Three years ago this month, we had the privilege of joining Julian on an all-too-brief European family road trip. There were six of us in our caravan: Julian and his Mom and Dad, (my brother!), and my wife and our son, Bodhi. Something that we had never done before, and although somewhat impromptu, was intended to be the first of many. To revel and linger together in those sleepy shaded plazas, this moveable feast of ours would ultimately be the most amount of time we would even get to spend together with Julian. One of the greatest gifts that I believe we ever received from him was to help us see the world anew, through his very young eyes.
We first departed from his farmstead home, nestled in the rocky foothills of the Pyrenees. Heading down to the seaside town of Sête, we had our first taste of the Mediterranean, lunching in the salty breeze at the edge of a turquoise canal.
From this maritime siesta, we headed northwest up into Provence, where the lavender fields had just finished blooming earlier in the summer and were now the color of straw hay; we resolved to return again one day to see and smell those flowers in their full glory...
In Roussillon, we caught a fuschia-salmon sunset splashing over those famous ochre cliffs. Vividly, I recall being bathed in soft velvety light, enveloped in violet-rosed luminosity. That warm, late-summer evening, we watched an amber-glowing nearly-full Harvest moon rise into a starry sky, silvering as it was slowly shrouded by wispy clouds; the moon looked so close, we couldn't help ourselves from reaching out, trying to grab it with our hands.
The road from Roussillon to Nice was more epic than we had anticipated. Down narrow winding gorges, in an unexpected thunderstorm, through ancient fortified hill-top towns and across undulating open country. Having travelled all day under dark grey clouds, it seemed that we had passed into dusk, so we were equal parts surprised and relieved when we arrived to find the sun shining through misty heights overlooking the sea.
It has always seemed possible to me, if not probable, that newborns arrive with some memory of where they are from, and that they bring with them a special sort of wisdom or unique inaccessible knowledge that fades as they acquire the ability to speak, and becomes necessarily forgotten as an increasing awareness of being human replaces any previously formed impressions. To try this theory, I recall playfully querying six-month-old Julian, “Do you remember where you came from?” and, “Can you please tell us: what was it like before you got here?” Although he had no words per se, the cherubim infant returned appropriately philosophical expressions. A raised eyebrow, a quizzical coo; but whatever secrets from the great beyond he contained, he seemed to keep them to himself.
Eastbound from Nice, grand vistas of the cloudless azure coastline opened on our starboard as we made our way towards Genoa. Pausing in Menton before crossing the Franco-Italian border, we found it easy to spend time there and vowed again to return one day, to catch that city’s famous springtime “Fête du Citron”, (the “Orange Festival)”... but for the time being, we had an itinerary to stick to, and the marvels of Italy were just around the corner.
The highway leading into Genoa threads through a seemingly endless series of tunnels and bridges spanning zig-zag bluffs jutting out high above the rocky Mediterranean coastline. In the inky indigo of twilight, the richly saturated colors of the French Riviera dissolved into a more stoic monochromatism as we arrived to mercury-lit harbour lights glimmering off dark water.
Genoa is a special place: built into a half-moon cliffside encircling an ancient trading port, the streets weave out over a slanted horseshoe of curving hills. It was our first morning there, sipping espresso overlooking the bay that we discovered the delightfulness of saying, “Buongiorno Julian!”. Rolls off the tongue! Navigating within this mysterious labyrinth together, we hunted for authentic pistachio gelato and “real pizza". Armed with tourist maps and GPS on our smartphones, the maze-like streets still disoriented us: what we had thought to have been a straight line had in reality been more like a circle, so that, after a long day of pushing strollers up and down steep and winding cobblestone streets, we were startled to discover that we had inadvertently returned back to the same place where we had started.
After a week on the road, we had reached our final destination together, Florence. Everywhere you looked, carved marble and intricately inlaid stone. Coming from the suburban sprawl of the US, a sea of vinyl-sided mid-century split-ranches, to me, these medieval corridors were oozing with a palpable sense of longevity. Surrounded by buildings that had every appearance of having been there forever, one cannot escape the feeling of one’s own impermanence; compelling one to wonder, how long will they be here after we are gone. Reflecting on longevity with this special six-month old, along with my son Bodhi, (who was eighteen-months at the time, himself), I could not help but look at them with the implicit hope that after us grown folk had passed, these younglings would return together one day to imagine and embark upon new adventures, and maybe even reminisce about these good times of their past.
Among the many wonders of Florence, the Uffizi museum was one of the highlights of our trip. Once the “offices” of the Medici family, it hosts not only Bottecelli’s “Birth of Venus”, but also that sublime artist’s larger-than-life “Primavera”. Like a scene from a dream, Primavera depicts a nocturnal sylvan-soirée, seemingly inviting you into another world, or alternate dimension. ...Perhaps it was beneath Raphael’s “Madonna of the Goldfinch” when, somewhat inexplicably, Julian and Bodhi began to laugh together. It was as if they were sharing an inside joke for the first time; we didn’t fully understand, but laughed along with them anyway, recognizing in that moment, they were the brightest part of the whole museum.
It is as this young adventurer that I remember Julian: riding bikes together with his cousins, searching for treasure on deserted islands in cerulean tranquility or foraging for mushrooms with his cherishing grandparents. As his parents proudly observed, their son truly contained multitudes. Tractor driver, and drone pilot; budding botanist, mycologist, and biologist; stone mason, cattle farmer; rock-climbing chocolate-connoisseur, like his Mom and Dad; dotting older brother, adoring son, affectionate grandson, a unique nephew and cousin; singer, pianist and guitarist; world traveler, dancer, and multilinguist; avec un grand joie de vivre, et un vraiment bon-vivance; a noble prince and future king. Every facet of his life, filled with such wonder-filled promise. He was so loved, he loved so much, and remains so very beloved.
Sometimes I wonder whether Time works something more like the streets of Genoa than the linear measurement we have come to embrace as a scientific constant. Now, so abruptly deprived of Julian’s tender presence, I cannot help but hope that Time is in some way more circular than we can comprehend, and that like that day we lost ourselves in those arced and ageless stone streets, we will somehow return to where we started, together again, as before. Or, like in a Botticelli dream-vision, I will always wonder about a parallel universe in which we are fêting together in the dappled shade of emerald-leaved orange groves.
More than mourning the loss of the sweet boy we all loved so dearly, we will always be observing the absence of the amazing person that he was growing up to be. And so beyond remembering him as the incredible boy that he had become, I will also recall him in the way that he was becoming: arm-in-arm with his Mom, Dad and Sister, reveling through lavender fields in full bloom.
