Confessions of a Digital Nomad by Dan Shiffman

Inside Saint Anthony’s Basilica in Padua, he turned to his wife and whispered that he had a “confession to make,” darting three steps toward a dark, vacant box.

“You got me,” she whispered back. She still liked his jokes, even after six years together, three as digital nomads. Pointing to her fitness tracker watch, she reminded him that they each had Zoom meetings starting in thirty minutes.

Saint Anthony, the Patron Saint of Lost Things, was blown off course on his way back from preaching in Morocco, landing in Italy, not his homeland of Portugal. That is what he wanted to say to her, that he felt blown of course by coming here. Unlike holy Saint Anthony, though, they hadn’t sparked miracles in any of the places they landed to work remotely. Writing lines of code and answering emails was not miraculous or even noteworthy. No fish gathered at their feet, no mules kneeled in recognition. More than once they left their toothbrushes behind, forgotten in someone else’s coffee cup. And there were still those drizzly days when they were either too warm or too cold in the wrong clothes, looking for an open pharmacy or somewhere to store their luggage. When the weather cleared, they might pass by a family sitting in a piazza toasting a grandparent’s birthday, Aperol Spritzes glittering orange in the sun like liquid jewels.

Still dazed by the basilica’s frescoes, the levitating sculptures, the line of mourners pressing their palms against the pocked black marble of St. Anthony’s imposing tomb, he wondered: Would loved ones, decades from now, run their hands across stone remembering something valued that had been lost?

What he hadn’t yet confessed was that he wanted to move back home, even though everything was coming apart there. The Dairy Queen where he long ago devoured helmet sundaes after little league games was still there. Their distant parents, who at first cheered them on to new adventures, lived in the same house they always had. A nephew—whom they hadn’t met yet—was just down the street. What else? Their former church with its bland concrete lacked the holy grandeur of Saint Anthony’s, but All Saints could be serene and comforting, not so tormented and mythological as here. And he remembered how he could lose himself for hours making furniture in their garage on the weekends, small desks and stools for their friends who had started having children. He wanted making furniture to be more than a hobby one day. Everyone knew him at the hardware store on Western Avenue.

Running short on time, they walked out of the resplendent, mesmerizing cathedral. A Vespa chirped at them through the haze. Picking up their pace, they made a haphazard shopping list for their post-Zoom-call dinner on their Notes app. It was hard to know if the family-run shop on the corner would have tuna fish or would even still be open after their calls were finished. Then what?

“Confessions in English: Tuesday and Thursday at 10 am.” He had seen the placard draped over a knob on the side of a confessional box in Saint Anthony’s.

His right hand fumbled around his front pocket where he usually kept his passport while trying to visualize it on the bedside table. His heart started racing. It could be–should be–there and hopefully no one would take it. The nearest consulate was all the way in Florence, three hours by train. Everyday lapses in care and thoughtfulness were harder to remedy here.

“I know I saw your passport in the bedroom,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

 If they did go back, he wouldn’t miss the gauzy distance of being spoken to in a shop keeper’s second language, but he didn’t mind not understanding TV commercials for medications and home supplies. There would be a lot he would miss, though: The olive trees looked like they were lit from the inside. When teenagers gathered outside of their current Airbnb before the school gates opened, it sounded like an opera. He wouldn’t want her to think that he didn’t notice these things.

“You really miss Albany sometimes, don’t you?” she asked..

“It’s not missing exactly. It’s more like hoping.”

“What are you hoping for?”

“That it would be different if we went back. Different than before.”

“Do you really think it would?”

“If I’m honest, I don’t think it would be.”

The next day he woke to the smell of coffee and lavender. Yellow curtains fluttered in the morning sunlight. A storefront grating rattled opened and someone laughed toward a friend pulling away on a bicycle.

Later, he approached the penitent’s box in Saint Anthony’s hoping he could say something out loud that would make things clearer.    

Dan Shiffman

Image: The top of a blue passport peeping out of the side pocket of a black travel bag. From Pixabay.com