Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.~Zen Proverb

Today Giovanni and I celebrate nineteen years of marriage. Our relationship carries the amalgam of vibrant romance, brazen conflict and two wildly different cultures. And we remain together despite this conglomeration of fragrance and thorns.

We are in Giovanni's country. Last week we rode the motorcycle across the Italian countryside. Fields of tomatoes flashed past us--red orbs gleaming amidst verdant meadows. Tractors amended the earth. Lavender mountains sat propped against the horizon, sun sliding onto their glorious faces. Castle turrets soared into cerulean skies.  Still our love story unfurls across the years.

Yet marriage is deeply anointed by the oil of incremental daily steps.

I have always loved a window, especially an open one.~Wendell Berry

I love the windows in this Italian house--tall and elegant in their simplicity. This early morning I can see the sky. A smooth blue palette shimmering through an opening in the lace curtain. A breeze filters in and grazes my cheek, though it will be hot this afternoon. For now, I drink in the view and remember there is a family who lives across the courtyard. I can hear a child singing from their bright orange house. A sound of life, of joy.

Looking through this window provides me a burst of hope. All that light spilling in anchors me for the day. I open my Bible and read: For God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. (II Tim. 1:7, NLT}.

Writing is a way to salvage life, to give it form and meaning. It exposes what we have hidden, unearths what we have neglected, misremembered, denied. It is a method of capturing, of pinning down, but it is also a form of truth, of liberation.~Jhumpa Lahiri (From Ties)

When I come to Italy, I pull back the curtain once again and examine my relationship with this culture. I long to find a sense of myself here, piece myself together in way that doesn't feel so awkward. But maybe I've just become so good at playacting in my own culture that all is well with me that I'm disabled in another culture. I can't do that here in this lovely country.

We're here living in a stone house with rose-colored walls. Purple oleanders  bloom in pots outside our door. Dappled light saturates the path where my husband and I ride our bikes to buy bread and vegetables. We travel to free concerts held in the town square, listening to classical music under a blue moon. Once in a blue moon, I think. Literally. That moon that caused the tides to swell and flood the streets while we've been away from Charleston.

That is how you know you're existing in the world, the uncertainty. Of course, that is why we sometimes want to return to the past, because we know it, or think we do. It is a song we've heard.~Matt Haig (From How To Stop Time)

The feeling caught me off guard. I drove downtown Charleston where I used to work. I recognized the ornate iron gates I passed when I walked to the Medical University for meetings, the Starbucks where I'd take a break and get a coffee. Even the parking garage seemed like an old friend. I parked for years there, often on the top floor so I could watch the sunrise before heading into work. I felt threads of sadness. All that life finished. And completed well. A good chapter in my life. Yet my workplace is not even located downtown now. Colleagues gone on to other endeavors. Some have died. While I wouldn't go back, can't go back, the past pulls on me, tugs at me to think of the familiar routine, romanticize what was. Like flipping through old LPs at a record store, yearning to find music that I know. Songs I've heard.

I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I'm going.~Anna Funder

The boy burst into my life with two backpacks full of plastic train tracks and myriad miniature train engines that he enthusiastically emptied in the middle of my living room. "I love trains," he exclaimed. "Wow," I said. "You have a lot of tracks and engines that you brought over." He beamed at me, blue eyes sparkling behind a fringe of blond bangs. The boy, I'll call Marco, (to protect his confidentiality) and I planned to collaborate in an effort to increase his reading skills. I wasn't sure where to go with the agenda, but I knew it would need to include trains.

I said, "Marco, what are you going to do with all these train parts?" He said, "Miss Priscilla, I'm going to build a track for my trains to run on."

"Great! Show me," I said. I thought to myself, "Get to know him, Priscilla. Pay attention. Learn why he loves trains so much. Learn from him. Put away your agenda.

In about twenty minutes Marco constructed a complex train track. And while expertly connecting the tracks he told me about his favorite engines that he placed at various stations. And it was then that an idea came to me. God's leading, no doubt. "Marco, why don't I put the reading cards around the track at all your stations? When your engines move to that station, you can read the cards. "Ms. Priscilla, that's a great idea. We can have a vowel party!"