“Oh, it’s a hard life!” Living and working in the heart of the Chianti region of Tuscany, with an endless supply of chianti classico vino at my fingertips is such a hard life to lead! But someone has to do it, right? I love the life I have been able to create here amongst the olive trees, gorgeous Italians, the melodic Italian language, the beautiful rolling hills, not to mention the unforgettable food! Life here in Italy is perfect. So why do I find myself deciding to leave?
While I saw this journey through rose tinted glasses last year, I find I have the glasses of reality securely attached to my face this year. Because now everywhere I look is my life. The life that I have been able to create here in Italy. Its all mine, familiar and old to me now. No longer strange, exciting and new.
I now have less than a month left here in Italy with my beloved little family at the Villa. And how sad that feels, except that I have absolutely no time to think about it. As we gear up for our final month of guests here at the villa, a new baby to arrive in less than 3 weeks time and all the preparations which go along with a new born. Have any of us got the luxury of time to sit and think about the changes which we are all about to face! Nope!
And thank god for that because I am certain any such train of sorrowful thoughts would lead me down a path which I know I may not be able to recover from. Each minute I spend with Sam now, each smile and laugh which I extract from his perfect beingness pulls on my heart strings. Every meal I sit down and partake in is just one meal less I won’t have again with my little family here in Italy. The family which embraced me as their own and which I feel as close to as I do my own.
How will I ever be able to forget this place? This place which has given me so much. The Villa, my little herby cottage, Verity, Simon, Sam and Harvey, Italy, Tuscany and an endless list of other magical people and things about this life I have here. How do I forget the place I now know as intimately as any home I have ever lived? Where I know where the best patch of sage grows, where the wild asparagus will sprout from in April and where to look for the August full moon. Which field to watch the fireflies from and where the wild boar like to take their young in Spring. The Villa is imprinted on the back of my hand just as Tuscany is.
The only consolation is the knowledge that this place will haunt me for many months and possibly years to come. I will know what the streets of Siena will feel like as the first Palio of the year is run, what the beautiful rolling hills will look like from month to month. How the grapes will begin to sprout in May and be harvested in September. The sweet broom filling the air as summer approaches and how the first figs on the trees will taste when picked in the August heat.
So as I gear up to pack my suitcase full of memories, with the knowledge that Italy isn’t going anywhere I am trying to console my heart by tricking it into believing that another journey is about to begin which I can only hope will become as rewarding and beautiful as the life I have created here, but secretly I never want anything to be as beautiful as this time here in Italy, my first journey overseas and the place which brought me back to life. It has been perfect beyond words and I always will have those memories with me, forever.
