Raise your hand if you recognize the name of Edmond Haraucourt.
If you don’t know the name, then let me tell you that he was a French writer and that the first line of his most famous poem is something most of us take for a proverb: “To leave is to die a little.”
That line has never been so true as it is for me now. The rest of the poem is pretty wonderful too. This is more or less how it runs in English:
To leave is to die a little;
It is to die to what one loves;
One leaves behind a little of oneself
At any hour, any place.
It’s a fine and final pain
Like the last line of a poem.
We leave as if in jest
Before the ultimate journey
And, in all of our farewells, we sow
A portion of our soul.
Today we depart. As planned, we’ve left our German shepherd Shepherd with Signora Giovanna. Shepherd watches me load the luggage in the back of the car with a somber expression, as if he understands I won’t be coming home. After all, I was his favorite slave.
The kids are beside themselves with excitement; as far as they know, this is just the beginning of a wonderful and unexpected vacation.
“Can you at least tell us where exactly we’re going?” Eva asks.
“The various stops are secret,” I reply. “Think of it as a treasure hunt.”
The kids get comfortable in the back while Paola gathers up the last kibble and stuffs it into the station wagon’s baggage compartment, already packed full.
We’re ready for departure. It’s five in the afternoon; we wait for the sun to slide a little way closer to the horizon to avoid the worst of the muggy June heat. I start the car, and it hacks asthmatically. Then, at last, we start off. The apartment building where we live dwindles in the rearview mirror, the last image I have of the life I once led. In a movie I can’t remember the name of, the protagonist says that life is nothing but a collection of last times. Too true.
The last time you talk to your father.
The last time you see the Colosseum.
The last time you eat a fig just picked from the tree.
The last time you take a swim in the sea.
The last time you kiss the woman you love.
The list can go on forever, and every one of us has already experienced thousands of last times without even realizing it. Most of the time, in fact, you never even imagine that what you’re experiencing is the last time. In fact, that’s the best thing about it. Not knowing. If, instead, as in my case, you know perfectly well that these are the last times, then suddenly the rules change completely. Everything takes on a new and different weight and importance. Even drinking an ordinary chinotto takes on a quality of poetic melancholy.
As we drive out of Rome, I leave behind me an astonishing number of last times. So many that I finally just give up cataloging them. After so many days spent regretting the past and dreaming of a future that will no longer come, it’s time to think of today.
I have the Dino Zoff notebook that I’ve filled with a thousand notes for this journey with me. I’ve made a list of things that I want to teach Lorenzo and Eva. And I have a woman to win back in the next twenty days. I don’t have even a minute to waste.
I take the on-ramp and follow the highway south. I’m as excited as a little kid heading off on vacation for the first time without his parents.
I slip in a CD of television theme songs and my under-ten passengers cut loose in song. Paola stares out at the panorama, but she still isn’t relaxed. I press down on the accelerator and ignore a sharper than usual stab of pain in my belly.