When Rome Was My Home

I lived in Rome a long time ago. How I got there, stayed there, and left there require separate chapters of a book yet unwritten. For decades, I would not write anything about my time in the Eternal City. I would talk about it over the years, sometimes embellishing details, and more than occasionally omitting inconvenient facts. However, no words about my Roman interlude ever saw type, except for very brief references to my "overseas experience."

Fontana di Trevi
I worked around the corner from the fountain.

Rome, by its very nature, challenged me in ways I had not anticipated at all. The city's sensuality was both an awakening and a provocation. The language, supposedly simple to learn, was in fact quite difficult to master and I certainly never came close to that accomplishment. Even though I was most definitely a foreigner in Rome, I could easily spot American tourists and often tried to avoid them. Yet, the irony of living in Rome was that I often thought about America and gained a useful perspective about it that I've retained since that time.

Of course, living an everyday sort of life amidst Rome's aura of dramatic history was definitely a singular experience. However, the grandiose monuments and subdued historic remains found their counterpoint in Rome's edgy, turbulent politics. It's hard to overstate to an American reader how Italian political unrest felt, even to a foreigner. I lived there when an Italian prime minister was kidnapped and murdered, buildings were bombed, and mass demonstrations and strikes were part of the city's political fabric. The sense of politics was quite different from what I had known in the States, even though I had lived in New York and went to arguably the most politically restive college campus of the 1960s (Wisconsin).

All of this was simply an operatic background to the personal relationships. Some people found love (congrats to you) and were lucky enough to keep it through the years. Some found love that unraveled over time. I'm still not entirely clear what I had and what I gave, but it was something short of love. However, there was respect and some genuine caring, and that's not bad. This part of the story gets a little complicated, and I've avoided articulating what happened. However, to tell the true story of when Rome was my home, I'll have to get into matters of the heart.

Phew....that's asking a lot. The reward will be worth it.