Heartbreaking piece. I love Italy so very much (and live in NYC), but I don't know that I could ever move there permanently. The ease of life in the US is too big a pull. The bureaucracy in Italy would make me go postal; I'm not a patient person. The Schengen Agreement works well for me; I'd happily do 90 in/out, shuttling between the two ideals.
PS. How on EARTH would anyone ever know if one were to work remotely for a US-based company whilst living in Italy?? Seems the best of both worlds: working for one; living in the other...
Oh, they know. Believe me, they know. Even with a VPN. It's quite annoying actually, since I go up for "U.S.-based" jobs and potential clients freak out when they discover that I'm abroad. Or a broad, if you will :-)
We love NYC, by the way. I imagine you have a fabulous life there, the cold weather notwithstanding.
HOW do they know? And why on Earth do they care? It's not like you're taking a job away from an Italian, working for a US-based company. And why would clients freak that you live in Italy - people are working from all over the world at this point!
It's been my dream to work remotely for a US organization, so aside from the obvious, the pandemic has been the best thing that's ever happened to me professionally. I love my job and have worked from my home state of Ohio and lakeside in Michigan. Next up is to do so from Europe for a couple of weeks. I would love to do so for the entire 90 days, but I have a cat and leaving her for 5 weeks over the summer was long enough. I couldn't see doing it for 3 months. 😢
NYC is pretty great, and I've lived here nearly half my life. However, I am returning to my home state within the year or so (by then, 8 years of an LDR will have been enough, thank you very much). And as someone who loathes summer with everything in me, I don't mind the winters at all. I desperately wait for October each year. 😛
By the time I was 16 or so -- about the same time I understood that I would never get married -- I also came to realize I would never have a home to come home to. I chose the army when I enlisted straight out of high school precisely because it was the one branch of the armed forces that had nothing anywhere near San Diego. (Even the Air Force had a radar installation in the mountains to the east.)
I mention the marriage bit because the two are connected: it isn't that I didn't want to marry -- or have a home to come back to, for all of that. But I understood that the world had issued a hard "REJECT" order on me, and these things would always be denied. So I find myself missing having a place to miss. Brings me back to this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2cKnGZC9iI
FWIW, I thought the "haunted" paragraph was an especially good piece of prose.
Well, I don't find you the least bit rejectable. But I know what it's like to feel oneself odd, different, not in lockstep with the vast majority of one's fellow humans. In the end, oddballs always find other oddballs, I suspect. That's my tribe.
Yeah, and it will feel weird going back to visit family next spring. My memories and felt sense of what that whole scene was like is dated. It literally no longer exists. It seems that the sense of self identity becomes more "now," less certain of anything, but somehow there's some sort of equilibrium that develops.
So true, Stacey, and well put. Even raising a fully bilingual child in German public school, working for and with native Berliners, I’ll never be of this place. I am dreading lonely holidays here but the alternatives are also no good. When I first moved abroad to NZ in 2006 - excitedly, happily, voluntaril - I sat on the floor in my box-filled NYC apartment and cried half the night, knowing I was doing something that could never be undone. I was right to grieve the sense of continuity of place and ease in identity that is gone forever. Xo
Dearest Tara, you are that bravest of souls: someone who is willing to let go of the branch and sail down the river. We know the rocks are there. Sometimes, we crash into them. But a life of psychological richness is preferable to a life of ease and comfort.
There is nothing comfortable about your life or mine. We are on parallel trajectories, only you're working with Berliners, and that's something not even John could handle for longer than his three years.
No disrespect intended to Berliners. But taken on the aggregate, they aren't the warmest bunch.
"You can't go home again" Thomas Wolfe. I was born in Arizona, parents moved when I was 3, I moved back at 22 and spent the next 40 years in Phoenix. That's my bona fide. Because in Arizona 50% of people who move to the state move out within 5 years. So "homesickness" is not just about being where language and customs are different. It's the siren call of the familiar. The "sacrificing" of the lamb when the prodigal returns. Here is the catch.. Sure family, friends are glad to see you, they have parties, they go out of their way to see you. For all of 2 weeks.Then they are back to their regular lives which have long since morphed into a totally different reality. So home has changed.
The Facebook expat pages are filled with "what do you bring back? What do you miss? From Dawn detergent, zip lock bags to Reeses peanut butter cups. What do I miss? Government that works. Or in my case after 7 years in Thailand at least government officials you can bribe.
My advice? Accept and then celebrate being the farang, the stranieri, the "American " because let me assure you you are NEVER going to get it right.
And if the differences are just too hard as you age? It's not a failure to return or to seek an easier, cheaper alternative. It's your life and congratulations for having the vision to create and the courage to follow your dream. You aren't going to lie on your deathbed saying could have, should have, would have.
Look, I know there's a journal of your poetry hidden under the mattress. YOU are a poet. It's all there. I can practically smell it.
SEVEN YEARS IN THAILAND. You're killing me. What was that like? John has a small jazz tour in Thailand this summer, and I'm quite envious. Floating markets and temples. That's the lure of Thailand, at least for me from a distance.
Your comments reminded me of a friend of mine from Texas. As a girl, she transferred to a British school just outside of London. Of course, she tried to fit in. Their rejection of her was downright cruel. Wisely, her mother suggested she come to school in cowboy boots and act just as Texas as she could possibly act. And they loved her after that.
So, yes, we must celebrate our own native cultures by embodying them. It's the only thing we know how to do.
OK, this one made me pony-up for a paid subscription. I am just a Lilliputian with one rope to tie you down here in Italy, but maybe a few more (a lot more) will throw a rope over you too. Reason: you are a superb writer whose writing, therefore, offers pleasures that transcend the content of whatever subject you turn your mind too. One of these is to enable us expat/immigrants connect with one another, which fortifies us against the mental forces that might undermine our resolve to live our strange lives in a country where we will be forever foreign. You deserve not just a secure financial footing here in Italy, but ways and means that will enable you and John to balance your lives (while enriching ours) with experiences that may even include trips back to America from time to time. We are immigrants here in Italy and will always have that connection to our places of origin. It is our progeny who, if we have children, get to really call it home. Immigrant status lands us in an emotional Sargasso Sea, caught, as it were, between two shores.
One of the greatest pleasures of having a gathering place here on Substack is getting to read word-poems like this one. There is so much great writing out there. Yes, there's schlock, too, but writers who don't think verbal precision is an anachronism tend to attract other writers who also don't think verbal precision is an anachronism, and frankly, that just makes for a happy Stacey.
Thank you for your generous contribution to the cause, dear Vian. I write Cappuccino for the love, but if my love connects and one feels compelled to share, that makes it all the more worthwhile.
"An emotional Sargasso Sea" was purely Rhys. I loved it.
I can relate to so much of this, because my two expat experiences created similar emotions for me. I remember my "culture shock" moment just after I arrived in Cyprus in the mid-80s. For some reason, my realization that pizza on the island didn't come with tomato sauce sent me around the bend and reduced me to tears. Once I got past that, and I think it took about 10-15 minutes, I was good.
I loved living outside the US, and given the chance I'd do it again. There were things and people I missed, but I don't recall ever being seriously homesick. Perhaps that's because home for me has always been a mobile concept. I can be happy and at home wherever I am, and if Erin is with me, home is wherever she is.
About five-six years ago, I took Erin back to the small town in northern Minnesota that I grew up in. It was exactly the same and yet totally different. I don't know that I was "haunted" by the fact that 40 years had passed since I'd left, but it was something close to it. No one I knew was around and little that was familiar remained. I've been back on 2-3 other occasions now, and it feels like just another town. I'm not even sure I want to go back anymore.
Time changes things, people, and memories. We can't get away from that, but I try hard not to live in the past. I'm rather enjoying this moment.
I'm more of a present-moment girl myself, so I totally get that. I've got to ask--when you watch films like Fargo, what kind of experience is that for you? The bleak whiteness is another character in that movie. It has to have affected you on some deep level. How could it not? You are beholding the possible means of your death.
I think that bleak whiteness and the stark, unforgiving cold that accompanies it reminds me so much of my childhood. So much time spend in a frozen wasteland in which one could literally freeze to death. So, yes, death was in a sense part of the backdrop.
The coldest I can remember was a day when I was 11 or 12 when it got down to -54. There’s no way to describe that sort of cold in a way the uninitiated can understand. Everything seems as if it’s in suspended animation, and even anti-freeze is frozen.
Interesting. I can see that. I'm one of those living in two places, and being in NY right now I can't wait to get back to Italy. I'm trying to sort through all of this; I guess that I have one leg up because I had an Italian father, and because of that I have an Italian passport. But there are times where I'm not completely at home in either place.
Exactly. That's what happens. And they don't tell you that, which is why I'm talking about it here. There's lots they don't tell you, sadly. Parenthood, for example. No one ever says, hey, you're not having kids, you're having people. Small people incapable of being reasoned with.
New York is cold! Do you live in Manhattan or one of the boroughs?
A sobering piece—and so well written, which makes it more authentic. I have a dual citizenship case to present in Italy, a country I love and have visited many times, and a hope of living there with my family of 3. We shall see. Kirtland
Heartbreaking piece. I love Italy so very much (and live in NYC), but I don't know that I could ever move there permanently. The ease of life in the US is too big a pull. The bureaucracy in Italy would make me go postal; I'm not a patient person. The Schengen Agreement works well for me; I'd happily do 90 in/out, shuttling between the two ideals.
PS. How on EARTH would anyone ever know if one were to work remotely for a US-based company whilst living in Italy?? Seems the best of both worlds: working for one; living in the other...
Oh, they know. Believe me, they know. Even with a VPN. It's quite annoying actually, since I go up for "U.S.-based" jobs and potential clients freak out when they discover that I'm abroad. Or a broad, if you will :-)
We love NYC, by the way. I imagine you have a fabulous life there, the cold weather notwithstanding.
HOW do they know? And why on Earth do they care? It's not like you're taking a job away from an Italian, working for a US-based company. And why would clients freak that you live in Italy - people are working from all over the world at this point!
It's been my dream to work remotely for a US organization, so aside from the obvious, the pandemic has been the best thing that's ever happened to me professionally. I love my job and have worked from my home state of Ohio and lakeside in Michigan. Next up is to do so from Europe for a couple of weeks. I would love to do so for the entire 90 days, but I have a cat and leaving her for 5 weeks over the summer was long enough. I couldn't see doing it for 3 months. 😢
NYC is pretty great, and I've lived here nearly half my life. However, I am returning to my home state within the year or so (by then, 8 years of an LDR will have been enough, thank you very much). And as someone who loathes summer with everything in me, I don't mind the winters at all. I desperately wait for October each year. 😛
By the time I was 16 or so -- about the same time I understood that I would never get married -- I also came to realize I would never have a home to come home to. I chose the army when I enlisted straight out of high school precisely because it was the one branch of the armed forces that had nothing anywhere near San Diego. (Even the Air Force had a radar installation in the mountains to the east.)
I mention the marriage bit because the two are connected: it isn't that I didn't want to marry -- or have a home to come back to, for all of that. But I understood that the world had issued a hard "REJECT" order on me, and these things would always be denied. So I find myself missing having a place to miss. Brings me back to this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2cKnGZC9iI
FWIW, I thought the "haunted" paragraph was an especially good piece of prose.
Well, I don't find you the least bit rejectable. But I know what it's like to feel oneself odd, different, not in lockstep with the vast majority of one's fellow humans. In the end, oddballs always find other oddballs, I suspect. That's my tribe.
Brava. Well said. The longer I'm here in Italy and further the boat drifts from shore.
Interesting, isn't it? You become a man without a country. You're not American; nor are you Italian. You're not even a hybrid of the two.
Yeah, and it will feel weird going back to visit family next spring. My memories and felt sense of what that whole scene was like is dated. It literally no longer exists. It seems that the sense of self identity becomes more "now," less certain of anything, but somehow there's some sort of equilibrium that develops.
So true, Stacey, and well put. Even raising a fully bilingual child in German public school, working for and with native Berliners, I’ll never be of this place. I am dreading lonely holidays here but the alternatives are also no good. When I first moved abroad to NZ in 2006 - excitedly, happily, voluntaril - I sat on the floor in my box-filled NYC apartment and cried half the night, knowing I was doing something that could never be undone. I was right to grieve the sense of continuity of place and ease in identity that is gone forever. Xo
Dearest Tara, you are that bravest of souls: someone who is willing to let go of the branch and sail down the river. We know the rocks are there. Sometimes, we crash into them. But a life of psychological richness is preferable to a life of ease and comfort.
There is nothing comfortable about your life or mine. We are on parallel trajectories, only you're working with Berliners, and that's something not even John could handle for longer than his three years.
No disrespect intended to Berliners. But taken on the aggregate, they aren't the warmest bunch.
"You can't go home again" Thomas Wolfe. I was born in Arizona, parents moved when I was 3, I moved back at 22 and spent the next 40 years in Phoenix. That's my bona fide. Because in Arizona 50% of people who move to the state move out within 5 years. So "homesickness" is not just about being where language and customs are different. It's the siren call of the familiar. The "sacrificing" of the lamb when the prodigal returns. Here is the catch.. Sure family, friends are glad to see you, they have parties, they go out of their way to see you. For all of 2 weeks.Then they are back to their regular lives which have long since morphed into a totally different reality. So home has changed.
The Facebook expat pages are filled with "what do you bring back? What do you miss? From Dawn detergent, zip lock bags to Reeses peanut butter cups. What do I miss? Government that works. Or in my case after 7 years in Thailand at least government officials you can bribe.
My advice? Accept and then celebrate being the farang, the stranieri, the "American " because let me assure you you are NEVER going to get it right.
And if the differences are just too hard as you age? It's not a failure to return or to seek an easier, cheaper alternative. It's your life and congratulations for having the vision to create and the courage to follow your dream. You aren't going to lie on your deathbed saying could have, should have, would have.
Look, I know there's a journal of your poetry hidden under the mattress. YOU are a poet. It's all there. I can practically smell it.
SEVEN YEARS IN THAILAND. You're killing me. What was that like? John has a small jazz tour in Thailand this summer, and I'm quite envious. Floating markets and temples. That's the lure of Thailand, at least for me from a distance.
Your comments reminded me of a friend of mine from Texas. As a girl, she transferred to a British school just outside of London. Of course, she tried to fit in. Their rejection of her was downright cruel. Wisely, her mother suggested she come to school in cowboy boots and act just as Texas as she could possibly act. And they loved her after that.
So, yes, we must celebrate our own native cultures by embodying them. It's the only thing we know how to do.
OK, this one made me pony-up for a paid subscription. I am just a Lilliputian with one rope to tie you down here in Italy, but maybe a few more (a lot more) will throw a rope over you too. Reason: you are a superb writer whose writing, therefore, offers pleasures that transcend the content of whatever subject you turn your mind too. One of these is to enable us expat/immigrants connect with one another, which fortifies us against the mental forces that might undermine our resolve to live our strange lives in a country where we will be forever foreign. You deserve not just a secure financial footing here in Italy, but ways and means that will enable you and John to balance your lives (while enriching ours) with experiences that may even include trips back to America from time to time. We are immigrants here in Italy and will always have that connection to our places of origin. It is our progeny who, if we have children, get to really call it home. Immigrant status lands us in an emotional Sargasso Sea, caught, as it were, between two shores.
One of the greatest pleasures of having a gathering place here on Substack is getting to read word-poems like this one. There is so much great writing out there. Yes, there's schlock, too, but writers who don't think verbal precision is an anachronism tend to attract other writers who also don't think verbal precision is an anachronism, and frankly, that just makes for a happy Stacey.
Thank you for your generous contribution to the cause, dear Vian. I write Cappuccino for the love, but if my love connects and one feels compelled to share, that makes it all the more worthwhile.
"An emotional Sargasso Sea" was purely Rhys. I loved it.
I can relate to so much of this, because my two expat experiences created similar emotions for me. I remember my "culture shock" moment just after I arrived in Cyprus in the mid-80s. For some reason, my realization that pizza on the island didn't come with tomato sauce sent me around the bend and reduced me to tears. Once I got past that, and I think it took about 10-15 minutes, I was good.
I loved living outside the US, and given the chance I'd do it again. There were things and people I missed, but I don't recall ever being seriously homesick. Perhaps that's because home for me has always been a mobile concept. I can be happy and at home wherever I am, and if Erin is with me, home is wherever she is.
About five-six years ago, I took Erin back to the small town in northern Minnesota that I grew up in. It was exactly the same and yet totally different. I don't know that I was "haunted" by the fact that 40 years had passed since I'd left, but it was something close to it. No one I knew was around and little that was familiar remained. I've been back on 2-3 other occasions now, and it feels like just another town. I'm not even sure I want to go back anymore.
Time changes things, people, and memories. We can't get away from that, but I try hard not to live in the past. I'm rather enjoying this moment.
I'm more of a present-moment girl myself, so I totally get that. I've got to ask--when you watch films like Fargo, what kind of experience is that for you? The bleak whiteness is another character in that movie. It has to have affected you on some deep level. How could it not? You are beholding the possible means of your death.
I think that bleak whiteness and the stark, unforgiving cold that accompanies it reminds me so much of my childhood. So much time spend in a frozen wasteland in which one could literally freeze to death. So, yes, death was in a sense part of the backdrop.
The coldest I can remember was a day when I was 11 or 12 when it got down to -54. There’s no way to describe that sort of cold in a way the uninitiated can understand. Everything seems as if it’s in suspended animation, and even anti-freeze is frozen.
Gawd, how I don’t miss that. 😝
As a Minnesotan can I ask what town?
I grew up in Walker, went to high school in St. Cloud, and college in St. Paul. 😁
U of M ag college grad here.
Macalester College 😁❤️
Interesting. I can see that. I'm one of those living in two places, and being in NY right now I can't wait to get back to Italy. I'm trying to sort through all of this; I guess that I have one leg up because I had an Italian father, and because of that I have an Italian passport. But there are times where I'm not completely at home in either place.
Exactly. That's what happens. And they don't tell you that, which is why I'm talking about it here. There's lots they don't tell you, sadly. Parenthood, for example. No one ever says, hey, you're not having kids, you're having people. Small people incapable of being reasoned with.
New York is cold! Do you live in Manhattan or one of the boroughs?
Staten Island. Yeah, it's cold, colder than Umbria in the winter—we're closer to Perugia than you.
A sobering piece—and so well written, which makes it more authentic. I have a dual citizenship case to present in Italy, a country I love and have visited many times, and a hope of living there with my family of 3. We shall see. Kirtland