April Cruel?

Based on some random Facebook posts and e-mails, it seems that winter is still holding on back home. Over here, and I’m not saying this to gloat (at least, I don’t think I am), spring has announced her presence with a firm but gentle hand. There were hints that it was coming. The last few weeks have been pretty mild, though the nights and evenings have stayed cool. Still, I caught myself thinking twice about putting on a flannel shirt the other week and by last weekend it was shirtsleeves at dawn (or what passes for dawn with me these days).

There have been other signs that the seasons were changing. Daylight savings time arrived over here a couple weekends ago. (By the way, I failed to get the memo, strolling in at noon for an eleven o’clock Sunday class. Pretty slick.) The Colosseum and Forum are staying open into the evenings and the crowds are swelling. The umbrella vendors have traded in their wares for sunglasses and parasols, and the Italian women have retrieved their cleavages from winter storage. I tried to stop by Giolitti’s for gelato on Sunday and the line was out the door.

This is Rome at its most enchanting. (Well, except for that line out the door for Gelato. I don’t do well with lines.) What look like redbuds and a number of other flowering trees have popped and the blooms, being a little more tightly tethered than those famous cherry blossoms back home, seem to be sticking around for. The sun is just warm enough to make you appreciate the shade and the shade still holds enough of a chill to welcome full sun. A person with a balanced mind could live these days in constant gratitude, or so I would imagine.
There is a slight mix to this blessing. The crowds in general are swelling and Rome’s sidewalks tend to be on the narrow side. Add the usual weekend increase and walking around town gets a little challenging. While winter tends to be pretty dismal over here, the upside was the fact that there was rarely a line to anything. You could walk up to the Vatican Museum in early afternoon and there was virtually no line. That window has closed for the season. It’s time to learn to share.
Then there’s the other thing-what lies on the other side of spring. I’ve already heard a few grumblings about the impending summer. Heck, one friend even suggested that I bump my return to the states up by a couple months in order to avoid July and August. That’s not going to happen. In fact, let’s not even go there. Let’s stay, more or less, in the present.
I conducted my first afternoon tour of the season the other day. Two families of four from different parts of Australian who listened and asked questions and were fun to take around. That morning I had taken a friend through St. Pete’s including the climb to the top of the cupola, all 362 steps. Anyway, after the afternoon tour I was walking up the hill to home. I was a little tired, a little sunburnt, probably a little, uh, ripe. There was something very familiar about it, like I’d done it before, because I had. Last year.

I’m approaching a year over here. Four seasons. Spring, which I suspect is the shortest, is also the most pleasant. Always leave ‘em wanting more. Still there’s something both reassuring and surprising about realizing that a year has passed (well, almost a year).
My first few years after college, I worked in a small record store and, ahem, audio salon in a little village in Ohio. When winter rolled around and the temperature plummeted, something, probably ice under the threshold, made the medal frame of the front door stick and squeak. I still distinctly remember hearing that squeak for the first time of that second winter. Up to that point I hadn’t lived in the same house (or dorm) or held any job for over a year. That’s no surprise. All my jobs til then had been of the summer variety and annual moves around campus or town were de rigueur during college years and those immediately post. Still, it was a sudden realization that a year had gone by and that maybe this is how patterns are set.
I had a similar awareness walking home from the Colosseum the other day, nothing startling, more along the lines of settling. A year had gone by, or at least the better part of four seasons. It’s been a reasonable chunk of time. Patterns emerge, routines, friendships. A life gets re-aligned. This is hardly a news flash and I suspect it happens whenever anybody relocates but I have to say that I’m at least mildly surprised that the city, and probably more accurately, living in the city, feels as comfortable as it does.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I have my end date. I started out saying that I was hoping to be in Rome for a year and it now looks like it’ll be 15 months. I head back in August and (knock wood) it appears that I have a job and a place to stay waiting for me. (Sometimes the best plan is to have a little luck.) There’s something comfortable about returning to the familiar but I’m really hoping that when I get back, I can see beyond the familiar.
Within an hour of landing in Rome, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The drive in from the airport goes by ancient ruins and mammoth basilicas. The ubiquitous tourist maps that all the hotels give out are thickly dotted with fascinating sites. It was easy to see things with new eyes. The trick is trying to keep the familiar stuff new. The stuff you see every day.
I taught high school English for a half a dozen years or so ago. It was 11Th grade, American Lit and there was a little bit of Thoreau in there. It was that excerpt from Walden where he talks about a Chinese lord who had carved in to his morning bath tub the command to “make it new, day by day.” That’s a hell of a commandment. Let me tell a tale on myself.
I’m lucky enough to be working as tour guide over here and my usual beat is the Ancient City but sometimes I work in the Vatican Museum. This means I get paid to walk people through an amazing collection of art that culminates with the Rafael rooms and the Sistine Chapel. This is not a bad job to have. A couple weeks ago I had a single client, a woman from California who seemed to be carrying a mild case of Attention Deficit Disorder and was more interested in taking a picture of everything than actually looking at the works. (Not that I would hold any opinions on that.)

Anyway, we get to the chapel, I give her the overview, and then encourage her to walk around and take it in. “I’ll be right here,” I tell her “Don’t leave the room without me” and she goes walking off. 5 minutes go by, then 10. I start to get a little antsy because she hadn’t spent more than about 20 seconds in front of anything yet. I look around the room and don’t see her, but the rooms crowded. I let out a sigh, roll my eyes, and check my watch again. 15 minutes have gone by and I’m thinking “How much longer am I going to have to wait here?” IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL!!! (This is the point at which the chapel guards all turn and “shush” me.) You get the idea.
So it’s Spring and, though there was Spring last year and the year before, this one’s pretty spectacular. I met a friend for coffee the other night in a very cool part of the city that I hadn’t been through before. At some point in the conversation I was asking him how he found himself over here and, as is often the case, it started with an extended visit and a return to the states with a little bit of Rome lodged in his internal resume. As I was listening to him, I was aware of an unpleasant sensation growing in my own belly, right below my heart. It’s going to be hard to leave this place…but I don’t have to do that today and not for a few months.
Like the man said…I believe I can do this for another day.