ok…the decision has finally been made.

After much teeth gnashing and an almost rabid desire to stay in Florence, I have decided to bite the bullet and live the quintessential Tuscan cliché. Effective mid February, (enough time to no-so-hectically pack up my things and beg every car driving Florentine I know to serve as pack-mule and courier), Passerotto’s new nest will be situated up on an Etruscan hillside, underneath the slightly over-photographed, much scribbled about Tuscan sun.

I have been thinking about this hard since November….hemming and hawing betwixt my love for Firenze: its character (not to mention openness to flakes like myself) and my dwindling bank account; worrying if by leaving, I am selling out on my dreams of living here successfully or if in staying, I am allowing myself to give in to some overly stubborn, self-indulgent prideful “I said I wanted to stay…now dang it, I’m staying!” mentality.

Firenze is a lovely courtesan, and as these lovely ladies are prone to do…. she has charmed me with her “furba” ways. As my first real “home” in Italy she seduced me completely. Like some sea weary sailor half starved for loving, she intoxicated me with her warmth, pulling back her colourful silken sheets exposing long naked legs beneath.

By welcoming me, letting me tweeze aside those carefully placed (and ever so touristy) renaissance gowns, I fell in love with all that is her vulnerability; plunging into her silky spoken Florentine-ness, her less than perfect sense of rhythm, her openly boastful, ever so indulgent sense of pride and self importance. So enamored, that even when she overcharges me……like some starry eyed John….I smile and accept her kisses gratefully. For it is here in this Florence, not the venue most tourists stop on for a few days to admire, that I have always imagined myself being. And it has been here, where I have, in fact, felt at home, itchy feet and all. So in choosing to leave, I wonder if there will ever be another place where I can feel so warm, both inside (in my soul) and out.

But on a practical side, one year after my arrival to Italy, reality sometimes glaringly intrudes and more often than not, bites me on the ass. And on the rainy January, I find that instead of enjoying the life I have tried so hard to scratch out for myself here, I am juggling three jobs whilst trying to justify why I pay rent three times the average of any other Italian city. And even as other tired expatriates in this city say “yeah but others don’t have the Duomo to look at every day” I realize that at my age, I really don’t feel the overwhelming need to prove myself to anyone anymore and like may suburban fleeing Italians before me, I am coming to realize that “Il Centro” just isn’t practical. I want to set aside enough money to hold my head high and not forever be ducking for cover, something I am only dreaming about in the here and now.

When I came to Italy last February, I came with the conviction to write more, to get these three books running around inside my head and on thousands of sheets of paper into something finely tuned (and hopefully published) and to learn the language (that I love so much!) so that it isn’t always glaringly obvious that I hale from America’s heartland. I left DC because I craved body and soul, what the Italian mentality had to offer. I was tired of my plane crashing, sniper shooting existence in Washington and I needed to improve my health and slow down to a more realistic, European speed. I chose Florence because I have always felt loved here and despite all, that has not changed.

It just seems that in this transition year, my life has instead taken on an existence remarkably similar to some really bad B movie of living life ala Ellis Island in reverse.

“Italy, the land of writer’s opportunity!”

And while my own émigré scenario hasn’t been replete with sweathouse sewing factories, I definitely haven’t had much time to enjoy what it is I came here searching for. And while I haven’t yet been reduced to my friend Maria’s biggest fear of selling rubber ducks in Duomo square, I have in fact, gratefully taken on jobs, that just two yeas ago I wouldn’t have given a second thought to.

Staying in Italy, even with the proper documents is hard. One doesn’t shoot for jobs where one feels self-actualized, complete with signing bonuses and stock options. Work is harder, yet simpler here and infinitely more humbly, I have gratefully accepted just about anything where added together with everything else, one is able to put the bread with the onions.

So, despite my former six figured saleswoman salary, like Jim Joyce teaching English for a mezzo liter of house wine, I have become comfortable selling apples at the central market, writing the occasional short snippet for this or that and cooking up any and all schemes possible that will allow me to continue to live in this country I love, where even in this constantly tired state, I feel myself more alive than I ever did on my hamster wheel in Washington.

And while this philosophy has its charm at twenty, at forty it takes on a less practical look, five years into my aging future. I cannot work at this pace when I am 60, so I better figure out something now, whilst I still have the time and where-with-all to make something of all these fanciful dreams. I want a life here that has some permanence, not a moment to moment feel, and maybe to accomplish that means taking a step into an area a little more remote and a lot more outside my comfort zone.

So almost one year to the day of my arrival in Florence, I will face this realigned view of life in Italy without the stars in my eyes naiveté of someone just off the plane. I won’t pretend at staying, but continue with knuckled down determination, no matter how far a field it takes me, armed with the knowledge determination to make a go of it for a lifetime in this country. Staying not just when its new and sweetly romantic, not just when its easy, but even when it’s the hardest damned thing I have ever done (save giving birth to two children) And knowing that in doing so, despite the change of locale, I have the rest of my lifetime to learn and love and live in this country that I adore so much.

Cortona is a little over an hour from Firenze…….and I am not leaving my dreams behind, just merely looking at living them through more pragmatic (and maybe for the first time, economically realistic) Italian eyes. With batteries recharged, perhaps I can get begin to enjoy Tuscany, the way I did in those first excited days of being here.

And for those reading this……come and see me sometime…..I will always have a warm plate of pasta and stories to tell.