She's gone to Capri

Well, one island over

My mother always wanted to go to Capri. She did attend an art school in Italy for a time right after she had an empty next— a time that she held like a treasure, a time all her own. A time that wasn’t about us. A time for her art alone.

But she didn’t go to Capri.

The whole time we were kids, she had pinned to the wall a torn magazine page of the old “She’s gone to Capri, and she’s never comping back” ads. She never smoked. Neither did I. So the ad didn’t get us to buy the cigarettes, but completely won us over on Capri.

When I was in my early twenties, the two of us almost went to Capri. We had two weeks to kill and we saw cheap tickets to Italy. We plotted. We dreamt. We almost went, but instead we visited people we felt like we should in the midwest. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

It was not the right thing to do.

We should have gone to Capri. We should have made it a memory just for us. We should have not visited the should-haves. We should have gone together and gotten too hot, lost, laughed, and ate mozzarella and melons.

I have very few regrets in my life. I actually can only think of three. Not going to Capri is one of them.

My youngest son Dimitri is a dancer, and is spending three weeks dancing and competing in Italy. The first week is on the island of Ischia, right next to Capri. I have joined for part of the trip, I was not going to miss the memories this time, or the mozzarella.

He is learning to have a time for his art too. He is off dancing now in a beautiful ballet studio under lemon trees, getting too hot, and lost in the dance.

I stayed behind today. I am sitting at a blue tile table, in a blue dress, writing my book, my own art. I look across blue water at Capri. There is it. Just like it should be. It feels so amazing to be here, so very close to Capri. And I wonder if perhaps that is where she has gone.

Holy hell, I miss her.

I resist the urge to go look. She’s gone, and she is never coming back.

But we are here. In Italy. Together.