New Homes Begin

To belong, even briefly, is a profound kind of comfort. I’ve known it in New York and Milan, and now I’m setting out to find it again, this time between the California coast and the hills of Tuscany, (pinches self.)

I remember the first time someone asked me for directions in New York.
“Which way is Union Square?” I was eighteen years old, on 6th ave and 14th st, and six months into the city. My eyebrows shot up as I grinned and pointed east. “That way! It’s that way!”

Milan felt like home almost immediately. Every morning, from my corner of the bar, I watched as the baristas greeted each guest with a bright “Buongiorno,” as if gently waking them from their sleep. While the espressos helped, I always had a sneaking suspicion that it was the warmth of their greeting that did most of the waking.

Milan instantly revealed her character to me. The parks and their oddly grouped, propped-up and sloping pines mixed between shiny magnolia trees. The brightly tiled facades glistening in the late afternoon sun. I fioristi and their overflowing offerings. The endless treat tours the dogs slowly constructed for us over the years. Starting promptly each morning around 7:30 AM, Charlie and Aurora would thoughtfully lead me from my bed through our neighborhood, starting at the bar (cookie), to the grocery (cookie), to the pet store (another cookie), the pharmacy (final cookie) back to another bar (final, final cookie). By the time I moved out last month, my daily caffeine intake had tripled, purely based on bars with biscuits.

Milan has a reputation for being slow to open to foreigners, but once it begins to unfurl, you realize just how small of a city it is. Before you know it, everyone starts to feel like a vicino, which is the word for “neighbor”, but also “nearby”.

A few weeks ago a man shouted at me from the sidewalk, “È rosso anche per le bici!!” as I slowly rode through a nearly empty Piazza Cinque Giornate. It took me a moment to realize he meant the light was red—and that I was expected to stop, even on a bike, even with no one around. Technically, he was right, but as someone who rides their bike at the speed of an old person out for a very thoughtful stroll, it was a bit harsh. But I didn’t mind. I was too busy feeling proud that I had actually understood him. “Oh! I see what you were saying there!” My eyes communicated as my head whipped around. Nothing says progress in a foreign country like getting yelled at in the native language and thinking, “Wow, I got all of that.”