About

I am an emotional girl living in an emotion-packed city.

Rome, Rome, Rome.

The name alone suffices to excite me, even after all these years. All I have to do is walk out my front door and zigzag around the piles of excrement and through the tight labyrinth of motorcycles parked every which way to be in the midst of it all.

Rome is a mixed bag, with far more goodies than baddies. The magical scent of jasmine infusing the warm spring air can make up for everything else, almost.

I am an American who has lived in this sublime city of Rome almost half my life.

By now I speak, read, write, and can even think and dream in Italian, all quite well. Over the years I have adjusted to most Italian ways, but I will never adjust to them all, and I remain American.

I can’t pass for 39 anymore but I still consider myself a girl. I have a girl’s voice, laughter and spirit. I rarely take public transportation and like to think that this circumstance, among others, helps me preserve an illusion of (relative) youth.

I am an incorrigible dreamer but I do not allow illusion to deceive me. At the end of the day I know who I am and I know I am alone, in the company of my dreams and my cats.

Studying art history opened my eyes to beauty and to horizons beyond the Midwest, and Rome is the place I most longed to see.

I came, I saw, I stayed.

Rome has given me spiritual riches, including a sentimental education, and a beautiful Italian daughter I raised alone.

Born and raised Jewish (the word, culture and experience that still push all my buttons) in a milieu that was all Jewish all the time, I became Catholic.

This fact did not sit well with my family but they never mourned for me. Officially, only my mother knew and, so deep was her shame, she never shared my “betrayal,” as she termed it, with anyone else.

My conversion took place many years ago, while I still lived in America. Had I waited until I settled in Rome I might, today, be a pagan.

If I didn’t allow the rabbis to manipulate my mind, I couldn’t allow the priests to, either. I am a free spirit and a Liberal Democrat who believes friction, in life and between State and Church, helps keep the sides more honest.

I am a natural contrarian who has always gone against the grain.

Sometimes I ask myself why. And wouldn’t it have been easier to have just gone with the flow? But I couldn’t and I can’t, and I don’t know why. All I know is that for as long as I can remember I have always had a sense of my own distinctiveness, for better and for worse. And this is all a part of my life’s adventure.

So, here you have me, Lawrie Taylor, Quirky Dreamer, writing to you from Rome.