I’ve been doing the writer thing for a while now. So, I like to think I know my way around verbs and nouns, and yet…I have not been able to write about the last two weeks. Not a word, since our release from quarantine. I’ve tried. I have. But every time I sit down to write, my heart feels too full and my head feels too empty. It’s a curious sensation.

The best I can figure, what makes writing complicated right now is that my life is made up of moments too small to mention and, at the same time, too big to explain.

Running my hands over the ancient pink walls…

Pausing every time I hear the church bells, unable to speak until they finish sending their rhythm over the cobblestones…

Greeting cats and laughing at their ways…

Raising a glass with friends new and old…

Walking Gabe to his first Italian lesson with Angelo…

Laughing with the old men who tell us we are “sempre in giro”…

The intake of breath as a storm rolls over the Chiona valley…

Inhaling flavors I haven’t enjoyed in years—a good Sagrantino that hasn’t flown across the ocean, fresh pasta with guanciale and asparagus, the simplicity of unsalted bread drenched in good Spellani olive oil.

It’s a life of simple gifts. But that simplicity belies the incredible power inherent in our mornings and afternoons connecting with this town we call home. It brings to mind that pulse of gold that outlines a landscape as the sun sends a last burst across a permission-hued sky. Intense, and at the same time, impossible to describe without sounding banal.

I still can’t believe we’re here.

I’m falling back into the arms of Spello as if we’ll never leave.

I rarely think past the next meal (today, eggplants glow duskily alongside a tender square of fresh ricotta salata for a simple pasta alla norma).

It’s funny though, isn’t it? During quarantine, I had no problem writing about my life. Now I wonder if those posts were threaded with anticipation, a thrum of propulsion, which I cope best with by writing. Plus, during quarantine, I could at least pretend to have some problems. I fooled no one, but I could pretend. Remember? The tales of mosquitoes and (gasp) running out of produce? 

Now… well, our days are pretty idyllic, and writing about endless beautiful moments, that’s like writing about one jewel-toned wave after another, rustling against a waiting stretch of sand.

In other words, my life seems best covered by a social media post, particularly with a photograph. Not a chapter. There’s just not enough conflict for a chapter. 

I mean, I guess it’s frustrating that the rooster brigade takes up their call and response while it’s still dark. But, honestly? Those are just words. I actually wouldn’t change it for anything.

So…what is there to say?

No, I mean it.

That’s not rhetorical.

What can I say, here, in this blog? What can I write of any import? What can I write that I could eventually turn into a book?

Even as I type these words, I hear a whisper, fluttering silver and green like the olive leaves I’ve re-fallen in love with.

Maybe…maybe my old chaotic habits are dying hard, even in this place that tugs at my serenity. Just maybe this wrestling with words is my old self pacing, hurrying a process that doesn’t need to be hurried. After all, it’s not like when I started my Il Bel Centro blog I thought I had something “important” to say. Rather, I sat down and I began and I let the story tell itself. No pressure, no expectations. Nobody read my words back then anyway. I only had to give myself space to let the words unspool themselves.

Until I found my message. 

Speaking of Il Bel Centro, it’s funny that amongst ourselves we’ve been referring to this year as IBC2 (that is, since we abandoned calling it, with varying degrees of forced optimism, “our world travel year”). But it can’t be IBC2, can it? 

Even just from a practical perspective. Say that we never leave Italy, thus setting the stage for digging back into the beautiful center… still, the pandemic provides its own antagonist. The world may well come crashing down and there is a decent chance we may see more of our terrazza than we see of anywhere else.

That would be a short memoir, I suppose. 

Beyond logistics, a “take two” is just not possible, nor would it be interesting. We know the language and the community enough to muddle through, the kids won’t be in school—so many of our “peach out of water” experiences that I felt such urgency to get down on paper simply won’t be present. In that sense, trying to replicate IBC will essentially create IBC-lite. This is particularly so given that the children are older (can you believe Gabe is now the age Nicolas was when we first moved to Spello?) and now it seems a boundary violation to narrate their journey. We all agree, one year of their lives on display was enough. This can’t really be about them.

So, IBC2 this will not be.

Angelo still wants to write a book together, telling the tales and legends and histories of the area. Our friends Max and Cristiana think this time around, I should focus on the stories of people who shepherd our foods from earth to table. It won’t shock you to learn I’m very into this. Both thoughts, twined together…a love letter to Umbria, rather than Spello.

A grand idea. But, then again, I think my trying to figure out what this is going to be is the exact thing getting in my way. Expectations, man, they get you every time, don’t they?

Because I’m also feeling an expectation that I’m never supposed to complain about anything. I’m very aware that we get to live in Italy, in a time when Americans are starved for international travel of any sort. I can feel the expectation on me to never grumble. Easy enough right now, when my life seems to glisten on gossamer wings. But eventually, I may grow tired of that rooster and I may tell you about that. It doesn’t mean that I’m not grateful to be here. I’ll complain for the same reason that sometimes you complain about someone being rude at the grocery store rather than feeling grateful that you can go to the grocery store. 

We are blessed. My current blessing includes sweeping views and ready access to fresh mozzarella, but we are all blessed. Let’s never lose sight of that. But let’s also allow for some bad days. Anyway, one thing I can guarantee you, if I did nothing but gush, you would not enjoy it. If you think you would, let me refer you to a number of memoirs that I myself discarded because I got so bored with all the cheerful sorts who did one cheerful thing after another. I’m all about feeling all the feels, and I hate it when people pretend to never have a negative emotion. How can that be? I’m riddled with emotions. Pretending otherwise is just stupid. 

I will have bad days when something goes wrong or I just feel wrong. I know that at some point the charm of any existence necessarily loses intensity. It’s all of our jobs, isn’t it, to allow those feelings while never losing sight of how lucky we are. Because we are lucky. 

Unbearably lucky. 


Even if that’s hard to write, or read, or even feel, all the time.

These last two weeks where I’ve written nothing, I guess I needed them to just be. To not have to think about what things mean or how to explain them. I needed time to settle in, to collect myself without worrying about how to couch my phrases to convey a theme. I needed to connect with people in a time when I can still see the suffering of the past half year etched on their faces. I needed to find my feet before I could show anyone the way through my tenderness.

This is all to say, I‘m realizing that this isn’t the time to figure out what the end of the road might look like or what landmarks of expectation point the way. Rather, I need to get back to basics. To live, and write about that living. And let the road take me where it may.

And isn’t that, too, true of all of us? Whether or not we’re traveling? We, all of us, sometimes need to let the road take us where it may.