Hard as it was to say goodbye to Assisi, Rebekah and I boarded the bus excited to be on our way to Northern Italy and a new set of adventures – this time with “Casa di Pashby-Maul” as our base of operations.
Traveling by rail – once again – proved a fast, efficient, convenient, and comfortable alternative to driving (especially when there’s no extra baggage). Andrew and Alicia met us at the Vicenza station and we arrived at their four-story town-home in time for a home-cooked meal.
BIG, BIG, WORLD: I’ve never understood why some parents put pressure on their grown children to live close to home, or try to guilt their offspring into keeping mom and dad as their perpetual center of gravity. Rebekah and I raised our children to learn all they possibly could, to know God, and to exit their teenaged years well-equipped to make their way in the world.
“You can live absolutely anywhere in this great big world that you want to,” we often said, “so long as it’s a great place for us to visit!” Well, with Naomi in Connecticut (shortly moving to Virginia), and Andrew in Italy for the past several years, they have taken us at our word and then some!
Andrew and Alicia live in the village of Pianezze (I think that’s what it’s called), in the district of Arcugnano, just south of Vicenza, in the Veneto region (I may well have messed up the distinctions between villages and towns and districts and regions…).
COMMUNITY: The townhouse is on a road where the views of the valley are beautiful, and where the sense of community among neighbors is genuine and heartwarming. Andrew has always chosen to live among the local people, and they love him for it. Add to that Alicia’s delightful personality and natural language skills, and it’s easy to see why they fit in so well.
Andrew works as a civilian with the United States Army, handling logistics. He gets to travel, and he’s lived in Italy (with the exception of 12-months in Bahrain) for the past six years.
Both Andrew and Alicia (who also worked in Bahrain, then four years in Kiev ) have embraced the European lifestyle: so Andrew does things like ride his bicycle 12K to work, they enjoy eating dinner late in the evening, they make espresso at breakfast, they fill up their big glass jug of sfuso at the local store every couple of weeks, they speak Italian at places of business, and they see themselves as citizens of the world.
Rebekah and I both say that the evening we shared dinner with 15 or so of their neighbors was one of the highlights of our adventure. We sat at the long picnic table for more than two hours, with more than 90% of the conversation completely unintelligible. But we read one thing loud and clear; we read genuine community, we read delight on the faces of people who obviously love our children, and we understood that Andrew and Alicia are happy.
And for that grace – irrespective of living over 4,500 miles away in Italy, or living 600 miles away in Connecticut, or living just a few miles down the street – Rebekah and I are thankful, grateful, and contented parents.
– DEREK
