Ca' di Pesa Magic

Arriving in Tuscany, I felt like a wild child, slurping up sights and smells and colors and texture the way a kid might eat an ice cream cone, inconsistently licking one side, while the colors melted in drips down to the elbows, smeared across the face, sticky and sweet. A stick shift Fiat, circling wild roundabouts in Firenze, careening free into a tidy countryside punctuated with even rows and lines and dots and trees, up steep slopes and down again, creating patterns across the landscape like knitted practice triangles of green wooly felts and fabrics. Dotted within this tapestry were houses the color of butter and marigolds and buttercups or ones built of thick rectangular stones, threaded with ochres and rust and bone. Tiny windows within towers conjured images of imprisoned princesses in billowing dresses made of jewel-toned velvet.The smell of spring flowers was mixed with dust and fir with a finish of olive-y headiness.Fiat and I bumped along roads created from chunks of ancient shale and dust, pitted and undulating and weaving us into a rhythm of the place until we reached a tall spiky gate, within which was another tower, a courtyard, the up-close tapestry of stakes and vines and silvery olive trees tidy as a line of saluting soldiers.And then a whirl of colorful dresses and suitcases and greetings and perfumes and puppies and cool, frescoed rooms and stone floors that defied the sound of our footsteps. And overwhelming awe and a desire to gobble down the ice cream cone all at once, but the knowledge that it will be savored over an entire week.And savored, we have. There are no words to describe the experiences we shared, our new sisterhood. Lavanaya, our fearless guide on this journey explained that trying to relay the experience to friends and family would be like showing the beauty of a rose by plucking off each petal. It can't be done and so I won't try. These words will need to suffice.The ice cream experience became a reality during a quick afternoon in Florence, eating gelato (twice!), becoming that kid not just devouring the gelato, but also the statues, the people, the colors, the smells. I bought a ring, a flower created from a pearl surrounded by 11 (seriously?) moonstones. I drank Aperol on the terrace of The Savoy Hotel with my new Tuscan sisters, rejoicing them and lamenting them at once. How to say goodbye?The week has flown by in a warm breeze of smell and color and food and tears and friendship and love and fearlessness and dancing and skinny dipping and pushing ourselves to an edge we didn't know existed. I have been looking for this edge, knowing it was out there, and learning recently that sometimes you must go past the edge to be able to then turn and see it. This has been a week of going past the edge. An experience for which words are inadequate.During my homeward bound stopover in Paris, unable to find the M gates, I met an equally lost South Korean man returning to Kansas where he was studying law. He'd been Berlin where he'd attended the concert of a woman he loved. As we each fumbled our way through another security checkpoint, he told me the story of his father who had fled North Korea, a heartbreaking story of lost love, and a journey back to North Korea fifty years later only to find his wife had died 6 months prior. He told me of his love for the violinist, the beautiful things he did for her, despite the love not being reciprocal. Loving her regardless was a choice he was certain in. I was struck by this man's and this man's father's incredible ability to love despite all odds and hardships.In the craziness of my arrival back in the states, in the hot International entry hall, I pulled off clothing and only when I reached home did I realize I had lost the ring. An odd heartbreak for an object I only possessed for less than 24 hours.What I have found on this trip is the reminder that to go deep requires letting go of resistance, dropping barriers, feeling pain, releasing emotions in all their ugliness, loving with a full heart despite the risks. But mostly what I was reminded (as I am again and again) was to savor every fleeting moment.I will not soon forget this week, my new soul sisters, my ring, DJ, my stopover friend. Deep connections can come over the course of a week, or over a 45-minute stopover if you are willing to allow the colors drip to your elbows and let the magic in, with gratitude.