Planning for the Unplanned

When I went to Italy in the summer of 2002, something very deep changed inside me. I was always a planner. Not to say that I wasn't spontaneous or I wasn't impractical (I mean, how could one get a degree in theatre arts and not be impractical). But, I was always rooted in "the next step", in my goals and my visions. In college, I would relish every semester in scheduling my classes. Fitting things together perfectly with getting the proper requirements, the right teacher, the right hours, the proximity from one class to another. I went to Chicago with the goal of working in theatre for 2 years. I did just that and left a couple weeks shy of my 2nd anniversary there.

How I ended up in Italy was the most unplanned event of my life up until that point. I came that summer to do an international theatre workshop in Umbria and a week-long residency with a theatre company in Tuscany. I had planned to travel afterwards for a month, first with my cousin, John and then with a friend, Christiana. One weekend of the workshop that we had free, I decided to go visit a friend of mine who was working in Tuscany at a seaside resort. I rallied together 3 other of the actresses to join me on an adventure. San Vincenzo & Ermanno (the place & the friend) ended up being pretty uneventful. We grabbed a wrong train on a sleepy Sunday and ended up in Rome instead of back to Orvieto. So, we decided to stay for a couple of hours and get something to eat in Rome before heading back. That's when it happened.

I literally found myself at the top of the Spanish Steps, coming from a roundabout way (the steps were closed because they were filming something) and I had a magnificent view of Rome. I was so giddy, I started laughing at my discovery and said outloud, "Oh my god! I'm moving to Rome!,". The other 3 girls laughed and poked me, jokingly "Yeah, I'm moving to Rome too...," and I said again, still laughing at perhaps the ridiculousness of it and at my revelation, "No, I'm actually having a moment here. I'm moving to Rome!,". When we got back to Orvieto, I called Vega who was a friend of a good friend of mine and was living in Rome. I was planning on seeing her after I finished the residency, but I had to share my revelation with her. She was so encouraging, telling me that there were plenty of opportunities to teach English there and that if I wanted to learn Italian, there were many language schools. I was excited and then, of course, I questioned myself. What was I thinking? I didn't know any Italian. I didn't have any money. I barely had enough money to support my travels. I didn't know anyone. Well, I kinda sorta knew Vega, but not very well and surely, not well enough for her to be my only contact in a foreign city. Right?

Rome began her lesson to me in letting go. From that first moment on the top of the Spanish steps to the next time I went there and Vega picked me up from the train station, I would get strong instincts about things, follow them, and find myself in the "right situation". I very quickly found other actors, directors, screenwriters, agents, & casting directors. My sister's car ended up breaking down in L.A., so she bought mine in CA and I had money to actually get me started. I took a teeny tiny studio on the Tiber River right near Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps and I was often on that floor, giddily thanking the universe/God/whatever angels there must have been, I thought, to be supporting me through every step of this incredible adventure. Sure, there were lots of ups and downs, triumphs and dissapointments, but my time in Rome felt incredibly unplanned, yet scripted. Everything always seemed to work out, even in ways I would have never imagined. And, as much as I fought with it, I was no longer a planner. Rome had taught me time and time again that when I tried to plan something, it was often the "mistake" (i.e. taking the wrong train), the unplanned event that led me where I needed to go.

Many stories and adventures later, I end up meeting Mimmo, end up getting married (that wasn't "supposed to happen"), end up getting pregnant, and we end up coming to California to birth Salvatore. When we got to CA, we did prepare as much as possible with me taking a small business course to learn about opening a small business here if we decided to stay. We took childbirth prep classes, did the hospital tour, read books, and began preparing for Salvatore's coming. We got an apartment, started to nest, and then, yes, the most unplanned event now of my life occured. Only this time, this "mistake" seems to have no rhyme or reason. Everything doesn't work out. All that I've learned so far in my life from experience, seems to have gone out the door. I survived many difficult things in my childhood and perhaps this had made me stronger, but I never thought that I would have to face trials larger than those I faced and conquered from my early years. Nothing, and I mean, NOTHING can prepare you for this and everything feels like it is out of whack and anything I may have believed in is either questioned or shot down. It feels like standing on a battlefield after all the damage had been done and I am left alive, but everything has been destroyed. And, my whole life before seems like a different person, seems like a film, seems like lifetimes ago and I want to understand and yet, I don't know that I ever will.

I guess that's why I need to write. I need to remember who I was. I need to remember who Salvatore was. I need to ask these questions even though I may never receive the answers. I need to try in my own way to make sense of things, even as they feel so senseless. I want to write a new story. I want this story to have many unplanned events, but I want these events to have a happy ending. I know that that may seem delusional after all that has happened, but I don't expect "and they lived happily ever after". I just expect that they don't end in irreperable tragedy. I'm still stuck on this planet it seems, and even though there have been many moments that I don't want to be, I am still here all the same and I need to find a way to make it ok to still be living. The stakes are too high for life not to get better, to have meaning, and to have purpose.