“This is a once in a lifetime experience. Not something that happens every day.”
He picked up the dainty €9 glass of frozen blended coffee and looked off into the distance—a posture he assumes when saying something he really means. In turn, I picked up my own martini glass and inspected it more closely. It was indeed miniature, served on a napkin and saucer that rested atop our marble table for two—similar to the others furnishing the 18thcentury café. When I finally brought the glass to my lips, I found the beverage to be delicious. Delicious, but expensive and fleeting.
While Caffè Greco has a counter like other bars in Italian-speaking Europe, it includes room after room of red velvet banquettes and chairs. There are dozens of wall-mounted artifacts that encourage a look around. The café’s reputation as the oldest in Rome, coupled with its proximity to Piazza di Spagna, high-end retailers and the storied Keats-Shelley House pulls the public inside—but with a menu that reflects the €18,000 a month rent, it was easy to see how no person—nevermind starving artists or the two of us coffee seekers—would choose to anoint this place as the go-to caffeine spot.
But still, when one considers the luminaries who once sat here: Hans Christian Anderson, Byron, Buffalo Bill, Casanova, Goethe, Gogol, Ibsen, Henry James, Keats, Shelley, Stendhal, Mark Twain and Orson Welles—you understand that this is a place to experience at least once. It’s similar to the reason why I patronized Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain exactly once; you sit down, order an overpriced beverage, and accept that this is all a part of the process.
Try as we might, it was indeed hard to make our frosty treats last longer than a few moments. Despite the outrageous price of our bill (a similar order at Caffé Tazza d’Oro costs about €4), Caffè Greco did provide a unique antidote to the oppressive force of the Roman sun. And as the day wore on, that brief stop and everything it encapsulated something that continues to make me smile again and again.
While this Italian coffee memory remains vivid in detail, it does ultimately drop into a card catalog of life events that I classify as notable for one reason or another. Each memory is unique, but my most cherished souvenirs lack this narrative of sophistication that can be stripped to the bone to say, “I once spent a beautiful weekend in the eternal city.” My memory banks are more commonly stuffed with quotidian acts, gestures and words that I love but are impossible to order off a beverage menu.
An example:
I don’t particularly enjoy group texts. I say this because they necessitate suffering through various curations of “humor” that are proffered by the collective. Two years ago, however, I created an enduring WhatsApp group for my siblings with the title, “Humans Against Group Texts.” As we are five in my family and are firmly entrenched in our own life activities, this chat has become an efficient resource for communicating news or deconflicting inherently tangled family dynamics. At least this happens some of the time.
Humans Against Group Texts has also evolved to serve as a sort of modern-day keepsake book. If I look back through our exchanges, I see a living photo album of multimedia that keep us connected to each other and our unique family customs.
The other day my brother shared 15 seconds of his struggle to oust a bird from our barn. He had all of the doors swung wide open to no avail. I guarantee that this video would not be terribly funny to the reader, but as I listened to his tenor and expletive-laden commentary, I laughed my ass off upon witnessing his situation. The clip also said so much about our family; it highlights how we characterize and respond to the things that irritate us. I enjoyed multiple viewings of the bird bonking around the barn ceiling, John’s lousy filming providing a substandard yet satisfying Blair Witch experience. I couldn’t remember when I had last laughed so hard at something. It was like I had been given an unexpected gift of validated raison d’être that I don’t encounter much in an adult world of mature drudgery and syncopated tasks.
Coming back to the overpriced coffee, I can juxtapose that experience with the bird video because ultimately there is connective tissue between the two memories: they both center around the idea of attention. Each in their own way have value, as both made me pause to reflect on what I was experiencing. They reminded me of how rich life in one particular moment could feel.
Along with this collection of memories tucked away, it should also go without saying that I retain moments that stem from more turbulent parts of life’s motion. Things like a midnight visit from first responders that left me wondering—hoping—that this moment was one that would only happen once in a lifetime. This acute frame of time had the potential to be something that would felt forever; the painful memories have as much if not more currency than those that inspire joy. In double time they make you sit up and take stock of the world around you; they shove you into an immediate appreciation for everything you have but might have forgotten about.
Life, I think, is best lived somewhere between rare moments lingering in a high-end café and those that include watching paramedics take vital signs of a person you love while you stand by idly. Of course, I’d much rather spend most of my time at the median, enjoying the everyday curse words and comedy that are shared between the people I know and love. These moments of loric understanding built around a lifetime of interaction—both the good and the bad—they produce silly bird videos and ephemeral servings of beautiful coffee that, taken together, are somehow immensely satisfying.
Once in a lifetime can be a special thing—but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be something extraordinary. As I discover every day, once in a lifetime can also mean focusing on something more simple or unexpected. If we try, I find that it is almost impossible to actively seek and attain those moments that appear most alluring. The images of life perfected residing on a smartphone screen. Instead, I think it’s best to simply focus on what you love doing: working in a barn, or wandering a new city with someone valuable. And when those less beautiful memories do come, hopefully they will indeed be once in a lifetime. Hopefully they are outnumbered by the wealth of positive remembrances that you’ve already managed catalog.