Two and a half hours flew by like that. It wasn’t until I was about 100 meters from my apartment door that I felt the wariness in my legs. “Good,” I thought. I hadn’t been allowed to wear myself out like that for such a long time. It was exhilarating. When I woke up that morning, I immediately teared up when I remembered that I could finally take a walk.
I climbed the five flights to my apartment, joyfully out of breath as I passed the Dachshund puzzle inexplicably stuck to the front door on two, wading through the smell of heavy smoke that always hit on four, and up the ladder-like staircase that lead to the last door – mine.
The entire quarantine situation had been surprisingly easy for me to handle. Part of it was due to the fact that I already worked from home and that I enjoy being by myself. But I owed most of my ease to my Florentine apartment. I moved in two days before the stay at home order, narrowly escaping from the dark rental I’d temporarily taken up after returning from a year in Milan.
It had come down to two apartments. The obvious choice had a spacious kitchen, a sitting area, and a bedroom with a dreamy queen-sized bed just outside the city walls. The less obvious choice was a small studio, five flights up with no elevator, smack dab in the normally clamorous city center. It was an artsy studio with a high beamed ceiling, wood floors, big windows, and one big looming flaw. Another couch bed. After a year of sleeping in my kitchen in a tiny studio, I had promised myself I wouldn’t settle for anything less than a big, fluffy bed in my next apartment.
But this place had a trick up its sleeve.
If you climbed up yet another set of wooden stairs inside the studio and pushed open a trap door at the top, you’d find yourself standing on a terrace with 360 degree views of the city. Standing there, I could see the tower of Palazzo Vecchio snaking up to the right, Santa Croce to the left, and the cypress-lined hills between Giardino Bardini and Forte Belvedere straight ahead.
It was everything I said I didn’t want, and the one thing I really, really did.
At first, I said no. But those views, the trap door, the artistic atmosphere of the place, they wouldn’t leave me alone. I couldn’t stop thinking about the apartment on top of the world. The artist’s alcove. A true writer’s apartment. A week later, I texted the owner to ask if it was still available. Eight days after that, I moved in.
And so, I found myself with a couch bed, a fireplace I was sure I’d never have the courage to use, a washing machine I surely would, a myriad of eclectic artwork, a tennis racket from the 1940s, and five ethnic straw hats inexplicably arranged on the wall. As undeniably strange as it was charming, the apartment immediately felt like home.
Then there were the views. Having a lookout perch where I could admire Florence without breaking any rules felt like winning the lottery. Dante peers right up at my terrace protectively, and although I can’t make out his eyes, the David on top of Piazzale Michelangelo seems to be fixing in my direction as well.
I knew there were millions of people struggling to cope with all of the uncertainty, but as I sat on my lookout perch, I couldn’t help but feel an immense wave of gratitude. For those of us who were lucky enough to be healthy, wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to take inventory of our lives?
To ask ourselves: is this the environment I want to be in? Is this the work I want to dedicate my life to? Is this the person I want to be with? All of the things that I’m upset about not being able to do – was I really doing them before? Was I living bravely enough?
I’ve always felt driven by that final question. It’s the reason I moved to Italy after college. The reason I quit my desk job. The reason I understood that that terrace which made me feel so alive was far more important than a queen-sized bed.
The trick is to live good and big before loss or tragedy provokes you. It’s assuring your path is marked by more did’s than didn’ts. It’s embracing more failure and more vulnerability, which is always the braver choice in the end. It’s loving wholly who you choose to love and be loved by and pursuing that passion your mind summons up as the nose of your airplane dips. That is the hardest part in life: to proactively pursue the important things. Keeping them in the front row of your mind always and not just when the turbulence kicks in.
And if you really live and love like this, it’s likely that many people will label you as crazy, when in reality it’s the other way around.
As I came home from my first walk in two months, climbing the stairs that made me question my sanity, pushing open the door to my weird apartment with the five straw hats hanging on the wall, I felt the biggest takeaway of the whole situation condense itself into two words: appreciate everything.
