It's the Big One

I've been dreading writing this Cappuccino, but here we go.

Beautiful Baiardo

I’ve lived in Italy for nine years. For nine years, she has given me the thing I value above all else, except love, which is a life of psychological richness.

Every bell tower, every craggy wall, every abandoned church, every wild rose, every forgotten shrine, every medieval village, every murmuring fountain, every whisper of a river in the distance has been, for me—in the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas—“the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It has sourced my creativity as a writer, nourished my soul that has, at times, felt like a crushed soda can tossed to the side of the road, and allowed me to realize previously unknown depths of joy and sorrow.

Stairs made impossible by time.

Italy gave me the gift of myself.

I understand her. I recognize her paradoxes and can easily forgive her faults.

Lord knows she has forgiven mine.

Italy is the roommate you had in the college, the stunning, unpredictable, fascinating creature all the boys flocked around. Some say she’s bipolar, but you think otherwise. She rolls in about seven in the morning, high heels dangling from her beautiful drunk fingers, and finds a way to charm you out of asking for the rent.

She uses your pricy hair products without asking, makes a mess in the kitchen, and late last week, she brought home a puppy and then left it for you to take care of. Every time the phone rings at two in the morning, it’s always some rando looking for her because she ran out on a bill or refused to love him. You can hear the thwarted longing in his voice.

But when someone breaks your heart, she’s the first one to offer you a box of Kleenex and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. Patiently, she’ll listen while you ugly-cry, and then she’ll offer to kill the bastard who hurt you.

The next morning, she takes you out for coffee and bagels. The conversation turns philosophic. She gets you thinking about the future, and then, despite your misery, you feel a tiny glimmer of hope. Month two slides by, still no rent, and now there’s a drummer named Otto sporting a pink Mohawk asleep on your couch.

Like the puppy, you’ll inherit Otto, too.

Month three. She blows the rent money on a pair of Manolo Blahniks and then manages to lose them at some dude’s house.

That’s Italy. And I can’t believe we’re leaving.

I will dreadfully miss the Engrish. How many times have John and I had coffee at this train station in Rome and laughed about it?

Unfortunately, we don’t have a choice. Since the pandemic, work has been at a snail’s pace for me, and in recent months, it dried up all together. Now that everyone and their mother is working remotely (Italians call it “smartworking,” and they pronounce it “smahrt-WOAR-keen,” like that), there are a million people who are willing to do writing, proofreading, copywriting, developmental and line editing for about 1/5 of what I need to charge just to stay alive.

When I submit my resume now, instead of competing with thirty, maybe forty people, I’m competing with the entire world, much of which appears to live in India. On sites like Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, you find a lot of job listings like this one: $35.00 to edit a 40,000 word manuscript. Trust me when I tell you, no one can work for that unless they’re in India.

John’s house in Calcata Vecchia, Lazio. Too small for two people, but beautiful nonetheless.

The medieval borgo of Calcata Vecchia, Lazio, an artists’ colony.

The problem with being in Italy is that you’re not legally allowed to hold a job. For those of us who are too young to retire but too old to work at McDonald’s, even if we wanted to, that presents huge problems. John isn’t allowed to teach at any of the conservatories, and teaching privately is a problem now because nobody—and I mean nobody—has any money.

So, we’re off to New York City, where John is from originally and continues to enjoy a robust network of jazz musician buddies and personal contacts. My brother and his family also live there. I can’t conceive of a city more antithetical to Italy. Manhattan is dirty, noisy, crowded, dangerous, expensive, and strangely lonely, although I have been told by New York friends that finding your bliss there is possible.

After all, it is an artistic and cultural mecca. There are rooftop bars, show-stopping sights, world-class food, and Broadway lights … if you can afford them. More importantly, I’m on the same continent as my adult children—only about three hours away—and being geographically distant from them all these years, especially during the pandemic, was emotionally damaging. Maybe not for them, but certainly to me.

Our second village in Lazio, which is called Civita Castellana, and is a big lovable mess.

John on the phone in our Civita Castellana apartment with Bunny supervising.

You think the lump in your throat that’s been there since the day you left will eventually go away, but it doesn’t. If anything, it gets bigger and more painful … just like the one I’ll have when I leave Italy next month.

Having your heart in two places is one of the most exquisite hells I’ve ever been through. Some of you will know exactly what I’m talking about. The light you see is always just a little bit muted. Your heart leaps, sure, but with only so much joy. All love eventually transmutes itself into heartbreaking loss, but this loss you feel every minute of the day. It’s a wound that never heals. So, from the perspective of seeing more of my kiddos, leaving Italy has a major upside, but the downside will always be: we’re leaving Italy.

It goes without saying that Cappuccino will continue in its present form with plenty of articles about Italy, some about the U.S., others about culture and current events. Cappuccino was never exclusively about one thing anyway. Cappuccino is a dialogue we have together. No topic is off the table. And I have so much more to share with you.

John and I have no choice but to rehome the kitties. That’s the part that’s breaking our hearts. If I cry any harder, I’m going to short out my keyboard. Human friends are easier to stay in touch with. Kitties, not so much, although we did manage to find a place for Olive, who is needy. Bunny we’re still working on.

This is Olive, a soft, adorable, ungainly little creetchur who completely owns my heart.

Olive and Bunny in a rare moment of kitty détente.

For the first few months, we’re going to be couch surfing. This is fine when you’re twenty, but we’re not twenty. These sorts of upheavals get harder as you get older. It’s the price you pay to live the life of a creative.

John will leave in about two weeks. I’ve got some business to take care of here, and then I’ll follow him a few weeks later. If nothing else, the U.S. is abundant in jobs, so if you hear of anything in my line of work, do let me know. We’ll sublet our place here and hope to make enough money to come back a couple of times a year. Maybe someday we’ll be able to retire to Italy, if we can ever afford to retire. I rather doubt it.

But this I will say. Italy’s draconian immigration laws will eventually come to bite her in the ass. As things stand, only retirees with a passive income of $60,000 a year or more are welcome. There are student visas, but those are heavily provisional. There are “artist visas,” but I can count on one hand the number of those in circulation. Most go to American celebrities who dream of living like Clooney. It’s one of the reasons in expat communities, you will mostly find retirees. The younger ones are almost always married to Italians.

While I dread this move, I also welcome it. John needs to be in his native clime. A friend of mine wisely said that when faced with several daunting choices, it is usually the most difficult choice that is the right one. This is difficult, so by that parameter, we are headed in the correct direction.

The view from our window in Amelia, Umbria.

It doesn’t feel like failure, though. A failure is something else. But it does feel as though we are letting go of the branch and sailing down the river toward some potentially nasty-looking rocks.

The only law you can count on is the law of unintended consequences. And yet, tragedy is sometimes a miracle waiting to be discovered. By not wanting things to be the way they are, I am setting myself up for the deepest kind of misery. This I know.

For the rest of my life, a part of me will be always waiting for the chime of an Italian church bell to come shimmering toward me through the warm, honeysuckle-scented air of a lazy afternoon.

Sadness only holds on as long as the heart refuses to let go. My body will likely always be a territory of struggle.

But maybe I can hope for better. Maybe I can remember that as a heart breaks, it can also usher in a dramatic rebirth.

Have you ever left your heart in two places? Made any impossible moves? I want to hear about your experience. Leave your comments in the comments section below.