A Room with a View
For whomever brilliant, but twisted genius substituted the quarter system for the usual semester system at the University of Chicago, let me send bolts of lightening raging down upon you from the summit of Mt. Vesuvius. For there, or close to there, for I only got near to the base, did I realize how through your macabre sense of humor you have managed to create turmoil, and tears throughout the winding hills of the Amalfi Coast.
It all started innocently like this. We had offered our daughter a trip at the end of the summer. Her friends, and others had gone back to school at the end of August, and she was to return, because of this quarter system not until the end of September. This left her alone for a month, and after a hard summer of interning for a congresswoman, and a good year at school she deserved a nice break.
As usual in our completely neurotic family no one could agree where to go. Originally we thought Japan, but then someone decided it was too far for a weeks trip. We then went to Istanbul but Savannah was convinced that this was not a place she wanted to go with her parents, but rather with friends. So after weeks of back, and forth we decided on Italy, and one week before our imminent departure we settled on the Amalfi Coast, and Rome. Savannah is very interested in Greek, and Roman culture, studies Latin, and at this point is pointing toward a Classics Major. The thought of plowing through the ruins of Pompeii, and Rome seemed exciting to her, and we agreed.
So off we went to Italy with our first stop in the tiny hill village of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. We arrive in the late afternoon after driving through tortuous, and circuitous hills that make their way down the coast from Naples to Amalfi. Often we came close to swiping bicyclists, maiming pedestrians, and barely avoiding collisions on roads even the Romans would have had trouble with.
Finally, late in the day as the sun was beginning to rest its weary heart we were shown our rooms with a beautiful terrace that looked over the Mediterranean. If E. M. Forster were still alive he would have found the need to update his classic A Room with a View, for as we gazed out on the gardens, endless lemon trees, and hills that emptied into the turquoise Mediterranean Sea, we felt we had found paradise.
As I look over to my daughter Savannah I see tears beginning to swell in her eyes. I am so touched, and I hold my wife’s hand firmly thinking that finally we have all agreed on something, and all is well.
I am sure the long day, and the long summer had taken its toll, and now finally Savannah was able to relax, and now at the sight at all of this tranquility, and beauty she had broken down in tears with the thought of a weeks vacation in paradise.
But as we lingered on our terrace, and then slowly made our way into our rooms as the sun was setting, tears of what I thought had been joy, turned into sobs, which then turned into moans, and finally became a total torrent of sadness, and complete despair, and tinged or should I say imbued with total self-loathing. My daughter had gone from happiness to despondency right before my eyes, and now was in a total meltdown.
Intwined with all these tears were moments of laughter, and slowly I began to understand. All her friends were gone, and they were too busy for the most part to talk. They were all having fun, and she was left with her boring parents. Compounding this was her new boyfriend who was very slow to respond to her emails. Every minute she was convinced she was going to be dropped, and was not worthy of any love. She was totally despondent.
Things would get better for a brief while, when she would receive a brief note from a friend, but then some few hours later tears would again be filling her eyes.
As we toured the ruins of Pompeii, ate pizza in Naples, ended up in ancient Rome, touring ruin after ruin Savannah was a ball of tears.
If she saw other students she would cry. If it rained she would cry. If she sat still she would cry, until our entire trip became one large box of Kleenex.
Leslie, and I had now completely fallen apart. We too became a wreck because Savannah was a wreck, and if there was a song that followed us as we meandered through Rome it would have been The Tracks of Our Tears. Leslie was pick-pocketed in Rome. Savannah was in tears, and I was totally exhausted from seeing so many ruins. My legs are to this day still wobbly. So I was sure that by the time we got home everyone was happy to leave this adventure that looked like a disaster.
But like all good stories this story has a moral. Although it was a week of total despair, and remorse, and everyone by the end of the trip had completely melted down, lost their patience, their emotional equilibrium, and any sense of optimism, we all realized on the plane home that we had one of the best trips of our lives. How did this happen? You wouldn’t know this by looking at any of us, but we did.
We were together, crying, laughing, joking, and despite not having any friends around Savannah did manage to enjoy the love, and good humor of her parents.
So in life when everything appears happy, or serene there can be great remorse, and sadness that lingers right below the view, and conversely if it looks like the world is falling apart, that there is no hope, and that you feel full of sadness, lingering right below your tears might be a beautiful room with a view.
