a leisurely morning alone — could step into gear. turned out we missed the guided part of the tour, but we managed to get into the old ruin and carried on the self-guided way. all that walking and gawking made us hungry, so kid No. 2 called time-out and guided us through the meandering streets to an osteria that he’d been told had the very best food in all of roma (and it certainly did)*. and then, bellies full and sunscreen slathered, we climbed to the tippy top of the palatine gardens, and all of rome lay majestically, magnificently sprawled out before us.

the boy’s simple instructive “when in rome. . .” is the essence of carpe diem, the code by which he not only lives but inspires. he’s a mere 22, a kid born just before 9/11, a kid whose years have been punctuated by the horrors of parkland and sandy hook, a kid who cowered inside our cambridge apartment the terrible week of the boston marathon bombing when we could watch the police helicopters whirring in the sky just out our windows, a kid who went to college during covid and got sent home for half a semester to watch pre-recorded lectures on the laptop perched on the covers of his boyhood bed.

he’s emerged with an unshakeable knowing that life comes around but once, and you’d better seize it while you can. because there’s no cinch on tomorrow. which pretty much is the truth it’s taken me decades — and a medical scare of whopping proportion — to figure out.

we talked plenty (be it discoursing eternal verities or swapping silly serendipities) as we wound through the ancient streets of rome (his hand always reaching for mine, to make sure i didn’t wobble or fall), as he insisted we mosey down the block to the corner watering hole for spritzes at dusk, as he and his brother led us hither and yon to the best eats in the city. and his ironclad creed is that life is to be lived to the fullest.

my number one teacher in rome was the kid who grew in my womb long after the doctors insisted there’d never be another; an odds-breaker ever since, a kid who dwells in the joy of exclamation. and his lesson is one i’ll not tuck away on a shelf now that we’re home. nor ever.

it’s a beautiful and glorious thing when the teacher appears in the form of a kid who serves up his lessons with spritzes and leads you through rome on a quest for flavors you’ll never forget.

bless you, and thank you, dear T.

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post script: our covid-afflicted fellow made it through mostly unscathed, and is now back among the unmasked. once his fever broke, and 24 hours had passed, he made the most of his unfettered hours to stand and absorb the architectural wonders of rome for as long as his big ol’ heart desired. none of the rest of us ever tested positive. though we missed the rooftop lazy sunday lunch of our dreams, we now have reason and incentive to return. i brought a good chunk of rome home in my heart.

what wisdoms have come your way in the wake of a narrative twist?

*in case you find yourself in the eternal city any time soon, the best food we inhaled in rome was at the little osteria il bocconcino, just up the hill and around a few bends from the colosseum. if you ask the boys, there are multiple other contenders as well. every bite, in a word, was sublime.