“This train goes to the Rome terminal, right?”
I asked my husband as we jumped onto the last car of the train, just in time after landing at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Italy.
“Mom~!”
Suddenly, from the seat in front of us, a young man stood up and called out. It was our son. What a coincidence! Things like this usually happen only in TV dramas—not in real life. Yet here we were, running into our son in a foreign country, after months apart.
He had been studying in Florence for a semester and was returning from a holiday trip to Barcelona. We were supposed to meet him in Venice four days later—but there he was, right in front of us. Before we could even enjoy the moment, he said,
“Mom, I lost my wallet. I don’t have any money.”
I offered to exchange some euros for him and suggested we go to the hotel together and have lunch. But he frowned and said he was too tired and just wanted to go. I handed him some dollars and muttered,
“Cold-hearted kid...”
We parted ways at the terminal.
Four days later, we met him again in Venice. Unlike our time in Rome, when we had to study maps and find our way ourselves, this time we just followed our son wherever he went. It was easy. He handled everything smoothly, without fuss. If I asked,
“Isn’t something wrong here?”
He’d just say,
“Don’t waste your energy on little things.”
Trying to sound cool. He was different from the son we knew at home. That made him feel strangely distant.
As soon as we arrived in Florence, he told us to email him if we needed anything and hurried off to school. My husband and I sat by the hotel window until sunset, silently staring out at the sea of red rooftops packed tightly together, imagining the joys and sorrows behind each window.
The next day, we took a trip to Cinque Terre, a seaside village known for its dramatic cliff views, more than two hours from Florence by train. On the way back, the train stopped at Pisa station and didn’t move for over 40 minutes. Suddenly, people began to get up—apparently, we had to transfer to another train. Just then, a young Asian man asked,
“Are you Korean?”
Thanks to him, we managed to transfer smoothly. He sat diagonally from us in the next train—he was in the front right, and we were in the back left. Through the dim window, we could see him gently inspecting a small wallet—perhaps a gift for his mother—and unrolling and rerolling a belt, maybe for his father. It was a warm and touching sight in the quiet night.
As we got ready to get off the train, we waved goodbye, and he asked,
“Where in Florence are you going?”
He explained that there were two different stations in Florence, and we needed to get off at the next one—Santa Maria. If he hadn’t told us, we would have been lost wandering the night streets.
After we got off, he stayed behind for a while, making sure we were okay before leaving. His thoughtful presence stayed in my mind. Throughout the rest of our trip, I found myself looking around, hoping to see him again. But we never did.
We also never saw our son again on that trip. He sent a short email:
“Ciao. See you in New York.”
And we left Florence.
On the tracks to the Rome terminal, I saw scattered wild poppies in brilliant crimson, swaying in the breeze. Their color struck my eyes like blood-red flames. That vivid red, blooming in the ruins, reminded me of Caesar’s blood spilled by the hands of his comrades on the steps of the Senate. And it made me feel, strangely, sad.
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