SURPRISE, SURPRISE11

Life is full of surprises, isn’t it? And like many truisms that have become cliché, it’s a statement that often induces eye-rolling mutters, allowing us to over-ride a moment of awareness as to how some surprises, while hardly life-threatening, nonetheless cause discomfort.

Discomfort, like disease, is a word worth taking another look at, in that the first syllable negates the second. So I was surprised this morning to feel discomfort mixed with a sense of displacement and dissatisfaction that led to disbelief. How could I possibly be feeling so blue waking up to Joel by my side, the day soft and warm, breakfast in bed and all of Italy on vacation; today being yet another of the many festa’s for which this country comes to a complete commercial standstill?

I had a niggling feeling as to the cause of the sadness but, finding it unacceptably surprising, I managed for a few minutes to re-route it by reading book reviews which led me to a seat on the pity pot from whence I wailed to Joel “I didn’t even get an agent. 22 years of submitting work and not even an agent.” Joel dutifully commiserated which was of no help because I knew it was tired old shit. So I got off the pot and let myself experience the true source of the sadness: I missed my daughter and the rest of our family in whose loving embrace we had just spent a week. But that’s not what surprised me. What surprised me was the feeling of having made a mistake; living in a foreign country, the two of us alone on this National holiday; the startling realization that we are without family in a country that’s all about family. To allow, even for one second, entertaining the possibility of having made a mistake of such enormity was so frightening it was easier to just remain namelessly sad. Suddenly the surprise became multifaceted and contradictory:

How could we have chosen place over family?

How could we live in such beauty and be sad?

How could we have spent so much time and money on making a home so far from everyone we knew?

How would we grow old (er) here?

How could we live in a place where the only people we know don’t speak English?

And as the sense of loneliness grew I found myself up to my old tricks: Start focusing on the negative Maggie and maybe you can talk yourself out of being here. Fucking cherry tree. First the frost kills the blossoms, then the ants attack the roots, now the leaves are clogged with what look like blackheads but which are actually some kind of leaf-destroying-evil insect. The frigging clover not only survived it grew so tall while we were away that we had to mow it yesterday and now it’s turning yellow. And what the feck is with all the bloody anthills around here? And now I find out they harvest aphids, which would explain why I had to murder an infestation of them on all the roses the day we returned. And why, for chrissakes, did the bathroom renovation not get finished as promised while we were in New York? What are we on Tuscan time here? Of course, the slip covers aren’t ready, you’re living in Italy. And really, could the neighbor who made the new bookcase not have waited until we got our suitcases in the door before delivering the damn thing…and installing it while we tried to unpack. Of course we’ve made a mistake!!!!

But here’s the thing: the mistake is not that we moved to Tuscany; (you can, as we did for some years, live close to family and yet not really be close. What’s sad-making is that now we are such a great family! ) Our mistake is really about not recognizing, once again, that you can’t have it all, or do it all. As Joel gently reminded me today, we flew to New York where, besides spending joyous time with the kids we also each had two dental visits, went to 2 museums, had dinner with friends, took in a movie, went to the theatre, picnicked in the park, met my daughter’s partner’s parents for the first time, went to an art opening, met with our accountant and attended several other business meetings. Then we got on a plane with stewards who looked and acted as tired as we felt, flew through the night, got stuck in a traffic jam between Rome and home and then, finding home to be in need of work, rolled up our sleeves and went to it.

Surprise! We’re tired!

Surprise! We ain’t as young as we used to be!

Surprise! It’s possible to live in paradise and feel like hell!

Surprise! All we had to do to stop feeling sad was give ourselves permission to join in the national holiday of our chosen country, get out of bed, and sit in the middle of the biggest surprise of all…living on a farm in Tuscany!