We made it!!! We traveled by train through Firenze to La Spezia. We. Are. Tired. But SMILING BIG!!!

When I was 14 years old, my Mom and I weren’t getting along…at all. I was a sassy, mouthy only child and my Mom wasn’t having it….public school spiced me up…lol (see my 9/9/22 post). My Dad couldn’t take it anymore and sent us to Italy for 3 weeks to “work it out and come back with some sense!!” He later said that he HAD to send us out of the country, because it would have been too easy for us to come home from anywhere else.

See, to me, my Mom was super woman…she knew everything. She was 8 feet tall and demanded and embodied respect. There wasn’t a thing that could stop her. People listened to my Mom. Some people were even afraid of her. She was and still is very dynamic!!! On our Daddy sanctioned Italy trip, it was just the two of us. NO staff. NO administrative support. NO government aides to sweep us in and out. NO entourage (yep, she had one). Just us. Me and Her. That’s it. It was on this trip that things shifted…..we saw each other differently.

I saw her vulnerabilities and she saw my abilities. I picked up languages very quickly and she HAD to listen to me because I was able to understand a bit quicker than she. I was like “WHATTT? YOU don’t KNOW what they are saying??? You NEED me to translate???” I saw my Mom make mistakes and she saw me step up. WE MESHED. A friendship was formed. Don’t get me wrong. My Mom is and will ALWAYS be MOM…but that trip gave us a new perspective on each other. We have been adding to one another every year since!!!

This trip we are reveling about that trip of almost 40 years ago with smiles, laugh, adventures (we were hustled today at the train station…smh..smh…but are all good) and lots of LOVE.

We are Built Ford Tough