In July, I went on a sabbatical. It was four weeks long and often boring. Not in a bad way, nor a good way—just in a plain, boring way. I had expected it, planned it to be so. I held off from taking my sabbatical for a while, as
About two years ago, I walked out of my therapist's office, and into a rainy New York afternoon, sobbing. Five years after I had scheduled my first appointment—because sometimes I couldn't feel half my face and the doctors had concluded the trouble was in my
I was about eleven when I learned, in a clothing store, that my hips were too wide. A comment made about a pair of white pants I liked—the suggestion that they might not look good on me, because I was skinny, yes, but not slender—woke me up to
It is possible I hate spring because it is beautiful. Because it demands, prepotent, that I live it to the fullest. That I absorb it and let it feed my soul, or my imagination—both of which often feel so undernourished—but I never can. Because it comes back yearly,
Bergamo, my hometown, is so gorgeous it’s distracting. Even those who’ve lived there their whole life—especially them, actually—will pause to note, often out loud: Isn’t Bergamo just beautiful? Bergamaschi are practical, tough people; rule-followers with an infamous guttural accent I tried to get rid of
One night last year I was heartbroken and awake at four in the morning. The internet said that was wrong. I was long past a reasonable time to be crying over something that ended months before (you can never cry over someone you had, but always and only over something
Ten years ago, almost exactly to the day, I found my wedding dress. It felt like coming up for air. I only had a couple of weeks in Italy to plan my wedding, before going back to India, and I had tackled decision after decision, watching the budget go up,