Ch-Ch-Changes

On bittersweet goodbyes

As I pack up my apartment, I find myself wrapped in a bittersweet tenderness toward the city that became my creative cradle. I am always both unsettled and comforted by the thought that we believe the world is constantly changing, when in truth it is our perception that shifts the most over time. Milan looks entirely different to me now, years after I first arrived — and while the city has changed, it is really I who have transformed the most.

A little over a year ago, in a small town in Pennsylvania, I found May Sarton’s Plant Dreaming Deep in the basement of a free public library. Neither of us had any particular reason to be there, yet one lazy afternoon we unexpectedly found ourselves in the same quiet corner of a sleepy main street. Two souls, diverged in a sea of yellowing wood. I don’t know whose hands let the book go, but it found mine at the moment they most needed something to hold onto.

In Plant Dreaming Deep, Sarton chronicles her journey of buying a house in a small New Hampshire town and slowly shaping it into her home. I had just purchased my first house in a village of fifteen in Northern Tuscany, and felt paralyzed with nerves of what to do next. Reading Sarton’s reflections on nature and solitude in the 1960s, as a single woman carving out a life for herself in a small town in America (she was born in Belgium), made me feel less alone. Instead of a crazy American in Europe with little understanding of homeownership in a foreign country, let alone her own, I was following in the footsteps of a great and courageous poet who had attempted a similar adventure some sixty years prior.

I couldn’t begin to count the plethora of pleasurable moments that Milan has brought me. A man walking down the street in perfectly coordinated shades of soft cement, like he had just sprung up from the sidewalk itself. A little knitted beanie with personality filled to it’s tightly-knitted brim–what a life to be able to follow such mysterious characters! Even if only for a block or two…

And just when you think there is nothing left to uncover, the slight change of location in the same town brings with it a surplus of new scenes. After returning the keys to my Milan apartment, I spent two nights in a hotel only ten minutes away, and suddenly there was a sea of new sidewalks just waiting for me to traverse. A bright yellow cropped bathrobe with a happy bow in the most decadently piled chenille, practically beamed at me through the window of a small shop. Reminding me that there are always new facades to be explored if the right eyes are ready to discover.

It’s so tough to continually give ourselves the chance to change, particularly as we get older. I often feel like I’m in the center of a seesaw that’s teetering between the familiar and foreign. Routines are formed and roots are planted, yet as the years pass by, I find myself more willing to leap without knowing exactly where I’ll land. I find the unknown scares me less, because even past explorations that proved to be tumbles, still brought with them great wisdom. Jumping is an act filled with equal measures fear and hope. Fear of the unknown, and hope that the courage to leap will carry us somewhere higher. As it so often does.

On the last day in my now old neighborhood, I went from street to street with a disposable camera, taking photos of all the little moments I knew I’d miss the most. My favorite trees. My favorite tiles. “The importance of this era must be preserved!” I told Charlie and Aurora as we walked along. We stopped to admire the spiraled white window bars on one of my favorite buildings on Via Pistrucci. The subtle beauty of Calvairate was never lost on me. Of all the places I lived, none ever felt as much my home as this place did.

I had started my journey in Milan on Via Pietro Mascagni, followed by Via Spartaco, where my independence began to take flight. I finally landed just outside Viale Umbria, in a world all my own. That wonderful 1950s building hidden behind the two tall pines. My local sartoria, lavanderia, pasticceria, trattoria–and all of the other rias that constituted my home! The neighbors I saw everyday on the street or in the bar. The barista that practiced her english with me. The post office where the Italians and I waited impatiently as the dogs played in the sunlight. The cast shadow of the smiling gelsomina (jasmine) archway that greeted me at my entrance and it’s light filled orb eyes that kept watch over my evenings.

When I first arrived in Milan four years ago, I had started in the center and slowly over the years always inched outwards until my burgeoning wings followed a particular sea breeze one day. And now, as I rest my appendages on the hilltop mountains of northern Tuscany, I wonder what lessons this new adventure, and home, is waiting to teach me.

On the day I moved into my final apartment in Milan, my cleaning lady, Dodo, arrived with buckets and gloves to help me polish the light into every corner. As she opened cabinets, she confirmed my intuition that the energy here was good. Dodo knows about these things. She just does.

All I can hope is that the next person, sees how special this place is. I mean, really sees it.

Will they watch the shadows cast from the curtains? Will they hear the melodic song of the merlo (blackbird) who lives in the tall pine tree in the front garden? Will they sleep with the terrace doors open, as I did through the spring? Will they use that soft birdsong in lieu of an alarm to gently wake them from their sleep?

Will they understand the importance of this place and all the creative potential that it holds?

A week ago the magnolia flowers just outside my balcony were firmly held to their branches. Now they fall, petal by petal, until the tree, which once was so full, is now almost bare.

And so, it is time to go.

x

Jenny