A Delayed Welcome

Inspired by a friend, I decided to dive into the blogging world. Seeing as I was never one to keep a diary, this might be a challenge. But in my excitement for a new challenge I dove in right away without even introducing myself. Oops!

I will start with explaining the title to my blog. I have never been particularly imaginative, especially when put on the spot. When I created this blog site I suddenly found myself staring at the screen and struggling to think of something that was adequate for a title. Most people would have spent days wandering the streets thinking of a name and only after finding the perfect name would they have started the site ... well, not me! All the possible variants on "this is my life" seemed too typical, and in the effort to make a challenge more challenging I decided I didn't want "typical." Via Poggio Gherardo is my street. It's where my grandma, Fanny Bernini, lived. It's where I spent most of my summers. It's where I ate the most delicious meals. It's where I had been driven insane by family. It has been a part of my life since I was born. And it's now where I live.

I was born in Greve in Chianti, in a house that was 30 minutes of dirt road from any paved road, which was also a good 30 minutes from any ambulance. I was born on the kitchen table of a good friend of my mother’s, who just so happened to be a homeopathic doctor (I once asked a few years ago, and yes, she still has that table). My mother chose to have me in that house because it was closer to Firenze and any hospital than her house, which was in Dicomano. In the summer of 2008 my mother and I went to look at the house where I was born, and I think she startled herself when she realized that she once thought that house to be close to the city.

As for the next few years of my life I have no idea of the order of events. I can safely say that we (meaning my mother, stepfather and I) lived in Italy, in London, in Cincinnati and in San Francisco. But if you were to ask me the order in which we lived in those places all I could tell you is that in the first two years of my life I was on a plane 22 times and can't possibly remember with all the going back and forth. I attended school until finishing the first grade in the San Francisco Bay Area. After which, partly fueled by politics in the United States and partly fueled by my mother's desire to have me know Italian and my native culture, we moved back to Italy. We lived in a beautiful house in the Tuscan town of Impruneta and I completed my elementary schooling at the school in Bagno a Ripoli. While living here as a child I realized that my mother was not strange, as I had seen her to be when we lived in the United States, but rather that she belonged to a different culture and her habits here were everyone's habits. It was at that tender age of a second grader that I realized we each have a "home" in the world.

When the time came for me to start middle school my mother, stepfather and I moved back to the United States. My mother was unhappy as a child in the Italian school system once past elementary school and didn't want the same fate for me. But much like the move to Italy, the move away from Italy was partly fueled by politics (this time the Italian politics) and, I think, a partial insanity my mother suffered from living in such close proximity to her family. So off to San Francisco we went! I completed middle school then high school and then University. It was towards the end of high school that I realized I did not belong in the United States. It had been a good home for me, but it was not my home. I'm yet trying to figure out why I stayed there once realizing it was not where I belonged; and so far I have come up with the following reasons (a) pressure to start (and then finish) university, and I was in no way going to dive back into Italian by directly going to an Italian university (b) money, I could not afford to live in Italy and (c)...as we Italian say BOH!?! I have no idea, but there probably should be a "c."

On June 5th, 2008 my beloved grandmother, Fanny Bernini, passed away while I was on vacation here in Italy. I don't exactly know how to describe the rest of that summer, but day-by-day it passed and in August of that year I found myself back in the United States and finishing my last semester of university with a plan to move back to Italy and live in her house. The first mission when back was to get US citizenship. My mother and I went through the process together (the process itself can be a blog entry ... maybe for another time). We were both sworn in as citizens on January 21st, 2009. I believe it was on January 22nd, 2009 that I started looking for a one-way ticket to Italy. Once that ticket was in hand I counted down the days until I moved. I had my bags packed on March 1st (no, not joking). I lived in my parents’ house, in my old room with my suitcases on the floor. On weekends I would unpack and then repack them over and over and over again in order to try to fit one last thing. It was an impossibility to decide what I needed to pack for an indefinite move. I was moving into a fully-furnished house (granted it needed, and still needs, much sorting through) but what does one pack (a) for an indefinite move and (b) an indefinite move into an already furnished house?!

On July 7th, 2009 I boarded a plane. I had been flying my whole life (I once counted and came to the conclusion that I fly about 20 flights per year), and yet I had never been so terrified of a flight. The knowledge that I was finally doing something I truly and utterly wanted to do in my life and that I knew was my calling, but that with a simple mishap with the plane it could all just crumble - was terrifying. I think I can safely say that any doctor would have diagnosed me with a mild form of a heart attack for the entire 24-hour journey. I was filled with happiness, with hope and the confidence that I could do it all. And yet, I was moving into unknown territory. I had a house, I had a tenant already living in the extra room so I had a little income, I had the citizenship, I had the knowledge of the language, I had the family, and I had the friends I couldn't wait to reconnect with after 13 years - but I didn't have a job, I didn't even know how to go about getting one in Italy, I had 500 US dollars and that was about it. Good luck!

I found luck. Or luck found me. I applied to one job, did one interview and from the time that I sent in my resume to the job agency to the time that I found myself employed in Italy was a week.

That was back in August 2009. It is now February 2010 and I love every second of living back home. Yes, I complain about work (tell me who doesn't), I face the issues of daily life such as condominium meetings, the neighbors’ cats, sorting through my grandmother's things, forgetting to buy milk and bread on Saturday and finding myself without either until Monday ... but I don't care. I live in Italy.

So it is on this beautiful February Sunday morning in Firenze, that I am sitting at my kitchen table looking out to the view of Settignano with coffee in hand while waiting for my Ciambella al Limone to come out of the oven; that I have finally written my Welcome entry on my blog.

I hope you enjoyed, stay tuned and continue to enjoy!

Lastly I will leave you with a picture from my kitchen window. The picture was taken on my first morning here in Firenze, July 9th, 2009. It was not a bad start to my life.