Passport, please.

If you have only two pennies left in the world,

buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other.

- Chinese Proverb

I must state clearly, again, for the record, that I must not die without ever having lived in Italy. My mother called me yesterday to read a postcard I had written during my first Italian affair. I was about 23 and travelling with a close friend. We landed in Paris without a plan, took a night train to Turino and embarked on an adventure in a tiny Fiat with her Italian cousin and a friend that took us to Montecarlo, Alassio, Verona, Venice, Florence and Rome. We departed again from Paris. The postcard described, in highly romanticized detail, our journey and concluded with the line, "We have decided we need no men. Italy will be our lover."

I emailed my friend, (now married and living in Jerusalem) that line and she responded, appropriately, "Wow! We were Thelma and Louise on Shakespeare."

If Italy was to be my lover, I am not quite sure how to personify China. But my fantasy since our last trip there is to go back. The fantasy takes several forms. One is just to go back. To be able to visit frequently enough that it feels, if not like a second home, than a place that is not foreign. I have always wanted this for Cate, for obvious reasons, but as time passes, I want it for all of us. We have been drawn in by the ancient history standing silently and graciously behind its modern development. Drawn in by the food, the sounds, the smells, the encompassing feeling of being alive and alert and aware. My second fantasy is to return for my 40th birthday as a volunteer for Half the Sky or perhaps our own agency and to work in an orphanage for a couple of weeks. My last is to actually just move there. Not forever. Maybe just a year. Maybe two. We keep our Fly Creek home, of course. This is always our base. But I go and teach. The kids learn the language and absorb the world. I could write a book about our experiences. Steve... well... he is the stumbling block in this fantasy... it is hard to work in a time zone completely the opposite of one's own. And of course, I know any of these scenarios, although ultimately rewarding, would be fraught with difficulties and challenges, all part of the adventure... At the very least, we will return when Cate is older to show her the place of her birth. And I wonder what it will mean to her then... this one great trip in isolation, but that is for another post.

Last year, at about this same time, I believed for a day or a week that we could actually move to Belize for a year. Winter was wearing thin. How hard could it be? I researched house rentals and teaching jobs. Alex was 100% on board. I saw him, barefoot and happy. I saw Cate on the beach, fresh mango juice dribbling from her chin. We decorated the house from top to bottom with tissue paper flowers and a palm trees constructed from poster board and grocery bags. We bought coconuts and pineapples. We names the geckos that would most certainly be peeking at us through our thatched roof. Steve seemed on board... but maybe only for a few months, okay, maybe two months, really one month, and the beach shack had to have high speed wireless Internet that met American, not tropical place, definitions of "high speed". Two weeks was probably more realistic, and as Steve pointed out, he and Cate hate to be hot. That is better left to my little son and me. My barefoot dreams began to crumble. Our long lunches in the sandy floored "Shark Bar" in San Pedro drifted out to sea. But we left the decorations up for months, popped in Jimmy Buffet's greatest hits and turned the volume up as high as it would go.

I usually make Valentine's Day all about Italy. Red wine. Cheese. Bread. Opera. Frank Sinatra... but this year, it falls on the first day of Chinese New Year... Cold, cold beer or warm coke. Firecrackers, Longlife noodles. Dumplings. Dragons. On Friday night, I am preparing a tropical meal - Tropical Supper Salad. Shrimp. Mangos. Rum Drinks. Steel drums. I wish I could say, it's just February... but it is just me... seduced by the world... eating bread while I breathe in the scent of the lilies on the kitchen counter, my children happily crafting the scenery of our next adventure, my husband shaking the local cocktails...