Florence then and now

Last weekend we discovered the Forte Belvedere, a great lookout over the whole city that also serves as a park these days--lots of families there on Sunday afternoon, lots of sitting in the grass and strolling around to take in the prospect. A kind passerby took this photo of us and when I saw it, I remembered the bottom photo.

That photo--one of my favorites of us--was taken just over 3 years ago in a spot not very far from the fort. Bill and I had just started dating and he had come to visit me while I was living in Rome. We came to Florence for a couple of days on that trip. It was my first time in Forence, but Bill had spent a month here the previous summer. He had spent it, in fact, at the Florence Academy, doing their summer program which is also an appetite-whetter for the whole program. When he came to visit me, he was hoping to be able to come back and enroll in the painting program, but didn't have a clear idea as to whether or how that would happen.

Now here we are--a year and a half in to our residence in Florence, and married with a 5 1/2 month-old baby. It confirms again to me that it's a good thing that we can't see the future before it happens. There is no way that we could have imagined this future, standing there in the cold, windswept piazza that February. Even if we could have, we would have been completely overwhelmed by all of the intricate ins and outs and ups and downs that its taken to get us here as we are at this moment.

I'm so grateful for our life here--so glad that that weekend in Florence was a preview of what would be coming, and so glad that it was hidden from us at the time, allowing us to make the choices step by step to bring us here as we are.