"Regrets, I’ve had a few.. But then again, to few to mention....."

So goes the Frank Sinatra song.

A few weeks ago my husband and I were talking about regret. I had just finished reading a book entitled Brunelleschi’s Dome about the architect of the cupola in Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral in Florence, Italy. I decided to read it for two reasons: (1) I had been to Florence when I was nineteen years old, and (2) it was the place where Lucy Moderatz, played by Sandra Bullock, in While You Were Sleeping, wanted to go. She owned a snow globe with the cathedral inside.

I was talking to my husband about how I enjoyed the book and how Filippo Brunelleschi was a genius; how I was glad to have read about him because he deserves to be mentioned among the Renaissance geniuses like Michelangelo and Da Vinci for his contributions to art, science, and architecture. I also mentioned that I wish I had gone into the cathedral. You see, I have been to Florence and I have the obligatory pictures with said cathedral in the background, but sadly, I never went inside. That got us talking about other missed opportunities from my first trip to Europe.

It has been one of my regrets.

I do not remember why I chose to only sit high above the hillside and view it from afar. Was it my choice or was it the tour director’s choice? Seeing as how I was also in Pisa and chose not to go to the top of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, I would bet that I chose not to visit the cathedral. It may have been that for the three weeks that we were touring Europe, we went to visit more churches and cathedrals than the pope himself! After all, other than to worship, which as a tourist you really do not do, you go inside churches and spend your time looking up. The beauty of the churches is heaven bound. My neck hurt by the time we got to Italy and it could have been the reason I did not go inside. At nineteen one church ceiling is like another.

More European regrets...

I did not get a gondola ride while in Venice. Oh, I did take a water taxi and a water bus to get from place to place, but not one of those romantic gondola rides. I probably wondered what the point would be riding a romantic canoe with .... my sister.


I also regret that in Rome, the Sistine Chapel was closed for repairs and would not be open to the public for another twelve years. That was the one ceiling I wanted to see!

Most of my regrets have to do with having had the opportunity to visit a place and then not having gone. The same was when we were in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We lived there for over one and a half years and not once did we go to see the burial place of Johnny Appleseed. That was walking distance from the place we lived!

Here at home, I have not been to the burial places of Theodore Roosevelt, the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, Frances Hodgson Burnett, or Guy Lombardo.* I have not been to see the “Big Duck” in Flanders. I have not been to the north fork of the east end of the island. I have not taken the ferry to either Fire Island or Connecticut.

In Manhattan I have not been to Ulysses S. Grant tomb. I never went to the observation deck of the Twin Towers. I have never ridden the Roosevelt Island aerial tram.

I have the chance to visit all of the places here at home but chances are rather slim of ever going back to Italy. This is why I now make sure I visit the historic areas and burial places of famous people of the cities I visit. That is why we saw as much of Richmond, Virginia when we traveled there in early June. That is why we drove home via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel even though we added two hours to our trip.

My regrets are few, as the song says, but I have them. I am grateful they are not the kind of regret that eats away at my soul. The one that comes close to it would be not having had a second child. But even that does not eat away at my soul and I can look at my daughter and feel happy that she has all of our love, attention, and focus.

If these regrets sound petty, so be it! I am glad for the pettiness of them for the alternative would have been too sad. I am only a wee bit sorry, I do not have lament. I guess you can call me lucky.

"I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
~ D.H. Lawrence

*Who are they?
· Theodore Roosevelt - 26th president of the United States
· Molly Brown - Titanic survivor
· Frances H. Burnett - author best known for The Secret Garden
· Guy Lombardo - band leader known for his traditional New Year's Eve musical program in Times Square