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Life is full of firsts. From our first smile, first steps and first words to our first love, first heartache and first loss, we measure many of life’s milestones in firsts.
Retiring early and moving to Sicily, to start up a new business with my new husband, means I’m still encountering many more firsts than are usual, in this, the last year of my fifties. Sicily has for sure been full of them.
One of the things that terrified me initially was driving. It’s on the ‘wrong side’ of the road of course if you’re Irish, and I had built it up in my head as something almost unattainable. When we bought my car, it sat outside untouched for about a week. “Going out for a drive today?” Fabrizio would ask. “Mmm maybe later” or “in the morning” came my reply. Eventually I needed to go to the supermarket and Fabri told me, in an act of tough love that I absolutely needed, that he wouldn’t take me this time because I was well able to drive there myself. Well, I can tell you that I held that steering wheel so tight for the fifteen minute trip, that my hands were cramping by the time I’d parked up. Every time I went to change gears I bashed my hand on the window, as muscle memory led me to search for the gear stick on the wrong side. But I made it there and back. I survived my maiden voyage on Sicilian roads and was rewarded with a return to the independence that comes from having your own wheels under you.
Language, of course, is the other huge challenge that moving to Sicily has presented me with. For the first year I listened a lot and said very little. That was hard. I love to chat and share laughter and stories with people I meet. Being so poor at communicating, I felt I lost my voice a little and was always relieved, on returning to Dublin, to discover that I hadn’t lost the gift of the gab. Year two my confidence grew and I hit so many firsts I’ve lost count! First phone call to book a table, first chat with our neighbours, first time going to the doctor on my own; each one a small achievement in many ways yet an enormous source of satisfaction. I’ve noticed with friends I’ve made here who aren’t Italian either, that we tend to share these minor triumphs with each other because we all just get how significant these firsts are when you’re navigating how things are done somewhere new.
But perhaps the single biggest challenge has been one Fabrizio and I have shared together – creating our beautiful Farfalla Blu, our fledgling Bed & Breakfast, post-retirement – at a time when most people start to think of winding down a little bit. Both brand new to hospitality we reckon the firsts are arriving daily at this point but perhaps our favourite one to date was the arrival of our very first guests.
Completely at home with hosting family and friends, it was surprising how different this impending arrival seemed. There was more at stake somehow. We wanted our guests to love our place, to see what we see, to feel they’d found their home-from-home. But furniture deliveries that had been promised didn’t arrive, changes to our plans had to be made. The pool wasn’t ready. The garden was a work in progress. We needed guests who could overlook these things in favour of the welcome they’d receive, the hospitality they’d experience and the connection we’d all make with each other. Well all I can say is that’s exactly the guests the universe sent our way!
As soon as Laura and Colm stepped out of their Fiat 500 we had an immediate sense that everything was going to be ok. We asked them to cut the ribbon (blue of course) as our first guests in Farfalla Blu and they obliged with gusto. We toasted them and each other, we shared chats and laughter and Fabrizio and I caught each other’s eye and silently shared a moment’s gratitude for the beautiful people who were now part of the history of our house. When they left two days later it was with the feeling that our paths will surely cross again. The connection we wanted our guests to feel, with Farfalla Blu and with us, had happened organically and that realisation was a moment of perfect, unspoilt gratitude.
The excitement continued with the publication of their review – yes you’ve guessed it, our first – on Google. We were so humbled by their kind words, all the little touches that they’d noticed and exactly as we would have wished for, their conclusion that Farfalla Blu is a very special home-from-home.
The firsts will keep coming and we’ll keep on welcoming them, even the challenging ones, those that are sent our way to teach us something.
But in the midst of all these firsts, we’ve realised that we’re finally ready to acknowledge that what we’ve achieved over the past two years means we’ll be very happy indeed if Farfalla Blu is the last place we live, the last place we call home.
