These Beautiful Days

It has been exactly one year since I left my Bainbridge Island home and came to my Pieve di Teco home. It has been a year of surprises. It has been a year of pain and loss. It has been a year learning, on a massive scale. I want to take a moment to reflect on all of that on this anniversary of change.

I knew when I got here that regular, mundane life would need to be lived, and that the vacation life I had experienced when visiting would not be my every day. I knew also that people who loved me were worried that I was ignoring this truth. It was a very real fear in my mind, that I would get here and be disenchanted. That I’d be frustrated with the language, the driving, the bureaucracy and longing for the ease of what I knew before. After calling this place my home for 366 days (leap year) I can say in all honesty that the magic and wonder are still with me, more powerfully than I ever even hoped for.

I spend a mind boggling amount of time trying to accomplish really boring things – doctor’s appointments, filing documents with this, that or the other office (always SO MUCH paperwork to be done), paying bills – but it hasn’t ruined the magic. There are challenges I didn’t anticipate, like working out parenting schedules, communicating the reality of a new family situation to my loved ones in the US, and figuring out how to use the vacuum cleaners at the car wash. But there are also inspirations and comforts that I never expected.

My life is made up of days with just enough aggravation in them to know that I’m still living in reality. I don’t notice every picturesque ruin or old church in quite the same appreciative way as I did a year ago, but I’m still struck by the fact that this place and this life are mine. The gratitude swells up in me so often that sometimes I’m afraid to say it out loud for fear of jinxing it. To celebrate this anniversary I want to share with you a few moments of joy from the last week. I want to acknowledge these beautiful days.

The town next to mine, Vessalico, is famous for a special kind of garlic, and has held a garlic festival every year on July 2nd for at least 200 years. All the farmers come to sell garlic braids. They are all selling the exact same thing so I don’t really understand how it works but it’s absolutely charming. There are also food vendors, and people selling clothes, cheese, salami, jewelry and handcrafted knick-knacks.

I bought some garlic, of course, and a stupid looking but comfortable jumpsuit. I shared a porchetta panino and a beer in the sun with my friend. On the way home we stopped at the river for a quick swim. I looked around me and thought to myself, ‘Seriously? This is what I get to do today? This is my life?’

That was a Tuesday. Wednesday my coffee looked like this thanks to the sweetie pie at the bar:

Saturday I was stuck in traffic for an hour but I didn’t mind because it was for the for the cutest reason. The Fiat 500 club was coming into town! Hundreds of them rallied in our village for the afternoon and the adorableness of these cars can’t be overstated.

Saturday night started with rooftop terrace aperativo, thanks to my sweet neighbor friends.

From there it was an into-the-wee-hours-dancing-and-wine-extravaganza a few towns away that I am still recovering from. There are no pictures of this, thank goodness, but fun was had.

And Sunday, a fundraiser for our tiny, ethereal Madonna dei Fanghi church in the trees. The church is not used, except for bringing beauty to this spot, but once a year they have to open it and hold a mass in order to keep its status. Sunday was the day for this. Afterwards there was a community dinner put on by volunteers who somehow managed to feed 200 people a five course meal out of a tent with only a hose for running water. Praying must have been involved for this miracle to occur.

In the last few months I have lost my best friend to cancer and come to terms with the end of my marriage. Through the grief, the beauty and bounty of my life here still shines through every day. In fact, maybe the gift to be found in the pain is the ability to see these little moments for the treasures that they are. I knew this place was magical for me before I moved, I knew I belonged here, but I didn’t know how much healing and full heartedness there was to experience.

One year in, still enchanted.