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I left for Italy brokenhearted, barely more than a day after saying a sooner-than-expected goodbye to my home and travel companion of the last 14.5 years – my dear, sweet pup. After nearly three decades, I was abruptly launched into a new era of life and travel, a time in which I suddenly had no living creature dependent on me for life. I imagine this will feel liberating someday; at the start of my trip, it felt unmooring at best.

Having lost one caretaker role, though, I embraced an unlikely one for the next few weeks – the balancing act of playing travel coordinator for two separated generations: my eighty-something parents in the first week, and my millennial son who jumped into the mix partway through. All three are bright, active, capable, interesting, and interested people, but I still felt the burden of getting them all from place to place and making sure everyone was having a good time. Old habits die hard, and early on, I struggled to relax into the first trip in years where there was nothing at home to fret about. (My husband was home alone, but he handles that with aplomb!)

Despite my apparent need to worry about something or someone at all times, my first charges were pretty damn impressive. From the very outset, I watched my 85- and 86-year-old parents navigate Rome’s irregular cobblestone streets for hours, starting a few minutes after we had landed from an overnight flight and stashed our bags at our hotel’s reception. My dad has two artificial knees, and my mom has one of those plus a brand-new pacemaker, yet neither blinked an eye at the idea of ascending and descending the Spanish Steps with no hand rails, walking uphill and downhill and occasionally in circles in search of lunch and dinner spots, or staying up until it was really time for bed to avoid jet lag the next day.

Both popped up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the following mornings for hours of sightseeing – walking the full circumference of both levels of the Colosseum, pressing through a crush of humanity at the Trevi Fountain, ambling through the Pantheon and Campo de Fiori, and doing the “simple” things like scouting out two meals a day on our own. A three-hour tour of the Vatican, all on their feet, was followed by a never-ending walk to lunch in the hot sun. In Florence, they toured the gigantic Uffizi all morning and still had the wherewithal to walk to and then fire intelligent questions at our guide at the Accademia Gallery that afternoon.

In spite of my constant fears of a fall, they stepped safely onto the Grand Canal water bus to the Piazza San Marco in Venice, clambered onto the Frecciarossa train, and repeatedly climbed a steep flight of stairs to our Florence apartment (which mom could not stop calling “the Airbub,” thinking that little “n” was a “u”), all the while maintaining a level of good cheer that was extraordinary. By the end, I know they were tired, but they chugged on until the very last minute when we put them into a cab in Venice.

They drank wine every night, sampled new foods, attempted a little Italian, unpacked and repacked suitcases, adjusted to an ever-changing lineup of new beds, helped navigate on a succession of poorly-signposted routes, caught early morning cabs and trains, peed in iffy gas station restrooms, wandered through three Tuscan hill towns in one very full day, shopped in crowded Florence (well, OK, that was mostly just mom), and got lost and then figured it out on their own on the one afternoon I let them out of my sight.

There were naturally some frustrating moments; no matter how adept these octogenarians may be, they simply cannot cover as much ground in a day as a twenty-something guy and his hiker mom can (and that’s OK). They got a little cocky, wanting to manhandle their own bags on slippery stone stairs (not gonna happen), and they got up ridiculously early to get ready for each day (sorry, guys, you know how I value my sleep). But there was so much fun, and plenty of hilarity, too: on our final night together, finishing off the last bottle of wine before they flew home alone, my mother turned to her grandson and said, “In three minutes, can you explain the internet to me?”

We were an unlikely group, but the trip was a resounding success, thanks in no small part to the gumption of my amazing parents. (Don’t worry, T – you will be praised in future posts!). I’m happy to have inherited at least some of their zest for life and can only hope to maintain it until I am their age and beyond.