ARRIVAL

April, 23 20143 armoires,2 sofas,1 sofa bed1 chest of drawers4 bedside tables1 fireside stool1 bathroom stool1 antique bathroom cabinet2 studio desk chairs1 hammer1 electric screwdriver1 bag of nails1 bag of screws1 load of firewood1 old outdoor table2 shelves3 olive trees1 lemon tree2 rosesThere are so many arrivals in life, some of them so upsetting we can’t wait for their departure. But yesterday was one of the good ones. Yesterday we arrived in Tuscany.We actually got here on Wednesday of last week and went straight to work unpacking, rearranging, making lists of what was needed, taking down shelves from here and putting them there, making the shower door from the old metal window shutters we portaged from France, putting up curtains…well, you know, the list is long as is always the case when making a home. And I admit I’m a maniac with it, not only because I have such a clear vision of how I want it to look, but also because I want it to be done so I can enjoy living in it.Making a home is one of those projects the implementation of which I find hard to enjoy. I feel driven, like a bird feathering its nest in time to give birth, flitting about with nails in one pocket, string in another, here a hammer, put the mirror there, no, up a bit on the left and that chair looks terrible there, it has to go; and on and on, while my body is screaming “stop already.” I try, I really do. I make a pot of tea and sit on the couch and within a minute I’m up doing the next thing and the next. Wisdom? Transcendental Meditation? Patience? I practice them all to no avail. I am a madwoman and stubborn with it.All those years ago, when I broke my neck, the neurosurgeon told me that my life would be forever changed and that as I aged I would experience the consequences of the injury. I can see him now, siting at his desk looking straight at me as he spoke and I remember feeling the same shiver of fear I’d felt when some two weeks prior, he had, upon looking at the emergency room X-rays, informed me I would probably never walk again. But he’d been wrong about that and so I decided he was wrong about repercussions later in life. But truth be told, in the 23 years since then it’s been a rare day without pain to some degree. Most of the time, like everyone else, I suck it up and go forward choosing to feel gratitude for life with pain as opposed to no life. But every once in a while there is something that gets the better of me, from a thyroid destroyed by radiation in the weeks following the accident, to neck and shoulder pain as a result of the nerves being flayed on impact, to the latest, and frankly most unacceptable inflammation of wrists and thumbs making the simplest of tasks, like unscrewing a bottle cap, to the manly work of humping boxes of dishes and sacks of earth, unbearable.The latter type of work I have always prided myself capable of, to the extreme. Like moving an upright piano from one side of the room to the other…4 weeks after breaking my neck and while still in the halo vest. So I’ve been a tad pissed these last few days. And frightened. The combination of which drives me to do more in absolute denial of reality. Not to mention that the only thing separating us from our cousins the gorillas, is the thumb.Maybe it was this anger and fear, combined with Ibuprofen that brought on a feeling of absolute dread yesterday morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table unable to see and appreciate how much we’d accomplished in a few days. Instead all I could see was how much more there was to do. I looked out the window to the landscape I love and felt nothing…and then, dread. An, oh, shit, we’ve actually moved here, kind of feeling. We’re not just playing at spending a year in Europe…we’ve actually moved to Tuscany….to a farm…way out in the country. And for one icy moment I thought, what if we’ve made a mistake? Here we are, just the two of us, alone in a foreign land. Now what? And then I saw the cows ambling across the pasture down to their watering whole and the dread was gone.We put the soup up to warm, hung a couple more curtains and then my dear husband said, let’s take a walk. The light was calling and as put on my old boots I stepped into my Tuscan self. We walked past the leccio trees and the red rose bush, opened the lower gate and walked over to the hay barn. Stepping inside its grainy perfume we felt our sap rise, felt the strain of the last couple of weeks disappear into the evening air. Hand in hand we walked down our country road, stopping to watch a flight of birds lit by the low sun, watched as they stitched a silver thread across the landscape, the hills so green it grazes the eyes, the banks of the road a profusion of wild onions, lilac, whitethorn and buttercups.Back home we lit the fire, which had been built for us this winter, and curled up with our soup, followed by local strawberries and cream. I looked around, saw the new couches, the renovated kitchen, the old rugs, the candlelight and suddenly I was home. I mean, really home. Like I’ve never experienced before.It’s a humble home made with love by Silvia and Vincenzo and filled with our love. We have just what we need and no more, and it turns out that living this simply is enriching beyond words.  And what luck that we arrived in time for the annual antique fair. For 4 days our little village was filled with treasures from all over Tuscany. The dealers took over empty shops and cantinas and we found a bunch of things, or as they say here, un sacco di roba, we needed for the house, all of which look like they’ve been here forever.And another piece of luck: in the house adjoining the farm house, some 50 yards from us, lives Giovanni and his wife Maura. Giovanni is a man of all trades, having built our fireplace, installed the bathtub and renovated the kitchen during our absence this winter. Now he is doing all those necessary jobs like shelves and hooks and mending the deck chair and soon he will begin work on making our platform bed with built-in storage drawers.But here’s the thing; we drove up to the house last week, past all the familiar twists and turns, parked the car, came in the gate and stopped in our tracks. There around the pergola and the new patio Silvia and Vincenzo had put a red ribbon, the scissors lying open on the table in readiness for the cutting.It was really in that moment that I came home. It was just too much happiness to absorb and so, in my usual manner, I distracted myself form happiness until the moment arrived when I felt I had earned it.