Italy: In the Beginning

In spring of 2017, my friend Michelle posted that she was holding a contest, and the winner would get to go to Italy with her. I entered and won, and the trip happened in April of 2018. It was the trip of a lifetime, and while I can't give everyone the same experience, I can at least share mine.

The writing is all mine, but many of the pictures were done by Petra, a fabulous photographer who was also part of the trip. Please note the credit below any photos, and feel free to check out her other photos on her website.


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The trip has finally begun—I am through the gate and on the first airplane, the one that will take us from Philadelphia to Detroit.

I have a window seat, and I look out at the gray—gray tarmac, gray sky, gray airport walls. The baggage carts huddle near the plane as though for protection from the elements. The blue canvas sides have come loose on one, and they billow out, curling dramatically like the cape of an old movie villain.

The orange cones have seen better days. Three of them are almost as black as they are orange. I understand the cones, the baggage cart. I feel these days like my protective sides have come loose, like my soul has seen long days out in the elements.

For weeks people have been asking me if I was excited about Italy, and I would smile and gush, “Yes, I am SO excited!” because that’s what they expected. But it’s hard to feel excited about something that doesn’t seem real, and when you are so focused on making it to the next appointment, getting through bedtime with the kids—again—and checking boxes on a to-do list that includes four part-time jobs plus family and friends, a list that you will never be good enough or strong enough or organized enough or any kind of “enough” to complete—when you are there, in that place, an event that is weeks, even days ahead is too abstract to generate an emotion like excitement.

But today, in the car on the two-hour drive to the airport, Michelle talked about her family, her villages. She told us about her great grandfather, who was left on a foundling wheel, a place where desperate mothers could safely abandon their babies to the care of the church. She told us about the castle in Macchia d’Isernia, and the barons who ruled there. She spoke of the towns, how they are situated in the hills of the southern Appenine mountains, and of the route we will take through those mountains and up along the eastern coast and then to Venice, to Florence, to Rome—

And I am excited. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, with all the emotion I couldn’t summon for the last several months, I am excited.

I have been dreaming of this since I bought the palm-sized painted Venetian mask at Busch Gardens when I was ten.

Since I read the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman when I was fifteen.

Since I watched Enchanted April with my mom when I was seventeen.

Since I sat on the swings with Mandi and dreamed of Venice during our Freshman year of college.

I am going to Italy.

I am going to Italy.

I am so excited.

Photo Credit: Petra Laster Photography