Eat, Pray, Love

ter in prayer again later that same day—when she drops to her knees in the middle of the Ro-
man Forum, clears away some litter off the face of the soil (as though erasing a blackboard),
then takes up a small stone and draws for me in the dirt a blueprint of a classic Romanesque
basilica. She points from her drawing to the ruin before her, leading me to understand (even
visually challenged me can understand!) what that building once must have looked like eight-
een centuries earlier. She sketches with her finger in the empty air the missing arches, the
nave, the windows long gone. Like Harold with his Purple Crayon, she fills in the absent cos-
mos with her imagination and makes whole the ruined.
In Italian there is a seldom-used tense called the passato remoto, the remote past. You
use this tense when you are discussing things in the far, far distant past, things that happened
so long ago they have no personal impact whatsoever on you anymore—for example, ancient
history. But my sister, if she spoke Italian, would not use this tense to discuss ancient history.
In her world, the Roman Forum is not remote, nor is it past. It is exactly as present and close
to her as I am.
She leaves the next day.
“Listen,” I say, “be sure to call me when your plane lands safely, OK? Not to be morbid,
but.. .”
“I know, sweetie,” she says. “I love you, too.”
Eat, Pray, Love