Chasing Open Borders
It’s been a roller coaster, I’m not going to lie. On top of dealing with my bout with COVID19, then Gabe’s bout with COVID19 (so much for kids not being impacted), we’ve labored under the serious problem of having no idea what we’re going to do for a year.
A year.
That is a long time.
Should we continue our plan to rent the house? But what if there’s a global lockdown and we have nowhere to go? Should we enroll Gabe back in school? But what if the world opens up and we’re stuck with tuition? Should we see if Siena can un-defer her college acceptance to Rice University? But if they’re doing distance learning anyway, wouldn’t it be better to take a gamble on getting to do some travel during this year than compromising the attendant joys of starting college?
You see?
Ups and downs, twists and turns, with no real destination, always winding up back at the beginning where no answers lie. A roller coaster.
Only not particularly fun. Roller coasters thrill. This pandemic-coaster pains. There are times when I think, “Oh, it’ll be okay… look at how hard scientists are working! A cure is around the corner!”
BAM!
We’re yanked around to face a new direction.
So really, it’s like a roller coaster that has bare moments of leveling out before we’re treated to a cartoon pie in the face. Followed by yet another nauseating dip.
Still…even with all that chaos spinning in our future, leeching its darkness into our present, moments of beauty grace our lockdown lives. The slowness that quarantine demands leaves room for unexpected blooms of joy. In fact, in many ways, our lives now reminds me of our lives in Spello. Obviously without the one major thing that made that year extraordinary, seeing people, like in real life, on the street, their faces not covered with masks, so their expression were easy to read, their love pulling us into their circles.
Wow, we really had no idea how lucky we were to not have to socially distance, weren’t we? I remember sometimes stepping back because our neighbors stepped so close, it sent my mind skittering over what I’d eaten for breakfast. Now, that seems like a dream.
In any case, even without the luxury of people, there’s a lot about my life now that feels eerily similar to my life in Spello. For instance, three months ago a regular day had me zipping all over town. I regularly had eight things on my schedule, and one of them might be “see five clients”. Now? If I do one thing, even just picking up a dozen eggs or going for a walk, I feel a sense of satisfaction with my productivity. Look at me! I put on pants!
Moments stretch. I’ll pick violets with Siena for violet simple syrup and I’ll have no idea if we’ve been reaching for those little purple beauties for ten minutes or two hours. I can’t remember the last time I used my instant pot for anything but rice. Why hurry? Though it should be said we’re going through an awful lot of rice, since we accidentally bought a bag at Costco that looks like it would last an Indian restaurant at least a month.
As I take my book outside at 5:00 with a little platter that includes a glass of bubbly mineral water and a wedge of cheese and a sliced green apple, I’m reminded of all those afternoons on my terrazza in Spello, my cat curled on the opposite chair. When the ringing of church bells and an upswell of swallows prompted me to remember that I might want to think about making dinner.
This is all to say, I’ve had Italy on my mind.
On my mind.
On my mind.
Can you hear it?
That’s the stirring of an idea.
Little fragments of thought, sliding past each other, looking for a way to bond, to form a pattern.
Until they do.
What if…what if we abandoned our old plan, wholesale and altogether. To tell you the truth, the old plan holds no appeal for me anymore anyway. The thought of creating a new home every month exhausts me, and if I’m perfectly honest, this pandemic has curbed some of my wanderlust.
Not all of it! But some, for sure. Maybe that should alarm me, but…it is what it is.
I’m not sure I even want to go to a country where I’d have to work to figure out health care. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it’s that, now at least, we can’t ignore the very real fact that our bodies are fragile. The wilderness of total unknown feels bleak, we want some sense of security.
Shifting, sliding fragments. Like Italian articles and nouns that join together with time and practice, until whole thoughts take shape.
And here’s the whole thought. I’ve got it now. I’m not sure why it took me so long, really.
Let’s go back to Spello.
Spello is safe, Spello is known, Spello is adventure, Spello is love… Spello is home.
Once that thought falls clear and cool into my fevered brain, everything else comes together.
We can wait for Italy’s border to open, and then book tickets with the miles we’d initially used and then cancelled. We’ll have to watch regulations carefully, reading the fine print. For instance, some countries specify that citizens and their spouses can return (that would be us). Some make no such distinctions. It could be that citizenship is defining feature of admittance. Or maybe it’s country of origin. If it’s the latter, maybe we could go to Iceland first, as they’re rumored to begin letting in anyone in June. If we stay there for a bit, that might grease the wheels of Italian entry. Or maybe Italy will announce a system like Austria’s, where anyone can come, but they have to submit to either a two week quarantine (we could do that in Spello no problem, it’s the upside of a whole year to manage, rather than a summer vacation) or a 200€ COVID test on arrival.
Once we arrive, I can apply for a permesso di soggiorno (residency) thanks to Keith’s citizenship. With that in hand, I can theoretically leave Italy and return as easily as Keith and the children. I wonder if it will be easier to get that permesso, if I’m still in the system. At the very least, we know how to do it, having done it before.
So we can spend the first month or two getting our sea legs in Spello, assessing the lay of the land. After that time, if regional borders are safe and open, we can do spontaneous trips throughout Italy. There’s so much we haven’t seen, so much we’re curious about.
If the rest of Europe seems manageable, we can travel further. I can’t imagine we’ll go further than that, but I suppose it’s possible that at the end of the year, things could have settled enough that some further flung countries like Israel and Japan have open borders and feel like reasonable options.
And if that second (or third) coronavirus wave happen and we need to lock-down, we’ll do it in Spello. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you define it), we already have experience with the Umbrian medical system. We have a support network in Spello, we understand it, if there’s a lockdown there, we’ll be okay, even if our antibodies don’t confer immunity.
The family is on board. Keith thinks the permesso plan will have more hiccups than I’m imagining and he’s undoubtedly right. But it’s worth a shot. Gabe says the new plan is fine (particularly if the alternative is staying here), but does vote for getting out of central Italy and, if we can, into parts of Europe we haven’t seen. Sure, we’re all open to keeping an eye out on open borders and using that to define where we go.
Siena feels exactly like I do, that this new plan—it feels like a reward rather than a disappointment. After all, it’s hard to be disappointed when you lose something you no longer want. I mean, yes, I still want to go to Scotland, and a handful of the other countries, mostly ones where I feel I wouldn’t be overwhelmed with novelty. As you know, going to the grocery store is now overwhelming. Imagine not being able to make out the letters on the canned goods.
Adventures, as it turns out, are for people with a lot more bandwidth than I currently have.
So, no. This plan is not disappointing and it doesn’t feel like a consolation prize. In fact, if it works, it feels like winning the lottery we didn’t know we entered. Returning to Spello is the right amount of exciting but also knowable. My heart lifted when Siena echoed my own heart. Then she added that she was so young when we lived in Italy , she wanted to go again, and this time not so scared. She really, really wants to cement the language. She gushed at the thought of staying in Arezzo again and taking fresco lessons from the teacher she loved. This is all to say, she likes this plan best of all.
It’s nice, isn’t it, when you discover that your children have the capacity to turn failure on its head and turn like flowers to the sun?
We’ve been imagining possible destinations in Italy—places we’ve been before and didn’t get to spend enough time. And places we’ve long been curious about. Our ideas…
Places we’ve been and want to spend more time:
Arezzo
Veneto
the Alpine area around Moena
Sicily (we only saw the Trapani peninsula, but fell head over heels in love)
Places we’ve never been and want to explore
There’s a lot to excite curiosity and wonder here—baroque architecture, sun-warmed spicy peppers, walking trails along glacier fed rivers, rustling oceans, dialects, cave dwellings, whitewashed streets. And through it all, Spello as our base to come home to. Spello, even if all other borders are closed to us.
It’s a good plan, a solid plan, if we can stay flexible. After all, there are more constants than variables here. It could work. Nonetheless, I find myself waiting for another pie in the face before the ground underneath me is yanked away.