A Couple Again in Bologna
For the first time in many years, my wife Miras and I headed off on a trip together without our son Raf in tow. He'd been such a fixture on our lifetime of adventures since his birth back in 2010 that it felt super strange to be heading to an airport hotel without him. But he was enrolled in an online school now, and they care about attendance, so a couple's trip it was. I guess we couldn't have chosen a more romantic location: Bologna in Italy, with a side trip to the microstate of San Marino. And we made the most of every minute, behaving more like teenagers than the older couple we'd become. Yes, holding hands all the time was back, along with sweet moments over coffee, pizza and flickering candlelight, followed by nights when we rediscovered a little of the carefree abandon we'd thought we'd left behind. I can't pretend my ongoing shoulder problems didn't follow me to Italy too, but the depressive slump I felt whenever I saw the bumps in the Nort...