Mother of the bride, Puglia edition,

In a couple of days, Fran, Sol and the wedding gown arrive in Puglia.

I list the gown separately because at this point it has its own itinerary, its own handlers, and possibly better travel insurance than I do.

Leo and I have been running divide and conquer for days now. He called the electricians, because the light has to be right, and Leo does not negotiate on light. I met with the wedding planners about the flowers. We tasted the menu at the venue, which was a terrible burden that I bore with great courage.

And then we walked it. From the piazza, through that ancient narrow passage, all the way to the celebration. The exact steps Fran and Brandon will take right after they say I do.

I stood in that passage for a second longer than I needed to. Stone that has been there for centuries, and in a few days my daughter is going to walk through it as a married woman.

People are flying in from all over the world for this. There are lists. There are group chats. There are group chats about the lists.

But here is what I actually woke up thinking about this morning, and it was none of that.

I was thinking about the fridge.

We have been stocking up on the things the girls love. Getting their rooms ready. Cleaning the house so that when Francesca and Sol and their partners walk through the door, everything they love about Italy is already waiting for them.

Nobody will notice most of it. That is sort of the point.

And then it hit me, standing there with a bag of groceries chosen entirely around other people's preferences.

I know exactly what I am doing, because it was done for me.

My mother did this. Every single time. The room ready, the food I loved already in the house, the sense that someone had been thinking about my arrival for days before I got there. She gave me that and more. I never had to ask for it once.

I lost her when I was twenty seven.

And that was the end of having a parent's house to go to. There is no other way to say it. One day there is a place in the world where you are expected and adored before you even walk in, and then there isn't, and no one ever tells you that particular door closes for good.

I have missed it for decades.

So this morning, holding somebody else's favorite cheese in a kitchen in Puglia, I realized I have not been inventing something out of nothing.

I have been reopening it.

Same instinct. Same fussing over details no one will comment on. My mother's hands, thirty years later, in a different country, doing the exact thing she taught me by doing it for me.

This is what I want you to hear, because I think it is the only real comfort grief ever offers.

The thing she gave you does not disappear when she does. It just stops arriving and starts asking to be passed along.

You do not get her back. You get to become the version of her that keeps the house open.

So no, we did not put this together because we are organized. We put it together because love is an overpowering feeling with no end to it.

It is energy. It does not die with the person who gave it to you. It moves. It gets passed on.

Which brings me to the part you might not like.

There is something you lost when you lost someone. A way you were cared for that no one has replicated since.

You have been waiting for it to come back.
It won't. But it can move through you.

Go find someone to hand it to this week, and pay very close attention to what happens inside you when you do.

With love from Puglia 💒