The Power of Now

      Nothing like 36 hours with four young men to remind you just how much fun it is to live in the present. And how easy it is to forget that simple lesson. 

      And, just in case you weren't sure, their reality, their attitudes, the way they see the world, the things they do, that's the new world. Not ours. Or mine in any case. 

      My son's friends breezed through our side of the hill again after a wild weekend in Rome while my elder son left for 24 hours to go to Milan for a job interview.

      They needed to rest. Still suffering from jet-lag, and after several nights of partying, first thing they did was sleep about 12 hours.  

      My son, the ringleader of this merry little back-packing band, needed to rest too. But instead, he took the last overnight train to Milan after a mad late-night dash to Rome's train station, where we arrived just after the last train left. 

     There is some disagreement between us on this point. While my son was trying to buy a ticket for another train from a machine in the empty station, a driver approached us saying there were no more trains, the station was closing soon, and that the last train to Milan was leaving in about twenty minutes from another Rome station.

      My son insisted the train would pass through the central station and that the guy just wanted to rip us off for the ride. 

      He was probably right, of course, (this is Italy, after all), but I couldn't see any Milan train listed in the departures table, I couldn't see any trains listed there at all in fact, he had twenty minutes to catch the last train, and I just didn't want to take the chance he wouldn't make it.

     So I handed the guy 25 Euros for a 10-minute ride (I was afraid I wouldn't find my way there quick enough) and my son sped off in the car in the night. 

     I headed back to the house, with only a passing thought that I had perhaps put him into a car with a mass murderer. Italy's not a country of murderers though. Swindlers, maybe. But murderers no. 

    When I arrived back home at about 1:45 a.m., one of the guys had just put in another load of laundry. 

     He did several loads over the day and a half he was here. I think he might have done all their laundry actually, dividing it up by whites and colors and since we have no dryer, hanging it up outside all around so it would dry in time.

    The others had crashed already. He too then took to his bed until the following afternoon.

     Soon after they woke up, they headed down to the town, and spent the day, and evening, and night, trying to have as much fun as they could. And succeeding, as far as I can tell. 

    My son, meanwhile, slept little on the slow train to Milan, but got there in time for his day-long set of interviews.  

    All in Italian. All about finance. 

    We don't know whether it'll come to anything yet. Italy's suffering a slowdown like every other part of the world, so it could easily not. I'm too scared to even hope for it.  

    But whatever happens, I'm simply awe-struck that he even tried. That he could pull something like that off.  

    And his friends were a joy to hang out with. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile. 

    They all left early this morning, laden down with their back-packs full of clean clothes, walking down the hill to the bus stop, onto their next destination -- the Cinque Terre and then to Barcelona for the weekend. 

     I just know they're going to have fun.