There are certain feelings which are too vast, intricate, and unfathomable to describe, even if they’re right there underneath your breast. It’s a heavy task to condense the way the ocean makes you feel into a crisp sentence, even when you’re floating right there in the middle of it. And maybe it’s a sentiment that’s better to be felt than to be spoken. Without squeezing it into the form of letters and punctuation marks, it can go on and on, untamed and unruly.
“Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” Steinbeck, 1953
The quote struck me as I scanned the hostel website, prompting me to find and read John Steinbeck’s entire essay. I felt the weight of each word sink into my skin, diffuse into my bloodstream, converting into familiar bits of anxious excitement which often crept into my belly before a trip.
I knew I shouldn’t be taking a vacation. I had already quit my previous job to prepare for the one I would start in Milan. At the last minute, my start date was delayed three months, and suddenly my bank account was looking a little bare, but the name Positano had somehow gotten stuck in my head like an overplayed pop song. So I threw caution to the wind, reserving four nights in the only hostel in the city, and hoping that the combination of saltwater, sun, and solitude would help me clear my head.
My hostel was on the top of a cliff. Every morning, I descended interminable staircases to reach the beach, often accidentally wandering into residential alleyways where I wasn’t supposed to wander. On one such occasion, a seventy-something man watched me as I turned left where I should have turned right. When I sauntered back up the alley, he was standing there waiting for me. He grinned a wide grin and shook his finger. “Wrong way,” I said in my best Italian, and we switched places.
As it often happens when you have nothing to do, I fell into an easy routine. Waking early, navigating the scenic descent, staking out a beach chair, reading, floating, repeating. In the evenings, I climbed the cliffside staircases, feeling thankful for the scenic backdrop if not only so that I could pause and catch my breath without appearing to be out of shape. I wondered idly if the word “breathtaking” had been inspired by the combination of stairs and views in Positano.
After a long day in the sun and an exhausting ascent to my hillside home, even a hostel shower could made me feel like royalty. I dressed, put on a bit of makeup, assessed my tan lines in the mirror, and headed out into the fading dusk. It was after descending the hill a second time and sauntering out onto the pier that I met the sailors.
I was trying to take a photo of the cliffs when they called out to me in Italian.
“Want us to take a photo with you in it?”
“Thank you but that’s not necessary!” I said, clumsily choosing the first semi-logical phrase that came to me.
“Not necessary?” they laughed. “Where are you from?”
Ten minutes later I found myself sitting there on the port with two middle-aged sailors, Fabio and Massimo, sipping on the Albertino drink they insisted I try, and wondering how horrified my parents would be if they knew what I was doing at the moment. My new friends were nice, and as they loved being on the water, both made their living by taking visitors on private tours. It didn’t seem like a bad way to spend a lifetime.
I told them about my future job, enjoying the opportunity to practice speaking with Italians who didn’t switch to English when they detected my accent. I felt I was on a roll until the one called Fabio suddenly threw his head back and howled with laughter. I blinked. When he caught his breath, he informed me that instead of saying the company had hired me, I said they had “dug up my body.”
By the third day in Positano, the locals recognized me. “Will you come for a cake tomorrow?” the baker asked me in English, recalling that I had stopped in for a croissant in the other morning. “Sure, see you tomorrow!” I responded in Italian, half-speaking and half-laughing. The waiters at the restaurant halfway up the cliff said hello to me with warmth in their voices, and I returned the greeting as if this were a commonplace exchange. How fun to be recognized in a place you don’t belong to.
Once while taking a new path down to the beach, I heard someone call out to me. “Meggie!” the voice echoed, reverberating off the surrounding cliffs. I froze. Nobody called me that except for my mom, and apparently now, Massimo, the sailor from Positano. I crossed the street to say hello as he introduced me to his friends and then continued on my way, shaking my head and smiling.
On my last evening stroll, I said goodbye to the medicinal sea, violet in the night and speckled with anchored sailboats. Then, I stopped in the pizzeria next to my hostel to order a takeaway meal.
I eavesdropped as the waiters talked loudly at the counter, pretending to pick lint off my dress while I worked on my comprehension skills. They were complaining about tourists and talking about the latest soccer match. I noticed the balding baker was alternating his attention between me and the oven in front of him. After about ten minutes, the baker approached me, opening the pizza box as if it were an oversized engagement ring. The chatter stopped and the waiters smiled. “You are beautiful,” the baker said to me in English, presenting me with a heart-shaped Margherita pizza.
I accepted.
One evening in the hostel, I encountered two other Americans, and we decided to have some wine on the terrace. A boy from Texas was there for a two-week summer vacation while his buddy from Oregon had packed up for a month of traveling before switching jobs. They could easily understand what I loved about Italy, but they didn’t quite buy in to the idea of a 23-year-old expat.
“Surely, you’ll go back,” Oregon said to me, after I expressed my desire to stay for a long time.
“I don’t know that I will.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Really.”
Every now and then I would see a family on vacation together and suddenly feel out of place. A dad would hoist his daughter up onto his shoulders or a mom would slather sunscreen onto her squealing kiddos, and for an instant, I would get bleary eyed. But then something would happen. I’d hear an emphatically uttered “mamma mia”, watch an eighty-something woman with a cane mechanically maneuver down the cliffside stairs, witness a dog climb onto a Vespa alongside his owner. A sailor would buy me a drink, a baker would present me with a heart-shaped dinner, a trio of waiters would greet me like an old friend. After a moment like that, I couldn’t help but think that maybe home can be two places at once. That maybe life is richer that way.
Was it really me standing there on the hostel patio looking out over the city? Did I float in the cool water for hours, looking up at a crystal sky? Did I scale a cliff twice daily, drink with fishermen, charm the pizza maker, and wander the town in silent admiration?
For me these memories are as durable as a Steinbeck novel, indulgent like the Tyrrhenian sea on a cloudless June day, and as precarious as a technicolor city on a cliff.
