Six years ago I carried a wee baby boy in my arms, and held the hand of my tiny girl as we checked into our flight to a foreign land. We flew across the oceans to a tropical island called Okinawa. Our adventure was only beginning and I thought it would never ever end. It would go faster than I ever thought it would…. Today, I sit drinking a coffee on my little Italian porch looking out at the mountains of Italy. I see a field ahead with a group of sheep, complete with bells around their necks. I hear different pitches of baas, and in the distance I see Mount Vesuvius and fluffy white clouds hanging out over the top. The sounds of ringing church bells, distant fireworks and too loud Italian music blasting from a nearby car punctuate the scene.
I feel tears swelling up that I am not going to let out yet. The reality is hitting me hard – in just a few short weeks I will be on a plane back to America. Last night I told my husband how very lucky we have been. How many Americans can say that they lived in two foreign countries for six years? How many Americans have traveled around Europe on their weekends off? How many Americans can drive up to Rome on a whim,or take a campervan around Scotland on the spur of the moment fun? Less than one percent of Americans that can say this. We are so very fortunate.
All of my life people told me to travel before I had children – that it would be too hard once they arrived on the scene. Yet here I am traveling the world with my family, and living in foreign countries. I know deep in my heart that I am happier traveling with them. I am happy I got to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower with the two children that are the reason my heart continues to beat each day.
I get to show my children things that other children dream about, that other parents dream about their entire life. I can’t be happy about leaving. I just can’t. We made memories here. So when I am driving around Italy in my beat up minivan, driving through stop signs without stopping, getting stuck in a traffic jam where a guy may get out of his car and yell at the person in the front, driving through neighborhoods with people yelling at each other from one balcony to the next, clothes hanging out to dry over the road, pizzarias and cheese shops, homemade vino and fresh olives, tomatoes and bread and fresh vegetables by the road, chestnuts and artichokes being grilled on the corner, old men playing cards in the town square while the kids kick around a soccer ball. Come out at midnight and families will be eating dinner while their kids run around. The next morning the town is quiet, nobody is outside and nothing is open for business except for the bar that sells donuts made from potatoes, cannoli’s and caffe.
Buongiorno! It’s morning in Italy, and everyone still lives the way we did 20 years ago in America. Come lunchtime and you can get a cheese platter to die for along with some vino that was made in Nonna’s vineyard along with her olive oil that makes you cough after you dip her homemade bread in it. It makes you cough because it is so fresh and was just pressed yesterday. Have some pasta with homemade ragu sauce that was cooked for two days on the stove and tastes like a bit of heaven. I tell my kids to eat up the pasta now because in a few short weeks they will find that the pasta will never taste the same.
How can we be here at this moment? How can we be on the verge of leaving this place where we live a much simpler life than we ever have? I think back to the summer where the sun seems so much brighter than it has anywhere else I have been. I am sitting on a beach chair by a pool somewhere in Tuscany and I am drinking some vino rosso looking out at some vineyards and I am at peace. Nearby my kids splash in the pool and the sound of their laughter gets me right in my heart. I reach over and get a piece of cheese that tastes like actual heaven. I will always remember that moment forever. How can this ever end? Here we are living out of suitcases again, getting ready for our big move, ready to take on new stresses and new worries that I haven’t had to deal with for a very long time.
There is so much to go back to, but also so much to leave behind. My heart hurts…. I haven’t fully accepted the fact that this adventure is almost over and that a new adventure waits for us on the other side of the ocean. I loved living in Okinawa, but I love living in Italy so much more. I loved the way each place was so different from each other–that I got to experience something that I will never be able to explain fully to anyone, no matter how hard I try.
Almost 20 years ago I joined the Navy not knowing what was ahead for me, and now I look back and I would do it all over again. The Navy brought me here to this place, to a place I will hold in my heart until the end of my days. So on my last days in Italia I will be soaking it all in, drinking some vino, eating some pasta, crying my heart out and hoping that someday I can come back…