I’m not just excited to see Rome. I’m also very excited to see Andrew William (A-Dub to peers and trusted associates). Andrew is the coolest person I know. He lives in Edinburgh, travels Europe widely, and speaks snatches of French and Italian – he’s not great, but he’s got enough charm that the locals dig it. He’s got a lot of that: he’s pretty much always in or about to be in a fight because some girl liked him better than a bigger guy. He hangs out almost all the time with a biologist and an American lawyer turned Western church historian, and I promise these are real people I am not making up. He also has, at last count, at least four diggers and a pretty bitchin’ blue blanket. He is two years and eleven months old, and he is my nephew, and I want to be like him when I grow up.
At this age, Andrew only speaks in a stage whisper (when “SHHH! Someone is sleeping!”) and a full-throated bellow, which is his natural speaking voice and also sort of an artistic statement. So when I say, “Hi, Andrew!” he replies, “WE WERE ON A PLANE, AND THIS IS A PLANE” – here he gathers his entire body while pausing for breath – “A PLANE TO ROME!” He’s not as excited to see me as I am to see him, though. This is partly because he’s cooler than you are, and doesn’t have time for your shit; there is an entire world out there to deconstruct, tile by tile. But it’s also because the last time we developed trust was in July, when I visited Scotland for a week. It’s March now, and that gap is literally 23% of his entire life. Basically, every time I see him it’s a 20-year class reunion. He’s pretty cool with me being here, but he’s not going to stop what he’s doing, which is initiating the launch sequence on the sink and instantly flooding the bathroom of this rented apartment. This all happens before I have a minute to hug his mother, the biologist, my sister. Andrew is a punk rock star too busy breaking shit to actually play any shows. “HA HA HA!” he says, when told that he is being bad. A-Dub’s Categorical Imperative is, “Break only that, which, if broken, you would find amusing. Strike hard; strike fast; there is no law.” (Which – that last part – is a solid translation of Kant’s neck tattoo.)
Andrew’s little brother is Jack (“Jack-Jack” to those in the know), who can’t yet speak in sentences but already adores his supernova sibling. Jack watches, mouth just open and eyes bulged, as Andrew launches his entire being at objects, people, and human civilization.
I love both of these monsters, because they’re family and they give me hope in the future I don’t feel for myself. But beyond love, I specifically and unusually like Jack, because I’m a hipster snob. Everyone – well, everyone who doesn’t have to clean up after him – likes Andrew: his vocabulary is already about four times the breadth of the President’s, and he smiles and sings and plays and offers Dadaist commentary on life, shot through with a surprisingly thorough policy focus on trucks and diggers. Jack is more difficult: he can’t move that much, can’t really talk to you, and has a terrible habit of screeching like a thing dying to grab your attention. When he succeeds, his goal is usually just to drool on you.
Jack’s also not sold on life. He’s less than a year old, and he is afraid of things that can hurt him, which means everything that isn’t is mother. He’s very curious about new stimuli – his attention will be captured by strange interactions of light and color in the distance, and he will screech to alert you. (“Holy. Living. Shit. Is anyone else seeing this tree?”)
But he is not eager to meet what he sees: he is an observer. He has a healthy respect for pain, and fears what a new object might do to him. His reaction to nearly all humans is, “You are not my mother; do not fucking touch me.” I hope to ask him about this when he’s older, because I can’t now: I think he sees a lot; more than most kids his age. Andrew will home in like a missile on one object or idea or shape in the distance; Jack sees all of them, and fears most of them, which I can only admire. (I am always drawn towards that which is difficult to love; this is ultimately narcissism.)
This doesn’t mean Jack is weak: he’ll go tottering towards Andrew, who is breathlessly narrating his life (“And there is a TRUCK! And… and I eat GELATO! in ROOOME!”). Jack will try to play along. Andrew will allow this for a time, until he doesn’t anymore, and (sometimes accidentally) wallop Jack with an elbow or digger. “Oh NO Jack-Jack!” Andrew will wail, amid the clubbing. Jack, though he is beaten back, will wade again and again into this ocean of pain. It is easily the best show on television, and I make no effort to change the channel.
Jack won’t cry until he sees someone watching – he cries not to articulate pain, but to notify the authorities. When he screams at my sister, glaring at her for allowing Andrew into the world, I hear Jack yell “¡Polícia!”, and every time it’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
Meanwhile, Andrew experiences just a hail of emotion: he likes Jack, but Jack is also trying to take his stuff; like, there are rules, man. And he both enjoys hitting his brother and I think is a little terrified by how easy Jack goes down at this stage; naturally, he announces all of this. (“But Jack-Jack! He is HURT NOW!” is a thing you will hear as Andrew winds up for another swing.) He also knows he’s about to be in trouble, but simply can’t help himself: hitters hit.
These scrums are especially entertaining to me because I am an uncle, and uncles do not have to make sure tiny, cuddly lunatics turn into serviceable human beings. I just get to enjoy the carnage. It’s pretty clear that Jack is going to be much bigger than Andrew in the coming years, and when the day comes that Jack can hit back I’m going to fly to my sister’s house with popcorn.
Even for uncles, though, the reign of terror and smeared foodstuffs can make travel difficult: Last Word (this would be my sister) and Rob Roy (brother-in-law) have been on planes for a while, and all that time they have been legally and socially responsible for the biological hazard that is their progeny. They are spent, and they have already spent too much: Their charming driver managed to pull a bill-change on them, and is now fifty of their Euros wealthier (I know exactly what kind of clothes he was wearing). Meanwhile, Andrew is caroming off walls as Jack watches in terror and fascination. Clearly, it’s time to go to a restaurant, with paying customers to watch us.
My sister has found us a spot near the Tiber, in a warren of apartments and shops across the river from St. Peter’s. (Predictably, it is well-priced and well-located; I recommend that everyone have their scientist sibling find lodging for them.) It’s a spot that seems, on first contact, perhaps too plastic: You hear plenty of English pinging off alleys, and absurdly beautiful restaurants line the cobblestone walks. But it’s all real: the place draws us foreigners, but the staff are Italian, and so are our neighbors for the weekend. It’s jarring to realize, as I swim through Pavlovian aromas, that some people just live like this.
We have one clear mission objective, and it is pizza. (“I will eat PIZZA in ROME!” Andrew explains.) We also have clear mission parameters, which are that we want to find this pizza close by and for not much money. Italy, ever the charming host, obliges.
I love seeing this family – I love it more than just about anything. The kids are beautiful maniacs, and the conversation is dense and free. But I do not love public censure, which is what you receive for bringing beautiful maniacs into restaurants. On flights and around tables, the single and childless all agree to smother apostate parents with shame. “Can you believe them?” we ask each other, marveling at the barbarity of their progeny. The parents, I know from my sister, band together to form their own shame-repulsion unit, but their ground is shakier, and the arguments don’t all stick: “Can you believe they stared at us because Andrew threw a plate?” (Yes.) “Can you believe they looked at us like it was our fault Jack cried on the plane?” (Yes: he cried on an airplane, which you decided he would be on.)
Yes, but those of us on the other side are also crippled by myopia: we were literally all once children (excepting Ted Cruz, who was manufactured in the Mr. Potato Head plant), and certain of us twenty-somethings seem to imagine children evil: “I will never have children,” we say, proudly. Which is a cool fucking luxury! We can have sex without pregnancy, which has been untrue for basically all history. We get to decide, and we have enough people around that we don’t need any more to perpetuate the line or stand watch for bears. I think we should probably be a little more charitable about our opt-out clause of the human experience, which is a new technical innovation only for rich people born in the last 70 years. Ideally, we’d have a society that respected every individual’s right to exercise that clause, while still appreciating the charm and madness of children; one that was refined, but didn’t expect children to be.
What I’m getting at here is that Italy is fucking heaven.
When we first enter the place, the waiter makes immediate friends with Jack and Andrew. Andrew, when tired, has occasional bouts of shyness – they’re very strange in the context of his love of every waking stimulus – but the waiter charms him. True to Italian form, he looks like he was cast: he’s thin, and his skin is the color the cookbook means when it says “leave until golden brown.” He speaks some English; the rest of the staff don’t. He translates little bits about Andrew and Jack to them – Andrew explains that his trusted blanket, a blue rag scraped off the shoe of the universe, is called Beetna. His plush cat, which has long since lost its color and bleeds stuffing, is Mouw. In Italian, these introductions are worth the price of admission.
I’m learning that the way to speak Italian is to pronounce each word as if you’re giving an offensively broad impression of an Italian. Back in Colorado, I roomed with a guy who dated an Italian print-maker. He was a charming-rogue sort, and one time the three of us were talking and he kept running over her conversation with quips. She turned to him suddenly, in the middle of his joke; and threw him this two-handed, open-palmed punch in the chest. She made that gesture you get from putting your thumb against the other four fingers, and shook these claws inches from his face. “You-ah neh-verr a-lees-senn!” she scolded him. I’ve seen the Grand Canyon, and this was better.
In this restaurant, Andrew mumbles nothings that become opera. Like many other things, the game of Telephone is better in Italian.
The table across from us seems less than amused: one woman snaps her head around the first time Jack-Jack unleashes his death-squeal (he is either tired, or has seen something out the window). As the meal progresses, Andrew surgically disembowels the pizza and Jack squawks and gurgles. I think that the only thing keeping peace between us and our neighbors is the waiter, but I’m wrong: as we depart, the whole table leans to serenade Jack-Jack. Two waiters attend Andrew, who has lost all fuel and collapsed in a pile of Beetna and pajamas on the tile floor. They weren’t watching us to condemn us: they were watching because they thought little kids are beautiful, and the Italian moral system rewards beauty above essentially all other considerations except carbs.
Life is just a little better in a place where children are valued: if you all expect them to be wild, then their wildness doesn’t ruin your night. It relaxes the adults at the table, too: hostilities are ceased by treaty. And we find this across Rome: night after night, place after place, the staff falls in cooing love with the boys. “Bambino!” is a word I hear more in real life than I ever expected to. It’s funny and sweet and a little silly, which makes it Italian. These are good days.
On this first night, the boys go to bed and we chat over a bottle of wine which in three sips converts me from whiskey; if only for a weekend.