Two Men, a Phrase Book, and Lake Trasimeno

My mom used to say, “It’s never late until midnight and after that it’s early.” By that measure we went to bed. Very early the sun was just coming up and we slept well past lunch. We’d just finished our showers, when two young men we met the night before by to pick us up.

We rode on their scooters out to Lake Trasimeno.

The four of us ate the best bread and parmesan cheese and drank wine. We swapped conversation from a phrase book and drew pictures in my journal. We laughed a lot too. It’s amazing how interesting a phrase book conversation can be. I’d page through to the automotive part of the little book, point to my head and say, “The battery is dead.”

It was true enough. Cognac and dancing until sunrise can do that.

We enjoyed ourselves until the sun went down over the lake. Then we road back to Perugia to get ready to head for the airport in the morning.

Nancy and I debrief our entire adventure—Assisi, St. Francis, the ogre, the prince, Perugia, the Lake. We talked as we packed. We talked as we got ready for bed. We talked as we stared at the ceiling in the dark. I think we might have still been talking about our adventure even after we feel asleep.

The next day after a drive during which we talked some more, we said our good-byes at the airport in Bologna. I flew back through London. She through Frankfurt.

On the plane heading home, I couldn’t help but think how the language difference had appealed to my sense of space—as much as the countryside had.

Maybe words get in people’s way as much as they bring us together.

The silence on the airplane was welcome. So were thoughts of home.
I put on my headphones, fell asleep, and dreamed of my own pillow.

—me strauss Letting me be