I’ve been traveling now for nearing three years, and it’s become quite marvelous to me just how normal life seems when I’m visiting famed, historical, and important places. Places that, maybe, I thought I’d never have the chance to see in my lifetime. In the moment of visiting them, I’m aware of distinctly human details, like cold toes or a forming blister, but those slip away upon later reflection. It isn’t until I’ve left a city, or sometimes even a site itself, that I realize how outstanding it is that I was ever there at all. This month, I find myself in Italy…this afternoon, searching for the Roman keyhole. I don’t know as much about Rome as I probably should, but the only thing I can think about at the moment is that Joyce told me to come here. She wasn’t my mother in reality, and I never called her mom when I was young, but she raised me, and she used to introduce me as her adopted daughter just the same. It’s become customary for me to not know much about the places I visit before I go, but to be honest, I prefer it that way, and I think it makes me a better and more open-minded traveler.
If my life as a child was transient, my life as an adult is even more rooted in movement. I’ve been married four times, moving on eight occasions in ten years. Five years ago, I was an overly-tanned, quasi-successful divorce attorney, 47 and much thinner, migrant in a materialistic city that seemed to be filled with a unique combination of queens, guidos, and chronic overconfidence. It wasn’t until I was getting my last divorce that I swore off my law career and hired a divorce attorney of my own. Miami, for a hermit, is its own special sector of hell, and I therefore had no intention of staying there after my marriage was over. Consequently, I chose to approach my last, and self-proclaimed final, divorce with an intricately molded business scope, carefully constructing my monetary legal victories as a ticket out of southern Florida. Leaving was always at the essence of my motivation during the legal proceedings, a choice of where and when, not if. Therefore, I’m not afraid of loneliness, of saying goodbye to the people around me, and I’m not intimidated by environmental newness. On the contrary, novelty brings a newfound exhilaration for me, comforting me in the knowledge that there is always someplace in the world that I can go where nobody knows me. I made a pledge to myself that I would get fat, date whomever I wanted, and never, ever remarry.
So here I rebound, and as I wander through what I interpret to be the Italian version of a neighborhood, I’m struck by the realization that I’m looking for something that I wouldn’t know how to identify even if I found it. When I was in high school, over thirty years ago, in a typical conversation with Joyce, she mentioned that she’d been told that the keyhole was a beautiful sight to see in Rome, that one of our friends had seen it on a trip here and later told her about it. She passed away thirteen years ago. It took me a long time to recover, and I’m not entirely sure that she’d recognize me today if she saw me. Even still, now that I find myself in Rome, I can’t imagine not at least trying to find this place in her honor. I’ve always cherished the memory of her sharing that story with me. For no particular reason, it just felt beautifully ordinary, something she may have chosen to share with her own child.
It’s with a twinge of guilt that I admit to myself that I haven’t kept in contact with many of the people that I love over the years. I tend to be able to remove people out of my life without any immediate pain and without any legitimate reason. Sometimes that scares me. It isn’t usually until years later that I look back with sadness at my instinct to flee. Not that I feel that way about my decision to leave Miami or about any of my divorces. Leaving Miami is the best thing I’ve ever done.
I became an orphan when I was eleven, outfitting me with a surplus of scars that I’ve never been able to fully accept. I was taken in by the family of one of my teachers at the time, Joyce Cappabianco. So, when I say that she wasn’t actually my mother, even though she raised me, that’s what I’m referring to. She had three daughters of her own, roughly my age, and her years of support allowed me to continue growing up in the community that I was familiar with. They were my family for longer than my parents were alive in my life, but I’ve spent my entire adult existence trying to desperately convince myself that their care wasn’t some sick form of charity. I think that’s why it’s so easy for me to break relationships. I refuse to ever be a burden to anyone.
With the belabored help of countless kind Italians and one German, I’m here, looking through this keyhole, instructed to look out for the men with machine guns. The mystery and wonder of Rome is no secret, known to all who have visited, and even by many who have not. To see the Vatican, I most certainly didn’t have to come to the keyhole, but to begin to understand the meaning and presence of St. Peter’s in Rome, the keyhole serves, in my opinion, as a sort of gateway.
To look out over Rome, especially Vatican City, through such a small, hidden focus, to me is to recognize how irrelevant any of my opinions about this place will ever be. To Rome, I’m a fraction of a blip, here and gone before anybody will recognize me or know my name. This city will persist with or without me, knowing that I will never fully understand. I could spend weeks wondering, deciphering what the mysteries of Rome are, but maybe the true message to grasp, as a person lucky enough to visit this place, is my own insignificance.
And insignificant we are, somehow also in the midst of our own importance. I think that human eyes are, in a way, similar to the Roman keyhole, a gateway of sorts. If I look into people’s eyes, I see a story, or sometimes lots of stories. To look into a person’s eyes can be like looking into a keyhole specifically cut and sculpted by him or her. Eyes can share, they can shut out, they can expose, and they can betray secrets. I don’t think that I’m capable of truly understanding people without their eyes, just like I wouldn’t understand the keyhole by only standing in front of the gate. To grasp the whole picture, the true meaning, it’s necessary to use an individual’s eyes, or the keyhole, as vessels into the person, or in this case city.
When I was a little girl, my mother used to look into my eyes if she thought that I was lying about something. If, while staring, she then decided that she believed me, she wouldn’t mention them. On the other hand, if she did happen to remain convinced of my untruthfulness, she’d tell me, “Norah, your eyes are lying”. She wouldn’t say it in a way that was accusatory, either. She’d say it in a matter-of-fact, I’ve won, but I’m not mad sort of voice. She’d smile, toss me a popsicle, and tell me that she was proud of me. Looking back on things, that’s probably a pretty twisted reaction to have once you’ve caught your child lying to you, but it’s also one of the most powerful memories that I still have of her.
In those moments of her prying into my eyes, I also carefully studied hers, imprinting burned pictures into my memory. In the middle, they were a swirly, creamy green, like a glass marble, my favorite color. But on the rims, they were brown. My mother had tender, strong eyes. She had pale skin and long, black hair. She never wore make-up and could always be found in a black tee-shirt, barefoot. She was loud, and she had the biggest smile I’ve ever known. She wasn’t happy particularly often, but when she did smile, it took up her whole face, contorting her other features. Her eyes would scrunch up, sealing her keyholes, completely closed, and her nose would crumple like a squished up accordion. Her name was Aubrey. In a remarkably painful turn of events in my life, Joyce has led me to a place that staggers me, not only because it reminds me of her, but also, most importantly, because it reminds me of my mother.
