Hiatus
Nothing like a day at the beach to make all your troubles seem a bit less heavy.
Listening to Miike Snow – Animal
Life Goes Fast
Last Thursday, after a cah-ray-zee couple of weeks, I was perusing Facebook when I saw my friend KT had entered a contest to win tickets to see the Flaming Lips in concert. I quickly texted her, “Just so you know, if you win those tickets, you are so taking me with you!” Her reply, “Haha, totally!”
After some silent wishes for good juju, she got the news. The tickets were hers! So followed an unexpected Friday treat, a night outside listening to amazing tunes, drinking delicious beverages and celebrating all around revelry.
By the last Lips encore, I was dead. So tired from the long day, and drained from the night out. But then Wayne came out an stage and made a speech. And every wall I have spent the past two months building, just came tumbling down.
My dad has cancer.
It feels strange to write that. To say it out loud. To read it.
He’s doing fine, always the optimist. And for the now the prognosis is good, so we all have every reason to be optimistic. We’re lucky to live in an age where cancer isn’t necessarily an immediate death sentence, and being a former cancer researcher himself, my dad has a knowledge of this disease that most people don’t.
But I hadn’t cried about it. It was like I was in a constant state of shock. Through the doctor’s visits and phone calls, it never really sunk in.
Until Friday night, when Wayne dedicated “Do You Realize” to a young band member whose dad had just died of cancer. And I just broke. I cried so hard, poor KT held my hand and hugged me. Crap, even the random guy next to me asked if I was okay.
The weird thing is, finally, I think I am.
Francesca and The Great Wide Open
When I lived in Italy, I had a lovely professor(a) named Francesca. She was the second Italian professor I had in college, and she was incredible. She was about five feet tall, gorgeous, arms decorated with random tatoos, long, wavy black hair. She was young, probably 27 or 28, but she had two gorgeous kids and the most incredible accent I’d ever heard. She’d been born and raised in Florence, but when she was in her late teens, she met an American boy, studying in her city. After three days together, travelling across Italy via train, he asked her to marry him. And she said yes.
Her family thought she was insane, but she packed up and moved to America. Lawrence, Kansas, to be specific, where her young husband was studying at the University. She became an Italian teacher by chance, and then began teaching at KU. She was always kind, never scolded and made the language so much fun to learn. She encouraged us to immerse ourselves in it, even hosting random nights out at local college bars, where we were only allowed to speak in Italian.
Every year she would travel, with her young children, back to Florence with a group of KU students who were studying abroad. The program was based in her hometown and she was able to see her family while she was there. It was the best of both worlds, she kept her job, her trips home were paid for, and her kids got to really “be” Italian for a good amount of time each year. It broke my heart, when during a drunken night out on the town, surrounded with the intense history of the city, she confessed that her marriage was on the rocks, and she was preparing for divorce.
I remember being so sad. Such a lovely love story, over, just like that. I asked her what she was planning to do about her living situation. Would she move home, to Florence, or stay in Lawrence with her children? She answered without hesitation, she would stay in Kansas. When I asked why (Somewhat rudely, but really? Lawrence, Kansas over Florence, Italy?), she just said, “Well, I remember my first day in Kansas. I remember looking up, and thinking I had never seen skies as beautiful as that. And I knew it was my home. No matter how often I come back, I think of that sky, and I know where I belong.”
Every spring, when the grey-ness of winter fades and blue lights up the sky again, I think about Francesca. She’s right, you know. The skies here are more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. And no matter where my life may take me, I’ll always know where my home is.
Spring
After the dull, gross, greyness of a Kansas winter, there is nothing more awesome then the blue skies of spring. After what has been a pretty insane, heartbreaking, confusing couple of weeks, nothing felt better then hanging on the swingset. I never wanted to leave.
Plus, Lucy has the best laugh ever.
