Return Thoughts

As I sit here this morning, wondering what to write and knowing that I have to write because it ultimately gives me such great pleasure, I sift through an assortment of recent memories and allow my thoughts to wander. I try to express my feelings about how, for three very recent weeks, I was in a different world and not one so defined due to geography. 

It's hard returning. Always has been. Especially difficult this time. It's literally as if I have been on another planet or two and have been dropped off on this one with a thud. As I emerge from my cocoon, my cozy condo, and have conversations with friends and neighbors, I answer the common query....."was it sad leaving Italy?".  My answer so far, has been "well, yes, it always is but it was nice knowing that we would be returning to friends and to familiarity". Having left at the very tip of Spring, we were literally jet-propelled into full engagement with Spring on steroids. Actually, we were met by the tip of Summer as we settled into Umbria and then, with more intensity, as we lived our Italian days in Puglia. And then, our return to our home and the advancement of Spring here, flowers and plants bursting from their former dormancy just at our doorstep. How did that happen? 

I honestly thought that the familiar would have a ring to it. But it did not. Everything, but everything, is changing, rapidly, everywhere in the world. The notion of familiarity and comfort from it, is gone, replaced by the sense of having to catch up, re-invent and reset moment by moment. Acute culture shock in one's own culture. Know what I mean? You do if you have been alive for the past almost-three years.

But, my thoughts do take me back a few weeks and the recollection of those days is still bright. I try to understand the difference. Why was every day there, in a "foreign" county, so much more "familiar" to me than here? What was the key ingredient to the sweetness and the feeling of harmony with the world? 

I think I know. The Italians have once again, as they have for centuries, moved on. They are wise, brave, and respectful of their surroundings. Every season brings a sense of order and purpose. Every day, a pattern of participation and engagement in life. Rural Italians don't have to do internet searches on what to do with what and when. They just do it. The cycles, they repeat over and over. They don't dwell on anything and they trust that if they just keep on living, all will eventually be well. Rarely does fear dominate. Joy comes easily, from the smallest of things. Nature figures prominently into their lives and they grow up understanding this. Love is big. Family is everything. 

So, for the past weeks, we zoned into a world that was free of the angst that we returned to. While the threat of testing Positive to Covid before flying back to the U.S. is huge, it only is because it is government imposed. The people have a respect for what has happened due to Covid, after all, they lost thousands of lives before we ever even donned a face mask here. But they don't let this, or any other outside factor, dominate their lives. And that, makes all the difference. 

It's sad to come to the conclusion that a war on our own soil would have made us a better country and I'm certain that the Italian lifestyle, the one of facing each day and really living it. is based upon their memory and that of their ancestors, of days when they were barely able to face five minutes once upon a time.