We had spent the entire morning at the Vatican, touring the grounds and galleries, culminating with the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. It was a day full of oohs and aahs, mesmerizing, but mostly, simply a day of wonder.
It was also a day of history. There was so much to take in — things we had heard of for all our years but never experienced, never knew what it would feel like to see with our own eyes. Again, it was indeed a day of wonder.
It was now near 2 pm in Central European Summer Time, and we were hungry after the far-more-than-stunning experience. Little did we know the experience would soon become even more beautifully profound.
A friend of Italian heritage had recommended a few restaurants in Rome should we be in need. When exciting Vatican City, we found one which was less than a mile walk, so we decided to stroll in that direction.
I have to admit. When we saw the spot from the outside — I mean, I love and respect my friend, but — I wasn’t all that impressed with the external. There was no prominent store front, and it kind of seemed a bit of a fairly rough hole in the wall. But hunger surpassed first impressions, so we daringly decided to go inside.
It was a tiny dining room; the dining room/living room of my 3 BR house may be bigger. Not only that, I heard not a one English word. (And for the record, 3 weeks of Italian on Duolingo is clearly not enough to be sufficiently fluent.) But the place was hustling and bustling like crazy. Two Italian brothers, running their restaurant, mastering their craft, and now engaging in a language we did not know, directing us to seats hastily moved together inside.
Here’s the thing…
We didn’t speak their language.
It didn’t matter.
We didn’t know what to order.
It didn’t matter.
We had never been there before.
None of that mattered.
Dino and Tony and their talented team just brought us thing after thing that they thought we would enjoy. Our only choice was “tinto o blanco” dictating the color of the house beverage. And over the course of the next 2+ hours, they brought speciality after speciality, with food after food to try. We would interact — mostly in two different languages — but it was amazing! The wonder continued. We would laugh and joke and smile and talk in our respective languages. There was love and joy and warmth and authenticity. It was fantastic!
At the end of the meal, they brought us the bill — which was nothing we had discussed but was completely appropriate — and accompanied it with 10 shot glasses soon to be filled with limoncello. But there were only 7 people in our party. They poured 3 glasses for themselves!
And in a toast to what fellowship really is — not allowing anything else to get in the way — we had the most wonderful time! We were sad to exit, and of course, we certainly couldn’t do so without the tradition of kisses on both cheeks, displaying our clear, generous affection for one another.
I learned something that day. We were immersed in a culture other than our own. It wasn’t life, food, pace like we knew it. But we joined in, trusted them, did what they did, allowed ourselves to learn from them, and experienced a bit of their world together. They showed love and care for us in a way known best to them. And it was so, so good.
Walking away in prolonged wonder, it was abundantly clear that sometimes, we simply make life too hard. We let too much get in the way… and miss the available, abundant joy when sharing sweet fellowship together.
Respectfully…
AR