Your Day is Done

Today was a busy day.  I was actively on my feet, talking and teaching all day long (as opposed to other teaching days when I am circulating and helping individual students while they work in groups).  By the time I got home, I was tired of talking and walking and smiling and communicating.  But my day was not done.  In fact, it was just getting started.

I rushed home to get Bean to his baseball practice by 5:30, which meant we had to grab a quick dinner.  Chris and I texted quickly midday and decided to meet at Subway for dinner with the kids, then he would shuffle Bean off to baseball and Gracie and I would go to Cub Scouts.  Instead, Bean’s practice was rained out, so I ended up running home and cooking a quick dinner before we all headed to Cub Scouts at 6:30.  Got home by 8:00, and sat down to write this little bloggity blog post.  After this, we have a conference call at 9:00 tonight with our ClassMax team.

I love bustling days, actually.  The hum of activity and places to be, things to do, people to see.  It keeps me fresh and active and feeling on top of my game.  But as I was kissing the kids goodnight tonight and turning off the lights upstairs before heading into the office to start working, I found myself smiling at a phrase I learned two summers ago in Italy.

Your day is done.

Chris and I went to Italy for our tenth wedding anniversary in June of 2015.  It was in the middle of my blogging hiatus and so I never was able to share about our trip with all of you (unless you follow me on Instagram, in which case I probably overloaded you at the time with updates from our trip!).  It was truly the trip of a lifetime.  We spent four days in Rome, two days in Florence, and two days in Venice.  We ate Italian food, drank Italian wine, and made out all over every city we went to.  It was just the best.

My favorite memory from our trip was our second night in Rome.  We ate dinner at this amazing little restaurant in the Piazza di Pantheon, also known as Piazza della Rotunda.  It is the little square that the Pantheon sits on, which by day is quite unassuming, with the Pantheon looming in the background.  It is hard to imagine anything upstaging the Pantheon.  But something magical happens in Rome at dusk, as the twinkle lights begin to appear over small cafes and restaurants on the cobblestone streets.  Street vendors set up their stands, selling roses and chalk drawings and telling fortunes.  And people walk by two’s through the streets, eating gelato and taking in the sights and smells and sensualness of Roma.

Chris and I fell in love with the Piazza della Rotunda.  It was smaller than most of the other more famous piazzas, and not nearly as crowded.  And I imagined that if we were lucky enough to live in Rome, this would be where we would spend our evenings with friends and family.  It felt like us, just in a different language.

We had dinner at a touristy restaurant on the square called, “Da Fortuna Del Pantheon.”  If you go, you can’t miss it.  It has the largest outdoor seating area out of all the restaurants on the square.  We got a perfect table, right against the little white picket fence surrounding the outdoor seating and closest to the Pantheon.  Under a sea of white umbrellas and white twinkle lights, Chris and I laughed and talked with our sweet, young waiter, who thought we were the luckiest people in the world to live in Orlando, where Disney World is.  He taught me to speak Italian as I ordered my first course, and he kept the wine pouring.

By the end of our first bottle of wine, we were just about done with dinner.

“More vino?” he asked.

“No,” I insisted.  “I couldn’t.”

“But why?” he asked us, in a very serious manner.  “Your day is done.  Drink more wine.  Enjoy your dessert.  Spend the evening together.  Your day is done.”

Isn’t that a magical phrase?  Your day is done.  It was such a relaxing feeling to acknowledge that peace had come and we truly had not a worry in the world.

So, we ordered a second bottle of wine and dessert.

And, later, our waiter treated us to limoncello and he even drank a few with us.  Apparently, his day was done, too.

Over four hours later, Chris and I literally poured ourselves out of the restaurant and out into the piazza.  We called back over our shoulder to our waiter, “Which way to the Trevi Fountain?” and he pointed left.  So off we went – me speaking my newly acquired Italian and Chris insisting he didn’t need an map at all.  We stumbled our way through the streets of Rome for another hour, stopping TWICE for gelato and even more for kissing in dark corners and alleyways.

Finally, we found the Trevi Fountain, where legend has it if you throw in coins, it means you will come back to Rome one day.

Chris and I took all the money we had in our pockets – probably $20 American dollars – and threw handfuls of money into the fountain over our shoulders, shouting with each handful of money, “We will be back one day!”

Shortly after, we sobered up long enough to realized we had thrown all our spending money for the next day into a water fountain and decided it was time to call it a night.  We hailed a cab and were back to our hotel sometime after midnight.

Tonight, as Chris and I shuffled through our busy daily lives, side by side, but not really, you know?, I smiled to myself as I came downstairs to find him sitting on our couch, waiting for me.  Like every night.  We still have work to do tonight, and I’m sure tomorrow night will be more of the same.  And probably the night after that, too.  But after all these years, Chris and I still end our days together.  The busyness of the day fades, the kids fall asleep, the dogs wind down, and somehow we are still standing together.  Side by side.  Hand in hand.

Our day is done.