Confronted with a different set of coordinates, our minds and heart can engage in a fresh new way. In “From Scratch”, I write about the two biggest times that happened for me: as a twenty-year-old college student and then again as a newly-widowed single mother. Both times, I landed in Italy, first Florence and then Sicily. Both times I set out with a kind of wish fulfillment. A wish for life I didn’t yet know was possible.
In Sicily, there is a term: “donna fuggata.” Literally translated, it means “a woman who fled” or “fugitive woman.” It is a reference to Queen Carolina who fled Naples in the 1800’s and took refuge in Sicily. Today, the expression is used to characterize a woman who is escaping something horrible or who doesn’t want to be found. Coincidentally, it is also the name of one of my favorite Sicilian wines.
I was drinking a glass of it one summer in Sicily when I noticed the name. Earthy yet noble and elegant, spicy but always sweet bouquets of citrus, the wine is complex, red, soft and round with hints of cherry and licorice and cocoa. As I sipped it, I couldn’t help but feel it was as complex as most women I knew, especially after a life changing event. We have all had a moment when we needed flight from something, big or small. We are all, in that way, a “donna fuggata.”
I became quietly obsessed with this term. And with more research, I learned that the words have Arabic roots and mean “fountain of health.” Flight and health may seem contradictory, but I saw a connection in my own life.
At forty-one, I was a newly-widowed, single mom honed and hammered by ten years of cancer caregiving. I was grieving the loss of a great love and my own vitality that I felt I had “lost” to years of illness. I kept looking back over my life to make sense. Looking back seemed easier than looking ahead. But I ran the risk of only looking at what had been left undone, half-finished, unfulfilled, longing for a past time. That is a natural in loss and it is a natural occurrence of mid-life. We look back at our choices and at events and wonder what might have been. But I was also anchored in deep grief. So, for me, the two things were intersecting in a powerful way. Some days I felt as if I were running out of runway on my life. The desire for “flight” felt strong.
In Sicily, there is scant rain, torrid heat and a long growing season. Sweetness and acidity go side by side. Sicily’s flavors are haunting, they will not leave your soul. For me, they are restorative. My need for flight found a soft landing spot there in the summers.
I knew “From Scratch” would be about an imperfect storied pilgrimage into love, family, forgiveness, motherhood and the ways I found home. What I came to discover in writing the book is the way I found my own “fountain of health”—emotional, physical, spiritual – by momentarily stepping outside of everyday life. Travelling allowed me to enlarge my reservoir of hope by enlarging my perspective, my understanding of truth and beauty. In the process, I went from being a woman in flight, to becoming a woman who slowly took flight.
