Italia: Getting to Lucca
Travel strips us down and rebuilds us through wonder. Moving strips us down too, but not a lot of wonder happening in that experience. Not until you get to the other side. The Cancerian Crab in me packs too much and turns my shell to the mobile setting so that I’m a contained little unit who likes to engage on my terms. As a mom, traveling became all about making sure destinations were packed with activities and accommodations catered to making a family unit happy. As a solo traveler, I’m ready to eat at gas stations and sleep on stoops eager to fill myself up on moments dedicated to just my wonder.
Traveling with kids in tow the anxiety of trying to find my way is lessened as I step into Supreme Protector mode. I’m somehow more confident and capable when I have children to oversee. As a solo traveler, I found that I’m more scattered and unsure. By the time I hit the Florence train station, I had been traveling for 10 hours (airport sitting, red eye to Germany, etc.) and was a bit blurry. Stepping in front of the moving airport tram, I realized that perhaps I needed a bit of grounding before carrying on. Not a lot of signage in Italy (as I’m learning), but was able to deduce the building with the stream of people was the train station. I found an elderly woman fighting the stream and followed her inside.
Duolingo is a brilliant language app that somehow makes the daunting task of absorbing verb tense, pronoun usage, etc. quite manageable. However, after three weeks of practice and achieving Gold Level status, I could expertly tell someone, “Il cavello legge il giornale” (the horse reads the newspaper), but I had no idea how to say, “which train to Lucca”, “how much does this cost” or “I don’t know”. In the whirl of the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station, this irony was only heightened by the multiple lost Italians who thought I was native and kept asking me for directions. Of course, I did what any good (former) Californian would do, I responded, “No sé.”
The worst part of the Firenze train station was missing a train because tracks 1-4 are actually hidden behind track 5 (again, no signage). The best part of the Firenze train station was succumbing to my starvation and purchasing a sandwich for the train—prosciutto, salty cheese and arugula on crusty loaf of bread—eating it and hoping that everything I’d heard was true: a wheat intolerance will not be an issue in Europe. Exhausted, nauseous from hunger, I tentatively ate half, neurotically chewing as if breaking down the gluten with my teeth would make it hurt less. Only when I was already three bites in did I realize I had no idea if there was a bathroom on the train or even how I would drag a carry-on suitcase and backpack into one. I rode for two train stops, inhaled the other half and waited. Nothing. No stomach pains, no lower GI destruction. I might never go home.
Arriving in Lucca was like stepping into a movie set: families and friends reuniting on the train platforms, whistles blowing, tiny fashionable dogs being dragged this way and that. Toni and Kali met me with hugs and smiles. After 11 hours of strangers and foreign words, they felt like like home.
This trip for me is about coming back to me. For the last month, I have been living in a city that I knew before I was a wife or a mother. We both have changed; new areas of growth, scars deposited by life and time. Gluten, dairy, wine, nights that last into the wee hours… all the things that I have avoided to maintain a balance, a composure. Control. It’s time for me to let Italy take the wheel for a while. Time to let go.
“Sì, mangio la crema al cioccolato.”
Highlights thus far:
Boston Logan is not LAX. No one in line at TSA and $16 for a Legal Seafood airport salad with grilled salmon!
The face on the woman when I exited the toilet stall at Dulles airport after she’d clearly heard me recording a Motivational Lemon.
Flying through Frankfurt and finding my college German coming back, only to mix with my recent Italian lessons and high school French so that the only sentences I could form were, “Ich besoin de cibo”.
The joy on the face of the Air Dolomiti airline hostess when I didn’t want the “American coffee” and instead wanted the “eh-spresssss-o”.
The pistachio cream pasta, the lard with truffle and Monica, the trans waitress at Tavolo de Lucca.
Eating gluten AND NOT DYING!
