Twelve years ago, I was feeling a little bit antsy. It was the longest I'd ever spent with a bunch of people without any real privacy, and I was having a hard time sleeping. I'm an extrovert through and through, but all of this "togetherness" was just a bit much. We'd spent five days in London, five days in Rome, and about ten days in our home base of Cortona, Italy, and every single one of them was, well, together.
I had no idea that the next day would be September 11, 2001, a somewhat significant day in my twenty short years on the planet. I had no idea that taking a few hours to get myself together and get some peace and quiet would be the beginning of a decade of finding my way to the scene of that horrific crime. I was sitting in Caffè degli Artisti on via Nazionale in Cortona, sipping a latte, when the first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
I, of course, was clueless. I was studying abroad during my junior year, and the only thing on my mind was how to get some space between me and all of these art students. I was square in the middle of my extremely conservative liberal arts education, and these folks, while lovely and really fun after a few too many glasses of wine, were rubbing up against my Southern sensibilities. A few were from my university, a few were from the sponsoring big state school, but most were from scattered points across the country. We were a rag-tag bunch of art kids, except I'd barely taken a drawing class and was kind of fudging my way through the whole thing.
So there I was, drinking my latte - ok, it was a latte with Bailey's - when I looked up and was confused by what I saw. I saw footage of what I thought was the '93 bombing of the World Trade Center. It seemed odd and out of place on the local Italian news playing on the tiny bar television, but everything seemed odd when announced by the statuesque ladies they put on television in that country. I cocked my head, trying to figure it out, when the film switched to live coverage, and I watched the second plane hit. My stomach lurched. Oh my god. What the hell. In the few seconds previous, I'd come to realize that the plane that hit the North Tower was current, but speculation led me to believe it was a horrible mistake. Watching that second plane was a gut-wrenching realization of what was going on.
I looked around, panicking. No one was paying any attention. I stood up, getting my face closer to the screen, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. They seemed serious, and this was definitely real, but the fast talk in Italian was way beyond the "Quanta costa" and "Buona sera" I'd been practicing in town. I ran out into the street and looked for any of my compatriots, but of course, now they were nowhere to be found. I ran back in, straight back to the screen, but I hadn't imagined it. This was definitely real.
It took about half an hour for word to spread around town, and I was the source of the news for many in our group. I made the lap between the screen and the street a dozen times, checking each time for a familiar face. I finally settled in when this nice Texan couple who had wandered in at the sight of a television offered to share their pizza and their booth and a pair of spectacular accents that were comfort enough for the time being. They had ordered a quattro stagione, and it was the first time I had ever tried eggplant. To this day, the taste of melanzane brings me back to Caffè degli Artisti and the dark hours of the afternoon of 9/11.
Exactly twelve years later, and I'm sitting in my New York City apartment with my wonderful boyfriend/partner, Jesse, a week and a half away from heading back to Cortona. We'll actually be staying a few kilometers away from town, but to me, whether I'm on the hilltop or the countryside matters not. It was a doozy of a decade between that afternoon in Italy and the circumstances that led me to head back for a long, lazy holiday abroad, but it was all worth it.
I look forward to a week in London and three weeks in the Tuscan countryside, focused on resting, relaxing, and reconnecting with the place that served as the starting block for my life. I get to spend it with the most perfect person for me, and I hope to spend some time reflecting on the years between that time and this one. The title of the blog, "Return to the Scene of the Wine," is a reminder to myself to keep chasing that perfect bottle, the one I first had in Cortona for a mere five thousand lire, or about $2.75.
I don't plan to spend any time on social media, but this blog will post to Facebook, and I plan to post photos both here and on Instagram (@sarahdotbrown). I will also serve as scribe for Jesse's submissions to the Captain's Log, so you can follow the Braver household here on braversineurope.blogspot.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment