'Tis but a dream within a dream

I had a terrible dream last night.

In it, I had suddenly awaken in the States and had completely forgotten to do any of the things I had wanted to before leaving Florence. As time and space have the ability to do in dreams, I had been teleported back to America without my consent, and was frantically realizing everything I didn’t do and couldn’t change.

I had forgotten to get my tattoo; I had forgotten to buy souvenirs, including something leather, which of course I HAD to come back with; I had forgotten to pick up those hand painted jewelry holders for my friends, and that Florence pendent; I had forgotten to say goodbye to the Italian that knows my coffee order by heart, to the cafe owner that gives me lemons to put in my hair when I tan, to the boy at my produce stand who never charges me full price for my bananas and lets me build my own trail mix, and to Pa! Oh my God what had I done?!

Now I was back in the States, and had so much unfinished business that I would never, EVER be able to complete, because I was thousands and thousands of miles away and God knows WHEN I would ever make it back to Italy! Sure it felt so natural and familiar living there, but this place was OCEANS away! It’s not like I could just hop back over and buy that scarf I’d had my eye on real quick.

In this frantic and hopeless dream, I had realized with a sense of growing doom, that I had no physical reminders of Florence. Without something tangible to touch, to feel, to hold, it was very likely that i had, in fact, made up the last four months in my head! Being welcomed by the monstrous beauty of the Duomo every morning as I step out of my apartment, the routine “Buonjourno, Lindsay!” and smile from Pa to start my day off right, the lounging on the river wall, eating my fresh blood oranges in the sun while watching the lively bustle of tourists along the Ponte Vecchio.

Had that all been in my head? Did I create this alternate universe where I had lived in Europe and studied Italian and indulged in nutella croissants every day? Where I drank wine in the streets and visited palaces in my free time and snuck away to viewpoints to watch the sunset over my gorgeous city with friends that I had made from every corner of the world? Where my daily run took me up vine-wrapped cobblestone roads, doing lunges to an incredible view of the Uffizi tower, and where whisking away to another country for the weekend was perfectly normal?

This HAD to have been a dream.

Which is why, in this one that I speak of, I woke up close to tears. Without something to prove to me that this had, in fact, been my reality, I would surely feel like I had made it all up; that I was losing my mind.

Perhaps this was God’s way of giving me an opportunity to avoid this terrible fate, and to prepare so I don’t develop a feeling of insanity when I return to the “real world”.

Because, for today, this is my “real world”. This moment I am here. I am living all these wonderful things, and I don’t ever want to lose the realness of how this feels.

This table in the cafe that I am typing this on, these wall-mounted flat screens playing American music videos around me, Nino (the cafe employee) who regularly stops by to see what I am looking at on Facebook while imparting a few Italian words of wisdom before returning to his duties. This is real.

Being that I don’t actually have any money, it’s not like I can rush to the market and purchase a bunch of pretty things to take back with me. But this dream was a great reminder that my time here is limited, and I must be extremely conscious of these last remaining weeks. When I go back home, I wont be able to just “stop by” Kiko, or Red Garter, or Astor. I won’t be able to pick up fresh vegetables on my way home to prepare zucchini tortellini or Tuscan pomodoro soup.


Sure I’ll be able to start eating peanut butter again, and ketchup, and FINALLY be reunited with my protein powder. But I won’t get the freshest mozzarella in the world or handmade ravioli at the market or heart-shaped pizzas made by cheery Italians who sing as they bake.

But alas, to differentiate between Italy and the US is comparing apples to oranges. There is no bad or good, just what “is”. Now I am in Italy. In two weeks I will be in the States.

And now, I will get off the computer and go soak up my lovely if temporary home.