In fair Verona, where we lay our scene…
It was my first weekend in your world—my first taste of your beauty, your chaos, your magic. I was a junior in college, still tethered tightly to the familiar. I had never lived away from home, never navigated a new language, never taught in a classroom of my own. And then—there you were. An unexpected invitation, a semester on a U.S. Army base in Vicenza, and a ticket halfway across the world.
You were terrifying.
But you were everything.
You met me with cobblestone streets, ancient ruins, and pizza I learned to order with awkward hand gestures and a smile. You gave me gelato in the snow, Juliet’s balcony in Verona, Carnivale in Venice, and a Valentine’s Day in Rome that still feels like a dream. You gave me my first roommates, my first students, my first real taste of independence—and, somehow, you gave me my future husband too.
You changed me not with one grand moment, but with a thousand small ones: the kind that turn into memories, and then into identity. You taught me how to be brave. How to live in the unknown. How to find pieces of myself in foreign places and unfamiliar faces.
You were my beginning—of adulthood, of love, of courage.
And while I may have returned home fifteen years ago, you’ve never really let me go.
With love and a suitcase full of memories,
from the girl who said yes to you and everything the came after