My last stop on my tour for Every Day in Tuscany will be 4 and 5 of May, at two libraries in the Minneapolis area.  Tuesday night I’ll be at Washington County Library in Woodbury and Wednesday night at Southdale Library in Edina, both at seven o’ clock.

When I come home on Thursday, I’ll go into departure frenzy: Sunday we leave for summer in Italy.  This requires that the garage is in order, closets are winnowed of clothes not worn, and the pantry is cleared of all sad items past their sale date.  Then there’s my desk to attack. That’s just the beginning.  I sometimes rewrite my will. My daughter makes fun of me, Ed is too busy with his own exit strategy to notice, and by the time I leave, I’d like to be taken to the airport on a stretcher!

Why this zeal overtakes me, I hardly understand. It’s just that Italy still seems so drastically foreign to me, such a break from normal life, that I almost have to tie up everything here perfectly before I can start over there.  It seems that my American house will be abandoned.  Ah, that’s it, the old fear of abandonment! (My father died when I was fourteen.)  And all that ocean between!  Travel always seems drastic.  But as the plane lowers over the Rome airport and I first see the sheep in the green fields and the toast-colored houses half as old as time, a deep familiarity returns.  By the time I pass through customs and emerge into the airport, I’m completely there.

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