The voice becomes a body, three days pass, the body becomes a voice again

I met my mother in Venice this weekend and thus was realized another dream of mother-son trips. It was strange and lovely to have such an important life figure walk into the Italian escapade and make my old life (pre-Ferrara back in North America) stitch itself into my current life (Ferrara and beyond). It was only this last weekend that I realized just how much I have grown up because of study abroad. Of course I was nervous before seeing my mother, thinking maybe she wouldn’t like the extremely long hair, suspecting perhaps that I lost weight or something of the like (I can rely on Bubby as the true barometer of this), or something else who knows. But the mother walked into my life as more of a friend than ever, with hints of the caring worried woman of my life long long ago (before college, before prep-school, think LCC).

My mother and I spent cold days in Venice snapping photos, catching up, glancing over Venice from San Giorgio’s tower, drinking scotch (I think I’m allergic like Dad) with a Count in his frescoes and chandeliered sitting room, getting lost, seeing glowing baby Jesus nativity representations in several churches, going to mass at San Marco’s and being floored by contemporary art.

So many lovely moments together, I can’t write them all down, it is just a feeling. A great proud I-am-related-to-you-and-care-about-you feeling. It was so nice to bring mom to Ferrara, show her where I’ve been suffering and then living, and what I see everyday, because photos, in the end, don’t really do the experience justice.

As quickly as my mother came back into my life, once just a voice on my cellphone, she was off again on the train back to Venice.