Leaving is hard.

The coming reality of heading home is the warmest feeling I have ever experienced.

Honestly, without shame, I just want to hug my mom. It is my personal opinion that people from other countries don’t engage in enough friendly touch each day. In e-mails and text messages, Italians write things like: “Ti abbraccio,” or “ Un abbraccio,” which translates into, “I embrace you,” or “A hug,” but the written word has proven to be a lame substitute for the real thing. So, now, after six months living outside of America’s warm embrace, I am seriously lacking in the nourishment of a good, long, hug. Lucky for me, my momma’s picking me up at the airport!

So, back to “leaving is hard.”

There are people and places and activities that I am leaving. People like my friends Eline and Aoi. People like my teachers Barbara, Sara, and Giuliano. People in our community like baristas, fruit vendors, waiters and waitresses, and the acquaintances you make over six months of frequenting the same locales. Places like the park at the top of the city. Places like pizzerias and bars and friend’s houses where you shared a meal or drink with someone special. Places like the stairs and escalators that are particular to this very tall city. Activities like daily language class, afternoon tea with your best friends, going to concerts in a “Sala”, “English Language Movie Mondays,” Italian language movies, making a daily passegiata (stroll). (I never said my life here was “hard,” just “real.”)

And, then there’s coming to terms with what I have done: It’s what I said I would do. I said, more than a year and a half ago, “I want to go back to Italy and finish learning the language.” I did it. I have learned all of the grammar. I have practiced speaking. That is to say that, so long as the person sitting across from me speaks slowly and without dialect, I can hold a conversation on all sorts of topics using conjunctive phrases and the like without having to raise my left eyebrow or shrug my shoulders too often.

It has passed. I have finished it. I can’t do it again.

There’s a fear that is setting in as that last statement rings in my ears. I was talking to my brother on the phone last night and I was just babbling to his very kind and listening ear, in a way only his baby sister could. And at some point I heard myself saying, “I came here with this staggering fear, and now there’s just not any. It’s way cool,” but, I kind of lied, to tell you the truth. There is a fear.