ROUTE: This isn't the fastest route. This is not the scenic route either, although it will take you past all of your former mistakes, indicating the exact places where you made them. Routes can be changed mid-drive, but all new ones may cause major delays, so be careful. It is your road, though. The coastal highway, the avenues, the unpaved path that leads into the mountains, the cobblestones in the middle of the piazza. The hill above Borgo San Giuliano where you first learned to drive a stick. Remember how you almost got stuck there, one foot nervously on the clutch and the other firmly on the brake as you waited for the car ahead of you to just hurry up and drive? 

 

TIME TO DESTINATION: The total time varies based on the stops made along the way. It could take hours. Days. Several months. Years even. For you (let's face it), it will probably take longer. If you could just tuck all of these places away and forget them—the city you live in, the kitten who keeps you company, her little head peeking up you from the outside balcony. Your husband Antonello and those twenty years together. His family who lets you sit in on games of Italian bingo—Tombola—and teaches you how to play Scopa with a deck of Neapolitan cards. The city itself. The clocktower in Macerata that you climbed when you were here the very first time. You and all of the other students in the middle of January with your heavy coats, gazing out at Macerata from its highest point. The terracotta rooftops stretched out in shades of red and orange and gold. Remember how small everyone looked down below? How you could see into frescoed rooms from up there, peer into the arches of other bell towers? The piazza, the hills, the duomo down a side road, winding. All of Italy like a speck on the horizon. And you: a brand new start.

 

MODES OF TRANSPORTATION: Take off your heels and walk barefoot through the cities that your feet have memorised, each cobblestone counted into piles of your days here—thousands and thousands of them. Hop on a bicycle if you wish, pedal your way up the steepest hillsides until you are out of breath. Take a train, rickety and slow, on the railways that criss-cross the entire country, stitched into a tapestry of green. Watch them cut through the fields, watch them split the land apart. Listen to them rattle. Leave your house (lock the doors and grab your bags), board a plane in Ancona or Bologna or Rome. Look out the small square window at the coastline that traces the entire country in a line of cursive, like a letter you are writing. Try not to regret leaving. Reach out for your husband's hand. If it's there. If he's beside you. If he's decided to come with you.

 

DETOURS: Are you wandering? Taking it slow? Stop in Loreto, where you work. Have an espresso in Macerata, where you live—watch the hot water drip drip drip into tiny ceramic cups. Go to Florence. Go to Venice. Ignore how over the romance you are, and fall in love with Rome once again. Visit your niece whose house is at the edge of the Tiber. Sit on the balcony and talk for hours, watching the sunlight slink away and the moon come out. Fall in love with the side streets of Florence and the canals of Venice. Take a gondola, for goodness sake. Stop in Alexandria, Virginia, and see that first apartment you ever had, the first time on your own. Visit your brother in Chicago and see the kids. Your life has a map and you are part of it. Track down the apartments where you've lived in Macerata: Via Borghi. Via Don Bosco. Via Crescibeni where the ceilings are frescoed in pinks and golds. Via IV Novembre, down a side street by the pizzeria. Remember the night Antonello leaned in and hugged you tight on the doorstep? You knew then. You both knew. You could write a love song with this entire city. Perhaps you already have.

 

GO: Move. Follow directions. Run. Drive. Fly from one side of the world to another, arms out like wings. Swim. Jump into the depths of the Adriatic and dive deep, coming up to see the way the pale sky swirls in patterns from underwater. No more slowing down. No more veering off the road at the sight of sunflower fields or the red papery poppy blossoms that fold and crinkle and whisper in the wind. They are distractions. Do not meander. Go. GO. By all means, go.

 

DESTINATION: Or don't leave at all. Stay. Is that what you want? There is no time limit. Batteries can be recharged. Decisions can be made, then unmade, then made again. New destinations can be charted. Ask yourself: what is keeping you here? And then: what is tugging at your heart back there? You can make a list out of it. Play it like a game. Write it down—every word.

 

And home? Where is it? What do you see when you look across the ocean? Is it as close as the autumn leaves on Emerson Avenue that float into heaps off of Maple trees, burgundy, scarlet and gold? Or is it distant, fragile, wrapped in brown paper, tied tight with string, kept on the highest shelf: a list of memories, of all your regrets, promises broken—the times you promised everyone that you would come home, that you'd have a child, that you'd share your dreams on paper with them, letters written by hand, postcards delivered to their doorsteps. The time you told your mother to just wait a little longer. The time your grandmother asked how you could abandon her, leave for a country you barely knew. You sat together in a red plastic booth in Steak 'n Shake on the East side of Indianapolis. You held her papery hands and whispered you'd be home soon. That was twenty years ago. She is long gone now.

 

If you still cannot make a decision, go to bed. Put your phone away. Put it all away. Let Cardamom curl into a comma at your feet, pawing at you until you rub that soft spot between her ears and she looks up, whiskers twitching, purring in small doses. Turn off the light and reach out beside you to where your husband is asleep. Whisper buona notte. Whisper amore mio. Think about all of this tomorrow. Dream about it. Hope for it. Pray. Homesickness is not for the faint of heart, and home will come to you one day like high tide, drowning you as you drink. 

 

And don't worry. You will drown in it, soon enough.

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