I will take you on a journey through Roma.

But the first thing one must never miss in the Eternal City is caffè. Whether in small coffee houses or hosteria, coffee in Rome is an existential experience - it is that good. And when you return home and flip on your own machine, steam your own milk or brew your own expresso or ristretto capsule, there is this not-quite-as-good funk that settles in as you remember the ecstasy of a Roman delight.

Still...it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all!

Four days in Rome, and I flew away knowing that I had been at the center of the world. There are stories to be heard; stories to be told in the quiet scratching of heels on cobblestones deep in the Farnese at midnight; to be felt in the cool echoing of abandoned catacombs at dawn. And I return...

We approached the ancient walled-in city that was founded by monks in a valley of medieval seclusion. The road that winds there passes through thick forest and nods in the city's direction as you drive by. Fog clung and hovered while drizzly rain drenched and soaked. It was the night I would be in charge for the first time; in charge in a city where I have often found inner refuge.

The recital was to be Beethoven, Schumann, Prokofiev - among others - and the final parting of Romeo and Juliette in opus 75 seemed appropriate for such a day. I pulled the heavy doors open and let my eyes adjust to the great darkness.

It is a long walk down the stone aisle to the front of the church. Notes carried and flew above me, and all that is Christlike, all that is holy seemed to gather there. 

Hours later, connoisseurs of music, both passionate and passive, bought their tickets and took their seats. The church filled; the pianist waited - concentrated - in her green room for me to summon her. I watched as everything fell into place, eyes darting for loose ends that needed tying up; but as I stood quietly, pleased that nothing had fallen apart on my watch, two social workers with four intellectually disabled guests entered the foyer in wheelchairs and then turned to leave. A colleague approached:

"They didn't realize it wasn't free admission. But there is plenty of room and it's time to begin. We can let them stay, can't we?"

I scanned the room, wondering why this had suddenly become my decision, and then remembered whose cathedral it was. Holy music, indeed.

They pushed the chairs to the very front and lined them up as Varvara began playing her angelic songs. And all I could think as I sat two rows back was of the final banquet that had just begun.

I traveled back into the alps for an exquisite concert last week - to Gstaad and the Lauenen chapel where texture and daylight stir and splinter, and candles warm stone walls at nightfall.

Surrounded by people, I was alone; enfolded in music, I sat in silence. 

I climbed the ancient stairs to watch while his fingers made art on white keys. His mind was in a place I could not access as the masters within him resisted being conjured up on such a lovely day - his intensity to force their hand imposed a saturation within that quiet place such as I have rarely felt.

What is art if not the sound of a consuming soul?

It was one of those summers middle aged women talk about in self-help books; where the kids have grown and gone off to camp and they find themselves alone with their laundry, their jobs, a dozen realizations that life has passed them by; where you lay the damn book down halfway through and decide to dance to Lyle Lovett in the kitchen just to keep from crying on the bathroom floor.

They grow, you know. One day they go out to play and it isn't just down the street, it's to southern France. You ring the dinner bell and three instead of six sit down to eat.

It's an age-old game, nothing new. There isn't anything anyone can say in a bestseller that will make it any easier. No one is wiser - no one knows better - no one has it figured out. It's the same for each of us, and it will be the same for those after us. 

That is the thought that has made it bearable. I walk with my daughter to the end of the street of an evening just to look out over the fields. She dances in the moonlight; her hair glows; our bare feet pad along the asphalt. 

It was the same for each of us. And it will be the same for those after us.

Tomorrow school starts again, which surprisingly means they're still mine for another year. :)

The quiet hum of diligence pervades a farm high in the hills of Bernese Jura, where the green fields of Switzerland still bring forth milk and meat products - many of which are organic - and local farmers genuinely care about what goes into them. For one producer in Grandval, the profession is an art form, the daily grind a strategy.

Read Here: Family Business

We have a fetish for old shutters. 

The Russian - who spent years of his childhood on a farm in relative poverty - does not really get that. Loving something old and rusty seems an existential oxymoron to him; you work hard to provide a home that neither leaks nor lets in thieves, and then you drag the dilapidated home to decorate it.

The Dreamer - as he calls her (and not necessarily with any amount of affection) -  spent years in the city. She likes comfort and ease (no camping, please) but finds something beautiful in the ancient.

The Russian and the Dreamer went to church on Sunday. They pulled up and parked in the lot, joined the service-goers in the courtyard for a cool drink (cool being artistic-license in this case. The Swiss do not drink things cool - room temperature on a 104° day is quite appropriate. Be grateful you have something to choke down.)

They looked around. The Dreamer fidgeted.

"Is it the courtyard?" he asked. "It's too clean for you, isn't it?"

There was not a leaf in sight; not a bit of anything on the ground. Clean to the point of obsession; mental-illness clean. 

He smiled.

I am a lucky Dreamer. I married the Russian. We have old shutters and leaves on the ground. He is willing to betray his roots. ;)