Next Chapter

Krakow post coming later this weekend, but as I landed in Italy a major page turned, so that's what this post is about. After the jump...



I landed in Rome the day my wife divorced me.

As best as I can do the math, she would have gotten the divorce ruling at about the moment that I hopped off the train at Trastevere station to walk to my flat.

I'd spent the day mostly cooped up in a terminal at John Paul II Airport in Krakow for a flight delay. (Side note: naming an airport after a religious figure is, I promise you, not going to win you any converts. Especially not with panini that are somehow simultaneously stale and soggy.)

Once in Rome I was immediately taken by the city's pulsing energy and extroverted, humor-loving openness. I've met some wonderful, goofy and thoughtful people on this trip, but Rome is the first place where it feels more odd not to greet people in passing on the street.

I got her email about the divorce shortly after checking in. Three short sentences. Fin.

I walked my neighborhood (Testaccio), wandering past neighbors chatting at the end of the day and laughing in restaurants around the piazza. I couldn't quite settle. It had been a long time since I'd eaten. I grabbed a pizza and suppli (both freshly made in front of me) at a local trattoria and ate back at my flat. I had reached out to friends, who were gloriously generous in their support and love.

I ventured out again, stopping by the gelateria on the corner (fresh-delivered milk each morning turned into their house-made flavors) and strolling the piazza, settling into a bench along the side and people watching. There was something soothing about watching the community greet itself at the end of the day, a whole world in miniature.

I decided to walk down to the Tiber, on whose banks the Eternal City was born. It was amber and brackish in the evening street lighting, but arresting and lovely all the same.

It feels good to be in an ancient city at the end of something. To be at the start of a new chapter at the close of the last. To be exploring as part of my life closes off.

This trip has been magnificent. I would have traded it all not to have yesterday be what it was. But every incredible chapter of my life has been born from the ashes of a catastrophe, and so here we are again.

I'm excited to see what comes next.