When I was a young boy living in England, my parents used to take my twin brother and me to Venice every year for the whole month of August. This was in the late fifties and through the sixties. It was a time of the great European holiday. We would go to the Lido di Venezia and stay at the magnificent Hotel Des Bains, made famous later in the wonderful Visconti movie Death in Venice, about the death of Gustav Mahler.

We would take our nanny, and my day would start with having breakfast with her and my brother, and then we would decamp to the beach. We had our own cabana where we would change and relax and play. My parents would join us an hour or so later. Then my father would request (read "command") us for a walk down the incredible beach, past the Excelsior Hotel and the Casino, which still houses the Venice Film Festival today. Lunch would be held en famille in the "pagoda" on the beach, and then there would be siesta, more play and a walk into the local town for tea and shopping. Dinner would be with the nanny, and early. Then my parents, wearing tuxedo and evening gown, would have dinner with their friends. My brother and I would wait for them to finish, then listen to the hotel’s band and dance with our mother. Then we would be sent to bed while they went to the casino to gamble, where they would always bet the number 29 in roulette. We would know how they fared the next morning without words.

My parents have now passed away, but I had the glorious experience of asking them, toward the ends of their respective lives, what was the highlight of their lives. “When were you most happy?” I asked. They both, individually, answered, “The years in Venice.” These were defining years for them in their marriage, as parents with their twin boys, and when their careers were blossoming. It was like the scene in Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner’s character sees his father at the baseball diamond, taking off his catcher’s pads, and remarks how young he looks, before life “wore him down.”

My memories of childhood are also framed by the holidays in Venice. They were the weeks of beach and sun (we lived in England when summers occurred infrequently, and sometimes only for a day in the middle of June or July). There were the smells of freshly cut coconut that the street vendors sold, the little square-grid sidewalks, the taste of fresh peach juice, the start of my love for prosciutto and salami. I think I grew up only when I was there.

And I wonder today how any of us will know when and where we were the happiest, for there will be a time when we know that day has come and gone. While we struggle to live so connected to ourselves, and in the present, there are snapshots of moments in our lives when it was sublime.

As I write this blog I am at Stinson Beach with my fiancée, her three children and my two children (do you know how much food five children, all preteens or teenagers, plus various occasional friends of theirs can eat in a day?) are spending some time. It is beautiful, and when I am here with my family, I am truly centered, grounded and happy. I wonder if, one day, my children will ask me when I was happiest, because if I had to answer today, I would say, “The Stinson days.” And I wonder, too, if as my children grow, they will recall Stinson, as I recall Venice, in their memories and their hearts. La dolce vita for the soul.

[Main Image: iphotostock.com]