A place called home

Karen sat on her bike and looked back. There were about two dozen people on the marketplace and she knew most of them. They were all very nice and kind people and over the past two years she started to feel like she’s one of them. She met most of them on that exact spot where they spent their Saturday mornings buying ingredients for lunch and drinking coffee in a café next to the market place. They were all typical Italians, kind, cheerful and loud. She smiled and waved to the butcher. 

Ciao bella, see you tomorrow, I have meat for you prepared in morning he yelled in his broken English with an Italian accent. She smiled and nodded.  

Karen always felt like a foreigner anywhere she came. Her dad was an officer in the military and they moved a lot when she was a child. She knew he loved her with all his heart but they weren’t a real family. She didn’t fit in at home. Her mum died when Karen was seven years old and after her death dad was never the same. He missed her mum very much and a part of him died with her. He was absent even when he was at home.

He once asked her if she didn’t want to move anymore but she told him that she didn’t mind it. She was searching for her home, a place where she belonged. She never found a place like this as a child. She felt welcome everywhere they lived, she easily found friends in every town, but she never found what she could call home. 

She always thought that she would discover her true self in college but that wasn’t the case. She studied sociology at The university of Texas but soon after she moved she realised that she made the wrong decision and she decided she wanted to travel. Travelling was the only constant thing in her life.

For the next three years she travelled all over the world; she spent some time in Australia and New Zealand and then backpacked in China, Japan, India and Thailand. Then she discovered her passion for old European cities.

She was exploring small villages and big cities in Europe for over a year when she met Fabio in Milan. Karen was working as a model and her agency had a party in a night club Fabio worked with. She noticed him the moment he walked in the room because he wasn’t a typical Italian. She liked his short curly light brown hair and blue eyes but what she liked even more was his smile. A smile that made her feel special.

They talked all evening and spent the night together. She thought she would never see him again when she woke up the next morning in the empty bed in her hotel room. But she was wrong; he came back soon and invited her to go to Sicily with him, because he lived there. 

I’m in love he said and gave her a dark red rose. 

Karen was in love too so she went with him and never left Sicily again. She felt she finally found her home. She felt like she belonged there. 

Photo taken from here.