Little Boxes and Big

 I am sitting at my makeshift kitchen table with the mismatched Ottomans. Contemplating. The boxes behind the bakers rack have been piled up there now for more than a month. I plan to fold them up and put them in The Constant Storage for the next time I need to move. I will do this  because as lessons go, we learn that boxes, toilet paper, half bottles of expensive shampoo and all that 'crap' that you want to throw into the trash bin when moving so you don't have to schlep it around  - that crap costs money to repurchase. 'I have become money conscientious', I say to myself smugly. {My family who use me as a textbook example of wild abandon shake their heads collectively}

There is a subtler truth though. Zebra's don't really change their stripes, silly family.

It is this: even though I know it won't last long, I think I am muddling about in various stages of grief.

The scoop:
Recently we all moved out of the lulling Mother Home and my free spirit allowed itself to reawaken, giving in to my life long love of travel. Through my adolescence we moved to far flung places in the world with my dashing army officer father. During my 20's and 30's I made Europe and the two US coasts a priority. I opened up businesses, married,  researched, worked and had plenty of adventures. That was fun.
Now, more fun. Working the deep blue currents, taking care with family, dreaming and talking more than doing: that was over. The chance came. We moved. And the move changed everything.

But was temporary.
And we are back...home?

 I look at the boxes in my kitchen, so many I can barely get out the back door,  as sort of a talisman. For now, I am processing  'that which could have been but was not' and the boxes stay.  Everyday, a bit at a time, I guess, I will have to indulge in all the things that I experienced that brought me further along my path in the world by moving.  Soon, the boxes will get thrown away (I'm not really going to change my ways after all these years!) and eventually my emotions will have incorporated this constantly mentioned but still often unexpected motto: change must become second nature to an adventurous heart.

Traveling with Anima

I was born in an ambulance on the way to the hospital and with few breaks in between never really stopped moving except for my last fifteen years in Colorado. I traveled with my family till I went to university and after that traveled the continents on my own. Even when my son was born, as soon as it seemed 'safe' we headed for Mexico, his first trip abroad at four months old. Many trips since then, 21 years ago but not nearly as many as I had planned while pregnant. Life slowed down a little bit as it invariably will and I concentrated on raising my children in a happy single parent, mulit-generational home with adventurous travel as often as possible.

aka 'Little Dragon'

Along with my daughter Anima Chiara , who is now eleven  we have been to many places here in the United States and to Italy and Germany twice.Our wanderlust hasn't been stifled by the recent downturn too much but we have entertained ourselves more readily with armchair travel and adventure books in the last few years. Until now.

We are moving to Italy,  Anima and I. The whole process of getting ready to go, not just on vacation but to actually live in another country is exciting and challenging at the same time.  When you take a trip somewhere and know you will come back in a few days or weeks time it's a little less daunting. Both Anima and I are very much looking forward to our new adventure and have decided to share our experiences in this blog, Traveling with Anima. We expect to share our experiences once a month about our move and consequent travels once we are settled in the beautiful and beckoning Val d'Orcia.

Just recently I started following Silvia Ceriegi, a very energetic woman who writes a blog called Tripando in Italian.  Silvia is from Pisa, Italy which is where I spent my teens and reading her travel blog really opened my eyes to all the places I had been missing. Tripando is really one of those wonderful and  enthusiastically written blogs that are chock full of  information and excellent local tips. Silvia just recently became the mother of a baby boy and has put together an association of  "mommy bloggers" who love to travel and do so with their children in tow.

  I am excited to be part of  "Il Circolo delle Mamme Viaggiatrici"  or  The Traveling Mothers Club.

The Circolo is made up of Silvia with her Tripando site, Alessandra who writes at LaliViaggi, Valentina Cappio who writes The Family Company blog and Melissa Muldoon who blogs at her website Diario di una Studentessa Matta. Sign up with us to get the latest news on what we are up to next!

 Travels with children. Come along with all of us. We look forward to engaging you in our travels and transitions. Ciao Ciao! Silvana e Anima Chiara

Ritual of the Familiar

A lot of my things are in boxes. My books. My pictures. I believe we are experiencing what is fashionably called the 'in transition' stage.

It was not so long ago that the words 'in transition' made me giddy with the hope of new adventure. New friends, possibly a foreign country, a wild affair, fodder for 'the' novel. Sometime in the last while 'in transition' began to mean a form of menial labor: packing, repacking and then the searching for packed items lost. As months rolled by, the translation of in transition is not so much the promise of adventure, but mostly the discomfort of uncertainty. The other side of the coin.

Curious. Everything out of place and yet exactly where I put it...in the boxes.

I think that I will get to the point where the boxes could blow up or blow away for all I'd care...it seems as though things cease to have meaning without the ritual of involvement.

Now I remember the smell of beloved books, the feel of crushed silk pillows, the sight of loved ones in frames- the lines and creases of their eyes so familiar. I walk by the empty spaces where my altars of love and devotion (not always to Mary; sometimes to long ago abandoned lovers, mostly to the pictures of children and outings to the seashore or a remnant of some old country) used to perch or lean.... and I feel a longing. Maybe for the ritual. The familiar.