This Is How We Take Up Space

We aren't in Rome anymore...are we?

This isn’t Rome, I thought when I woke up this morning. Or the open sea.

Such are the ruminations of one who, prior to stumbling out of bed and pouring a cup of ambition, staggers through the mental cobwebs of jet-leg-born, immediate post-vacation confusion. A month spent traversing continents, from LA to Boston to New York to London to Barcelona to Mallorca to Pisa to (is this getting annoying yet?) Rome to Pompeii to Sorrento to Naples to a hazy layover in Hong Kong and then…home. Home, where the last things I did before leaving were spend two weeks here (and the Great Barrier Reef…and Queenstown…and Titanique) with visiting family, then turn in my 100+ page master’s thesis.

Things have not been “normal” in a long while.

Whatever that means, since normal isn’t a word we use around here anyway because there are already designations like prosaic and banal and boring to do that work, and taking up space in new situations and places has just reminded me of that. Normal cannot share a stage with nuanced or curious or different or empathetic, so its usefulness has faded along with the mindset I embraced when those words were anathema to me, philosophically if not overtly, fear of them sheathed in self-protective anger that precluded any possibility of risk or vulnerability or…adventure.

But adventure broke down that door via that soft knock then insistent hammer of grace, which is how I found myself hosting like-minded family, going back to school, traveling around the world and, if not waking up to the ocean directly outside my window, then glimpsing it as I drove the boys to school this morning in a race against time thanks to late sleeps due to aforementioned jet lag.

Here’s the thing: The Husband has become a slut (reappropriated) for cruises, which means life is full of surprises and couples therapy is on the horizon, because I found ours to be quite people-y and loud. Another thing is that Boston is a beautiful city, a discovery I made at the age of forty-seven (better late than never), and New York is even better when I take the boys there to meet The Sis and Older Niece and we go to Serendipity 3, a fate and credit-card charge I avoided in the half-decade I lived there. Have you ever run around Central Park with your sister and thought to yourself that none of this would have ever happened if your planned life hadn’t gone to shit? 5/5 stars, highly recommend.

Also recommended: the kind of deep discomfort and uncertainty brought on by learning the Tube route so you can drag your kids to museums they complain about then haul them to (the first half of) a fever dream called Starlight Express in Wembley of all places, and this after forcing them to realise your dream of visiting Hampton Court Palace in an ill-conceived but highly memorable (by way of exhaustion and forgiveness) day. Truffle carbonara cooked in a wheel of cheese. Reading with a glass of wine on a London terrace you could never afford. Runs around Hyde Park, getting a little lost each time. The McDonald’s by the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Not getting pick-pocketed, after all, on La Rambla. Not going to the people-infested pool on the cruise ship. Medieval Italian villages with truffle carbonara (not cooked in a wheel of cheese but somehow better). Tour guides who play Green Day for your kids in the car, which somehow rivals even “Nessun Dorma” played by your 2008 girls-trip guide played across the same Tuscan hills. Eyeing Pisa’s leaning tower as a stand-in for the erect package of a guy lying on the ground in a pose as his girlfriend snaps a photo. Temporary, yet prolonged, dehydration, compounded by walking through Rome in the heat and humidity and discovering that while the Pantheon still stands, the McDonald’s there does not. Suffering through Pompeii to be rewarded by views and limoncello in Sorrento. Fried pizza in Naples. Barcelona again, this time with the wisdom of known routes and an awareness of the fact that all European beaches are nude beaches for those who want them to be.

Not pictured: accommodations due to neurodivergence. Fights due to NT-ND clashes. Eczema flare-ups due to deviation from routine (i.e., poor sleep and hydration). Carbo-loading (weight gain). Barfing on planes. Missing the dog. So much melatonin.

Too sacred to capture on film: The growth of understanding due to what is different, including autistic brain processing. The awareness that dawns on others’ faces when they encounter different, and their ensuing accommodations and kindness (or, if not? Fuck ‘em). The notes left by Little Brother to the crew magician who made towel animals in our room every night, unwittingly creating core memories. The hugs given by the waiter who learned our names, orders, and quirks (eating with cutlery? Overrated) and brought tears to my eyes with his goodbye.

I think of that goodbye—one of the last moments of our trip, and an unexpected display that painfully enlarged my heart the way any sincere kindness toward my children (and, let’s face it, myself) does. I think of the multilayered history of Rome, the excavated beauty found only after the chaos of demolition and painstaking tedium of recovery and restoration. I think of the bench at the disability exhibition at the V&A Museum in London, a bench I never sought to occupy but have a designated seat at anyway. Everything means more because of how we got here. This is how we take up space in the world: through a higher character count because of the asterisk beside the word home. Through more napkins because of the cleanup required. Through views of the Vatican from a distance because we’re out of spoons for the day. Through rocks with the boys’ names written in lipstick in Lancashire Court because I didn’t know to bring a marker and I will redeem this moment if it kills me. Through leaning in closer to understand his speech. Through leaning in closer, period, in so many ways. Because this is our posture now: leaning in to see, to know, to accept that turning away is no longer an option…but adventure sure as hell is.

Excavated beauty, everywhere. Maybe we are still in Rome. Maybe we always will be.