Bramasole

I've been reading Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mays. I've seen the movie repeatedly, but the book is a completely different story. I loved the movie. It's one of those tales about thinking you're in the absolute worst place in your life and winding up exactly where you want and need to be. I guess that's something that I'm really identifying with at this point in my life. When you get to a place, numerically, where you thought you would have certain things, have accomplished certain goals, but realize you're in a completely different place than you thought you'd be. Not a bad place, per se, just a different one. And you wonder if you've taken a path that took you somewhere other than where you thought you wanted to go. I'm turning 34 in a few months and I always imagined that I would be married by now and have children. I'm not and I don't. I have other things, things I'm very proud of, but I wonder what I may have sacrificed on the way. Did I completely miss the married with children exit on the interstate? Was I so focused on the left hand lane of higher education and career? (Hang in here with me, I'm enjoying this metaphor! )

But getting back to the movie, this story, at least in the film, is one of those tales where people end of getting everything they want in the end, they just have to get used to the idea that it doesn't look like what they expected. That's what I like. I think maybe the interstate is really a beltway and that if I just keep driving, I'll hit that same exit again. I just took a longer time getting there.

The book is different though. She doesn't run away to Bramasole, it's a summer home with her second husband. And she has a grown up daughter who visits. But it stills makes you fall in love with Tuscany and gives a romantic feel to the lives of American expatriots in Italy. I am jealous that my tomatoes and peaches will never taste as vivid as the way she describes the fresh fruits and vegetables from the markets in Cortona.