My Home in Italy

 My Home in Italy

I love this picture of me in Italy and not just because my face is obscured and I fit into a pair of jeans better than I do now. It’s because I’m leaning out of an unscreened window overlooking the trees and vineyards at Villa Casalecchi in a small town in Tuscany called Castellini en Chianti, bottle of wine opened and half drunk beside me. Just to look at it takes me back to the small apartment in that building separate from the main villa, which my partner, Greg, and I scored because we went in early May before serious tourist season had begun. After touring Rome, Florence, and Sienna for a few days, we landed here and it felt like home.

That was in 2004 and we swore we’d be back there long before now, but so far, it hasn’t happened. I say this as if it is in someone else’s hands to get us there, knowing that I could jump on a plane this afternoon and in a few hours, after abandoning my teaching job and tapping into my meager retirement savings, I could be there. Landing in Rome and wandering down ancient streets for a few days before taking the train to Sienna, then renting a car, driving along the highway that leads to the winding hilltop roads to Tuscany, crazy Italian drivers impatiently beeping their horns as I cautiously make my way in front of them.

This year would’ve been a likely candidate for our next trip. It was the ten year anniversary, Greg turned fifty and all signs pointed to going. So why didn’t we? To begin with the flights were expensive and the last time we went my mother’s inheritance paid for most of my part of the trip. But we do have the money, sort of, just weren’t quite willing to spend it on that.

To be honest, I travel a lot. Since then I’ve been to many places all over this country, just not to other countries, unless you count Canada, and I certainly don’t. While some of my journeys include visiting relatives; my dad in South Carolina, my grown children in Texas or California, Greg’s parents in Florida, I’ve also gone on bona fide vacations, mostly to National Parks. Arizona, Colorado, Utah; I love all the wide open spaces and majestic landscapes, but I can’t see myself living in any of them.

But I can’t see myself living in Buffalo much longer either. It’s hard to stay in a place that prides itself on being the birthplace of chicken wings, or can’t make its mind up about a bridge design. Not that there aren’t many great things about Buffalo, like it’s proximity to Canada, and how easy it is to leave here. Did I mention that the airport is fabulous and there’s never any traffic? These are major pluses, especially when you need to get out fast.

I know now that I probably won’t leave Buffalo permanently until retirement because at fifty-seven I’m too old for anyone to hire me anywhere else. Maybe that’s why we’re waiting to go to Italy, so we don’t have to come back here to any jobs or other responsibilities. Though neither Greg nor I are Italian by blood, I believe we became so on our last trip; through osmosis, red wine, wandering hillsides, the sounds of our  feet shuffling over cobblestone, swishing of shopkeepers’ brooms over walkways, the kindness of strangers and that delicious language we heard everywhere.

Yes, in a few years, we will go back there, leaving behind what we know right now, leaning out over whatever lies before us and with nothing but dreams to sustain us, we will go back to live in our home in Italy.