Phone Home

I got to pick my parents up at the airport today when they arrived from Paris. I got nostalgic thinking about how times have changed since the '80's, when I somehow tricked my parents into sending me to Europe every summer. Back then, communication was cumbersome and limited. I remember going to the post office in France with a pocket full of change. In a tiny booth, feeding coins into a big, clunky phone, I would receive a few precious sentences about home, shout into the phone that I was OK. Then the change would run out and I would be cut off from my family, alone in the world.

The summer after my senior year, I was in love with a boy named Scott. I tearfully left him to visit a friend in Paris and attend a music camp in Rome for the summer. I missed Scott terribly, so my friend Genevieve offered to send a fax from her workplace in Paris to my dad's office that Dad would then deliver to Scott's house. I wrote a page-long letter to Scott proclaiming my love. If Scott received my fax, I wouldn't know until days later, after I arrived in Rome.

When I had been in Rome for a couple of days, getting acquainted with the other kids from the camp and finding my way around, I was desperate to know Scott's reaction to my letter. I pooled all my lire and walked down the street to the nearest phone booth on Via Tritone. I tried to call Scott's home and the line was busy. I don't think I've ever felt so alone. Suddenly, I heard a man shouting "Scott Dopp! Scott Dopp!" It was the owner of my hotel, shouting my beloved's name with a heavy Italian accent. A boy from the camp came running to me, saying, "Scott is on the phone at the hotel! Run!" Boy, did I run! I was breathless by the time the hotel owner handed me the phone. From across the Atlantic, over a crackly phone line, Scott told me he missed me and that...he loved me. That ancient, dark-paneled hotel lobby on that narrow cobblestone street remains the scene of the most romantic moment of my life. I was seventeen. I walked to the TWA office and begged them to change my ticket, citing love as the reason. I came home two weeks early, and my parents were furious. I decided that I wouldn't admit it was because of Scott (like they didn't know!) unless I married him. A month later, I went away to college and Scott left for his mission. I had to wait seven years before I said the words, "I came home early from Rome because of Scott."

Today, that kind of intense communication - or lack of - is hardly a possibility. While my parents and Trajan were in Europe, we texted back and forth almost every day. We were never out of touch, despite all of us being in different cities on different continents. It was fun to banter across the miles, to get word that the pastry shop I loved was still there, or that Mom was taking too long in the Louvre gift shop. I'm glad, though, that when I was seventeen and in love, I had to wait for that crackly phone call to find out that Scott loved me. I'm not sure if I would still be able to conjure the damp stone smell of the hotel lobby or remember what dress I was wearing then, if Scott's call had been in text form. Still love u, S!