First Love

Just peering past the corner into the living room, I slowly tip toe into the room. As quietly as I possibly can, I scan over the couch to see who occupies it.

She’s sleeping; I’ll have to wait.

First I will have to tactfully find out how her day went and what kind of mood she was in. This is most important when asking for something. Only this wasn’t something… it was everything. At 17 years old that seems dramatic, but this truly was a game changer and not some pair of shoes I saw at the mall.

Later that night, with my toes grazing the kitchen floor as I lean my torso onto the island, I am watching her put hamburgers on the stove. This is a good sign. This isn’t a quick and easy box dinner- meaning she has had a good day.

“Hi Mommy, how was your day?”

“It was good- what do you want, Kate?”

Damnit. Mommy was too much. Time to lay it out there…

… “Can I go to Italy?”

I really have my mom to thank for this love story. It all happened because of sacrifices that I know she made, though I do not know and may never know the specifics. Sometimes small pivotal moments happen that set your life off in one direction rather than another. Because of her willingness to sacrifice, I am where I am learning who I am.

At 17 years old I fell in love for the first time. I know the exact moment- down to where I was, what I was looking at, doing, everything. Today, I fall more in love everyday and it took me coming to Korea to realize how deeply rooted it was.

I was in Italy- Verona, specifically. The theater I was in was dark but emulated a warm light. The low hum of the people below was beginning to die down. I was was shuffling around my balcony seat trying to get pictures of my friends and myself. The room was hushed upon the entrance of the Italian flag.

I was lucky enough to go to Italy with my choir in high school. As a high school teacher- I’ll never understand how my instructors didn’t lose their sanity taking 30 high school students across the ocean. We were participating in a competition and had piled into the theater for opening ceremony.

A flag passed that represented each participating country. A man came to the podium and spoke, there was a translator, but I wasn’t paying attention- there was too much to look at; carvings, velvet curtains, a painted ceiling, people from all over the world. Then it happened- my ear pricked, just slightly. Someone was singing.

My eyes shot back to the podium. It was the man who had made the speech. I knew there were going to be other performances, but he was just smiling out into the audience and singing.

That’s when it happened. . As the man at the podium sang, I recognized the song, and I wasn’t the only one. As I peered around at the audience of performers the delicate sound began to rise. Soon the entire theater was singing Amazing Grace. Harmonies floated and reverberated off of the ceiling.

I’m struggling to explain the sensation of a thousand or so strangers singing the same song. The languages were not the same, and perhaps the emotions put into the song were not the same, but we were sharing an experience that wasn’t spoken, seen, or even sung. It was felt. It was a feeling I promised myself in that small corner of the world  that I would never forget, and never want to top experiencing.

On an April evening back in 2007 in Verona Italy, I fell maddeningly in love and I knew it. What I didn’t know was that it was a love I would briefly lose. That in the next years the girl in that theater balcony would get a little bit lost. She would think fondly of that evening, but assume that the best had passed.

There is something that seeing the world does to you, that traveling does to you. Until you
experience it, you’ll never fully understand and falling in love is the best I can do to explain it. It’s exciting, unpredictable, and rewarding. You fall in love with food, sights, and experiences you never could have imagined. However, it takes nurturing and patience. Even on the worst days you have to remind yourself “yes, it was a bad day. But, it was a bad day on the other side of the world.” 

Korea has reignited the divine romance I had been missing from my life. I am relaxed, happy, and I am learning about the world outside of my mid-west bubble. I had lost the sensation that I promised myself I would not forget, but I found it, hiding, on the other side of the world.

-K.