Elsewhere

Today is my last day living abroad. We arrived in Rome about five months ago for a sabbatical of sorts. The children were in college and the wife and I were unemployed. Why not get out of the country for a while? It’s something we’d always wanted to do, and with not much going on at home, it seemed like a good time to give it a go. The original idea was to decamp for a year. We’d been to Rome the previous September and loved it. Perhaps we could base ourselves there for a while, then maybe travel north when the weather turns hot. Then back to Italy, or maybe someplace else. That was the plan, anyway, rendered moot by our failure to secure the proper visa despite two trips to the Italian Consulate in Miami and the diligent collection of tax records and bank statements attesting to our financial well-being. (We are not particularly well financially, but we felt we obfuscated that fact rather nicely, thank you.)

After waiting around for weeks for the Italians to decided whether to issue us a visa or not, we finally canceled the request and decided to head off on a tourist visa, which would allow us only three months before we had to leave the European Union. Three months didn’t feel like enough time abroad to either of us so we decided we would head to London when our time in Rome ended, a decision only made possible by the slimy Nigel Farage and his gang of Brexiteers. London is no longer in the EU so London is where I am now, staying for a few days at a friend’s home in Crouch End, contemplating getting a final European haircut before tomorrow’s interminable flight back to Savannah.

Over the last few weeks, I confess to feeling some homesickness. It’s not that I miss the States particularly. When taken as a whole, there’s not much to miss right now. We’re in one of our periodic spasmodic episodes and I don’t feel any great desire to witness this particular fit first-hand, especially considering that the flailing and frothing will only increase as the presidential election season gears up. What I miss is my son, who has been house and dog sitting these last months. I miss my mattress and my piano. I’m not a particularly good sleeper these days and an even worse pianist, but I spend a great deal of time pursuing both activities. I miss driving my car and puttering around my kitchen. What I miss, I suppose, is just the feeling of “home.”

We only moved to Savannah a couple years ago so I can’t honestly say that Savannah feels like home just yet, but it’s the closest thing I’ve got. Plus, my kid is there, as I said, and the dogs. And some very good local ice cream.  

I’m trying to figure out if I’ll take any lessons with me on the flight back. I suppose yes. Rome in particular taught me a lot. The main thing is that we’re living life all wrong in the States. The Italian economy is shit and their government is, as always, a shambles. Their bureaucracy is famously byzantine. They have all the problems everybody else has. But they have pasta. They have singing in the streets when their football team is on the pitch. They have hours off in the prime browsing hours during the middle of the day because life has to be about more than keeping shop. They have la dolce vita.

Pictured: my wife and I in Rome.

It can be frustrating for an American couple to arrive in Rome and discover that everything isn’t available now, now, now! Sometimes you have to wait. Maybe you have to wait longer than you might like. Either you make that adjustment or you do not. We made it and life felt better having made it. There is much to be said for American efficiency and much to be said for American availability, but there is just as much to be said for taking one’s time, for sidestepping the constant chomping maw of American consumerism, for languid lunches with emails unchecked. No American can spend much time in Italy, I think, without coming to the conclusion that these people have figured out at least a few things about life. I suppose any culture that has survived two thousand years learns something along the way. Of course, I’m romanticizing Italy. But isn’t that why one travels? We go away in order to absorb the best of a place and to be changed for the better by it.

As for London, I don’t know that I take much away. It’s too American. Or we’re too British. That’s not a criticism of either place, merely an observation. Of course there are differences, but the similarities are much more apparent. I mean, we are their bastard children, I guess, so no wonder. I will say that London’s diversity is extraordinary. Walking down the street in Crouch End, you might see a Thai restaurant next to an Indian takeaway next to a Polish grocery across the street from a kebab shop catty corner to the chippy. I’m not attuned to British politics so I don’t know how well all these cultures mix or not, but the streets feel peaceful. I haven’t noticed tension among the rabble on the street except for the guy in the van who was yelling at his wife yesterday for always making him late. Martha found the exchange offensive but only because I sometimes yell the same thing at her.

One thing I will definitely miss about living on this continent - it’s lack of guns. Maybe I’m just an old softie, but I feel safer in cities where I know I’m not going to get shot. It’s a subtle thing. It’s not like I walk around America in Kevlar. But it’s great to be in a city where, when you think you’ve just heard fireworks go off, it’s always fireworks. The newscast never begins with “Three people were shot today…” Over time, the shoulders relax just a bit. It’s a good feeling. In the States, gun owners most often purchase their weapons for security. I have never felt safer or more secure than I have these last few months. What’s a good word to describe this feeling? Freedom.

Martha and I have already decided we’re going to do this again. Hopefully for a few months next year. We’d like to spend some time in the north of Italy. Maybe the Bordeaux region of France. Scandinavia. I’d love to spend some time in South America. If you’re thinking of doing something similar, it’s not hard and it’s not crazy expensive. Airbnb and similar sites make securing long-term lodging doable for most budgets. Go off-season. Get yourself set up someplace and then, just live there. Most days we didn’t do much. Yes, we did plenty of touristy things but for the most part, we’ve stayed close to home, found the local pubs we like to frequent (for Aperol in Italy, pints in London), we hung out with friends but mostly with each other. We cooked and did laundry and sometimes we were bored, and that was ok too. It was life, just elsewhere. And sometimes elsewhere is a pretty good place to be.