A Place

Everyone has a place where they belong…
(Or something like that…)
~ Unknown

The year that we moved from Las Vegas to Nashville, a friend tried to cheer a bereft me up by sending me a short essay in which the writer stated that everyone has a place where they belong…. It could be the sea or the mountains, the desert or the ocean, the city or the country. They might search forever and never find it, or it might be the place they were born. You get the drift. I lost the darn thing, and try as I may, I have never been able to find the essay online.

At any rate, the friend who sent that to me said that Las Vegas was probably my place, and that I would eventually get back there. My crying would stop, and I would be “home.” I thought he was right.

We were both wrong.

As much as I love Las Vegas, I have found it is not the place where I “belong.” Yes, I feel somewhat at home there….more than in Ohio (no offense to any of my family or friends there)…..more than in Nashville or Atlanta (ditto the no offense thing)….more even than in Florida (triple ditto the no offense).

A Las Vegas friend more recently told me that I am living with one foot in Las Vegas and the other in Italy. If I am living like that, it is with my left foot over here…my heart side….Indeed, when I was going through my breast cancer chemo and radiation and the world’s COVID crap, my biggest fear was that I would never get back to Italy. As sick as I was at times, I knew I wasn’t going to die, but would my world or the global world ever open up again? Who knew what we were facing then?

I’ve spent the last three days (well, two really since I slept most of the first one away) sitting in a piazza or walking the streets of the home of my grandparents. I’ve closed my eyes and listened to the sounds. I’ve talked to my grandmother silently and with whispers as I walked. This is the place of my blood. This is the place I belong.

Please do not misread what I am saying. As I sit and write this, I miss my husband tremendously. I love him and love when he is anywhere with me. But Pettorano….. Italy…. might not be his place. He undoubtedly does not feel a part of it as I do. And therein lies a quandary. I’m just lucky that he understands, and I come over when I can, either alone or with him.

And, I feel at home.

(PS…I wish I could find that darn essay.)