Three Coins in a Fountain

Oct 2, 2006

Tomorrow is the day we agreed on ten years ago: a couple of love-struck and hopelessly idealistic girls. We were students – Lenay, Lisa(Me), Jen, Laura M., Wynne, Barbara and Melinda, and Zulieka. We held three coins in our hands and wished to return to Rome. The Trevi fountain accepted the tokens and the statues gushing crystalline water laughed. “Ten years from now, on this date, we shall return to celebrate what our lives have become.” We solemnly agreed that we would all be there and went on merrily with our Italian adventure. In the haze of a decade, contact has been lost with the other girls… phone numbers changed and never updated, new houses acquired and announcements not sent; new opportunities took almost all of us in divergent directions. But two of us remembered. Two of us planned. To two of us, this was a challenge. No Herndon woman turns down a challenge.

So Lenay and I, bound by the ties of family, planned to return. We’d take whomever was in our lives at the time -- lovers, husbands, children, fathers & mothers, family, friends, and well-wishers. And here we are: Lisa has married Tom Dowling and birthed Clare Mae (2+2 mos); Lenay has married Daniel Collaro and birthed Dira Isabella (3+7 mos) & Dominic (1+11 mos); Lisa’s mom Cindy and her “Aunt” Paula are in attendance; Lenay’s friend Dana has joined the cavalcade of madness just for fun. Another distant aunt, Vickie Carnevale, is presently wandering with a tour group around Rome, and is going to try to join us all tomorrow at high noon.

This is more than just a silly wish and follow-through. This is a sort of promise with the world. This is two girls who know how to make a vow and keep it, and a family that knows when to buckle down and dream about possibility. I am so very proud of everyone who is here. They’ve given up time at work, time with family and friends and loved ones, (not to mention a sizeable chunk of change) to throw a few more coins in an antique fountain. In return, though, they’ve reaffirmed what I had nearly forgotten: that life is whimsically, beautifully, and painfully absurd, and there ARE a few people out there willing to make sense of it. These people who have gathered here are unafraid, or if they are afraid they have challenged the most fragile of human fears and won. No one likes to be out of their comfort zones, in a land where no one speaks your language, the food is all different, the lifestyle radically unlike anything you’ve known. But these people understand that this life is just a series of dreams, some good, some bad, and that to wake up means personally walking away from hope.

I miss the people who aren’t here. Those that wanted to come but were stopped by work, obligation, or personal doubt. I hope that those other girls have acquired lives that are as filled with love and art and light and friends and children and homes and peace as mine is. And who knows, maybe one of them woke momentarily from a dream sometime in last couple of years with the promise uttered ten years ago suddenly remembered, and she’s jetting in this direction right now. We shall see tomorrow who has not forgotten what it means to make a promise. To yourself, and to life.