July 20, 2017. Trento, Italy.
Twenty years ago, I married a woman I knew to be kind, smart, thoughtful, wise, beautiful and tender. We travelled to Italy--after giving a couple boys rides from our wedding to the ferry, or something like that--Stephanie remembers we didn't get to just get married and find ourselves alone in each other’s company--and in Italy, we adventured and ate and considered the kinds of lifestyle we wanted for ourselves, and also what we loved in Seattle. Within seven years, we would have three children and a minivan; and twenty years later, we would return to Northern Italy to celebrate the resonance of our marriage, and we’d do it not as partners, but as a family, in the multiplying loves of our two lives become five, the gelato and piazzas and evening promenades something together in which we rejoice.
Stephanie and I have different memories of our visit to Verona. We both experienced the opera Macbeth in the first century arena, and walks through the old city and by the river, and the strange youth hostel that was a monastery for hundreds of years and now, as a hostel, continues a code of silence and separation and shame; but I didn’t do well in the heat.
In neighboring Padua, our daughters likewise thirsted and melted. The cathedrals and history were magnificent, but we weren’t truly happy until we settled into the restaurant our B&B host, Filippe, recommended, with its eclectic and in places raunchy decor and its terrific lasagnes. We came into close contact with the bones of saints, so claimed, and with towers once inhabited by Galileo and Copernicus and I wondered at Shakespeare setting his Shrew here in the old university city studded by ancient Roman history; but as a family, our two best moments were meeting Filippe at the B&B (and re-discovering close-talking and the intimacy and generosity of Italy), and finally sitting and laughing in the Enoteca dei Tadi, the restaurant. And perhaps, with Stephanie, the less-visited but soaring Cathedral of St. Giustina posed a special meditation for us on art, history, architecture, saints.
Trento, meanwhile, is a mountain town, theoretically cooler, with many more calm, shaded places for the girls to feel what it is to be in Italy. Maisie says, if she had to move to one country just for the food, it would be Italy. Or France. Either way, in Trento, after a hair-raising turn around the block a couple of times to get into a parking garage, we arrived through three locked doors to a beautiful, spacious apartment with three bedrooms, each devoted to a different European painter, three bathrooms--two with bidets--a living room and large kitchen; and this has been a welcome base for the kids who immediately went to work playing hide and seek To provide a sense of the apartment, Sophie only found Amelia after ten minutes, Amelia popping out of a cupboard.
But then, here are the streets, with their hidden alleys opening up into corridors of restaurants and many centuries old churches, and the medieval apartments stacked high in different lively colors, but also faded Tyrolese murals on the outside of many of them, and in one shocking opening, a grand piazza with every direction a wonder, centering around a powerful fountain of Neptune and his trident--from which Trento gets its name--a cathedral, a palace, and towers here and there steepled in Zolnai tile, which reminds us that Trento was once bucking under the Austro-Hungarian empire.
In our apartment, the host left us a Sacher torte with a fondant ribbon and the message, “Hoppy 20th Anniversary!” It made me tearful to see it. Later on, it was just tasty. With the Buonconsiglio Castle two blocks away and charming streets and the Dolomites all around us and restaurants proving Maisie right over and over, our family together, our love indulged and its harmonies and expansiveness stirred, Trento was a fine place to spend this day.
In the morning, we spent a long time viewing the archaeological exhibits and frescoes in the castle. A highlight was a tower with 12 panels designed like tapestries capturing the life of Trento for each month, with a fantasy about how aristocrats and peasants should live aside each other as the peasants happily served their masters. But we also saw artifacts from the town over two thousand years old, and older artifacts from Egypt that noblemen collected to show their love of culture. I tried to view the artwork shown with appreciation and new understandings, but I ended up appreciating it even more in the most disrespectful way possible, laughing at medieval baby Jesuses with sculpted abs or baby Jesus airing out his genitals or the bishop princes with gossamer armor and pointed nipples and sultry poses and come hither eyes.
I had already gone running, with the mausoleum on the hill facing us closed to the public until nine, and missing that mountain trail already, had already purchased a beautiful bouquet of flowers and some artificially painted ones from a man who kept insisting I was German in the Piazza Duomo, and had time to prepare scrambled eggs, pastries and yoghurt before anyone else was up, but the best moment of the day was yet to come, and it was simple and affirming:
In the afternoon, Stephanie and I went to the big square and sat with two large, minted drinks and wrote each other anniversary letters. It not only ended in writing honoring our marriage, the very act captured who we are and what we love in each other, taking moments to hold hands and take each other in, and radiating in and through and capturing, the way writing can do, the sharply yapping dogs at the table beside us just a moment, the singing of Italian, the palace and cathedral above us, the mountains around it all, our marriage and our future around us too, and the minted drinks intoxicating and sweet.
Twenty years ago, I married a woman I knew to be kind, smart, thoughtful, wise, beautiful and tender. We travelled to Italy--after giving a couple boys rides from our wedding to the ferry, or something like that--Stephanie remembers we didn't get to just get married and find ourselves alone in each other’s company--and in Italy, we adventured and ate and considered the kinds of lifestyle we wanted for ourselves, and also what we loved in Seattle. Within seven years, we would have three children and a minivan; and twenty years later, we would return to Northern Italy to celebrate the resonance of our marriage, and we’d do it not as partners, but as a family, in the multiplying loves of our two lives become five, the gelato and piazzas and evening promenades something together in which we rejoice.
Stephanie and I have different memories of our visit to Verona. We both experienced the opera Macbeth in the first century arena, and walks through the old city and by the river, and the strange youth hostel that was a monastery for hundreds of years and now, as a hostel, continues a code of silence and separation and shame; but I didn’t do well in the heat.
In neighboring Padua, our daughters likewise thirsted and melted. The cathedrals and history were magnificent, but we weren’t truly happy until we settled into the restaurant our B&B host, Filippe, recommended, with its eclectic and in places raunchy decor and its terrific lasagnes. We came into close contact with the bones of saints, so claimed, and with towers once inhabited by Galileo and Copernicus and I wondered at Shakespeare setting his Shrew here in the old university city studded by ancient Roman history; but as a family, our two best moments were meeting Filippe at the B&B (and re-discovering close-talking and the intimacy and generosity of Italy), and finally sitting and laughing in the Enoteca dei Tadi, the restaurant. And perhaps, with Stephanie, the less-visited but soaring Cathedral of St. Giustina posed a special meditation for us on art, history, architecture, saints.
Trento, meanwhile, is a mountain town, theoretically cooler, with many more calm, shaded places for the girls to feel what it is to be in Italy. Maisie says, if she had to move to one country just for the food, it would be Italy. Or France. Either way, in Trento, after a hair-raising turn around the block a couple of times to get into a parking garage, we arrived through three locked doors to a beautiful, spacious apartment with three bedrooms, each devoted to a different European painter, three bathrooms--two with bidets--a living room and large kitchen; and this has been a welcome base for the kids who immediately went to work playing hide and seek To provide a sense of the apartment, Sophie only found Amelia after ten minutes, Amelia popping out of a cupboard.
But then, here are the streets, with their hidden alleys opening up into corridors of restaurants and many centuries old churches, and the medieval apartments stacked high in different lively colors, but also faded Tyrolese murals on the outside of many of them, and in one shocking opening, a grand piazza with every direction a wonder, centering around a powerful fountain of Neptune and his trident--from which Trento gets its name--a cathedral, a palace, and towers here and there steepled in Zolnai tile, which reminds us that Trento was once bucking under the Austro-Hungarian empire.
In our apartment, the host left us a Sacher torte with a fondant ribbon and the message, “Hoppy 20th Anniversary!” It made me tearful to see it. Later on, it was just tasty. With the Buonconsiglio Castle two blocks away and charming streets and the Dolomites all around us and restaurants proving Maisie right over and over, our family together, our love indulged and its harmonies and expansiveness stirred, Trento was a fine place to spend this day.
In the morning, we spent a long time viewing the archaeological exhibits and frescoes in the castle. A highlight was a tower with 12 panels designed like tapestries capturing the life of Trento for each month, with a fantasy about how aristocrats and peasants should live aside each other as the peasants happily served their masters. But we also saw artifacts from the town over two thousand years old, and older artifacts from Egypt that noblemen collected to show their love of culture. I tried to view the artwork shown with appreciation and new understandings, but I ended up appreciating it even more in the most disrespectful way possible, laughing at medieval baby Jesuses with sculpted abs or baby Jesus airing out his genitals or the bishop princes with gossamer armor and pointed nipples and sultry poses and come hither eyes.
I had already gone running, with the mausoleum on the hill facing us closed to the public until nine, and missing that mountain trail already, had already purchased a beautiful bouquet of flowers and some artificially painted ones from a man who kept insisting I was German in the Piazza Duomo, and had time to prepare scrambled eggs, pastries and yoghurt before anyone else was up, but the best moment of the day was yet to come, and it was simple and affirming:
In the afternoon, Stephanie and I went to the big square and sat with two large, minted drinks and wrote each other anniversary letters. It not only ended in writing honoring our marriage, the very act captured who we are and what we love in each other, taking moments to hold hands and take each other in, and radiating in and through and capturing, the way writing can do, the sharply yapping dogs at the table beside us just a moment, the singing of Italian, the palace and cathedral above us, the mountains around it all, our marriage and our future around us too, and the minted drinks intoxicating and sweet.
July 20, 2017. Trento, Italy.
Twenty years ago, I married a woman I knew to be kind, smart, thoughtful, wise, beautiful and tender. We travelled to Italy--after giving a couple boys rides from our wedding to the ferry, or something like that--Stephanie remembers we didn't get to just get married and find ourselves alone in each other’s company--and in Italy, we adventured and ate and considered the kinds of lifestyle we wanted for ourselves, and also what we loved in Seattle. Within seven years, we would have three children and a minivan; and twenty years later, we would return to Northern Italy to celebrate the resonance of our marriage, and we’d do it not as partners, but as a family, in the multiplying loves of our two lives become five, the gelato and piazzas and evening promenades something together in which we rejoice.
Stephanie and I have different memories of our visit to Verona. We both experienced the opera Macbeth in the first century arena, and walks through the old city and by the river, and the strange youth hostel that was a monastery for hundreds of years and now, as a hostel, continues a code of silence and separation and shame; but I didn’t do well in the heat.
In neighboring Padua, our daughters likewise thirsted and melted. The cathedrals and history were magnificent, but we weren’t truly happy until we settled into the restaurant our B&B host, Filippe, recommended, with its eclectic and in places raunchy decor and its terrific lasagnes. We came into close contact with the bones of saints, so claimed, and with towers once inhabited by Galileo and Copernicus and I wondered at Shakespeare setting his Shrew here in the old university city studded by ancient Roman history; but as a family, our two best moments were meeting Filippe at the B&B (and re-discovering close-talking and the intimacy and generosity of Italy), and finally sitting and laughing in the Enoteca dei Tadi, the restaurant. And perhaps, with Stephanie, the less-visited but soaring Cathedral of St. Giustina posed a special meditation for us on art, history, architecture, saints.
Trento, meanwhile, is a mountain town, theoretically cooler, with many more calm, shaded places for the girls to feel what it is to be in Italy. Maisie says, if she had to move to one country just for the food, it would be Italy. Or France. Either way, in Trento, after a hair-raising turn around the block a couple of times to get into a parking garage, we arrived through three locked doors to a beautiful, spacious apartment with three bedrooms, each devoted to a different European painter, three bathrooms--two with bidets--a living room and large kitchen; and this has been a welcome base for the kids who immediately went to work playing hide and seek To provide a sense of the apartment, Sophie only found Amelia after ten minutes, Amelia popping out of a cupboard.
But then, here are the streets, with their hidden alleys opening up into corridors of restaurants and many centuries old churches, and the medieval apartments stacked high in different lively colors, but also faded Tyrolese murals on the outside of many of them, and in one shocking opening, a grand piazza with every direction a wonder, centering around a powerful fountain of Neptune and his trident--from which Trento gets its name--a cathedral, a palace, and towers here and there steepled in Zolnai tile, which reminds us that Trento was once bucking under the Austro-Hungarian empire.
In our apartment, the host left us a Sacher torte with a fondant ribbon and the message, “Hoppy 20th Anniversary!” It made me tearful to see it. Later on, it was just tasty. With the Buonconsiglio Castle two blocks away and charming streets and the Dolomites all around us and restaurants proving Maisie right over and over, our family together, our love indulged and its harmonies and expansiveness stirred, Trento was a fine place to spend this day.
In the morning, we spent a long time viewing the archaeological exhibits and frescoes in the castle. A highlight was a tower with 12 panels designed like tapestries capturing the life of Trento for each month, with a fantasy about how aristocrats and peasants should live aside each other as the peasants happily served their masters. But we also saw artifacts from the town over two thousand years old, and older artifacts from Egypt that noblemen collected to show their love of culture. I tried to view the artwork shown with appreciation and new understandings, but I ended up appreciating it even more in the most disrespectful way possible, laughing at medieval baby Jesuses with sculpted abs or baby Jesus airing out his genitals or the bishop princes with gossamer armor and pointed nipples and sultry poses and come hither eyes.
I had already gone running, with the mausoleum on the hill facing us closed to the public until nine, and missing that mountain trail already, had already purchased a beautiful bouquet of flowers and some artificially painted ones from a man who kept insisting I was German in the Piazza Duomo, and had time to prepare scrambled eggs, pastries and yoghurt before anyone else was up, but the best moment of the day was yet to come, and it was simple and affirming:
In the afternoon, Stephanie and I went to the big square and sat with two large, minted drinks and wrote each other anniversary letters. It not only ended in writing honoring our marriage, the very act captured who we are and what we love in each other, taking moments to hold hands and take each other in, and radiating in and through and capturing, the way writing can do, the sharply yapping dogs at the table beside us just a moment, the singing of Italian, the palace and cathedral above us, the mountains around it all, our marriage and our future around us too, and the minted drinks intoxicating and sweet.
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