It’s easy to forget that you have a body when nothing is complaining. 

Like, if you are lucky, in the years where you spend hours scouting snapping turtles or testing the centrifugal capability of a tire swing, it’s no problem to run barefoot across streets and wooded areas Road Runner-style. You do it because everything feels possible and your body gives little resistance. You just go-go-go until you’ve quickly developed “summer feet”: where the soft skin underfoot quicky adapts to what you are asking of it. In these moments you feel bulletproof and weightless—prepared to go full tilt until roped in each night by parents who seem devoid of any evidence that they once did such things. 

Ah to be young.

You don’t realize it yet, but incremental change is happening. It’s like when we used to collect fireworks on the shore of John’s Pond on July 5^th. Walking barefoot on the pine needled shores, we’d race each other to scoop up the coolest-looking barbecued leftovers that washed ashore overnight. I remember holding up hollowed out fireworks that were now shells of themselves —half charred with fluorescent wooden stems and labels that read, “Bottle Rocket with Report!”. The report is the bang that that a firecracker gives off once exhausted of its propulsive properties. I am no walking firecracker, but these days I identify with those bottle rockets in a way that I never did as a kid. It’s like you turn around in your 40s, and suddenly there’s a constant staccato performance orchestrated by your body.

None of this happens overnight, but sometimes it does really seem that way. All of that running around done started in childhood created a precedent. But paying attention to incremental change isn’t a thing. Humans aren’t wired to pay that close of attention to what is going on around and inside of us.

At the end of August I was running through the grassy sections of Villa Borghese. It was a rare afternoon run, where I took in the full-fat leafy trees amidst a humidity level that validated my shorts and tank top choice. The years are long gone where I would run barefoot, and in my stability control sneakers I now transitioned to a cooldown walk. Moving slower now, I suddenly detected the crunch of leaves under my shoes. That’s strange, I thought to myself. Everything else about my surroundings screamed Italian summer—but all of a sudden, I was presented with this unmistakable report from Mother Nature. The curling leaves given up by the majestic alberi overhead now told me that these take-for-granted pleasant days were numbered.

That afternoon announcement of falling leaves quickly dissipated into the remaining forgetfulness of my summertime. In the ensuing weeks I continued to move about much like I did as a kid: little regard for what was to come, maximum effort spent at enjoying every last moment. And then last week hit. The rains came and they turned many parts of Rome (and the entire country) into a modernist artist’s rendition of a failed canal project. The temperature dropped. I suddenly become aware that Rome had ippocastani—horse chestnut trees. Rome told me about this because their fruit—exactly the kind my Dad used to pocket in Paris—suddenly littered the sidewalks I took every morning on my way to work.

In the Mashpee neighborhood where I grew up- the one that had those snapping turtles and John’s Pond—our house was unusual for a number of reasons. Under the gambrel roof on the southern side of the overhang there was a hex. It’s a feature more often seen in Amish properties and we are far from Amish) but it was something that my father painted and placed on the house. He depicted leaves in the throes of autumn’s transition, “a thing that was put on the house to ward off evil spirits and shit” as he has now explained to me. My sisters’ houses and my Dad’s house now each have a hex on the side, and I’d like to think that this does something to help ease the inevitable and sometimes painful passing of time.

I don’t mind the autumn weather so much—but it’s the transition between these two seasons that I find to be a little bit hard. For any other year, I would say that without question, the summer-fall changeover is without question the most jarring of them all. But especially in 2020, where the usual drop in temperature has my body feeling under the weather—I get served up with an additional thought process of, “Oh God, the COVID has come for me”.  Where is my hex? Where are those days where I forgot that having a body had repercussions?

So soon we’re just about into October, and a whole new world of seasons and shifting. I just received a care package from my Mom who’s sent some local autumn mementos that will help to ease me into the seasonal shift. I don’t know what’s on tap for the coming months, but of course the steady passage of time is inescapable. And truly, I might ask my father for my own hex that should be added to my world over here. It’s abundantly clear that I have a body—and a body that is aging appropriately. And my goal, for as long as I can manage, is to maximize those increasingly-elusive moments where I forget that I have any complaints at all. 

I miss those moments as a kid, but that doesn’t mean I won’t stop looking for new ones even as I slow down.