Junk Drawer

Roma

We stay in an apartment right by the colosseum, which we view through phone cameras capturing Family Colosseum, Sexy Colosseum and Lads Holiday Colisseum shots. When we arrive, we peel off our sweaty travel clothes and sit quietly in our pants. Luna toddles around the apartment in a t-shirt and nappy, surveying her new dominion.

We eat perfectly al dente pasta and remember what tomatoes should taste like. We walk, we sweat, we get takeaway geeta (pizza) and take turns chasing Luna around piazzas.

We decide to walk to the Villa Borghese gardens. It is a longer walk than we expect, uphill, and Luna is showing signs of being done with the pram. When we finally arrive, we look at the park map and see the symbol for playground. Great! The perfect move. We walk and walk and walk, further into the park than it seemed on the map, surely it’s not far now, and turn the corner to discover an upsetting state of affairs. The swings have been removed, and only their hinges remain. Teen couples make out on each of the three benches, undisturbed by our arrival. Even the grass has given up, growing in exasperated yellow patches. The only elements of playground that remain are three abstract impressionist animals propped up on stiff springs. Luna does a courtesy couple of rocks back and forth, before asking for off. She shoots us a pitying look and voluntarily climbs back into the pram.

We giggle at this anticlimax all the way back to our apartment, and over dinner while we scribble on the tablecloth.

Cefalù

The balcony of our flat is three stories high and freaks me out. My vivid visions of Luna falling out of our old second floor flat window rush back, with a new, Mediterranean backdrop. I line it with some pillows and push through the wobbly legs.

Luna does laps around the kitchen table. She finds a freezer bag in a drawer and says a casual bye as she slings it over her shoulder and goes for a day trip to the next room. She plays throw the cork in the tray. We make espresso in the moka pot.

We go to the beach in the morning and head home to cool down for lunch. Luna gifts us a few three-hour holiday naps, where we sit on the balcony and have a beer. I read, we muse, and a salad of tomato, caperberry, and spring onion is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

I decide to finally follow the advice I got when Luna was a newborn and sleep when the baby sleeps. I close the blue linen curtains, then my eyes, and don’t notice when I fall asleep until consciousness drifts back to me. I lie with my eyes closed listening to the clink of cutlery in a drawer next door and murmur of voices from the cafe downstairs.

Luna wakes up from a nap one day with very hot skin. She’s got a temperature, runny nose and starts to grab at her jaw. We can see the white nub of a new tooth rising up in a lump of pink gum. We ride the pendulum of concern from “this is what happened last time she was teething, all good” to “this is heatstroke, where is the nearest hospital, disaster” and back again. She comes alive after a miraculous bowl of cornflakes but then has a particularly distressed night. She’s uncomfortable and cries, and I cry because she’s crying and we’re all just a bit sad and tired together. I am reminded over and over again by this little body not to create too many expectations for what a time will be.

The beach is a crowded patchwork of towels, but I don’t mind because no one minds. It goes unspoken: live and let live, no close is too close. We find an empty patch of sand and fill it in, towel down, umbrella up. A sandy stack of apartments and balconies supervise.

Going to the beach isn’t as easy as it used to be. Luna asks to go doming (swimming) but once we’re in, it’s back back back y toweh (towel). We play in the sand, watching our feet disappear under the final rush of a broken wave, until the rising tide hits slightly too high on her leg: no, no, no, no, up, up, up. Then she asks for Dada, but Dada has gone for a wofwee (coffee) and na’ na’ (croissant), and I pace the shoreline holding a grumpy toddler, hoping that ball! or castle! or doggie! will distract until Dada returns. I feel frustrated that I can’t osmosis my love of this place. That she seems to be annoyed by the feeling of sand on her skin, doesn’t feel immediately at ease in this environment. I am reminded over and over by this little body that I am not in control. She is different to me and experiences the world in her own way.

But this tension makes the moments of serenity sing. Luna and I manage a 30 minute stretch of floating and giggling. She sleeps on the sand. I go for a swim. An old man sporting a holster of small knives on his ankle guts a fish two meters away. We share a beer before she wakes up.

These moments stir up nostalgia for the ease of a past life. When we could lounge on the beach all day, follow every whim, not cater to anyone else’s needs but our own. When we took that time and freedom for granted. Before we got to watch a child feel and grow and speak and learn and nap sweetly on the beach.

I find myself compulsively counting down the time we have left. How many full days, how many nights. The anxiety of trying to preserve the moment is pulling me out of it, willing the time away.

One evening, after Luna has perked up, we go on a walk. She stands between us, holding Daniel’s right and my left hand. We go at her pace, the time it takes for her little legs to cross over each other and her weight to redistribute across them. People are in motion around us, but the town invites us to go slow.

The balcony directly across from ours reveals a flat that looks untouched since the 70s. The elaborately painted tile floor is dusty and chipped. A wood-panelled fridge lurks in the corner of the room, next to a stacked teak table and chairs. A sofa along the wall is covered with a fraying blanket. A sideboard on the back wall holds a hodgepodge of frosted glasses and enamel mugs. Canvases with generic paintings of flowers lean against the wall. Through the cycles of light and dark the doors to this ghost apartment stay open, but we never see anyone there.

Città della Pieve

In Rome I bought a new book. A father watches his daughter’s play, written about a holiday they spent together in the Aeolian Islands ten years before. They have different takes on how it went down. I’m intrigued because writing about shared experiences is something I wonder about. I know I can only represent my own experience of something. But when that experience is tied up in relationship with others, it’s nearly impossible to avoid your perception of their experience too. In theory this is fine. Your writing is necessarily your perception of everything, always subjective. But I worry I haven’t got it right, I’m misrepresenting someone, they’ll be upset with how I’ve framed it. The natural extension of wanting to be liked, to please.

13 of us have gathered at a villa in Umbria to celebrate Zoe’s 30th birthday. We are from Scotland, the US, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Iran, India, and Australia. I know everyone, as either my in-laws, Zoe’s friends we’ve know for years, or Zoe’s friends who have become our friends. Luna is one of two under twos in attendance.

We go out for birthday lunch. Uno bottigle vino bianco. Fagioli. Risotto con Asparagi e Zafferano di Citta della Pieve. Tagliolini al Tartufo Nero. Daniel does a long shift with post-nap Luna while I eat and chat. It’s my turn. She starts screaming and squirming for Dada, so I divert into some side streets—the winding, cobbled kind seen in postcards and period dramas. I try to take them in while also not dropping a toddler whose back is as arched as it will go and whose tortured screams make concerned citizens of the town peer out their charming windows.

It’s a long weekend and the time is kind, it stretches and flows, framed by olive trees and red bricks. A pool painted green. A rowdy game of Traitors. What are you reading? Where is home for you? Luna names 5-month-old Nenna’s body parts, only marginally smaller than her own. She poos on the floor behind the jacuzzi. Silly and profound and unassuming. It reflects the life that Zoe has built and the people she has assembled around her.

Luna warms up to the group, has moments with everyone. Granda rolls her into town every morning to fetch fruit and croissants. Rouzbe makes lasagne and throws her up in the air between each slice of pepper. She shrieks in delight: mo, mo!

I shoot off a thank you message to the WhatsApp group, but it’s difficult to describe the gratitude. The gift to us and her that is the feeling of the village, of warmth and shared care. The love that is shown through sitting and watching Piggies (movie of the moment, Sing!) while everyone else is by the pool or taking shifts circling the villa, counting the flowers and naming their colours.

As I drift in and out of awareness of who she’s with and what she’s doing, I feel pangs of guilt. Am I taking advantage? Should I be more attentive? But I try to hush these thoughts and read my book.