The Big Decision, Part Two

How do you communicate good news of this caliber? With a short message on WhatsApp? Mark Zuckerberg would certainly like it. Or maybe you use the phone?

No, not us.

We love to talk about these things in person, before a dinner with good food and sparkling wine. We want our friends to enjoy the story we tell, see the smiling faces, and if they don’t smile enough we try to improve the storytelling to make them smile more.

We are the types who like to do a few surprises now and then. So now and then, sparingly, we organize surprise trips to each other, surprise gifts, surprise dinners… you get the idea. So this time we decided together to travel to Cecina and surprise Stefania’s brother and family with a dinner out, to give them a full update.

We booked a room in a nice hotel nearby (pssssttt do not tell anyone, it is hotel Zi’ Martino in Castagneto Carducci), we got there, and then we sent the invitation message to her brother. A dinner, the same evening, by Zi’ Martino.

Of course Bro was very surprised. Goal achieved. Well, he was twice surprised. First, because we were supposed to be in Pavia and not in Tuscany; second, because in the meantime he had left Cecina to visit friends in Talamone, one hundred and twenty kilometers further south towards Grosseto. That night was a no-go.

Well, then the messages started flowing. Bro “Hey, we are back tomorrow morning, can we postpone, are you staying a few days?” Us: “Not really, (it’s) just (a) hit and run for (a) toast.

You know what short messages look like…. abbreviations, no articles, misspelled words… the spellcheck that misspells words too. And here comes the translator’s note: “toast” in Italian is “brindisi”. The same word as the name of the nice Apulian city, further south. The only difference? the capital “B”, that obviously the spell-check decided to stick to “brindisi”.

Bro replied “ah I see.” Then he started thinking: why are they traveling to Brindisi? and why the heck they stop in Tuscany, on the opposite coast?

This is all truly true! It’s nothing big, but it’s true.

In the end, we extended our stay and postponed our dinner at Zi’ Martino which turned into lunch the next day, just in time after Bro’s return from Talamone. We still had our toast though, dressed with little more than a bathing suit, after our morning swim in the hotel’s pool.

During lunch we could finally tell my them the great news, we had our toast, and then our sister-in-law asked “I’m curious, why are you travelling to Brindisi … and why stop on the opposite coast, in Tuscany? There was much laughter and explanations… and laughter again…  All text messages’ fault.

This is the story of the great decision. A big step of course, that cost lots of money, as well as time and research. It deserved a proper celebration. With family and friends, good food and sparkling wine. And laughs. It ‘nice to laugh at these little things, it’s good for the heart.

After a year, when we think about it, we still laugh.