The first time I went to Italy was back in 1996.  I was backpacking with two friends and ricocheting around some of the more major cities in the northern part of the country, armed not with smartphones but only tourist maps and oversized backpacks that challenged the capacity of our college freshman frames.

There is much that I remember from that trip (a Roman waiter, for example, swirling “I love you” into the foam of Linda’s cappuccino)— but more than that, there was this old man who stumbled upon us one morning as we poked around Verona in search of the exact bus that would take us to our youth hostel. The slightly stooping and white-haired man spoke almost no English, but somehow or another we communicated our desired destination, and he seemed to know where we needed to go. So off the four of us went through the streets of fair Verona, smiling and nodding to this gentleman as we wondered how far out of his way we were taking him. It was an early summer in May, and the quiet streets were covered by big shady trees that felt like a space-filled antidote to the buzz we left in Venice.

I can’t remember how long we walked, but as we reached the end of our sojourn, the Italian man motioned to a particular bus stop sign, and we waved and grazied our profound thanks.  We had no other words to bridge the gap between us.  The man, before turning away, held up his hands as if to bid us wait one final moment. We stood there and watched him, as words were clearly being formed in his fine vintage head.  As we waited patiently, at last he exclaimed from across the street, “Enjoy your life!” before turning around and heading back to do whatever was on his list of morning activity.

We three girls, overly energized teenagers, heard this and shouted, “Yes!” as we felt perfect synchronicity with what had just been said.  It was one of those simple phrases that absolutely nailed the construct of our respective situations— him having lived god knows what and us setting forward to experience (hopefully) decades of god knows what on our own. Enjoy your life.

Verona, and the finer points of our trip have long since faded into my gray matter’s recesses, but that one brief space of time remains my fondest memory from that trip.  The second most memorable, incidentally, was probably the man selling OJ Simpson postcards just outside of the Coliseum. Globalization, even back then, needed no smartphones or wi-fi.

So it’s 20 years later. And while I am definitely unqualified to be a tour guide in Italy, I have managed to return several times. On this most recent occasion, I found myself waking up in a Bed & Breakfast near the Vatican, alongside my brother and father— both of whom have never been here before.  It was a hastily arranged trip, and one that would bring 2016 to a close with a bit of tourism.

When I was in Rome this fall for a work trip, I started texting my Dad photos of the sites I wandered during my spare time. I sent him a photo of Castel Sant’Angelo. “You’re in Rome?” Dad texted back.

Then he texted again: “Wow. I never got there.”

I looked at his reply and was a bit surprised. See, Dad was an airline pilot who flew internationally, and he more or less set the standard for me in terms of travel— him with his flight bag covered in flag stickers showing the countries he’d traveled to. Surely Italy had been an easy score at some stage in his life? Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.

And the way he put it in his text: “I never got there.”  It sounded so final, so preordained. Sure, Dad’s 79 years old— and the Grim Reaper was a right asshole in whisking people off in 2016— but honestly no one knows the future, and as far as I was concerned it wasn’t for Dad to decide whether or not his life would end before he’d experience the antiquities and tiramisu of Rome. Moving his Catholic Irish-American ass across the Atlantic one more time (at least) became my new mission.

So I’m not super keen to post a travelogue of the walking odyssey that comprised our end of year days in sunshiney Rome. And besides, I am fully aware that I have loved ones who haven’t been able to experience a fraction of what we’ve gotten to see. I have guilt that I haven’t brought them all over for an experience or two.

But maybe it’s the law of averages and the reality of Dad tipping the scales toward the winter years of life; I want him to feel as though there are still new things that can be attempted and achieved.  For him and my brother…and hell, everyone else— I want them to enjoy life from end to end. To get wrapped up in a bit of uncertainty or misdirection that most often translates into a richness of experience that cannot be had if you simply cash in your chips and recline in a living room chair until your end of days.

Like I mentioned before, I have no idea how much time any of us have on this astronomical clock.  I don’t know if that old Veronese man is still kicking around and impressing impressionable foreigners with his suave Italian charms and savoir-faire. But no matter the case, no matter where we all find ourselves, the most I think we can wish for is to achieve what he called on us to do so many years ago:

Enjoy your life— cultivate and follow a strong pull of curiosity, to always keep an eye on the horizon and remember that just about anything is still achievable. Because Dad did get to Italy. He now has a sticker on his bag to prove it.