Erice

"Why are we going to Erice?" one of the kids asks as the rented Ford climbs up to this medieval city.

I start to answer, then stop myself.  Instead, I say, "Sebastian picked it.  Sebastian, why did you choose it?"

He says, "I don't know.  It's a high medieval city, kinda like Viterbo.  So I just wanted to see it and walk around it, maybe find a piazza or a fountain, get some food.  Not sightsee a lot, just hang out."

As the Ford gets higher, we see the Mediterranean around us, the coast of Sicily in view.  Our hotel in Palermo and those littered streets are now far, far away.  Ninety minutes is another time zone.  Here the ground and the buildings and houses don't resemble the dilapidated apartment buildings of Palermo, nor do they resemble what I expected, the dark stone of Viterbo.  The stone on the ground and on the buildings is bright, almost white to me, shining up even though it's overcast.  The brightness makes me happy.  The kids start scouting out a spot for freeze tag.  I walk the street.

We meet a Canadian family.  They are traveling for the year, a new air b and b every week or so and a new country every four weeks.  We eat lunch with them and then have a ten person game of freeze tag in the piazza outside the restaurant.  Daniel and Tom (man from other family) are it, and they find themselves out of breath more than once.  Then they strategize, tagging the quickest people first, i.e. the kids.  Claire and I remain free for a while.  Still, it takes them about fifteen minutes to freeze us all at the same time.

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Jacqueline (my dad's wife) tells me in an email that she met her husband in Erice at a conference.

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We'll see the Canadian family again next week.  They'll be in Rome, and they'll come to Viterbo for an afternoon.

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Who knows what meeting spots we'll find in life, or rather, what people we'll meet.