Hah! Just can't get seriously bummed about leaving NYC for the Val d'Orcia when I know this weekend's winter wonderland blizzard is all going to be grey slop by Monday. Twenty-five more working days to go (maybe minus two or three accrued personal days for trips to the Italian consulate and to sources of the unbelievable number of prerequisite documents they'll require). I've been working without a year to myself since age fifteen! I'm finally going to taste a kind of perfect freedom wherein
everything I do will be for myself and for whom and what I love. Contemplation and peace, nature and laughter. Incredible!
It's finally beginning to sink in that I'm leaving my New York life behind. People complain about the bureaucracy in Italy, but for some reason I am only feeling grouchy about the bureaucratic tasks involved in getting there from here.
When I left my last meeting at corporate headquarters, I thought of the people I'll miss at my company. I did get to say a few words to some and confirm that my last day at work will be February 28. I'll miss my colleagues at the clinic, too. I hope that I'll have people dropping in at Il Loggino over the next few years. The invitations are heartfelt; the recipients are part of my history and I'd like some continuity and I'd like to get to know some of them better than I've had a chance to do while working.
But as I walked away from the place, thinking of all the changes that I had a small part in implementing (and hoping I did well by patients and colleagues alike), I was suddenly acutely aware of all the red tape to get through in the next month: fingerprints and an FBI certificate of good conduct required for the residency visa, all the documents (in triplicate), the financial arrangements (the pension checks, bank and brokerage statements, etc.)-- the
anxiety kicked in. Thank heaven for my counterphobia. It'll get me through all of it.
Next thing you know, I'll be
a casa. Magari!
My sister finally called this evening. They all went off to the "mountains"-- that Koskiosko hill thingy they call a mountain there in Oz-- for the hols and forgot to tell me.
Hmmmph! I remember when we used to do those things together. Yep! That long ago.
