I would be reflecting on the past year, which saw me retiring at the first available opportunity, selling a way-too-expensive condo and downsizing to a smaller one, getting on a plane for Italy with a plan to stay six months, breaking this arm four days into that journey, spending two months in a cast and two months engaged in painful physical therapy, buying a house in a little town in Umbria and spending my last two glorious months in Italy there.

I would not be sour at all thinking about how the cast and subsequent therapy did no good because the bone did not heal. Instead I would put this fact in the "things that are better here than there category and vice versa" and rejoice that I have such good medical care here in Oregon. I would celebrate the fact that having a broken arm in a cast gave me a window into My Italian Experience that I would not otherwise have had, and I would not take that fall on a cobblestone street back even if I had the chance.

I would be saluting my dear friend Mick who died exactly one month ago with his family around him and me holding his hand. He was one of the most joyous human beings I have ever known and in his eighty one years lived more of life than most of us ever dream of, and even during his final short-lived battle with lung cancer you would hear him saying, every day, "I am learning so much…"

I would be thanking him for teaching me so much, including the new information that death doesn’t have to be horrible, especially if you are surrounded by the love of family, friends, and new-met strangers. I would thank him for that tap on the shoulder I feel so often these days — when I get caught in a negative thought loop, am feeling ungenerous and/or resentful — that gets my attention and tells me that I really don’t have time.

I would be blessing the Powers-That-Be for leading me to this wonderful blog via another blog I have been following written by a young woman who lived in Tuscany for three years.  I would be marveling at the connections I’ve found there, not the least Rilke and Anne Lamott.

I would be looking forward to the rest of the day which will include lunch with friends at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant (free on my birthday!) and a visit to our museum. I would be musing about a recent news story concerning a plane that crashed into a beach house in the early morning hours and killed five people, two of them children, and badly burned two others, and shaking my head at the knowledge that two of my friends live within blocks of that particular house. I would remind myself, again, that life is a risk every single day and that you don’t even have to get out of bed to run it.  And I would think a lot about six degrees of separation and the fallacy of separateness.

I would be speaking Italian to my cat Phoebe, who now has reservations to return to Italy with me on October 28th, and be very excited about the thought of that while reminding myself that here, now, the sun is breaking through the morning clouds and I am surrounded by love and wonder. I would be counting all the amazing blessings that grace me at age 63.

I would be sending you a picture that says so much about Why I Love Italy and reminding myself to take more pictures, next time, with me in them.