Ever since I was a little girl it was my great desire to see the cathedrals and museums of
Italy. My tiny little white Catholic Missal had tiny little pictures of St Peter's Cathedral in Rome, The Shroud of Turin, The Pieta'; my young Catholic mind formulated my own bucket list that ended up changing the direction of my life once I finally got to Rome and met my future husband.
My first trip to
Europe was the summer before my junior year in college with one sister and two friends, and I carefully orchestrated our itinerary knowing full well that the others would go along with my program as long as I kept us close to pastry shops and the occasional McDonald's. We saw the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Louvre in Paris, The Vatican Museums in Rome, The Uffizi in Florence - I even threw in a deviation from our route just to see a Michelangelo sculpture in Bruges (no regrets there - Bruges is a beautiful city with excellent pastries.)
After we were married and before children we took several trips abroad where my husband tolerated my museum and church hauntings like an obedient newlywed: quietly and three steps behind me. Like most Romans, he had seen very little of the wonders of his own city and I enthusiastically introduced him to its treasures, often accompanied by his mother or sister who also had minimal knowledge of
Rome's attractions.
When we had children we were fortunate to spend a lot of time in Rome and I slowly, so as not to overwhelm them, introduced them to the Masters and their works; The Capitoline Museums in Rome were much smaller than The Vatican, so we started there, the three boys enjoying the Greek sculptures with snarling, wrestling lions, or the magnificent bronze Marcus Aurelius on horseback. They were much older before I attempted The Sistine Chapel with them, hiring a private guide from an American tour company. Unfortunately, my husband was with us for that five-hour tour, and his eye rolling and feet dragging was not helping me to keep the troops in good spirits. I think that's when it all started to fall apart.
How is it that a man who can spend
4 days on the beaches of Normandy studying every bayonet, SS helmet, grenade, parachute, and even, by god, the consistency of the grains of sand on Omaha Beach, how is it, I ask, that this man can ignore a Holy Family by Raphael? Which wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't gotten to the children.
On a trip to
Florence with our friends, the Pates, we were fortunate enough to acquire tickets to the Uffizi Galleries. (Actually,
they were fortunate that
I had pre-paid 14 euros a pop for line-cutting reservations.) Oh, the Uffizi! Arguably the finest collection of Renaissance art in the universe, and I had only been there once, many, many years prior. Imagine the fortune of my family and the Pates to have me as their guide - I had studied the floor plan the night before and knew precisely which rooms to visit for the greatest and most famous works - to attempt it all in one visit would be overwhelming and exhausting. I would show them Leonardo's Annunciation, Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, Caravaggio's Bacchus, and, the magnificent Birth of Venus by Botticelli - I knew the route in my head and was able to maneuver around the slowpoke couples and shuffling tour groups, pointing hither and yon and speaking with authority on composition, lighting, allegory. I was brilliant! until the point at which I lost control of my group as my husband and youngest son, exceeding the speed limit, got ahead of us by three or four rooms.
I sent a scout ahead to recover the troops, but she came back only with my son, who had a message from his father: "We're tired and we're going back to the hotel." I lay in wait, knowing that the coward would have to retrace his steps right through my present position in order to negotiate a successful evacuation. Once in front of me, he unflinchingly repeated his plan. I pleaded: "But you haven't seen The Birth of Venus!" He didn't care who was getting birthed - he was going to take a nap. I insulted him: "You can spend the rest of your life completely devoid of culture and class, but the boy stays!" He shrugged, raised his eyebrows at my son, and said, "C'mon, let's go." And so, they did. The Pates, terrified, remained.
The next day was our last in
Florence, and although I had seen Michelangelo's David at the Accademia twice before, I knew it was worth visiting again. I was, however, no longer interested in casting pearls to the proverbial swine, so I mentioned that I would be going even if no one came with me. Everyone was pretty tired, naturally, so when they asked me if the Accademia was a) nearby, and b) small, square-footage-wise, I made no attempt to convince them to come. Well, they said, since there was nothing better to do, so we all went to see the wonder that is Michelangelo's David. Best thing they saw in all of
Florence was the final vote, but some of them never saw The Birth of Venus.
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