Ben tornati!

Which means "Welcome back!" And despite gray weather and a bit of morning-after disarray, Fidenza felt delightfully welcoming when we arrived a few days ago.

Pam made this sign for us the last time we came. I keep it in our guest room. 

We left California Wednesday at about seven in the evening. The nonstop flight was only eleven hours long, but thanks to the magic of time zones and some truly awful highway traffic around Milan, we arrived in Fidenza a little more than 24 hours later on Thursday night. We'd deliberately arranged to get here the day after the end of the San Donnino Fair, the town's annual five-day blow-out in honor of its decapitated but still ambulatory patron saint. We were in Fidenza for the 2018 edition of the fair, and enjoyed it thoroughly, but we didn't feel we needed to repeat the experience--the noise, the crowds, the overeating--quite so soon.

As we headed to our apartment there was still some fair garbage in the streets, waiting to be picked up, and the main piazza was still full of tents. Although the fair ended on Wednesday, we discovered that the piazza was to be the site of a "Quality Street Food" exposition all weekend. ("Quality Street Food" is not a translation; apparently  the Italians can find no adequate words in their own language for curly fries, odd variations on the theme of pizza, deep-fried olives, greasy samosas, and other delicacies eaten out in the open.) But nothing much was happening on Thursday night and the streets were mostly empty.

Above the quiet street our apartment was waiting for us, so lovely and large and free of historic clutter, dark behind tightly closed blinds but eager to be brought back to life. That had to wait, though, because we were starving--we hadn't eaten anything since Air Italy's rather repulsive breakfast offering hours before--so we dropped our bags and hurried out to meet Pam and Romano at a local pizzeria.

I was exhausted, after sleeping only three hours on the plane, but catching up with Pam and Romano and wolfing down a ricotta, prosciutto, and arugula pizza and a large glass of fizzy red wine temporarily revived me. Our friends, the food, the happy Italians all around us filled me with quiet happiness. How lovely to be back.

I can't entirely explain why the homesickness for California that I felt so acutely, albeit momentarily, when we came here last April isn't at all in evidence this time around. In fact, I was kind of astonished when I reread it just now. I still hold my California friends and my California activities in my heart, but with no sadness, just pleasurable anticipation, knowing I'll be back with them in a few months' time.

I decided a while ago that one point of this bi-continental lifestyle of ours was to teach me to be a bit more willing to accept and even welcome being pushed out of my routines, to worry less about what I'm losing and focus more on all that's being given to me. I realize this sounds preposterously self-pitying; my sufferings, after all, involve the luxury of shuttling between two of the world's best-loved places and, once I'm in either one, doing pretty much exactly what I want. Spoiled brats suffer, too, however, and a temperamental aversion to change is something I struggle with. What better way to force all kinds of change on myself than periodically moving to another country?

In fact I have been working at improving my mindset, trying to use gratitude as an antidote to anxiety and sidestepping (at least sometimes) the temptation to feel that all this moving back and forth is something that the universe or my husband has imposed on me, rather than a choice I've willingly made. So perhaps I'm actually making progress, a pleasant thought.

Or maybe I'm just getting used to this half-and-half life we now seem to be living. Maybe this is my new routine.