My first international flight took me to Rome, where I got off the plane and then stayed for four months, living and studying as a college student abroad. I was 20 years old.
Today, that semester feels like an out-of-body experience. So much has changed in my life and in the world since then. I love that girl who visited a different country every weekend, who spoke confidently in a second language, who often put her camera away in favor of taking a picture with her mind, but I’m certainly not her anymore.
However, reading Anthony Doerr’s memoir Four Seasons in Rome brought me back to that time in my life in a visceral and substantial way. The way he writes about his own experience brought mine into clear focus for the first time in years. What might that 20-year-old have to say to this 30-something if I took a few moments to stand in her shoes once again?
Rome is an ocean.
Step out of the airport and Rome is in your mouth and in your hair. It’s dirty and loud, tan and bright. Sirens and horns pass through you like waves while the humidity wraps its fingers around your throat. Coughing, sputtering, you make your way to your group’s chartered bus, hoping for cool, purified air. There is none.
Sweat becomes your constant companion. Blisters form almost immediately. For days you walk on cobblestone streets in flip flops so your feet can heal. It’s wobbly walking like this, and everything seems off-center. But maybe it’s you: you keep craning your neck to see monuments and archways, reaching out to scrape your fingers on stone to make sure it’s all real.
You looked at pictures on the internet and thought Rome would be a vacation, a respite. A little taste of Heaven, all fresh-baked bread and golden light on ancient walls. But it’s a city, a real one, with garbage in the gutters and cigarette fumes in the air and people passing under lines of laundry on their way to work.
You try to dip your toes in carefully. I’ll start by getting my feet wet, you say to yourself. Maybe I’ll go in up to my knees. But then a wave knocks you over and plunges you into the brine, dragging you under, blocking the sun.
Rome is a song.
Days pass. You figure out where to catch the bus. You start shopping at a grocery store. You step out of the Metro and cross the street and find yourself at the door of your school without thinking.
And maybe it’s then – as you are crossing the street, or as your key slides into the lock on your apartment door, or as your tongue finally, finally rolls the “r” in grazie just so – maybe it’s then that you hear it for the first time: the shimmering hum of music under the surface of the city, the melody left behind by pilgrims of the past.
After class, you follow it. Hopping on and off busses, walking around new neighborhoods, not always consulting a map. You try every church door that you pass. Most open like mouths into a cool darkness where the pilgrim sound grows louder and the noise of the city fades away.
Their bodies may be buried – in altars or under centuries of stone – but their voices call out to you, showing you The Way. The sound is so compelling, so beautiful and true, you can’t help but follow.
The longer you spend here the more instruments you hear: the bass of history, the harmony of art. Each one essential to the music that surrounds you. Each one its own path, its own key to unlocking the city. Each one already much bigger than one semester – or even one lifetime – could hold.
In one church, you and a friend find yourselves alone. You take off your backpack and lie on your back on the dusty marble floor, elbows and palms pressing into the coolness. You tilt your chin up, up, up, so you can see the paintings on the ceiling without twisting your aching neck. Your friend laughs at your posture and the sound of their voice joins the song you are hearing, the song you have started to sing.
Rome is a mirror.
Who do you want to be while you are here?
Not someone entirely new. But perhaps someone who is one step closer to who you really want to be, to who you know you really are. A bit more confident. Bolder, but not too much. A little less judgmental and far less rushed. Someone who is both strong and soft. Someone who knows how to be present, who sucks the marrow out of life.
You lose weight from all the walking. You lose a few inhibitions that were ripe and ready to fall, but you hold on to the ones that keep you grounded and true. You lose your camera, blessedly, on the very last day.
You gain a sense of direction that will guide you, slowly, toward happiness when you get home. You gain at least one lifelong friend.
One night you walk through St. Peter’s square dragging a rumbling suitcase behind you. The purple lights on the basilica catch you in their glow, and for a moment you can feel the planet spinning beneath your feet as you stand before its edifice.
Who am I compared to Rome? I am a shell tucked into the sand, I am a thread on the jacket of someone writing a symphony.
And yet, who is Rome compared to me? Piles of crumbling rocks and dust. An eternal city won’t last forever, but an eternal soul will.
The water tinkling in the fountain fills your ears and the night breeze plays gently with your hair. You fill your lungs with it all, turn on your heel, and keep walking home.
It turns out that the girl walking on cobblestone streets in flip flops was walking the ancient path of a spiritual journey, too. The disorientation of my first few days pushed me to shed so many things: my expectations, my comfort zone, and my pride. As time progressed, I grew in wisdom and gratitude for the goodness, truth, and beauty that surrounded me in the people and places I encountered each day. Eventually, I came home to myself with a new appreciation for God’s providence and care, having been changed for the better by the journey.
The mystics call this process purgation, illumination, and union. Some people see this progression unfold over a lifetime, but I’ve found myself rotating through these movements each time the seasons of my life change. Graduate school, teaching, marriage, and motherhood have all given me opportunities to let things go, grow in wisdom, and experience grace and peace.
So what would I say to that 20-year-old studying abroad? I’m so glad you took that flight.
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What I’ve been reading and writing lately:
I am getting excited to lead a (free!) workshop for the Jesuit Media Lab called “Substack Tips for Spirituality Writers.” Please join us on June 18 at noon EST! Learn more and register here.
This excellent essay by has given me some much-needed perspective on the ever-growing presence of AI. The last paragraph had me standing up and cheering.
My dear friend is weaving gorgeous contemplative narratives based on excellent biblical scholarship over at . Don’t miss her series, Tending the Tapestry!
I was grateful to be included in this roundup of stories from the day Pope Leo XIV was elected alongside some fabulous spirituality writers I am lucky to call my friends.
Coming up…
Inspired by a recent art project at my child’s school, I want to write about what it means to have an eternal perspective. See you then!
Maybe my new favorite essay of yours! LOVE IT. And you ❤️
Lovely reflections! I felt like I was in Italy from reading this. I did a short study abroad in London in college and I loved the feeling of having settled in enough to use the Tube without a map and go where I wanted to go.
Have you read The Enchanted April or seen the movie? The experience of time in Italy (from four British ladies) has some shared flavors with yours. It was a healthy, humbling, grace-filled time for them. The book (and the movie) is/are like a warm cup of tea on a rainy day.
In the recent book The Awakening of Miss Prim, the main character (who lives in Spain) is told that every woman needs to live at least a month in Italy, and I feel like the author is using that advice as shorthand to reference The Enchanted April (a favorite book of the author's). That every woman needs to get what those women got from a month in Italy.