Vivid dreams

The Duomo in Siena
(The equipment belongs to people cleaning
her facade.)

We've come back from Italy with a serious cold. I don't know
whether it's the cold medicines, or just the sheer fact of air travel not
allowing us to actually feel where we are physically, the way
car travel does, but my reaction to the huge cultural shift
of leaving Europe has been to dream intensely about
what I'm missing. Yesterday morning after a short sleep that
of course was way off schedule for our recent time zone,
I woke up and remembered what I'd been dreaming.
It was amazing really. In my dreams I had been walking
around an astounding cathedral that I'd never actually seen,
either in real life or in pictures. I was making up a new one!

Then this morning I dreamt that I'd left something behind
somewhere in Florence, and we had to retrace our steps
through those gorgeous art packed streets to find it.
In my dream my husband was insisting that we couldn't
go back, the place would be closed, we'd have to go
back tomorrow. And then I woke up as they say. And
realized with great sadness that I couldn't walk back
down those streets because I was here, not there.

Steven brought me a coffee, and I said, "I'm having a
hard time getting to positive." I asked him to tell me
three great things about being here, and he said
"Number one -- we're home." I was a tough sell, and
I said that's not working for me, but sometimes that
man is so right, and he replied, "No but it will."
By tonight after a lovely dinner with friends, and with
excellent cold medicine, I feel that my soul has come
back to Canada. I'm a bit like a teenager newly in love,
and the love is for a place. But I feel sanity, happiness,
and peace of mind returning.

Now we must get some Christmas going here. We don't
have so much as a wreathe.

Have a being-content-where-you-are day.