Addesso.......Now

I’m seated on an airplane, it’s after lunch and I’m listening to the opera and classical music selections on my headphones. The plane interior is darkened and that’s a very good thing because I’m actively crying my eyes out and can do so without being seen by my husband or fellow passengers.

We’re homeward bound, an expression that I find harder than ever to fit into the vernacular. Home?  It’s been five whole weeks.  I guess the catharsis was inevitable. I thought the weeping might have come by now but, it takes an incredible amount of preparation and strategy to get from Point A, across the ocean to Point B, and back again. No time is allotted to emotion.  I recently discovered that we are above the age at which we are referred to as “ancienti” and have officially joined the group known as the “vecchi”.  Somewhat disturbing. We have to force ourselves to stay focused.  Care-free travel is owned by those who are younger. Focus folks.

I have nothing but time at the moment.  I have had nothing but it for all these weeks and it wasn’t until a few hours ago that I finally understood how precious a commodity that is and how well the Italians embrace the whole concept allowing time to be their silent partner, always.  Were I given a dime each time I was reminded of that, I would be one, very wealthy vecciana.  We, who live in a country that is only a few hundred years old, can’t fully appreciate the fact that we have had to bee-line everything in order to bring our civilization to where it currently is.  The Italians have had centuries and have not rushed to anything, ever.  I now find it incredibly funny to think of so many Americans who come to Italy as tourists and report that they have fallen in love with the country after two weeks of hopping from Rome, to Florence, to Venice and on and on.  It takes a whole lot longer than that to really and truly get it.  Twelve trips and I’m just approaching the iceberg. With each visit, I get it more but the gap is still huge.

My heart and soul are in Italy.  I’m called back by a force that even I don’t fully understand.  I feel so much more like myself when I step off a plane and touch the soil of my ancestors.  My heart opens up and I feel as if I am living in a world that could only exist on another whole universe. Every man looks like my brother.  I am my grandmother, I am my mother and I am saddened by the loss of those lives within me.  I want to have both of them back so that I can lie on their deathbeds and curl into their bodies, as a child, begging them to not leave the earth.

Oh, to have that chance.

I was paid a great compliment a few weeks ago by a beautiful man who makes his living binding books, by hand, in a tiny workshop in Assisi.  He told me that I was an “Italian woman” and my heart soared.  I told him that my grandmother must be smiling and I levitated at the thought. My Italian friends ask me when I will become their neighbor because I “belong” here and should.  And, I pause and think about it.  So much that I am sure it will happen, that one day, before I become too unable to, I will join their ranks. I am an Italian woman.

But for now, I’m restless on an airplane that is soaring through a sky that hangs over the ocean that separates my mind and body from my true origins. My return to that other life is becoming profoundly certain and I have more reason for being a sad person.  It’s going to be a challenge holding my ground when we get back into our house.  It's going to take all that I have to keep the Italian hours alive.  There’s no reason to fall back into the fast lane. To get where, I do not even know. Time. 

Time to remember that I can be whoever I chose to be and can live my life in any way I desire. If I have learned nothing else, I have learned that.

My grandmother and my mother are waiting.  For that last embrace.

Ciao Italia. Ci vediammo multo presto.