Keeping the Memories

I've been too busy to write. Too busy to think. I've been the last one to bed and the first one up in the morning - pushing, prodding, and generally bossing everyone around Italy. Ordering them when they're sluggish, encouraging when they're tired, feeding them when they're hungry and being generally tyrannical when they won't go to bed at night. In the past week, we've covered down on all of the important bits of Italy. I don't know when Laura and the girls will be able to come back - for that matter, I don't know when I'll be able to return, either. So its best to get as much in as possible. That's been my philosophy. I make a list here because I want to remember and I doubt my ability.
1. Venice: the Doge's palace, St. Mark's Square, Murano, and Santa Maria Della Salute (didn't make it to the Acadamia)
2. Verona: Juliet's house and random city streets after I lost the car.
3. Florence: the Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery, morning run along the river by myself, the Acadamia and the David (where Rachel and Chrissy stood transfixed for more than an hour and still didn't want to leave), and then teaching the girls how to haggle for prices at the street market.
4. Rome: The Metro system (Rachel decided then and there that she would live in Rome), the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain with Gelato, and the Pantheon with Coffees and hot milk and wine outside; the Colosseum, and the Forum.
5. Pozzuoli. Bananarama and Villa Avellino where Fabio had set aside Eve's old place for me to stay!! We walked along Via Napoli and ate at Acqua & Farina. Spaghetti al Fruiti di Mare.
6. Pompei. Sorrento. Positano. Amalfi.

It has been sweet and beautiful to be here: to take people I love here. But it is also so poignant and sad to remember what was taken from me.

I have memories of Venice at Christmastime: watching Tim and Eve dance in San Marco Square and the glass blowing in Murano. I remember waking Eve for Midnight Mass and walking back to the hotel with dozens of others, carrying paper bags with candles inside, moving their silent precession along the canal and over the bridges. I was so sad then, but the memory is not a sad one. It is beautiful.

I was here in Naples and Sorrento. I fell in love here. Three years ago last Thursday Sjors broke apart his phone so that they wouldn't track him, and he drove with me in my little Nissan Micra to Amalfi for the first time. We held hands and hiked up a cliff face in the rain. We drove past churches and I longed to stop at one, find a priest and marry him there. We arrived in Amalfi after dark and walked up the steps of the Cathedral together. Inside, I talked too loudly to the caretaker in my bad Italian and embarrassed Sjors when we were "shushed". Sjors bought me chocolate and danced with me in the shop while Madeline Peroux played in the background. On the drive back to Pozzuoli, Sjors shared his intentions with me: to leave his organization, and to begin to deal with the memories that had kept him frozen for so long. There was such hope in that one sweet day. I have taken friends to Sorrento and Amalfi since then and every time, I've layered on another memory, sweetening the depth of the experience.  I am a lucky person. I was lucky to find the person I would have given my soul for. That moment of realization and understanding, a deep incomprehensible knowledge of another person and unexplainable deep love. This is a rare thing.

I remember traveling to Florence for the first time and seeing Botticelli and Michelangelo and lighting a candle for Sjors in the Duomo. This last Thursday, I awakened in the early morning hours, and went for a run as the world began to stir. The sun was rising. The streets were quiet. I was such an anomaly in my running clothes, pounding out a rhythm on the cobblestones, men turned to look and smile at me. I ran into the Palazzo Vecchio courtyard, saw “The Rape of the Sabine Women” and “Perseus and Medusa”. They looked cold and waiting in the pale morning light. Then I ran across the Ponte Vecchio and into the side-streets on the opposite side of the river. The sun was rising, making a golden pink glow over the river. It took my breath away.  I talked to god - without the hostility I used to feel. The latent anger and sadness that surges to the surface and pulls me under. Instead, I had a sense of immediacy. Of presence. It is difficult for me to speak Sjors’ name to divinity. It is like a question I’m forbidden from asking. But I said it anyway as I ran. I prayed for him. In the Duomo, I lit a candle for him again.

In Rome, I remembered every visit as an echo of the last - ringing through the years and resonating my body: the first time in 2008 I traveled to the Sistine Chapel, worried that I would never see it again and I feeling so amazed and fortunate to be there. I traveled to Rome again by myself on November 29, 2010 - the day Sjors left Naples. I stayed at a hotel on Nomentana and awakened in the night, crying out and feeling Sjors crying out for me. I walked around the city - especially the Spanish Steps where Sjors told me he would meet me - where he said he would ask me to marry him.

In St. Peter's Basilica, I remembered the prayer I'd uttered aloud five years ago: "I give you the fire of my mind". This time, I escaped my charges for a few minutes, and made my way back into the chapel, and I knelt at the pew. I considered that I may have given god my mind several years ago, but it is my heart that needs the caretaking now. I tried to give this to god, too. But he did not seem too eager to take it. Again, I found myself reiterating the prayer, "I give you the fire of my mind". So if I give god the secret places of my heart, he will have to take them - but it seems he has use for my mind still.

Pozzuoli is the most difficult place for me because the pain of the betrayal is very present. . Here, I feel that I have returned home, but I know that I must leave.

If Sjors had not lied. If the Command had not been cowardly. I would be here still.

But I have such sweet memories here. For three years this was my home. It has my heart. I have my memories. I will always get to keep the memories.