Ever heard of settled envy? It's a syndrome I've invented. Many people suffer from it, I bet. I've got it bad.
Last night, I went to an old friend's house near the side of my hill here in Italy for dinner. She's American, but has lived in this area for 30 years now and just got back from a great trip home to the States full of family and friends.
Sitting on her gorgeous terrace having a drink as the evening sun set in the distance though, she sighed over her chilled prosecco and said it was great to go home, yes, recounting everyone she had seen and all she had packed in, but really, Italy is her home, and that was made ever more clear to her, yet again, over the past ten days.
Over dinner in her big stone kitchen, my eyes kept darting to her sets of beautiful hand-painted Italian dishes, all stacked neatly in the huge Neapolitan china cabinet she's had for years.
I want to stack my dishes in my china cabinet again. But my china cabinet is with all the rest of my furniture in a storage container in east London. I want to say things like I know Italy is my home, too, because I have a house here too, like her, that I spent years building and decades fantasizing about.
But even more than her, I was born here, grew up speaking Italian, and still have a delightful family here, cousins I spent a lot of my childhood summers with in southern Italy. There's a big part of me that's Italian. And it's the part I like best.
I built a house here so I could feel like her. But the truth is, I don't. I still just want to run back to my old life in the States, where I just raised my boys and buried my parents. I want to go back to where my boys live, but they live in different places now.
I want to go back to the time I was a newspaper reporter with a house and a life and two boys at home. All that's gone now though. And anyway, I live in London. Where I don't have a life.
Shall I bring all my furniture here? Shall I stack my dishes in nice, sturdy piles here like my friend?
I am so glad to see you are writing and look forward to reading more!
ReplyDeleteWe have this conversation all the time, what is home, community, family? It definitely isn't what we expect, but more often what we create and let into our lives.
I moved every couple of years as a child of military parents and love having a "stable" home for my kids in a suburban neighborhood right now. But I also don't think of this as permanent - we might need to move for jobs or other reasons. And I miss traveling and experiencing the world and want my kids to get a flavor for that too.
Ultimately, for me, I know home is about both place and people. Our neighborhood friends make this the most amazing place to be and we are surrounded by friendly support that far surpasses what extended family offers.
I hope you get to meet more people, enjoy the scenery and all the great things that go with this new life. And don't beat yourself up too much about missing the boys and the US, they are such a big part of you :)