Attenzione! Carry-on baggage may shift during takeoff and landing.

I have spent a good portion of my life in motion; moving residences from one place to another, flying between my offices when I worked in America, and spending my free time on vacation whenever possible. This constant state of motion, allowed me to distance myself from some of the mental housekeeping work that staying put allows you the time to do.

Since I arrived in Europe I have moved residences at least 7 different times, if you count my extended stays of a month or so during this pandemic, that jumps to at least 10. Admittedly, with each transition, I can’t be certain I tidied up the place before I left. I’m not talking about the apartment–I am speaking about doing a good sweeping of the mental and emotional clutter that accumulates with each stop. However, these last several weeks, I have made a conscious effort to face some of my carry-on baggage directly, and perhaps face the inevitable acknowledgement that my life was changing again.

When I left California for Italia, I knew this adventure would change me. I also I knew I had a lot of carry-on baggage that I could not leave behind. It wasn’t like I could pack them in my storage boxes and figure them out if/when I returned to America. “Hmm..let me see, unwarranted anxiety..you’ll go here next to the small kitchen appliances. Resentment and anger, let me bubble-wrap you and put you with my income tax files. Unresolved conflict and guilt, be gone! You’re going to the thrift store.”

Why the conflict?

Two weeks ago I made the trip to Italia. I had to move out of my apartment in Torino and hand the keys back to the property owner. It was a true “adulting” moment for me, because even at 50 years old, I still avoid internal conflict. However, this last month I couldn’t put off my own personal civil war in my head. I had to start to sweep up and address some carry-on baggage I was dragging behind me. On top of that, I had to delicately manage through all of the conditions that only occur during a world-wide pandemic. Traveling across borders and relocating become a bit more tedious. Let’s just say I wasn’t really looking forward to the trip and what I thought it would signify.

Taking a temporary leave from Italia, meant admitting to myself that my initial plans of building a happy, fulfilling life surrounded by “tutte cose italiane” hasn’t worked out on the timeline that I planned. I guess I can blame it on the life-changing aspects of a pandemic, along with a healthy dose of lofty goals and unrealistic expectations for myself. But nevertheless, I had to come to terms with the realization that my original plans for my life in Europe had shifted. I was having a very difficult time “detaching” from the outcome I had set in my mind. But as I shared with you before, I made the decision to let go of the apartment despite the anchor it represented for me in Italia. It wasn’t easy, but it was the right thing to do.

So of course, the days leading up to my return to Italia to do the unwanted but undelayable stuff were filled with anxiety, some troubling thoughts and many nights pondering how was all this going to work out in the end. What was the destination?

I had a video call with one of my nieces a few weeks before I left. Near the end of the call, she asked me a question that hit home in a good way. After we talked for literally hours, about how life was with for her and my nephew and their 3-year old son, along with what was happening here in Europe, she asked me point blank, “Luke, do you feel lost?”

I’m actually smiling as I recall the conversation, because it was a very direct question that tied directly to my state of mind at the time we were chatting. At any other time, I might have immediately responded with a, “No, I’m fine..I’m just living my best life.” But, at this point in our call, we had already dispensed with all of the congenial fun shit, and the conversation begged for depth. So I answered with my truest response…”I don’t know – perhaps I am. But maybe that’s ok?”

Now of course, we didn’t end the conversation that way. It actually led to a healthy discussion about are we truly ever “found” in the place we think we are? Perhaps, being lost and just flowing with life is a better approach than attempting an environment that seems bulletproof. Those barriers of safety glass work wonders until life lobs a molotov cocktail through your living-room window. (Such as the case of an unexpected death.)

It’s something that I have been thinking about for a long time since that video call and it’s actually given me some strength over the last several weeks to face the inevitable and not try to immediately search for a destination.

The days leading up to the big one.

I think life gives you practice sessions before facing a big challenge. Perhaps the Universe thinks it’s best to do some pressure-testing before sending us off to battle our own egos. So as I much as i want to say I wasn’t affected by this move, I had a couple of “big-boy” moments. It was time to grow up and push for honest relationships with others and with myself. I had to stop leaving things unaddressed or unattended to properly. If there was an answer to a question, I needed to hear it, even if it hurt a bit.

The first one was an ego-buster..a truly vulnerable moment where I had to make a decision to just put my heart out there, and see how it would fare in the end. The second, well, that was a bit more unexpected sentimental journey during my drive to Italia, but it released a wave of gratitude and understanding just before I arrived in Torino, as a way to help me close the chapter of my life in that city.

I’ll have ambiguity with a side of rejection, s’il vous plaît!

I’ll share some of my romantic life with you, if you’ll bear the story telling a bit.

For the last several months I have been seeing and talking to a French friend. I use friend in the true meaning of the word…not the salacious sex-friend you might be thinking. I found myself very interested in him. So much so, I could easily imagine dating this person, just in case sex-friend wasn’t in the cards.

We saw each other 4-5 times, but mostly we texted a lot. With all of the COVID restrictions and curfews, we didn’t have the chance to spend a lot of time together. (Shout out to the single people: Yes, dating during a pandemic sucks!) However, I felt a connection with him, even if it seemed a bit one-sided. Not that he wasn’t kind or considerate, but he’s francese.

In my view, the francesi are not as direct and clear as the italiani. If this was an italiano, we would have dispensed with all of the conversational foreplay that first date. But this was my first serious experience with a francese and I wasn’t sure what to expect. So I let it play out for several months…and decided that I would remain “in the question” for a bit. It was a pandemic…I finally got a nibble on my fishing poll, the last thing I wanted was to reel them in too fast and have to cut the line short.

Finally before I left for Italia, I realized I had been stewing in the question for months, and at some point, I needed to reel it in or cut bait. So I had to have the conversation. You know the one. it’s that conversation that brings a person to their most vulnerable core. The conversation that takes you back to your high school prom and first “back seat of a car” kiss kind of stuff. It starts with these words…”Do you like me..I mean, really really like me in that way?”

If there was ever a more difficult question we ask of someone, I have yet to find it. I realized that at age 50, I needed to have a “big-boy” moment and ask the question regardless of the answer. There was no way to avoid the emotions that could arise from a rejection. I don’t ever remember putting myself out there on that topic before. In prior relationships, it just happened naturally. Maybe that should have been my warning sign!

We were able to see each other just before I left, and I finally mustered the courage to ask. Well, you probably know the answer to my question. His response was that he’s not looking for a relationship..nor apparently is he looking for casual sex either. You can’t blame a guy for trying.

After that moment of clarity, it felt a bit awkward to linger, so I figured it was probably time to head home. I wanted to collect my thoughts and lick my wounds a bit. But on the way back while I was driving, I couldn’t help but feel a little satisfaction with the experience. Because I was honest with myself and my ego. I was willing to take any answer for the sake of resolving an open issue. I passed another “big-boy” test…and I didn’t feel rejected for long. Once that feeling past, I felt the relief of letting go of one piece of carry-on baggage that would not be going with me to Italia.

900 kilometers and 900 kilograms of carry-on baggage.

The journey by car from South West Francia to Torino, Italia is about 900 kilometers (that’s 550 miles if you use the Imperial system). I’ve made this journey at least four or five times, so I know the trip. I planned to drive for 5-6 hours and stay one night near Provence, and then I would finish the drive passing through Nice. The drive skirts over the top of Monaco and finally into Liguria, Italia which would lead me north to Torino. I had to be in Italia within 48 hours of my COVID test, so I couldn’t dawdle.

That first day on the road I was heavy with emotion and the anxiety of the COVID restrictions. Sofia slept comfortably in the backseat of the car most of the first day oblivious to the emotional wreck occupying the driver’s seat who was contemplating life while listening to iTunes.

It was during that first day, where some of my carry-on baggage decided to spill out of its boxes. I thought about a lot on that drive. At first I felt that I had failed in some way by not hanging tough in Italia, despite the relationship ending in Torino and the horrible effects of the pandemic in 2020. I wondered what would have happened if I would have returned to Italia from Switzerland that first week in March 2020 instead of heading to Francia. Life would have been completely different for me, and I’m not sure it matters whether it would have been better or worse. It just would have been different. It was a moment when a fork in the road appeared, and I went right instead of left.

Maybe I would be sitting in that apartment as Europe faces another round of lockdowns. Perhaps I wouldn’t have Sofia or a garden to enjoy or a place where I can walk for hours and not worry about running into a carabinieri or gendarme officer to question my comings and goings. Maybe I wouldn’t have had that same feeling of accomplishment that I received from redoing my house and garden in Francia.

On the other hand, I probably would be fluent in italiano (after months of confinement with little else to do). I may have met some new friends, or I may have had a nervous breakdown.

There are a lot of things that I wouldn’t have done that made me happy, and I will never know what I would have done instead in Torino or whether it would have made me equally happy.

So as I was driving, sorting through all of this carry-on baggage questions in my head, I decided that I needed a change in music to break up the melancholy. I touched my Carplay screen..and went to iTunes Radio. I saw something that I haven’t seen before. It was probably there all the time, but I never noticed it. It was called “Luke’s Station”. I was curious what the geniuses at Apple would have compiled for me, so I selected it and started listening.

Immediately it starts playing a Carly Simon song that I had probably listened to 1,000 times when I was in America, “Coming Around Again.” I bet you know the words. If not, you can click the YouTube track and listen to it below. For some reason, this song always seemed like an anthem to life. “I know nothing stays the same, but if you’re willing to play the game..it will be coming around again.”

It reminded me that life is a game of chance, but you play it fully and gleefully. Not with the heaviness and half-heartedness that I was carrying with me to Italia that day.

Well that was just the beginning of the iTunes serenade, for the next several hours I was reminded of the past and present in a repertoire of songs that brought me from when I was a child growing up in Pennsylvania, to some of my best years in California and ultimately to a slew of my favorite musica italiana that I listen to today. American artists such as; Indigo Girls, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton, Pink, Culture Club, Madonna, and my latest italiani finds like Malika Ayane, Carmen Consoli, Francesco Gabbani, Zucchero…it was an anthology of my life in music. It made me realize how full my life was, and a full-life will always have some carry-on baggage.

In that moment, I believed in the magic of music. I barreled down the Autoroute des Deux Mers heading towards Provence..laughing, singing, crying and realizing that perhaps I was overthinking all of this. It was just a moment of change in a lifetime of changes..it’s coming around again. Each song that played reminded me of where I was at that point in life. It reminded me how far I had come, even though I knew little of where I was going at the time. I was always progressing forward. Despite what I may have thought, I never really had any control of where I was heading, but I could choose what I brought with me. So as each kilometer passed and each new song played, I imagined throwing out another piece of carry-on baggage that not longer served me.

So this minor setback from “il mio sogno italiano” was a simple off ramp. Italia would always be there for me. When this horrible year of pandemic isolation and restriction was over, life would come around again. I would have new options and choices and certainly another fork in my road.

So here’s to checking your carry-on baggage.

Ultimately I made it to Torino on the second day. I arrived to a city that felt a little battered and bruised after this last year of disruption and loss. I could feel the heaviness in the spirit of the italiani in the streets and in the piazza. It made me realize how difficult life has been in Italia since everything changed a little over a year ago. It also made me grateful that I wasn’t alone during this dark year. Perhaps leaving Switzerland and heading to Francia was the Universe sparing me more pain. I needed to work on the past pain I was carrying with me..my carry-on baggage was already heavy enough. Still, l wonder.

I spent a few days getting grounded and shifting from my poor lingua francese – to my markedly better lingua italiana. I also used this time to honor what was Torino. This was a place of growth for me, and I had plenty of “big-boy” moments here. To ready about my arrival in Torino over a year ago and what brought me here, read my post here.

I was able to spend some quality time with friends with whom I share an interest with in their future. I was able to close some chapters and answer some questions in my mind. As difficult as it was, it was a beautiful experience.

I left Italia on the first of April, but knew that I would be back soon. When autumn creeps into Southwest Francia and the leaves begin to fall, I’m heading back to Italia. I’m going to to do what I wanted to do when I first arrived there two-years ago. I will travel around the country, visiting friends and making new ones. I will continue to seek my happy place there.

Overall the last few weeks weren’t easy, but I was able to eliminate some useless carry-on baggage. If you find an imitation Louis Vuitton bag on the side of the autostrada between Torino and Nice, the one full of unnecessary shit, just leave it. I have no need for it any more. I’m going to continue staying lost for a bit and enjoy the summer in Francia. I hope my friends from Italia and around the world will come find me here. I want to celebrate our re-found freedom and pay tribute to all that we have lost.

Hello friends! As always, thanks for staying in touch with me through my blog and through your notes and messages. I’m aware that some of you are still reeling from the impacts of this last year. Many of you have lost your jobs and those with small businesses have had to close as a result of the neverending lockdowns. Even worse, I know some of you have lost family members and friends to COVID. I can only offer my love and an ear to listen to you if you need it.

I never want to appear that I am making light of the fact that many people are still suffering, and my emotional carry-on baggage may sound like much ado about nothing. However, I am always honest with you. I only share with you how I truly feel. As difficult as my life may seem to me, I recognize (as my friend Rick says) it’s a “tempest in a teapot” to others. I’m blessed to have this life with all of it’s carry-on baggage. I am grateful for it and for all of you. Stay well. There is light at the end of the tunnel.