Lost and Found

3rd Place Creative Nonfiction | First Published in the Virginia Writer's Club Golden Nib 2024 Anthology

The stone around my neck feels cool against my skin and I stroke the face of it absently as I walk. It’s summer in Italy. The sun reflects hot against the asphalt, hotter still radiating off the throngs of tourists who, like me, are headed to Trevi Fountain. It’s been decades since I was here. Back then, the stone around my neck was nestled against my grandfather’s wrist, a turquoise cufflink far too large by modern standards.

Modern standards. Does anyone still wear cufflinks in a time when pajamas count as pants? I ask myself this as I swat away the tourists who are pushing into me. We are cattle being herded to our destination, funneled past quaint bistros and souvenir shops hawking cheap items at high prices. We are a product unto ourselves, and everyone wants a piece of us.

But I’m not here for the food, or the tchotchkes, or the photos. I’m here for my grandfather. I’m hoping to find him at the fountain where I left him all those years ago. It was summer then, too, but the tourists were fewer. We could wander the streets at a slower pace, admire the buildings, the sounds, the people as we walked.

Those days, like my grandfather, are long gone. No one comes to Italy anymore for Italy. They come for the photos which they plaster all over Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok. Even before I reach the fountain, I see them: spray-tanned blondes clutching oversized straw hats they’ll never wear. As if on cue, rows of sundress-clad women thrust one arm into the air, the hand of their other perched lightly against their hip. The hats rise above them in a come-hither pose beckoning others to join the lie they are creating for public consumption. Near the fountain, it seems everyone is selling something.

But now the view of the fountain is blocked by hats and arms and suntans and my grandfather is not here. Has never been here. He belongs to another fountain in another time, a slower time, a time when memories, not likes, were what we captured with our photos. I think to myself, perhaps it’s good he’s gone. He would not have recognized this alien world where reality is a four-letter word and perception is revered like a god.

It’s useless—I know—but I linger a moment longer, my eyes searching for the lost. Instead, the fountain, like my memories, arrives in fragments. That space on the left is where we once stood, arguing over who-knows-what. We fought the entire trip. I don’t know why. Maybe that’s the real reason I can’t find my grandfather here. Because I was too busy seeing anger where I should have seen him. And now he’s gone and I’m standing alone at a fountain teeming with people and I’m looking for him where he used to be and he’s not here and he won’t ever be here again and no matter how hard and how long I look, I will still see an oversized hat where there used to be a man wearing oversized cufflinks, the blue of the turquoise against his wrist as blue as the water against the marble.

Defeated, I turn away and into an alley ignored by the tourists. There’s nothing special here to capture their interest. Just people trying to live their lives. I walk the street slowly, my eyes lingering on ancient wooden doors set deep into the walls. With a creak, one of the doors swings open. An old man emerges, a graying horseshoe of fluff ringing the base of his scalp. He reaches for a paper outside his door and the sun glints off the cufflink winking at me from his wrist. My hand moves to the stone around my neck, its face cool against warm fingers. In the distance, a church bell counts off time. I smile a hello to the stranger in the alley and walk away.

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