Mini Series, The First 60 Days in Italy— EPISODE I
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Long before passports filled with ink and airports became familiar terrain, our story opened on a blank canvas — the kind that looks empty until you realize it’s making room for the next masterpiece — Italy.
We sold our house in Spring Lake, North Carolina two months before we left. Five years of life packed into boxes. Five years of growing up compressed into bubble wrap. That house had held us through the earliest versions of our family — the years right after Zoey was born, when everything was new and we were learning how to be “us.”
Before we handed the keys away for good, I walked through it one last time.
The backyard still felt like laughter — the big trampoline, the space where childhood didn’t just happen, it ran wild. The deck where fresh air and conversations lived. The park so close it felt like an extension of our front door. I walked into the spacious two-car garage, and it played back like a highlight reel: part parking space, part gym, part dance studio — the place where Will and I trained our bodies, and where I danced my heart out like nobody was watching… even when life was.
That walk-through became a symbol I wouldn’t recognize until later: the empty house.
Not empty like loss.
Empty like space.
Like a stage after the curtain falls.
Like the quiet before the next act begins.
I would learn, move after move, country after country, that the space is always empty before and after — and we are the ones who fill it. We are the ones who decide what it becomes. We furnish it with memory. We bless it with laughter. We make a home where there was only structure.
But that understanding came later.
At the time, the world was shaking.
We left for Italy during the height of the COVID pandemic — masks on, sanitizer ready, six feet of distance living in everybody’s mind like a constant refrain. We had only the news as a preview of how other countries were handling the pandemic, and Italy was being described as one of the hardest hit. That didn’t help the nerves of our relatives. People were sad to see us go, excited for us too — but the kind of excited that trembles underneath.
The goodbyes came in waves. Hangouts. Going-away moments. Slumber parties for the kids and cousins to soak up “one more time” together. A whole series of soft endings, like the world was letting us practice departure before it demanded it.
And then the day came.
At my mom’s house in Fayetteville, my grandma, grandpa, and aunty were there. Saying goodbye to them tightened my chest in a way that would follow me — not just as sadness, but as guilt and worry too. Because unlike our parents, they weren’t keen on flying. I knew I wouldn’t see them for a while. And some love doesn’t leave easily.
Still, I knew what we were embarking upon was good for my little family.
We weren’t strangers to adventure. Even in the States, we lived like explorers: hiking trails, museum days, Spartan races, theme parks — we chased experiences like they were vitamins. But to do all of that in foreign lands? To give our daughters the world as their classroom? That was the next level. That matched our spirit.
So I held both truths at once: the ache of departure and the call of expansion.
Only me and the girls boarded the first flight out of Fayetteville — three of them then. Willow wasn’t born yet. Daddy was TDY in San Antonio, and he wasn’t allowed to fly in to leave with us. Instead, our routes were threaded to meet in Atlanta: Fayetteville to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Marco Polo Airport.
Walking onto that plane without Will, my body didn’t panic — it clicked into something ancient, something maternal. A remembered cadence of duty. The kind of awareness that sharpens without shaking. As if I was borrowing strength from my future self.
I sat in the aisle seat. Always. The buffer. The gate. The watchful presence between my babies and the world.
My calm wasn’t the absence of fear — it was self-trust.
You got this.
That was my guiding voice.
In Atlanta, when I saw Will again, a small spark jumped in me — not fireworks, not drama — just that quiet ignition that says: we’re whole again. We hugged, and then moved with surgical precision through the busy airport, navigating like it was something we’d always done… even though it was only the second time we had flown together as a full family unit.
It’s funny how destiny works like that. Sometimes you’re new to a thing — and still built for it.
Somewhere between terminals and time zones, we became a unit in motion.
By the time we landed, the world introduced itself in the softest ways first: Italian accents drifting through the air, fresh baked bread, coffee — the kind of smell that doesn’t just announce a place, it welcomes you into it.
And the first emotion louder than fear wasn’t relief.
It was curiosity.
Because that’s who I am at the root. That’s who our family is. We don’t only travel to see things. We travel because wonder keeps calling our name.
From Marco Polo, we caught a bus to Caserma Ederle, then to a home where we would spend the next 14 days in quarantine before being cleared to move about freely. A pause between worlds. A cocoon before the story could fully open.
The quarantine house was the first time our family had ever been completely alone together —
not “alone” as in lonely, but alone as in unwitnessed.
No relatives a few hours down the road.
No quick drives for help.
No familiar hands just around the corner.
Just us — tethered by love, learning how to be a small universe.
Our bodies felt the crossing before our minds did.
The first days were… honest.
Stomachs rebelling. Literally. Our bodies “flushing” away the American diet.
The kind of physical reset that reminds you: You are not where you were.
We ordered our very first Italian pizza — impossibly large, wider than our heads — and took a picture like we’d discovered treasure.
The ingredients tasted different. Cleaner. Brighter. Alive.
So non-American that it became a family theme we’d return to again and again:
This place feeds us differently.
The girls built their worlds inside bright little tents, playing Roblox with their cousin back in the States — one foot in home, one foot in becoming.
We watched movies.
We made up games.
We ran through the backyard playing tag and Red Rover, just us — laughter bouncing off foreign walls that were already learning our names.
We worked out together in the living room.
We learned how to pass time like pioneers of a softer kind.
We quarantined beautifully.
A couple young soldiers were assigned to help our family — bringing groceries, supplies, and then something even more sacred:
homemade food.
Her favorite wines.
A quiet hospitality that gave a “Welcome to Italy” vibe.
And just like that…
Italy didn’t feel like a country anymore.
It felt like a chapter that had been waiting.
And then — the moment the universe finally said, Yes. You’re here.
I looked out of the window.
Mountains.
A mountain view that would become my compass — the kind of view you don’t just notice, you recognize. The kind that settles your nervous system like a hand on the back. The kind that makes you start searching every future window for the same quiet promise:
You are held.
You are safe.
You are somewhere bigger than you were before.
That was the first true arrival.
And if my future self could whisper back to the woman I was then, stepping into the unknown with sanitizer and faith, with daughters and duty and longing in her chest, she would say exactly this:
You were born for this.
And this is your preamble.
In the coming weeks:
- Hotel Life and our first Venice trip
- A birthday on the water at Scaliger Castle
- An old beater van that would unlock more of Italy
- An Epic winter storm
- Mildred’s granddaughter makes a Thanksgiving spread out of inheritance and instinct in a tiny two burner hotel kitchen
- House hunting before Christmas like we were chasing a deadline that had claws
Read next (Getting Ready to PCS? Guide):
If you want the practical guide companion to this story—knowing what to do with all your stuff—we’ve got you covered.
Getting Ready to PCS? Shipping, Storage, or selling everything before a move
Series navigation:
Mini series: The First 60 Days in Italy
→All episodes in this mini-series
→Italy World Page
Coming up next
Episode II — Hotel Life, an Empty Venice, and Our First Weeks as a Family in Italy: Moving from quarantine into a hotel and not waiting to get out and explore...
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