When in Rome

Do as the Romans do. Walk miles every day over the black cobblestones, over the layers of history hidden beneath them. Eat pizza and pasta and gelati. Drink espresso and wine and big blowsy Aperol spritzes. While you’re sipping, listen to your husband read to you about Caravaggio, whose studio was a stone’s throw from where you’re sitting.

When in Rome, do not tear your hair and rend your clothing over the American election. Has a single Italian person asked you about it? No, not a one. Is the sun bathing the white ramparts of the Vittorio Emmanuel II monument? Yes, it is.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Look up that sentence, and you’ll find that it’s an expression that dates from the fourth century AD. And what a useful one it is, especially when you’re actually in Rome, as Rustin and I were, two weeks after the November election.

 When we were planning this trip, we had dared to hope that we’d be in a celebratory state of mind. Al contrario. As we dragged our roller-bags to the light rail station, at 4:45 on a Tuesday morning exactly two weeks after Election Day, I felt like we were fleeing the scene of a massive explosion: deafened, bruised, glass and debris still embedded in our skin and hair; all we wanted was to get away from the smoke and sludge. I felt like I ought to feel guilty, because surely we should’ve been pitching in, getting people to safety, not flying off to Rome.

 But I didn’t feel guilty. Because this was a different kind of disaster. There would be no quick cleanup. There was a strong argument to be made for granting ourselves a short sabbatical before facing whatever lay ahead.

And here’s the truth: arriving in Rome after the November election really was like that moment in the Wizard of Oz where it goes from black and white to color. Around the corner from our rented apartment, we could see the Colosseum glowing in the morning sun, just a few blocks away. Around another corner, we saw the sprawling ruins of the Forum. Rome is a place where you realize that politics and governance and justice have always mattered greatly, but so have art and culture and all the centuries of human expression; all the centuries through which we have strived for beauty, searched for meaning, made bold choices and tragic choices and slowly, occasionally, learned from them.

   Long long ago, Rome was a republic. Then it was a dictatorship, starring Julius Caesar, after he and his army crossed the shallow Rubicon River and gave the world another useful saying. After that, Rome shrank to a scrawny village for several centuries. Then it was revived yet again, as a mecca for pilgrims, and eventually a dazzling center of Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture; a place where you could build the tallest dome in the world and say with a straight face that it was all about glorifying God, which to many people it was, and is. But the grandeur and beauty of St. Peter’s Basilica and all the other churches and ecclesiastical palaces were also, collectively, a powerful form of intimidation; a way of saying: This is where God lives. Pay your indulgences so that you’ll have a better afterlife, and so that we can build these dazzling new monuments. As for those old ones? In the mid-1400s, when work began on the dramatic expansion of the Basilica, Pope Nicholas V ordered 2,522 cartloads of stone to be taken from the Colosseum and put to use at St. Peter’s.

Makes you think about what a young country the United States still is. How maybe we might be in our adolescent phase right now. This is not an original thought. But as we walked around Rome, it made sense to us.

Italians have endured 69 governments since 1945. And yet that hasn’t stopped them from their ongoing campaign to restore and conserve their historic treasures, like the Sistine Chapel, which was dark and murky when I first saw it as a wide-eyed college student in 1976. In 2024, the colors and clarity of Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes are a joy to behold. (And cameras are not allowed.)

The Sistine Chapel was closed for restoration when I was in Rome again in 1988, this time with Rustin; two newlyweds starting off our marriage with a backpacking trip around the world. What better way to get to know each other, and the world, than to travel together on a tight budget?

And now, in 2024, what better place than Rome to reflect on the highs and lows of human history? While eating and drinking astoundingly well, and affordably too?

One evening we met our son Nick, who was in Rome for the second week of our trip, at a bar in the Trastevere neighborhood. The bar’s name is Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fà“–“But what did you come to do?”  I slipped a coaster into my pocket. It’s now on my desk, to remind me of Rome. And to remind me to ask myself what I have come to do. Here. Today. Whether in Rome or Seattle or anywhere else; whether my party just won or just lost an election. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come up with a better answer to that question than Mary Oliver gave us, in her poem called “Sometimes:” Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell About It.