My birthday falls in early August, a fact I never found to be anything other than fortunate until I moved to Italy. It was only then that I discovered that my annual birthday party invite almost always engendered multiple responses of “I would love to, but I’m away” or “I’m leaving August 1st, so sorry!”
The reason for this was, of course, that August was the inaugural month that we all sought different shores, whether it was going home to the United States for some of my American friends, going home to Puglia or Sicily for some of my Italian friends, or embarking on a group trip to some far-flung part of the world for still others.
