Italia: The Prologue
My friends, it is time for the much awaited Italy blog. And by much awaited I refer to myself, I don’t presume you to be awaiting it. I’ve been dying to write it for months. Well before the trip even began I would day dream about writing it, wondering what unplanned adventures awaited us, just begging to be put into words and shared with family, friends and strangers.
Now that we are back, and the adventures (both planned and unplanned) have wowed us, I am completely overwhelmed and unsure how to begin.
So I suppose I will begin at the beginning…with a bit of a prologue. In part to set the story, in part to preserve the story for myself, and in part because I think my stream of pretty instagram photos created a very glossy highlight real and we need to add a bit of reality to that.
A long, long time ago (I can still remember…) husband and I were not yet “husband and I.” We were still boyfriend/girlfriend, living in sin while we plotted our wedding and subsequent marriage. We had wedding plans and then we had plans. Big, expensive, crazy plans and absolutely no idea how we would make them happen. I suppose it would be more appropriate to call them dreams. But to have called them dreams would have suggested we didn’t expect them to become reality. And to hell with that. I have way more audacity than that. They were plans. Put-it-on-the-calendar and count-on-it-baby plans. One way or another.
Our plans were something of an anti-plan. Knowing we were getting married fairly young, we had no desire to follow the usual plan: marry, buy house, make baby, make another baby, etc. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that plan, for the record. I sincerely mean that. But while being quite conventional people it seems we have just a bit of fuck-the-system in our veins.
<Pause Button> Remember when I wrote the much loved Ireland blog and I used the word “fecking” instead of actually saying “fucking” and some how that made it charming instead of offensive? Well its 2 years later and we’re all a bit older and I hope we can all handle my liberal use of profanity. I assure you it will be one of the least offensive things you read here so if you clutched your pearls when I said “fuck-the-system” then I kindly thank you for stopping by and wish you a lovely day. I am an artist and the f-word is my favorite paint brush. Or some such nonsense. Feel free to still scroll through the images and avoid all the vulgar text. <Pause Button>
We knew we wanted the house-baby-quiet-suburban thing for sure. But we also wanted a bit of adventure. A bit of freedom. A bit of crazy. Something to make us perfectly uncomfortable so we’d come out the other side scarred but for the better. And we wanted a healthy dose of just-the-2-of-us (bonus points if you read that as a Will Smith lyric. What up 1998.).
We decided we would dedicate up to the first 5 years of our marriage to this adventure business. (And to starting an actual business, but Lord is that ever a different adventure!) We knew we wanted a few specific things – a little bit of carefree Caribbean sunshine, a little bit of European exploring, a little bit of closer-to-home long weekends and a dash of Vegas crazy. The variety was important – we knew a week spent laying on the beach would feed one part of our relationship and one part of ourselves individually, while two weeks in a tiny rental car in a foreign country would feed different parts.
For us, that meant the house and the babies and whatever else comes with being quiet and settled was being put on hold and every penny we made was going in the adventure jar.
That wasn’t easy.
I’ll say that again: that wasn’t easy.
We aren’t exactly rolling in the dough over here. And we’re very comfortable with that. We love our jobs. All 3 of them! And we love that our jobs give us plenty of free time and flexibility. There’s been more than one occasion when keeping it that way has been a conscious decision. One or both of us could have changed jobs, could have cashed in a bit, could have made our adventures easier to pay for. But we’ve had to find balance between adventure-funding and maintaining a happy day-to-day. So we stayed in our happy jobs that keep us comfortable and we made it work. Ish. We made it work-ish.
That is to say that the planning and carrying out of such adventures has led to more than one high speed come apart in our house. Self-imposed poverty will do that to people.
We’ve struggled with saying “no” to things we wanted to do… because we couldn’t swing the cost of dinner out with friends and still scrounge what we needed for our next adventure.
We’ve become gourmet cooks on the grocery budget of a college student. Because splurging on a Florentine steak in Tuscany sounded better than brand name Oreos. Usually. Sometimes the oreos sounded better and I wanted to flip Tuscany the bird. I mean if we’re just being honest…
We (okay mainly I) have struggled with the fact that we don’t yet own a home. Not because I’m actually desperate or until recently, even ready, to own a home. But because I worry that people think its odd, or that people think we “should,” or that we are some how lagging behind. But there was no way we were buying a house and having our adventures. So we picked the adventures. Reluctantly, at times. But always, always, on the flight or the drive home from an adventure – no matter how big or small – I knew the experiences, the time spent together, the little lessons and the big lessons, the memories – we’re exactly what we needed. I knew those things were building a strong foundation for us as individuals and as a couple. I knew that all the awkward “sorry we can’t afford it”s and the uncertain mumbled answers to “when are you guys buying a house” were worth it. It was worth it to make a different choice.
I tell you all of this for a few different reasons.
First of all because many people have left very sweet comments on our photos and our blogs. Some say they hope they can go here or there someday, some say they are jealous, some say we are so lucky. It concerns me to think that our little highlight reel gives a false impression, makes it look like we jet off on a dream trip on a whim. Cus honey, that just ain’t the case. And I’ve no interest in making impressions or convincing anyone of anything. I am the queen of comparing myself to others and allowing that to suck the joy out of my day. I let it make me feel behind or less than or whatever. I imagine it’s a fairly common ailment, especially for folks our age. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the source of that for anyone else. So I’m trying to keep it real up in here.
And please know while I tell you these stories in this here prologue that I don’t mean to sound burdened. Like “oh poor me and the suffering of saving money for vacation.” I get, beyond words, that it is a blessing. I just want to be real about what this little adventure era has been like for us – the good and the not so good.
Secondly, because so many people have said “I wish I could do that.” And I know full well that we are blessed to do these things and its not within everyone’s means to do it. But please please know, that if you examined my life you probably wouldn’t think I had the means to do it either. Like anything in life, its about choices and sacrifice. If you want to go, please, go. If you truly want to go, give up whatever you need to give up, let yourself be uncomfortable for a while, let it take as long as it takes. But don’t be too quick to think you can’t.
Thirdly, (wow haven’t used ‘thirdly’ since I wrote a 3rd grade essay but whatevs) I’m very aware of the fact that many people travel father and more frequently than we do. I know we aren’t world travelers. To those people our adventures probably seem small or not much of a big deal. But that isn’t the case to us. And I’m not about to pretend that it is for the sake of playing it cool. Fuck that. We went to Italy. And from where I’m sitting, it was a big damn deal and I refuse to take it for granted by acting flippant.
I also tell you all of this because I feel like its the only way to really express how special this trip was to us. When we made those plans, like I said above, we outlined a few must do trips. Italy has always been last on the list. The biggest adventure. The finale. It would require the most planning, the longest stash of vacation time, the biggest sum of money.
And it almost didn’t happen.
Last summer, we tentatively selected a few weeks to block out for Italy. (These things are necessary when you’re a photographer.) We started browsing travel books and online forums, taking note of all the places we wanted to visit. But another adventure, revisiting our beautiful honeymoon spot in Negril, Jamaica, was already on the table for December so it was our main focus.
In early December, a few weeks before we left for Jamaica, I lost my shit.
I’m talking up-all-night, crying, yelling, lost my ever lovin mind.
I was mother flipping sick of paying for trips. Sick of counting pennies, sick of budgeting.
Did my husband understand, I demanded to know, exactly how wealthy we might feel if we spent our dollars on normal things? Like oreos and new shoes.
Did my husband understand, I insisted, that if we just skipped Italy we could buy a house, soon even, and make a baby and live like normal adults?
He understood, he assured me.
And if I’d had enough, if I’d reached the end of my adventure rope, he said, we could call if after Jamaica. Come home, tan and happy, and get on with normal adult things.
Thank God, I said.
The next day, at lunch, I called him crying.
I was in love with going to Italy. How could we not be going?
We would wait, he said. No decisions until after Christmas, he said.
So off we went to the tropical paradise that is Negril. Of all the places we have been (not to sound like its that many places…but still) Negril will always be my favorite place. Always. There is no where I feel more me. That makes it a perfectly good place to cap an era of adventuring.
For 8 days we sat in the sand and floated around in the sea and a few times we pondered, should we go to Italy?
We agreed there were good alternatives. (Read – cheaper places to go.) We could go back to Jamaica. We could head to Florida. Maybe Vegas. Again.
Heading home from Jamaica I felt very satisfied with our adventuring and thought another smaller summer vacation would do just fine. Italy could wait.
Then came Christmas at my parents house. Zac opened a gift bag of wine bottles – red, Tuscan wines – wines I’d helped my mom pick out for him, selected because they were from the small towns and wineries we planned to visit.
And I cried.
And we both knew we were probably going to Italy.
On New Years Day, we sat on our living room floor, snacking and drinking champagne on our floor-bed (confession – we like to dig out our sleeping bags and pile them up on the floor with our pillows and watch movies and eat snacks. Like children. We hope to have a pull out sofa sometime soon…) and debating our trip to Italy.
To go or not to go.
Which was the same as: To buy a house sooner, or buy a house later.
We tried to be really honest about it. Was I wanting to buy a house earlier because I really wanted to? Or because I was giving into pressure (likely imagined pressure) that it was what I was supposed to be doing?
If we didn’t go to Italy (which had been my choice of adventure) when we’d already gone to Ireland (Zac’s choice) would I be resentful when 10 years of babies and home ownership had kept us from my dream trip and not his?
(Do we sound super melodramatic? Whatever. I’m just being honest.)
And this is where it is important in life to have friends who aren’t afraid to tell you what you already know…
I texted my dearest friend and asked her to tell me what to do. Do we go now and buy a house later, or do we scrap it and buy a house sooner.
I quickly got a text back and of course there was the requisite caveat of “I can’t tell you what to do” but the end of the message weaved its way to what I already knew: Go.
And so we booked our plane tickets. And we braced for 6 more months (and a few after to be sure…) of saving every penny just to turn around and spend them all again…on one last, grand, adventure.