The Intersection of My Past and Future Self
COLLISION 00020
It’s the catalytic lunch, the turning point in a lifelong journey with taste, that I’ve written about over a dozen times now as The Untethered Traveler.
It’s a restaurant I’ve shared with friends and taken family to.
A counter from which I’ve uncharacteristically allowed myself to order, with very little variability, the same dishes over and over, and over again. Anchovies, Amatriciana and Red Wine.
And no, I promise I don’t have an arrangement with them where they pay me by the mention. I prefer, instead, the more traditional relationship we already have. I pay them for memorable meals seasoned with Rome’s incomparable energy, its seductive flavor and its somehow-soothing loud, iconic hustle.
In inspiring the shape and scope of my Italian Severance Project travels, Roscioli Salumeria has become the uncontested ground zero in my story of reclaiming self and purpose. It flexes its status and hold on me now just as I sit down to write Collision 00020 originally intended to feature an encounter with a lovely store clerk in Luxembourg. Not yet, it seems to say.
Stop fixating on your all-time favorite pasta. Zoom out. See the room. And see her.
I met Elizabeth halfway through my lunch at Roscioli. I don’t remember how we came to chat, but once we did, it felt as if we were old friends. She had been a flight attendant on my flight over from Chicago the night before. Wild. It truly was a small world. She had recognized me by my winter coat, which hung now on the under-counter hook in front of me.
I’m embarrassed to say I couldn’t place her as the one who had stored my coat at take-off. I chalked the lapse in memory up to the day having been an emotional one. A blur of texts and calls fielded in a haze of humiliating and overwhelming succession as news of the layoff had spread.
I had traveled to nearly 20 countries on my own up until this point. I can think of just one other time in my solo, clearly self-absorbed, self-led travels where I had actually chatted with a fellow diner. Ever.
This encounter at Roscioli broke up a very stale and significant pattern of travel.
Before Elizabeth there was only a most hilarious run-in with a man wearing a Boba Fett helmet and a Yankees jersey at a most fantastic eatery in Tel Aviv.
Roscioli wasn’t just nudging me to pull back and see Elizabeth. It was asking me to see this moment with her for what it was. A breakthrough.
We discovered that we both lived in Chicago. We also talked at length about food and travel of course. Then the conversation turned to what we did for work and what had brought us to Roscioli. At some point along the way, we each ordered another glass of wine.
In the time that passed, she eventually introduced me to Alpha Guess, a web-based word-game that I would fold with unwavering and inexplicable commitment into my morning routine from that day forward. This guess-the-word-of-the-day game was beyond basic, requiring little skill except knowing how to alphabetize. It was luck of the draw.
I’ll never forget playing my first round with her. The word that day I was trying to guess was STUFF. I got it in three. Three insane, rapid-fire guesses.
Our late and long lunch ended with both of us spilling out into the early November evening. It had gotten dark in Rome while we solved the problems of the world. The conversation was shifting now, despite us having just eaten lunch, to plans for dinner. For a hot minute, I considered tagging along with her and her co-workers, but I changed my mind.
While we exchanged a couple texts in the weeks that followed, we soon fell out of touch. I think about that collision, however, almost every time I open up that game and play beyond my third guess. How it took time to see how lucky I had really been. How it took a stranger who became a quick and fleeting friend at the intersection of my past and future self to show me what I needed to see then.
Sometimes it’s about skill and sometimes it’s just about how the game plays out.
