Yesterday I watched a 15-year-old kid haggle over a 6 pack of beer in the corner store. Standing at the counter with a 6-pack of the cheapest Peroni, he was doing this thing where he pretended to be appalled by the price of the beer to seem mature. I vaguely understood his tactic. His thought was that if he put focus on the price, it would communicate implicitly to the shopkeeper that he buys beer all the time and knows a reasonable price, hence making him seem eligible to buy beer. The shopkeeper played along and explained that the price was the price, but would give him a small discount. The kid rolled his eyes and feigned capitulation, and as he opened his Velcro wallet, the shopkeeper asked, ” Quanti anni hai (how old are you)?” Without looking up, the kid mumbled, “Diciotto”, 18. There was no fucking way this kid was 18, and as I stood behind him ready to pay for my single, overpriced beer, the shopkeeper and I met eyes. I winked at him, and the shopkeeper asked the kid for ID. He didn’t have it. “No, no, no, mi serve una carta (I need an ID). I stepped forward around him as the kid took a small step out of my way. I put my beer down on the counter, and as I was being rung up, the kid explained why he didn’t have an ID. The shopkeeper dropped change into my hand, shaking his head at the explanation, and as I stepped out of the store, I heard the kid throw a Hail Mary; he would pay full price for the beer…

Back on the cobblestoned street, I thought briefly about all the strangers who agreed to buy me beer in the parking lot of Safeway when I was 15. At the time, I couldn’t believe these kind strangers. At 38, I see now that most of them were dirtbags.

A year in Italy has come and gone, and the story above is basically the kind of experiences I have been collecting. Besides the fact that everyone was speaking Italian, there is nothing specifically Italian about the situation above. The pigeon I found standing on my kitchen counter last week was just like any other pigeon. He stared at me, got freaked out, flew into the walls, and shit on the floor just like an American pigeon. It refused to fly out of the open window, and Nik eventually got it to perch on the edge of a broom handle and slowly placed it outside the open window where it flew onto the adjacent roof and stared into our kitchen for the next hour.

So what happened over the last year? Family came and went, my parents staying each for two weeks at a time. My mom and stepdad arrived the day before my birthday and stayed through Christmas and the New Year. I made Christmas dinner in our tiny apartment, and Nik and I made them each stockings, something my mom used to do for my sister and me.

In November, we traded apartments with a friend we met in language school when we first arrived. She is from Amsterdam, and we spent a wonderful week in her sleek and girly apartment, leaving every morning to wander the narrow, leafy streets of the city. She and her Roman boyfriend stayed at our place and watched our cat. She gave up her apartment a few months later to move here. The two now live together near the beach in Ostia.

One of the biggest changes from when we arrived is that I found a job. It’s at a startup based in New York, and it’s the hardest job I have ever had. They hired me as a contractor and are allowing me to remain in Italy for the time being, which everyone keeps telling me is the luckiest thing in the world. My days are no longer spent trying to figure out what to do. Instead, they are filled with work at my computer. I rented a desk in an office full of Italian architects, replacing my language schooling with real-world Italian spoken to and around me 9 hours a day. The office is a block from my apartment, which means I get to come home for lunch and to use the bathroom rather than sharing the privacy-free one in the office. I start my day in the office around 11 in the morning, and though I try to close my laptop by 7 pm, I’m usually there until 8:30, sometimes later.

At night, after work, I grab a Peroni from the corner market. They open the bottle for me, and I give them a little salute. I meander home slowly, past the crowds lined up at the tourist-trap trattorias, climb the 5 flights of stairs to my apartment, and open the heavy, 3-inch-thick door to my beautiful wife and cat. Nowadays, she is either studying or watching TV and knitting. Sometimes she has her own beer sitting on one of the knitted coasters she made.

I still make dinner every night, which usually isn’t ready until after 9 pm. We watch TV and eat, and I give Walter, our cat, 4 bites of whatever is on my plate. The dishes done, nightly rituals completed, I’m in bed by 11:30, and I fall asleep to the faint din of Aperol-soaked whooping 5 floors below my little castle.

My mom tells me she sometimes looks into the mirror and can’t believe the old woman staring back at her. She says she feels the same way she did when she was 18. I also feel this way, at 38. I am still a teenager, making plans for what I will be when I grow up.

So… a year, a little over a year, I can’t believe how quickly it goes by. I only get 40, maybe 50 more of this “year.” My future self will hate me for not creating a bullet-pointed list of every major activity of the last year. One that I could go over with Nikki during some distant dinner as she asks me if I remember that time we were in… and had that really great… and we saw that big/weird/interesting…. a list I can show the old man in the mirror to help him decide if it was enough.

But life is not a highlight reel. And I doubt a list would help him feel any different. By the time he’s standing there, the years will already be gone. He won’t be able to go back and feel them more carefully or document them better or want them harder. All he’ll have is whatever stuck. The pigeon, the 5 flights to the apartment, opening the heavy door to Nikki and Walter.