Dear ______,
My apologies for the tardiness of this reply. Too often, meaning to write something true, I end up writing nothing. Glibness is easier. The emoji-fication of language is a sorry trend of our time: say nothing cheerfully – in a keystroke!
More than two years have passed since we said goodbye to Rome, after our four-year visit. Numbers often startle, chronology especially. Only yesterday, it seems, we were together – yesterday and an eon ago, in a mythical golden age. You, who’ve lived such cosmopolitan, international lives, might be surprised by how much we Americans had to learn. Yes, we’d traveled, done things, learned things, but our careers and consciousness were exclusively American. Americans typically mistake domination for decency, wealth for wisdom, accident for destiny. Because we’ve been lucky in the scrum of nations, we imagine ourselves superior. Romans, circa 300, must have suffered similar delusions: pax Romana, pax Americana! History grins ruefully: a pox on both.
Our friendship with you enlarged our lives. You showed us a different way to be: gracious without condescension, elegant without ostentation, proud of your heritage yet modest about your part in history’s parade. You recalled a dozen generations of family as a matter of course; we, three maybe. In Rome the past is millennia, in New York City yesterday. That difference in perspective alters self-regard.
It’s hard for me to fathom the enormity of my Roman education. In memory I walk those hilly streets daily.
One surprise was the Church. In America we have a smorgasbord to choose from, many recent; in Italy there’s one, and it is old. The ubiquitous art, architecture, ceremonies, religious, and saints make faith feel permanent in Italy, not a lifestyle option. The erosion of religions throughout the so-called developed nations I now view as ominous, thanks to Rome. When God visited me several years ago, it was because we met in Rome.
Another surprise was beauty. Italians honor it, preserve it, live in it; Americans don’t. Americans confine beauty to museums, parks, theaters; in Rome beauty is a concern of every piazzetta and trattoria. The spoliation of beauty by cars and crud accelerates everywhere, but in Rome one can still amble with joy. Italians honor makers of beauty, whom Americans dismiss as decorators. As a journeyman in the beauty line, I felt honored in Rome, not superfluous.
In Rome, life is given to be savored not rushed through on our way to somewhere else. This astonishes Americans, who are always on the go even if we’re going nowhere. We don’t know how to linger. I still don’t, but I’m learning.
Humility is a lesson Americans skip altogether. Since our founding, we’ve assumed that God had a special place in His heart for Yankee Doodle. History seemed to prove it; even our calamities somehow turned out OK. Italians are used to the ebb and flow of fortune. Today’s glory will be met by horror tomorrow – just wait. Good and evil must learn to coexist.
Developments, which began in America during our Roman years, now threaten the peace of mankind. No longer cocky, Americans cringe before the humans we betray and abuse. Friends ask, “Don’t you wish you were still in Rome?” We do – often – but not for that reason. We must be at home to abide the destruction of our dream. As our loved one approaches the gallows, we cannot look away – or look.
I meander. We miss Rome and our Roman friends always, you guys foremost. The memory of our time with you glows like candles in a dim apse, before a saint in his glass box.