ExcerpTuesday: Edie Weinstein

Standing at the Crossroads 

“What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain. The house protects the dreamer. Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game. It’s such a surprise.” – Frances Mayes

Tonight I watched one of my favorite movies: Under The Tuscan Sun. As always, I found myself immersed in emotion soup … laughter, tears, goosebumps and aha moments. Diane Lane plays a newly divorced writer named Frances Mayes who goes to Italy on vacation, sent there by her pregnant lesbian friend and her friend’s partner. A series of cosmically coincidental meetings and celestial signs sprinkle throughout, and Frances buys a crumbling villa in Tuscany. She wistfully casts her desires for someone to cook for, a wedding to take place in the home, and a family to live there. Those wishes come to pass in profound and unexpected ways. 

The most poignant part of the movie occurs when Frances is in conversation with Martini, the realtor she befriended who helped negotiate the purchase of the villa. She bemoans her circumstances, wondering if her life will ever turn around and allow her to feel a sense of home. He says to her:

Signora, between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.

Someday the train will come. Each day I awaken and, like Frances, find myself ‘standing at the crossroads’, wondering which way to turn. I question why my life circumstances appear as they do at the moment and what steps to take to have them blossom more fully into what I desire. I gaze backward and see when and where I have laid the train tracks in impossibly steep mountainous terrain. I notice, with gratitude, who it is that has worked on the railroad with me, swinging the hammers and pounding steel into rocky ground. I question what it is that has me knowing eventually Vienna and Venice will connect and that the train will arrive, carrying on it the work I was born to do and the partner with whom to share my villa. Each day, like Frances, I celebrate the family of choice that embraces me and the beauty and magic that I encounter. Each day, like Frances, I notice the messages that arrive ushering me into “the four walls,” in which, “unmistakably good things can happen, even late in the game.”

Ciao, Bella.

Bliss Kisses

Do you feel as if you are standing at a crossroads in your life? 

What wishes have you scattered out into the Universe?

In what ways have they come to pass?

 

Are you willing to get on the train and see where it takes you?