On Italy, Resilience, and Happy Endings

Hey hey hey! We’re back from Italy! We’ve been back for a couple of weeks, actually, but it’s taken me this long to gather and process my thoughts and, you know, sit my butt down at the computer. Re-assimilation is hard, y’all.

I promise I’ll have some recipes up soon – and oh, do I have some good stuff for you – but for now I wanted to do a general recap and share some photos.

First things first:  those of you who follow my Instagram or Facebook feeds may have seen me allude to some, er, challenges on our trip. Well, yes. Our journey started out with a major thunderstorm which resulted in us missing our direct flight to Rome (lesson learned:  never leave less than three hours for an international connection in Chicago, no matter what time of year). Thankfully, we were able to book a new flight and were soon on our way. Upon which we experienced our next hiccup, and it was a doozy:  during our overnight flight, David began to experience a loss of vision in one of his eyes. Our frantic googling revealed this to be, most likely, a detached retina, which meant he’d need immediate surgery. In Italy.

Upon landing in Rome the next afternoon, we zipped straight to the emergency room, where we waited four hours for a doctor to confirm that, yes, he would need surgery, and sorry, but they wouldn’t be able to get him in for several days. They told David to go to our apartment, lie flat on his back for the weekend, and come back Monday to see when we might be able to see a surgeon. When we said, “Yeah, but …. we’re supposed to be married in six days,” the doc responded with, “you’d probably better cancel your wedding.” Which we did. I got on the phone and called off the ceremony, officiant, hotel, musicians, flowers, and photographer.

Cue first sobbing, then deep breathing, meditation, and purposeful focus not on what was going wrong, but on what we had to be thankful for. Which for me, was being with David and my sister and brother-in-law (who, as seen below, cooked for us, ferried our luggage ,and generally supported us through all of this). And knowing how lucky we were that David’s eye was fixable and this wasn’t worse.

Our mantra became, “It’s not what happens to you; it’s how you handle it.” We resigned ourselves to staying in Rome a little longer than planned (not the worst thing ever, right?) and taking each day as it came.

At that point our luck began to turn. Our amazing, wonderful angel of an Air BnB host somehow hooked us up with the best eye surgeon in Rome, who took our call at 11pm on a weekend night, squeezed us into his schedule early the next week, and personally performed David’s surgery. And, after evaluating David the next day, made the surprise announcement that hey, the healing was going so well that we should go ahead and continue our travels after all. What? Mind you, this was the DAY BEFORE our (now canceled) wedding was to have taken place.

David and I looked at each other and said, “Are we crazy to see if … we can still pull it off?” To which we answered ourselves, “Yes! We are crazy! But let’s try anyway.”

And miraculously, we did it. With a lot of help from several wonderful Italian people, in about an hour, we’d re-booked the hotel, officiant, musicians, photographer, flowers, and dinner. And then we hot-footed it to the train station and headed for the Amalfi Coast, where we got married the next day, overlooking the Mediterranean, with Bach’s Sleepers Awake on cello, a full strawberry moon rising above us, enveloped in a crazy cocoon of love and joy.

We went on to have a deliriously wonderful honeymoon in Tuscany, Florence, Cinque Terre, and Milan, where we marveled at art and architecture, hiked, relaxed, and ate. And drank wine. And ate.

Which brings us back around, at last, to cooking. Although it’s taken me a while to put our story on the blog since we got home, I have definitely been motivated to cook – Italian-style, ovviamente – mostly experimenting with making fresh pasta and gelato. But I have lots more to tell you about. I tried some things that were completely new to me and had mind-blowing versions of some classic dishes. I can’t wait to share it all with you.

In the meantime, I continue to focus on gratitude and appreciation for this life and all its joys. We didn’t have the trip we planned, but we sure had the trip of a lifetime. And we’re happily married – maybe a few pounds heavier and a little fuzzy in one eye – but together. Amen.