Italy Epiphany

Italy is known for it's food, wine, and fashion, but also for it's amazing culture, which involves celebrating passion and taking the time to soak in all the elements of life. So when Shanna and I traveled to Italy in February 2010, we were looking not only for a vacation filled with food, wine, and fashion, but also for an escape from the go go go cubicle wasteland.

Shanna and I are both by trade and education Aerospace engineers. We both attended Stanford and work with the best and brightest in the field. And while Aerospace has an element of glory (we are rocket scientists after all), there was always something missing for us. Certainly there is a lack of femininity in the engineering workplace, but it is also a very left-brained world where logic and analytical thinking dominate. And Shanna and I are blessed to have both very adept left brains, but also very active right brains, constantly yearning for that creative artistic expression that is somewhat lacking in technical fields. We had in the past used fashion as an outlet for our creativity, but we still felt unsatisfied. We were still hungry for... pasta.

So we traveled to Italy on what our husbands called a glorified shopping trip. But while there, immersed in the amazing history and cuisine, we came across the Italian way of life. We learned to embrace a passion for wine and food and fashion as a way of life for two weeks. Each meal was ecstasy, each pair of unique suede boots was buried treasure. Each time the sun came out to warm our cheeks, we both took a deep breath and sighed. Was it the air? The wine? Why did we feel so alive? It was in Venice at a small deli where we purchased olive and cheese filled loaves of bread from an elderly woman that it dawned on us. As she happily filled our order, hobbling around her tiny deli, we came face to face with a woman doing exactly what she wanted to do. She was not worried about retirement, nor was she studying new technologies to expand her business. She wanted to sell cheese and bread, and that's what she'd been doing, for what we guessed, was at least 60 years. And why, Shanna and I asked ourselves, weren't we doing what we wanted? Why were we doing only what brought us a sense of achievement but not satisfaction?

So on our last night in Rome, as we reminisced on our adventures and purchases, we decided upon our return we would start living our lives. We would continue our adventure as partners in a new business, bringing our artistic creativity and analytical thinking, both our left and right brains, to share with others our new found passion for life. We would bring that little bit of sunshine that caused us to pause and sigh, that small morsel of food that lifted us into euphoria, that sip of wine that made us giggle, we would bring those small bits of life and love co-existing, to as many people as possible, on what most consider the most memorable day of their lives... their wedding day.

The week after we returned home, we were already planning the beginnings of our new adventure. Engineered Elegance by S, what had been a possibility before we left, was now becoming a reality. And with each detail we tackle, and each new smiling face we meet, we feel both more alive and more at home.