"Everyone else is doing just the opposite," Mom explained. "This will be less crowded." Her logic was flawless. We were, indeed,
the only ones climbing up the monument. And, since it was the pinnacle of the tourist season, there were hundreds coming down the stairs as we – my mother, sister and I – bravely fought our way up. It was like swimming upstream,
only not as much fun.
When we finally arrived at the top, red-faced and winded, we were barely coherent enough to catch the view before hitting the elevator for the trip down. My father, having been married to this woman
for a long time, did not climb with us. He stayed firmly with both feet on the ground.
Years later, my husband and children and I went to Rome with some neighbors. Mike – who is apparently my mother's twin brother separated
at birth – was fascinated from the first moment he glimpsed the Victor Emmanuelle monument, which has one overriding feature – multi-levels of steps, all outside, all steep, all-never-ending.
We passed that monument several
times while traveling around the city and each time, Mike would comment about how much he wanted to see it up close. Yes – it was beautiful. But it was so tall and had seemingly more steps than the Empire State Building. I did my
best to avoid it, but one day, there we were, directly in front of the gleaming white marble edifice and I had run out of excuses. Climb it we would, although some of us did a little better than others.
The kids were
running up and down those steps with the speed of gazelles. They weren't even winded. But some of the grown-ups (me) were a bit less thrilled with the prospect of trudging up and down all those stairs. Each flight simply led up to
the next flight, which then led to the next one and the next one. By the time I got as high as I would go (two flights of stairs from the top) all I wanted was an oxygen mask. What I got, instead, was a unique view of the business
end of the enormous bronze horses that adorned that level of the monument.
Life has a way of repeating experiences, whether you want them back or not, which is why nearly 40 years after climbing to the top of the
Washington Monument trailing after my wacky mother, I did the same thing halfway around the world. Only this time my kids were ahead of me.
And I guess they will always remember it as the time they climbed that huge
monument in Italy, with their own wacky mother crawling up the steps behind them.
