re-defining home

creating the endless summer afternoon, wherever we go

My angels,

It’s the evening of October 1st. It’s still sunny in Rome, it’s still 26 degrees, and it still feels like summer. We’re still carrying around water bottles to avoid heatstroke, we’re still eating gelato, we’re still wearing shorts, etc. etc. 

But can I be honest with you? I cannot wait for jacket season. I cannot wait for oversized denim jacket season, for oversized bomber season, for leather jacket season. For bodysuits and Zara jeans and the rotation of white boots VS. black boots VS. cowboy boots. 

You know what I just thought of - and I can’t be the only one who has this obsession. You know those TNA boyfriend crewnecks we all have (linking here because Italy does not have Aritzia) I really miss my forest green one. I’d wear it to bed, I’d wear it to Summerhill Market, I’d wear it on my evening Covid walks, I even wore it on a date once. 

Anyways - let’s remind ourselves that next on our shopping list is the Search for the Perfect Crewneck. 

Lorde’s Hard Feelings is my go-to wind down song as of late, and I think it’s because of one of many lines:

I light all the candles / cut flowers for all my rooms / I care for myself the way I used to care about you

AND, my other favourite:

When you outgrow a lover / the whole world knows but you / it’s time to let go of the endless summer afternoon

Even when you’re not necessarily sad or melancholic about anything in particular, there is something main character about spending your Saturday evening beside lit candles and cut flowers, listening to Lorde, and writing about your week to the people you love most. 

We officially have 29 days left in Rome, or 28 depending on what day you’re reading this. 

An update - I fell asleep before finishing this last night so now it is the morning of October 2nd, and I am drinking an espresso and listening to my morning affirmations. 

Change is good. I remember in one of my first newsletters I wrote when I first got to Rome - I wrote how change is needed, and change is welcomed. Sometimes, I write words that I know I need to hear, but don’t necessarily believe in the moment. With change comes fear, and what I was most scared of back then was not finding My Home. 

Home, to me, used to look like planted roots. Four walls you could return to when you felt lost. When you couldn’t remember who you were. And where you needed to feel like everything would be okay again. 

Home was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to feel easy, and it was supposed to feel reliable. That safety net. 

Long dinners, conversations about days, hopes, wishes, and dreams. Old photo albums, an overflowing backyard of daisies and evergreens, tea brought up to you before bed. The antique chandeliers and shopping lists and the linen closet that always smells like a Sunday evening.  

“Can you hang up the laundry?” 

“Going to Shoppers, need anything?”

That feeling of an endless summer afternoon. 

So, what do we do when the inevitable winds of change and the universe come in (sometimes, uninvited) and ask us to paint a new definition of home? 

I don’t know if we feel ever fully prepared for change. I don’t think it’s in our nature to have every single box ticked and have every single duck lined up in a row before we are forced into changing something in our lives. 

But maybe, that’s the point.

How can we tell stories if we don’t experience something more? How can we meet new friends and new lovers and discover new cafes and drinks we love, aesthetics we love and new routines we love if we don’t leave a part of what we know? 

I’m trying to get used to this idea of not having that physical structure to define home. 

Home is a feeling, my friends repeat to me. 

Lately, I keep finding myself at art exhibits. Yesterday, I went to one where the artist used flower petals to make ink. “Floweries” - Flowers as Memories. And, ironically enough, she collaborated with an ink maker from Toronto. 

“I love the way we can use flowers as a medium to communicate” the artist says to us. 

Daffodils are for unrequited love, pink carnations are for a mother’s love, pink flowers in general mean “yes”, and red roses represent eternal love. Yellow roses are infamously used for apologies after infidelity, while white roses represent heaven. 

“This is something I think you’d like. Flowers and ink - I feel like you like to hand write on paper” my Roman friend says to me.

I didn’t tell her this yesterday, but isn’t it funny how all it takes is one sentence that falls along the lines of: “I remember how you like this” or “I noticed you’d be into this because you like this” - for you to feel like home. Understood. Safe. Appreciated. Celebrated. 

Remember how one of my Roman lessons was learning how not to be afraid of ourselves? This was one of those moments. You find your family when you start to define yourself as what you love.

In other moments that felt like home this week, one of my favourite muses of the past reached out. 

And I can finally say “my favourite” because it’s been so long, and I can admit that I miss our language of banter without feeling the need to hide my true feelings behind my usual defence mechanism of sarcasm. 

I know they say the past belongs in the past for a reason. But isn’t it beautiful when you can start to communicate with the past from who you are in the present?

It’s been about 6 months since we last spoke. So, naturally, I have to tell him about my Italian love stories that have somehow all ended with me, unknowingly and unwillingly, becoming a third party. 

“Well, you never were a side piece, Emily Mais. Main column only.” 

Sometimes, we receive exactly what we need to hear. And from the people that we least expect it from? Well, that’s what makes it even better.

Home. Family. Two ideas that are so firmly rooted in tradition, yet they are the ones that need to be constantly redefined the most.

But maybe I’ve already found it.

I love you,

Emily