As someone who has always been eager to travel, it’s unusual to long to be ensconced in the place that’s been my home for the past year
The view from my hotel room in Feldthurns, in South Tyrol. Pic/Rosalyn D’mello
The exuberance I had felt in May upon entering my own temporary apartment in Venice faded by early July, when the longing to simply be ‘at home’ intensified. As I suspected, and somewhat feared, marriage has interfered with my enthusiasm for being a domestic nomad. Though I enjoyed many of the people I was regularly meeting as part of my fellowship, I also craved my solitude, which, eerily enough, is a virtue I am able to savour most accessibly in my marital home. While each time I was in Venice I enjoyed my independence, I also missed being cared for, and I missed feeling accountable. It is not easy to admit any of this. For almost ten years I lived alone and loved every second of it. I rarely craved the presence of a husband, or a marital family in any form. I was good at attending to my needs. Whenever I had the urge to cook for more than one person I was happy to invite friends over, or throw a party and allow myself to inhabit the mode of the hostess. When I needed to be nurtured I would go to Mona’s house and spend the weekend there and let her pamper me.
Marriage complicates things. Especially since, over the last year, I have rooted myself here in Tramin, being away seems to encourage a strange kind of homesickness. I realised it most profoundly last week, when I had to travel from Venice to Tramin for an appointment and I was only able to find the energy to return to Venice because I knew my partner would be joining, and it was to be my birthday, and two other dear friends would be coming in from Innsbruck to spend the weekend with me. On Sunday afternoon my partner and I drove back from Venice to Feldthurns, since I was meant to do a reading there at the South Tyrol Summer School. It was the first time I would be travelling the distance between these two points by road. The movement away from the lagoon and towards the Alps seemed even more pronounced. As we gradually exited the Veneto region to enter Trentino/Südtirol I felt a sense of calm enter my body. In the dickey were all the things I was bringing back after having been simultaneously located in Venice since May. It was officially the end of my period of mentorship which had begun in March. I felt lighter, like I finally had space within my imagination to conceive of the future opportunities that were already presenting themselves to me.
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Instead of sitting at my desk writing this column, I should be on a train back to Venice, since I had booked a ticket from the Marco Polo airport to fly to Berlin. I’d found a cheap flight which would enable me to be at the celebration for our friend, Peter, who recently completed another Master’s degree, enhancing his already successful career as a dentist. But every cell in my body begged me to stay where I am. This was unusual because I’ve always been eager to travel, as if the simple act of temporarily relocating from one point to another allowed for a movement of thought. Even when I lived in Delhi, I enjoyed travelling and then returning to my apartment and immersing myself in it as if it were an oasis.
This time around, all I wanted was to be in Tramin. My body sought the comfort of being cared for by my in-laws, being able to spend continuous time with my partner, walking over to his Aunts’ home for a cup of tea or juice, and spying, regularly, on church activities. In any case, going to Berlin made sense when I was meant to travel from there to the Netherlands. But the rising number of Covid-19 cases there compelled me to cancel my plans. Suddenly travel didn’t feel urgent. The people I was hoping to meet in Berlin would still be there another time. What I seemed to want, right now, was the pleasure of my old lockdown routine, going to bed at 10pm, waking up by 7am, having my meals on time, going for long walks and exercising. I wanted to be in the company of my books and my Orchid, which is growing wild. I am hoping to spend tomorrow at the swimming pool, with my proofreading work and a book. I am excited about the feast day of Sankt Jakob, when I will encounter the full moon this Saturday, and in accordance with the lunar calendar, cut and let hang upside down lavender stalks in order to dry them out to make a stock of tea. I suppose I got eerily attached to all the mundane things that mark my life here. Yesterday, a friend of my father-in-law dropped off a carton full of home-grown zucchini. Today, Aunt Monika dropped off luscious tomatoes from her sister, Crystal’s garden. I missed all of this freshness and generosity. I missed eating home-made jams and drinking juices.
This is the thing about nesting. The instinct creeps up on you and before you know it you are suddenly attached to a notion of home. I suppose when I married my partner I got wedded, inadvertently, to this region. I fear I may never be able to fly solo again in the untethered way I could before. And yet, all things considered, I’ve never been happier.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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