The way they do license plates in Italy is through an alphanumeric system.  The first two positions started with AA, and as they run through the numbers and letters in the second half of the tag number, when they get through AZ, the next plate starts with AB. After AZ winds down, the rollover goes to BA, and it starts again. This system replaced the old timey system 30 years ago—long before I had any conscious thought of Italy beyond Prince Spaghetti. 

When life did eventually land me in Italy, the license plates had reached the GA and GB mark.  Ever since that moment, I have unwittingly started to keep track of the plates and how frequently they’re updating.  Unlike in the United States, a license plate stays with the car for its life—or until the car is exported and then you have to turn the plates in (no souvenir license plates in this country, I’m afraid).  But because the most recent license plates are usually the newest cars (again, unless a car has been imported and assigned a recent number), you also get a chance to check out the latest models of vehicles on the road. Right now, the newest plates are sporting GV as the first two letters.

Call it an adult version of the road trip alphabet game, but as the years have passed, I realize that I’m using Italian license plates to mark time. The changing letters are a process more frequent than the changing of the seasons, and with that indeed, no extension of daylight or excessive temperature was ever fazed by what was imprinted on on pieces of metal affixed to motor cars. But it is a change nonetheless, and that untimed second hand would seem to occupy the same current that I swim in. The new discoveries in my own advancement: body parts degrading where I never expected them to before. The sunspots on my hands and face (I will never call them liver spots!). We’re all getting older.

I spend a lot of time driving in Italy, and recently I was listening to a podcast about the way we humans travel, and one of the critics spoke about how he cries when visiting a new place: “I’m seeing something that I may never see again. You only get so many summers. You only get so many trips.” I personally haven’t found myself brought to tears in visiting many places, but to quote one of my college professors who was paraphrasing the Bible, “Nobody knows the hour”.  

As time moves on, I don’t really feel as though I’m in a race to do anything at all. Rather, I’d prefer to just sit down and do nearly nothing—this in itself is probably a factor of the inertia that an aging person feels. The clocks, the license plates, the lists of experiences to have will continue to auto-generate regardless of what I think or feel. And amongst it all, self-awareness has allowed my body to experience a wearing down every so slowly by the invisible pressure of time. 

I remember back years ago reading through my stacks of Rolling Stone and Spin music magazines and coming across an interview with musical artist Perry Farrell. He was talking about growing older—both as a human being as well as a musician. He spoke about not feeling so much old, but instead feeling like a bit of grace was becoming him. And recently I read another article that had him reflecting on how his traveling music festival, Lollapalooza, had evolved: “you have to age with grace, and then you’ll be okay in life,” he said. “If you’re going to fight age and try and be what you were, what I like to try and do is, I like to know, this is what we’ve become, what can we do with it?”

The older I get, I feel like that’s more the objective than anything else. For sure, at the moment I don’t feel grace in aging so much as I find myself groping about for items that I have misplaced.  Most recently I got caught up rifling through my car and purse, in frantic search for my work ID until I finally looked down and realized that I had already reflexively hung it around my neck. The grace, I guess, came in not telling myself that I was a moron for searching for what was not lost—but rather in allowing myself for those uncontrollable moments of distraction and displacement. 

There’s something also to be said for the older cars. Yes, the ones from 30 years ago bearing the “AA” vintage—but also the ones from before. There are not so many these days, but when you do see them, you take an extra look. For sure in Italy, you will find your share of Vintage Fiat 500s—those cute little things you imagine when you picture La Bella Vita—but I am also talking about those mighty old Panda 4X4s and other barely moving hunks of junk still moving about. They’re still in the game, doing their thing with the sparest of gadgets aboard. I find grace in that too. And I also find that those are the folks on the motorway who are often moving in the most expeditious, I’ve-seen-it-all kind of way. I wouldn’t mind a go at that stage of life either. 

Whether we realize it or not, I am sure that we all have our own small markers of advancement on this planet. Time for each of us is not a guaranteed thing, and so I try to remind myself to appreciate what’s on tap in the Right Here. I could fantasize about what I’ll be doing when license plate MM roles out—but that seems like a tall order. Nobody knows the hour, for better or for worse.  The key is to do what we’ve got—regardless of whether we’ve got a bum foot or torn ACL. Life continues “as is”, and all I can do is try to remember asking myself what I want to do with it.