Like most of the storybook Italian town I live in, my 14th century apartment was built because wealthy vacationing Venetians wanted a nice getaway up near the Dolomites. They brought a contingent of nuns and priests to Asolo to keep things holy, and build a beautiful complex on the top of the hill to house them.

The old convent has been used as a hideout for politically unpopular writers, as place to stash the prodigal daughters of the elite and as a refuge for soldiers during the Second World War. It is now a place of learning for students from around the world, brought here to work on master’s degrees. The apartment that I live in once belonged to the sacristan, the man who oversaw the convent grounds and resident nuns; I oversee the graduate program and its students.

From the uppermost window looking down our street, I can see into the heart of our little city. Making a frame with my hands, I can make a picture comprising the central piazza, the clock tower and the church — a picture that has remained unchanged for centuries. The town keeps time by the bells that gong out the hours on the hour every day. Their cacophony makes conversation impossible, carving out minutes for the reminder that time is steadily passing.

Time has been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve lived here for almost two years, and in a few months, at the end of the summer, I’ll return to the U.S. with a master’s degree, many stories, several great friends and some hard-earned wisdom. But I don’t have a truly solid plan, and that scares me.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, in the greater scheme of things. I don’t know my “higher calling” or “perfect job” is going to be, and people ask me every day what I’ll do after I leave Asolo. I don’t know what to tell them, so I deflect the question by saying something about taking everything one day at a time.

But here, in my apartment, I brood.

The worn path in the main room tells me previous residents have also had my pacing habits, and I think about them as I reinforce the slight dip in the marble. It’s comforting that so many others have lived here, and the reminders of their presence — steps worn down in the middle by many feet, door posts polished by familiar hands, carved messages in the exposed beams — are the non-verbal equivalent of that comforting “I’ve been there” that friends tender when giving their support in hard times. It’s impossible to feel alone here.

Even as I’m sitting here in the uppermost window, looking down into Asolo, the rock sill’s convex shape tells me that my posterior is not the first to rest here, and the rock is worn where my feet rest across from me. Leaning my cheek on the polished stone, I’m relaxed in the company of these nameless occupants. They walked these halls, climbed these steps, gazed out of these windows, swept these floors. They had problems, questions, wars, times of plenty and times with nothing. Plagues, sackings, domination and reunification.

I’m a child in the history these stones have withstood. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about my time here — my problems are minimal in comparison to others’. In the timeline of this space, this is a blip. I’ll find answers eventually. In the meantime, though, I’m not alone. All these others, they’ve been here before. In five months, I will leave. Someone else will take my place. The bells will ring every day. And time will go on.

— — —

Tess Montano is a program coordinator for an international graduate program in Asolo, Italy, about an hour north of Venice. She misses peanut butter and Red Vines.

Tess is a guest writer for This Ordinary Day’s Sunday Specials. If you would like to participate in Sunday Specials, please click here.

“Don’t quit your job,” Meg warned us.

I laughed with the others as our director explained that it was likely that we would go home and find ourselves having trouble settling back in to our real lives. I had just completed my first 10-day residency at the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing program. At the beginning of each semester, every student meets at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. We spend 10 days in workshops, classes and nightly readings by the program’s talented faculty and staff. It’s pretty intense. Then, we are sent home for the rest of the semester where we work one-on-one through e-mail with our assigned mentor.

By the last day I was exhausted, overwhelmed and starving after having to eat 10 days of objectionable cafeteria food. I was ready to go home, cuddle with my puppy and eat real food. I was ready to get back to my daily routine.

Or at least, I thought I was.

The initial reunion in Kansas was a good one. It was nice to see my family again, and of course, my little puppy. I was excited to see my roommate for the first time since she had gotten engaged. And the 30-degree weather actually felt warm after frigid, snow covered Boston.

By 9 a.m. Monday, I was ready to go back.

Don’t quit your job. I found myself repeating this phrase as I struggled to keep a 2nd grader from falling out of his seat. Don’t quit your job. I told myself as a kindergartner flung his scissors across the room. Don’t quit your job. I chanted as I held a trash can for a sick 3rd grader as we rushed to the nurse’s office.

I longed for interesting conversations with my classmates. I wanted to be back in Boston, listening to writers share work that left me feeling hopeful and inspired. Selfishly, I wanted to be someplace where I only needed to worry about myself.

By lunchtime I had quit using the phrase all together. I was trying to figure out how to tell my principal that I wasn’t coming back. I wondered how long I could survive on the money that was in my bank account. I eyed the closest door.

Then something happened that shocked me: my day got better. My favorite fifth grader read better than he’d ever read before. My co-worker brought me chocolate to help me get through my first day back. A group of kindergartners sat quietly for 10 whole minutes as I read them a story.

I went home and took my dog for a walk. I listened to my best friend talk about her wedding planning. I ate real food for dinner. I lay comfortably in my soft bed, something I’d never appreciated until I spent 10 nights tossing and turning on the hard mattress in my freezing cold dorm room.

Meg had been right. It was extremely difficult to settle back in to my daily routine. But it also forced me to take a look at the things I liked about my life. It made me see all the things I would miss in July, when I’d once again leave Lawrence for Boston.

The other night, I asked my husband who he thinks should play me in a movie (of my life, presumably). Yes, I do tend to take a risk like that every once in a while; it’s good for your relationship to alter the usual pattern of How do I look? and Do you think I gained weight? every now and then. My only requirement was that it not be John Cusack. Not that I don’t like him, I do — I just don’t appreciate this particular sense of humour in certain situations.

My guess was that he’d say Minnie Driver (for reasons rooted in our history as a couple that I thought were obvious, but apparently not). His answer, after a very long pause, was: “I’d have to do a casting for that.”

“Hhhm,” I said.

“Yes,” he continued. “She’d have to be good looking, elegant (which would make her totally unlike me, but hey, I’m not the one doing the casting), and she would need to be able to convey a certain sense of nastiness with a mere raised eyebrow.”

You see, this is the kind of situation where a fight is easily begun, because pride has been hurt or someone just feels like it. This is also a situation, however (given that he was not being entirely serious), to reflect on the truth in this cheeky little joke.

I can be nasty. Very nasty, actually. I do it when I’m angry, or afraid, or just bored. I’ve cultivated it in my 31 years; being an academic, words are my trade, which comes in handy, I guess. However, while it can be very entertaining, it can also be very offensive.

For instance, while on a Jeep tour through Wadi Rum in Jordan (an entirely different story), I was trashing these women who wear asymmetrical haircuts and only one very long earring, while the wife of one of the other participants was sitting right next to me. Needless to say, she had an asymmetrical haircut and was wearing one very long earring. (In my defense, I only realised after the tour).

A while ago, I read about a priest somewhere in the USA who one day decided to stop complaining. He had a bracelet made which said “A world without complaints“ or something like that, and the goal was to stop complaining for 21 days. Every time he’d slip, he’d put the bracelet on the other wrist and start over until he’d completed the three weeks.

I think a bracelet saying “No being nasty“ would not be wasted on me.

So anyone else up for the casting?

Sometime around the time my nephew Tayte was 7 or 8, I quit being cool.

I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t like skateboarding or because my hair wasn’t long enough or my clothes weren’t cool enough or the bills of my hats weren’t flat enough. Or maybe it’s just because I’m kind of a goofy guy, and goofy guys weren’t cool at that time.

Tayte was hitting the teenage years about six years too early — probably because of his teenage stepbrother — and I felt like I had peaked as an uncle.

When he was just a little guy, he idolized his uncle. I was one of the first people who’s name he would say. OK, he didn’t actually say “Uncle,” but he would click twice, and the clicking kind of made that noise. As a toddler he loved basketball, and I taught him how to shoot. Because Uncle played basketball, Uncle was a pretty cool guy.

Then Tayte’s interest in basketball kind of faded and video games, skateboarding and wearing tight jeans became cool. Since those activities weren’t in Uncle’s wheelhouse, Uncle was someone he still liked to be around, but that look of idolization was gone. Uncle was more dork than cool.

This was all kind of tough for me to handle. I wanted so badly to be cool again in Tayte’s eyes that I would try too hard. Trying to impress my nephew was like trying to impress a girl; the harder I tried, the more my coolness level declined.

Then last month, Tayte was visiting with new interests. Apparently football had become the cool new thing to do and basketball was working its way back into Tayte’s world. He wanted to know more about the Kansas City Chiefs and how to throw a spiral, and Uncle was back in the game.

We played catch outside and I taught him how to run routes and how to catch the ball over his shoulder and how to catch with his hands and how to hand off the ball. I hadn’t had that much fun in months. I showed him how to run on his toes and how the quieter you feet are, the faster you run. And he got that look again — that look of awe.

Tayte and I played catch until the sun went down and we probably both could have stayed out there for hours. Playing catch is still one of my favorite things to do in life. It never gets boring or monotonous. It makes me feel like a kid again.

A couple days ago, my sister called me and left a message, asking what makes a basketball shoe a basketball shoe.

I nearly shed a tear. Tayte had joined a basketball team.

I can’t wait to go see him play and maybe give him some pointers, and show him my crossover and re-teach him the fundamentals of the jump shot.

And, I can’t wait to be the cool uncle again.

There are a lot of good reasons to not like church (and to like it), but one of the most sensible is that it’s unnecessary, that an omnipresent God doesn’t need a designated building for recognition, and certainly not to bestow gifts. If God is everywhere, then anywhere is church.

I happen to like church, but I’m sympathetic to the everywhere-can-be-sacred argument, not least because when I am driving in Southern California with the windows down, I am so happy that the act is sublime. It is worship, it is glory, it is a blast. There’s a lot of factors: how it’s both inside and outside; how driving can be so fast and exhilarating; how you’re hurtling through public space in your own private bubble. Then there’s the breeze, and the sunshine.

I slide in my seat, stick the key in the ignition, click the seatbelt, and my hand automatically goes to roll down the windows. It’s like the way you kick off your shoes the second you walk in the door, or hit the lightswitch without thinking when you walk in a room. Southern California almost always has perfect driving-with-the-windows-down weather. It’s sunny, it’s bright, it seldom rains, and there are hills and valleys chock full of palm trees everywhere. It is hard to describe the sheer amount of sunshine here, and the way it douses everything. My morning commute is like a gorgeous landscape scene in a movie (if I ignore the graffiti). The drives to Target, to the grocery store, to the library are stunning. The coastal drive down Interstate 5 to San Diego? Forget it.

Driving quietly is enough, but I like rock music a lot, and that makes the whole experience a thrill, and even more like a movie. I had an Aerosmith Day recently, when I was so well rested that I woke up ready to kick unbelievable amounts of ass, and clearly the sun was too. It was a mood that only Pink at full volume and my moronic enormous Nicole Richie sunglasses could make better.

I am certain that my 1994 filthy black Volvo 940 is in no way cool, and that a driver who’s a short-haired nerdy girl head-banging to, say, Led Zeppelin, doesn’t make it any better. But when Night Flight is on and I’m at one of those impossibly long California red lights, I am convinced as a stubborn drunk that everyone around me thinks I’m awesome. Like, as awesome as Steven Tyler, Nicole Richie and Robert Plant rolled into one.

If that isn’t a gift from above, I’m not sure what is.

Am I too old for video games?

It’s a question I’m sure hundreds, even thousands of young men and women before me have pondered. I’d never really considered it until about a month ago, and even then it wasn’t with any real intent of giving up a pastime I’ve had for most of my life. Instead, it was sparked by an observation made in an unlikely place, at an unlikely time.

Christmas morning, surrounded by gifts and loved ones, wrapping paper and cardboard, a quarter-mile of wrapping tape and more boxed candies than anyone should ever think about eating, my mom pointed out what was on her mind.

“I can’t believe my son is 24 and I’m still buying him video games,” she said. It was a sort of “Ain’t this world full of surprises?” type of statement, nothing mean-spirited. I honestly don’t think she meant anything by it.

I didn’t take it to mean much. I laughed it off, we went about our day and it wasn’t until later that I considered not only the gravity of what she’d said, but also the importance of my response. Without a second thought or any previous conversation to base it on, I had asked:

“Well, who was it that put an Atari controller in my hand when I was 4?”

That’s Atari, a very old, very crude gaming system that consisted of blocks on a screen, awkwardly-shaped controls and not much else. The goal was to make the blocks do different, sophisticated actions, such as bouncing past an opponent’s control or into a square of some sort. And the answer to my somewhat rhetorical question is: my father. I wasn’t being mean or accusatory or even defensive, and I think that’s what occurred to me later in the day.

Yes, I’m 24-years-old and yes, it surprises even me a little that my parents are still buying me video games for Christmas. But I don’t consider myself a “gamer.” I don’t skip sleep to play World of Warcraft online until 3 a.m. I don’t talk about the games with co-workers, I don’t make note of them on my Facebook page and I don’t miss out on social interaction to play video games.

And yet, the simple fact is: I play video games.

I can’t decide what that says about me, because I openly embrace that video games still entertain me, but as evidenced in the previous paragraph, I’m not completely proud to call myself a gamer.

I was correct in my assertion that my parents started the pattern of interest by bringing the Atari into our house. They fed my taste for the console by allowing me to scrounge for months to buy my own Nintendo Entertainment System (“regular Nintendo”) when I was 7. When the Super Nintendo came out, and later, the Playstation, they never told me I couldn’t play. Sure, there were restrictions: Never past 8 on a school night, only for an hour or two at a time, they got to choose which games I bought and rented.

I was a bit of a parent’s dream, I’d say, because I never cared much for shooting games or anything violent (other than Mortal Kombat because, hey, what kid in 1995 DIDN’T love blistering their own fingers for hours on end just to perform a single Fatality?) I stuck mostly to sports and racing games — to this day, my games of choice.

I’ve run the gamut of justifications: I’m not a “gamer”; it helps develop hand-eye coordination; it’s been a bonding tool for me and my friends; games today are designed for 20- and 30-somethings, not just kids; it helps me unwind (kind of like a night cap). I consider all of those excuses to be true, and yet, I understand that they sound really, really pathetic.

It’s just something I’ve always done that I enjoy immensely and that not everyone can understand. From time to time, I marvel that year after year, game after game and gaming system after gaming system, I keep coming back.

I suppose my parents would have preferred for me to request socks for my Christmas gift this year. Maybe they’ll get their wish next year: a 25-year-old son who acts his age and finds interest in adulthood’s little joys. But in my defense, socks were on my list this year, too — a guy can never have too many. But that doesn’t make me an adult, does it? Just because I asked for socks doesn’t mean I have completely grown up. By that same token, I suppose asking for video games doesn’t mean I’m a child. At least I hope not. That would mean I have to return my copy of “Lego Batman”, and I really don’t want to do that.