I Spent a Week Touring Rome With My 80-Year-Old Father
By Sheila Pierce
I’ve spent much of the past two years cursing Covid for how it has disrupted lives and upset families. But Covid recently gave me an unexpected gift for which I’ll be forever grateful.
At the end of my parents’ recent two-week trip to visit us in Rome, Italy, my mother tested positive for Covid. My father tested negative, and our goal was to keep him that way. Fortunately, my mother was asymptomatic, and felt just fine. But, by Italian law as of May 2022, she had to quarantine for 10 days and could not board an airplane until she tested negative. So, an extra week together was added to my parents’ itinerary.
After we shuffled around our sleeping arrangements in Rome and my parents postponed their future engagements back home in New York, we set up my mother in her quarantine cocoon, and suddenly I had my father all to myself. I replaced my mother as my father’s guide and translator. While my father and I navigated Rome as a couple, I held his hand the way he once held mine when I was a child.
The last time my father and I held hands at length was eighteen years ago, the day he walked me down the aisle. A photograph capturing the moment hangs in our Roman apartment, revealing our teary eyes, mega-watt smiles, and white knuckles as we clung to each other on the brink of change. His puffy palms brought back memories of my childhood. Walking around our small village in the Hudson Valley where I’d accompany him to the hardware store or the grocery market, he’d hold my hand to cross the street.
At a healthy 80-years-old, my father walks slower now than when I last saw him ten months ago. His once limber legs no longer leap around the tennis court he used to dominate. His deteriorating eyesight prevents him from driving, from recognizing faraway objects, and from sensing depth and shadows. He doesn’t let on to just how blurry I believe his life has become.
Nevertheless, his appreciation for art, architecture, history, and literature is as vibrant as ever. Walks around Rome satisfied all of his interests. I guided him up and down ancient stairs, over ruts and rivets on cobble-stoned streets, and pine-tree roots hidden underfoot. I held on tight: he squeezed back. I focused on his gray New Balance sneakers, described by my teenage kids as grandpa shoes, remarkably similar to the trendy models they wear.
At one point during our week together in Rome, my father lost his watch. It felt symbolic, as if time had stopped, and we weren’t supposed to look at the clock. We missed having my mother around, but we decided to embrace this moment, after spending so much time apart from each other over the last two years.
Living far away from parents makes aging invisible. Aside from an occasional peek of visual reality through a video conference call, it’s not until we’re actually in person with each other that we notice the wrinkles on a neck, the crow’s-feet around eyes, or the shuffling footsteps.
Just as I’m sure my father quietly noticed my middle-aged body transformed, I saw how time and a pandemic lockdown had taken its toll on him.
On one of our days together, he asked if we could go on a driving tour so he could see the sights from afar, admire the architecture, and take in the panorama of Rome like a movie reel from La Dolce Vita. That evening, we visited St. Peter’s Square. It was a balmy, breezy night, and we managed to park the car only a few blocks from the Vatican. Packs of tourists had shifted from sight-seeing to Aperol Spritzes, leaving the magnificent piazza all but empty.
It was the day after Rome’s local soccer team had won a major European tournament against Rotterdam. About two miles away from where we were, the team players arrived at the Circus Maximus for their victory lap, received by thousands of shrieking, enthusiastic fans. Car horns honked throughout the city, and mopeds zoomed by, carrying patriotic flags. We saw videos of the chaos later as my son had been among the faithful.
But my father and I were with another type of faithful in St. Peter’s Square. We didn’t need to look at a painting—we were living quietly within one. Faint church bells chimed at nearby basilicas reminding us that vespers were starting. The fountains on each side of the square’s obelisk trickled water with a hypnotizing serenity, sunset clouds and crying seagulls overhead, and young children kicking a soccer ball while their parents read guidebooks. A tranquility hung over the magnificent basilica designed by Michelangelo, and we felt as if we’d heard an inspiring homily just by standing still. Eventually, we found my father’s watch, and it had kept the time. But we had slowed down, receiving the gift of time when there never seems to be enough of it.
There is an expression in Italian that I have always loved: alla mano. It means doing things casually or being easy going.
Two years into the pandemic, life in Rome is now relatively back to normal: busy, chaotic, and frantic. However, some people are awkward in returning to how things used to be, their social skills stilted, their ability to mingle in bigger groups challenged. I’ve noticed that playing into the spontaneity of life, alla mano, lifts spirits.
The week with my father was either spent holding his hand or linking his arm, alla mano, and also per mano (by hand), as we enjoyed slipping into life as it used to be. I couldn’t help but feel that the tides were about to turn, and that I would soon parent my parents. But, by week’s end, I was already used to it, and it felt natural, just like our daily walks and talks, something I’m not usually graced with, living 4,000 miles away from my parents.
When my brother and I were little, during long family rides in the station wagon, we’d always ask my parents how much longer it would be until we arrived. “Closer every minute,” my father would respond.
After our week together in Rome, that’s exactly how I felt.
++
Sheila Pierce is an American writer currently living in Rome, Italy, with her husband, two teenagers, and dog. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and Vogue Italia. Married to an Italian diplomat, she changes countries every four years, with recent postings in Brussels, Tel Aviv, Rome, and San Francisco. She’s currently writing a book about her life in transit, with many of her international chronicles featured on www.sheilapierce.com.