Qual è la passione?

A buzz of questions swarmed around her but only one was for me. The rest were her own. She needn't ask where I was going. Rome was surely the answer. Nor need she ask from where I had come. It was likely a distance beyond which she had ever traveled. 

Her more than seventy years worn like a shroud, she stood respectfully in a sun bleached hazy air. It seemed there was an aura of uncertainty about her. I first spied her from a distance of no more than twenty meters. It was near the end of the small village, perhaps three streets wide. I was walking the main street, a street unworthy of that description except that it passed the church and civic offices. She stood at the end of a road intersecting from the right, at a rounded corner, a meter or two street-side of the grey-painted wrought iron fence on her left. The path I was walking would curve in the opposite direction, taking me away from her.

She noticed I had seen her and took a step forward. If not then, her one chance would be lost. How many of us had she seen in her life there, no day different than another except for a death that the entire town would mourn or a marriage it would celebrate? Why me and not the many others that had passed? Why was now the right time, the only time?

"Buongiorno," I said invitingly as I passed. Another step forward halted me. "Mi permetta. Vorei fare una domanda?" May I ask a question? she said quietly. No need to disturb other people with her inquiry. Likely as not, she would prefer no one else hear. But no one else was near, or in sight, let alone in ear shot. This was to be a private conversation.

"Certo!" Certainly! The question that was burning in her since the moment she saw me, or for years, or for decades: "Qual è la passione?" What is the passion? I always need time to parse an Italian conversation, the words I understand, the words I do not. But this time I understood immediately. Maybe I understood her before she even finished speaking. She wanted to know what drove me, and the many others she had wondered at, to cover such distance, on foot. It was a simple "Why?"

If she had been a person of faith, she never would have asked. She would have assumed it was a religious pilgrimage and known the reasons, to give thanks, to seek intercession, to fulfill a vow. But she could not have been, and so she asked. Had she had that faith once and lost it? Had it never reached out and touched her? Did she believe in a god? Did she wish she could?

It was such a powerful question. I felt inadequate to answer. I could not tell her about God, about faith. But she asked, she wanted to know, and the only Truth I could give her was the truth as I felt it. 

"Per meditazione. A pensare." For meditation. To think.

She consumed each word. I could not tell if it was a satisfying answer. She herself might not know for years, or ever. But it was an answer she considered weighty, honest. One could see that from the slightest nodding of her slightly bowed head. No smile crossed her face, but there was a thank you on it. I would have loved a photograph of her but I felt it profane to ask. I continued my walk, curving away from her. Did she stand there to watch until I faded from her view? Did she retreat but then steal a glance over her shoulder as a lover might, or as one knowing she never could but longing to join? I don't know.

It's taken me a while to write about this incident. It happened well over a week ago. I've been trying to digest it myself just as she likely has been trying to digest my answer. 

Today I began to cross the Apennines, the foothills, tomorrow one of two big climbs. Two to three more days depending on temperature (low 90's F) and how my knee holds up.