“You who let yourselves feel; enter the breathing that is more than your own. Let it brush your cheeks as it divides and rejoins beside you.
Blessed ones, whole ones, you where the heart begins; You are the bow that shoots the arrows and you are the target.
Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back into the earth; for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas. The trees you planted in childhood have grown too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus”
If someone would have tried to describe or warn me about the events of spring 2020, I don’t think I would have believed them. It was unimaginable before it occurred. I couldn’t picture a world with borders shut, outdoor activities restricted and food rationed. All but a small fraction of the world shut down to lay victim to a pandemic.
We may never know the true toll of Spring 2020. It is not simply social and economic, but for me, and countless others, it is deeply emotional. Even today it lingers in the overheard words of conversations among strangers and in fearful tired eyes resting atop masks of cotton, gauze and lycra. It is still far from over, and yet we are trying to move into something that makes us feel a bit better.
One week ago I crossed the border from France into Italia and had the heavy burden of distance lifted from my shoulders. It was the distance from the physical aspects of my life, distance from the knowledge of what I would find and distance from the changing way of life the last three months.
I was given a gift on the way home, a few nights staying with friends near Nice in the Côte d’Azur. When I arrived, I found myself in one of the most spectacular places I had ever been. It was a place where my heart could rest a bit and gather strength. A place where my thoughts could collect and where some well-overdue deferred maintenance could happen. I needed to do this before I finished my journey to the place I call home, Torino, Italia.
While I restored myself in Nice, I had a chance to roam among beautiful gardens from a story book; fruit and nut trees, centuries-old oaks and olives and fields of lavender beginning to bloom.
I always appreciated those famous French lavender fields of Provence, but I never experienced one this way before. On my second morning, the field called for me to visit and sit while I drank my coffee. It was there where I seemed to release three months of anxiety, collect my thoughts for the future and soothe familiar grief. Leaving burdens in a lavender field seemed to be the right thing to do that morning.
I have not written much about the last three months other than my time and travels in France and my sincere appreciation for Maurine’s company. I always try to balance my writings between light and dark. However, I think it’s time to reveal the rest of the story. I have to take you back to January when things began to unravel.
In January my beginner’s skiing incident (read about that here), actually resulted in two fractures to my ankle. I did not realize the severity until 8 weeks later when I finally was x-rayed. The good news was that my ankle healed normally without a brace or cast. But for weeks, I had a lot of pain and anxiety. Fear of the unknown allowed me to abandon my responsibility to take care of myself.
I also came down with a horrible flu a few days after being in Milano in February. In the middle of the night I woke up with a raging fever and strange hallucinations. At one point, I fell asleep on the bathroom floor. I didn’t remember how I got there. (There was no wine involved, I promise.) Spending those days recovering in bed with nothing but fear and isolated thoughts, along with an unknown broken ankle, just added to my anxiety. It was one of those times when you realize you’re in a foreign country and you know few people who can help you.
Finally, after a year of heartfelt adventures, sadly my relationship with the Italiano came to an end while I was in France. This was the most difficult of all, and I am still trying to understand what brought me to that point. I believe the challenges of 2020 pushed me into a place that resurfaced realities that I must deal with first before being able to share my life with another.
Perhaps we are both better off on separate paths. Putting it into words makes the pain resurface again. I will always think fondly of our time, and I have nothing but care, love and gratefulness for all that he shared with me. Since I have talked so much about him in previous posts, it feels right to share this with you.
Imagine bringing all of these heavy thoughts into that beautiful lavender field that morning. If the lavender could have talked, it would have probably asked me to march my troubled mind right back out and go directly to a good psychiatrist. But alas, there was no psychiatrist in the Côte d’Azur, only the lavender to console me.
The wonderful thing about sitting in the field was the fragrance. It did not need to be coerced by my touch. It hung gently in the air. I remember thinking, “Had I known about the pleasure of sitting amongst lavender, I would have done this years ago.” I let it do its magic. Quietly and gently it seemed to lift some of my burdens.
When I found Rilke’s, “Sonnets to Orpheus” quoted above, it was a perfect introduction to this post. There are far mightier things in this world than us. We should rest our burdens there, rather than carry them on our backs. Burdens seem to stick to me longer now without the distractions of everyday life to keep them at bay. I knew that when I left that lavender field, I was going to be ok. I may not feel great for a while, but eventually life was going to feel good again. There was no better thing than leaving burdens in a lavender field.
Last Saturday, I came back to Italia after my unexpected three-month absence. As I drove the Autostrada dei Fiori (highway of the flowers) that climbs the cliffs above the Italian Riviera towns of Ventimiglia, San Remo, Santo Stefano al Mare and dozens of others, I felt joy seeing life return to something that almost looked normal. People were out and about, the sun was brilliant and warm. You would think it was just another summer beginning in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Thank you for following The Spaghetti Diaries. If you want to follow my blog, please subscribe in the box below. If you like what you read, please share on your social media page or by sending a link via email. Be well my friends, and if you are troubled now, try my approach of leaving burdens in a lavender field. I stumbled across this website where you could do a virtual escape to some of France’s best lavender fields.