Vasto, Déjà Vu
A circle had closed. We had traveled through the world but were always drawn back to Italy.

The sun rose from the sea over Vasto into a cloudless sky, as though the bells from the town’s ancient churches had woken it from its slumber. I kept my eyes closed, as much to hold onto the dream I was having, as to keep out the blinding light. The high-pitched clang that came from the nearby steeple of Chiesa di San Giuseppe on the town square, called the devout to mass. Our house shook when the great bass bells of the nearby Cathedral of Santa Maria Maggiore, rang even louder in the competition for the souls of the faithful. When they quieted, only the muffled ringing from other, lesser chapels and churches that dot the town could be heard in the distance.

I was still in that indistinct realm between sleep and waking, when the mind can play tricks, and wondered if I hadn’t been in this place before. Was it the gravitational pull from the gnarled roots of my family tree, or was it my Italian ancestors calling to me after all these years?

A circle had closed. My father’s family fled from the brutal poverty of their village on the Amalfi Coast in Southern Italy, with a dream of finding a better life in America. I returned a hundred years later, following a different dream.