The Museum Of Broken Things And The Contract
Before I begin today’s story, could I ask you to join our Patreon family for just $5 a month? Every weekday, I share our adventures here at Under The Crow in Portofino, Italy, along with an audio blog read by Girl Person. Your membership helps us continue our rescue work, tell the stories of real shelter animals through This Is…Me, and build Fruitycake’s Pawcast into something that can bring comfort to shelter dogs across America. We are still waiting for a closing date on the sale of our rustico, and we are trying to keep our work going while preparing for a future that seems to change every time we think we have figured it out. Your support right now means more than you may realize. And today, I would like to explain why.
Join us today: https://www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue
This is Fruitycake. There is a museum here at Under The Crow. You will not find it listed in any Italian guidebook, and there are no official opening hours because the curator is frequently wearing two pairs of mismatched socks and occasionally crying. Admission is free, although I have repeatedly suggested charging one slice of pizza per visitor. The museum has no velvet ropes, no security cameras and certainly no gift shop. I have volunteered to run the gift shop, but Girl Person says that eating the merchandise is not an acceptable business model. Nevertheless, it is a very important museum, and I believe its collection is worth approximately one million dollars. Girl Person says that is ridiculous. I say she has never seen what people will pay for a broken plate when someone calls it art.
During the two years we have lived here, Girl Person and Boy Person have found so many pieces of pottery, broken glass, mysterious bits of dishes and old bottles buried in the earth around our rustico. They even found an anesthesia bottle!! I don’t want to think about that.
Some pieces were hiding beneath the olive trees. Others were tucked between stones or uncovered after heavy rains washed away the soil. And some of the bottles are still completely intact! That is especially remarkable because the people who lived here long before us actually made olive oil and wine on this very mountain. They harvested the olives and grapes, worked this land and filled bottles with something they had created themselves. I imagine there were long days of work, tired hands, conversations around tables and perhaps a dog waiting patiently for someone to drop a piece of bread. I would have been that dog. Professionally.
Girl Person has turned all these discoveries into her own little museum. I call it the Department of Things I Am Not Allowed To Put In My Mouth. But to her, these are not simply broken dishes and forgotten bottles. They are pieces of people’s lives. Someone picked those olives. Someone gathered those grapes. Someone poured wine into a glass after a long day. Someone broke a plate and probably said something in Italian that I am not permitted to repeat here. And now, years later, Girl Person is picking up the pieces they left behind and treating them as treasures. Isn’t it strange how something that was once considered broken and useless can become precious simply because someone else recognizes its value?
Sometimes she arranges the pieces together and studies their colors and patterns. She wonders whether two fragments might once have belonged to the same plate. Other times, she imagines taking completely different pieces of broken pottery and making something beautiful from them. A mosaic, perhaps. A picture made from things that were never intended to fit together. Because broken pottery does not always have to be glued back into the exact shape it once had. Sometimes the pieces can become something entirely different, and perhaps even more beautiful than before.
Girl Person is feeling rather like one of those broken plates.
She has been trying very hard to hold herself together. Some days she does a convincing job. She makes espresso, writes our stories, works on the rescue projects, records things for the Pawcast and tells Boy Person that everything is going to be fine. Other days, she looks around this mountain and wonders how much longer she can keep doing all of it. We are still waiting for a closing date on the sale of Under The Crow. The reports have come back good, and the buyer is moving forward, but we still do not know when we will leave. It could be soon. It could be months. And in the meantime, we must somehow keep living in the present while preparing for a future we cannot yet put on a calendar.
Sometimes Girl Person says she wants to give up. Not because she no longer believes in what we are doing, but because she is tired. The kind of tired that does not disappear after a good night’s sleep. She worries about leaving this mountain, too, even though she knows we need to.
Girl Person has been looking at all those broken pieces and realizing that she has not been holding herself together entirely on her own. Not now, and not for all these years. There have been people who have helped hold her together when she could not manage it herself. People who have supported our family through the good times and the difficult ones. People who have read our stories, joined Patreon, sent donations when they could, shared the face of a rescue animal, purchased a calendar, listened to our podcast or simply written to say they were still here.
Some have been with us for nearly fifteen years. Others have arrived recently, perhaps without realizing how much their kindness would matter. They are all different pieces, from different places, with different stories. Some have never met one another and probably never will. Yet somehow, together, they have created something extraordinary.
The years of traveling, the animals we have helped bring attention to, the stories we have shared and the new projects we are building would not exist in the same way without the people who have consistently shown up for us. When Girl Person has felt like she could not write another story, someone has reminded her why the stories matter. When the practical difficulties of living on this mountain have seemed overwhelming, someone has helped us get through another day. You have not simply supported our work. You have become part of it.
That brings me to today’s affirmation.
October 23 | I Will Notice Who Shows Up
I will pay attention to consistent care, not only impressive words. The people who remember, check in, help, listen and stay present deserve to be noticed. I will value reliability.
I think this affirmation is especially important because people often imagine that love must arrive with some enormous gesture. A grand announcement. A dramatic rescue. Perhaps a helicopter dropping an emergency supply of pizza into our valley. I remain available for that last one. But most of the time, love is much quieter. It is someone remembering that you are having a difficult week. Someone asking whether you have enough groceries. Someone reading a story even when they are busy. Someone helping without needing applause. Someone staying when things are no longer exciting or easy.
Those are the people who become the glue between the broken pieces.
And speaking of things that must never be forgotten, there is one very special place at Under The Crow that Girl Person has worried about more than almost anything else.
Brickle’s grave.
My friend Peanut Butter Brickle is buried here on this mountain. And when I say my friend, I mean my friend. We traveled together. We knew each other. We shared a life long before this mountain became our home. Brickle and I came all the way from America to Italy together on an airplane made especially for dogs. Imagine that! Two rescue dogs flying across the ocean, leaving one chapter of our lives behind and arriving in a country where people talk with their hands and apparently believe dogs should not eat pizza every day. Brickle and I made that journey together. We arrived here together. We explored this valley together. And although I now walk these paths without him beside me, there are places where I can almost imagine he is still just around the corner, waiting for me to catch up.
Brickle wasn’t simply part of the history of 2 Traveling Dogs. He was part of my history. He was my friend, my traveling companion and one of the reasons this place became home. We shared the adventure of coming here, and I wish we could share the adventure of leaving. But that is something I have learned about life. Sometimes the ones who helped us arrive cannot travel with us when it is time to go. That doesn’t mean we leave them behind in all the ways that matter.
One of Girl Person’s greatest worries about selling Under The Crow was what would happen to Brickle’s grave. Would someone understand why it mattered? Would they see it as something worth protecting? Would they recognize that beneath the earth rests a dog who helped change the lives of other dogs?
And now we have received a beautiful gift. The new owner has agreed to preserve and honor Brickle’s grave. And officially put it in the contract.
I wish you could have seen what that meant to Girl Person. In the middle of all the uncertainty, all the waiting and all the sadness about leaving, someone had listened. Someone had understood. Someone who did not have to make that promise chose to respect something precious to our family. Brickle will remain part of this mountain, and his resting place will be treated with the love and dignity he deserves.
Girl Person also hopes the new owner will keep her little museum going. Perhaps he will discover more fragments beneath the olive trees and add them to the collection. Perhaps he will find a missing piece of a plate she has spent two years wondering about. Perhaps one day he will pick up an old bottle, turn it toward the light and imagine the people who made olive oil and wine here long before any of us arrived. I hope he does. Because a place like Under The Crow is not really owned by any one person forever. We are all just caretakers of its stories for a little while.
And isn’t that true of people, too?
We come into one another’s lives carrying all sorts of pieces. Some are beautiful and polished. Others have sharp edges. Some are missing entire sections, and some have been broken so many times that we no longer remember what they looked like originally. But perhaps we are not supposed to return to exactly what we were before. Perhaps we are supposed to become something new, with the help of people who recognize that broken does not mean worthless.
I don’t think Girl Person needs to be glued back into the person she was before we came to this mountain. That person had not yet learned everything this valley would teach her. She had not carried water up these steps, watched the seasons change from this hillside, found old olive oil bottles beneath the trees or discovered how much love can be contained in a tiny grave. She had not yet learned how many people would stand beside us when things became difficult.
Maybe the person she is becoming will be different. Maybe she will carry some cracks with her. Maybe the next chapter will look nothing like the one she imagined. But I hope she remembers that a mosaic does not become beautiful because every piece is perfect. It becomes beautiful because someone cared enough to put the pieces together.
So today, I am going to visit Girl Person’s museum. I will inspect the pottery, supervise the bottles and refrain from tasting the historical artifacts, although I make no legally binding promises. And I will remind her that while she is busy worrying about what happens next, something rather extraordinary has already happened.
She has spent two years collecting broken pieces of history, never realizing how many people were helping her put the pieces of her own life together.
If you are one of those people, thank you.
You are part of our museum, too.
And unlike the pottery, you are not required to remain on a shelf.
Fruitycake
P.S. From Girl Person — The Pieces We Still Need
I want to thank everyone who continues to help us through this uncertain time. We are still waiting for a closing date on the rustico, and until we have one, we must keep managing life here while preparing for everything that comes next. We have been experiencing difficulties finding some of the foods and supplies we normally rely on locally, and tomorrow we need to get groceries and other necessities. Every trip requires planning, and with our resources stretched so thin, even the ordinary things have become difficult.
We are also trying to make sure that the rescue work we have spent nearly fifteen years building doesn’t stop during this transition. Our goal is to return to America with This Is…Me and Fruitycake’s Pawcast already growing into sustainable projects that help real shelter animals. We don’t want to wait until we arrive to begin building that future. We are building it now, from this mountain, with your help.
Here are the ways you can help us keep going:
Necessities, groceries and supplies: https://www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities
Venmo: @travelingdogs2
Zelle: rachael@2travelingdogs.com
Join Patreon for $5 a month: www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue
Sponsor a This Is…Me rescue dog for $35:
http://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/Q56YEJJTKXY96
Our 2027 Calendars — Our Last Italy Calendars!
We still have a few calendars available, featuring the beauty and memories of our time in Italy. Every calendar purchase helps support our work and our transition to the next chapter.
Under The Crow 2027 Calendar: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/SNB5CCR7YX5QL
2 Traveling Dogs 2027 Wall Calendar — Portofino, Italy: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/6TLHKT85EC9YL
And please keep listening to and sharing Fruitycake’s Pawcast, our free weekday podcast for dogs, by a dog. We hope to bring it into shelters across America so that even dogs who are still waiting for families can begin their mornings with a friendly voice, a little encouragement and perhaps an occasional discussion about pizza.
You can find our pawcast at https://2travelingdogs.com/feed/podcast/fruitycakes-pawcast/https://2travelingdogs.com/feed/podcast/fruitycakes-pawcast/
I know I have been quieter lately, and I haven’t always had the strength to answer every message. But I read your words. I notice who shows up. And I hope you know that your kindness has held more together than you may ever realize.
Thank you for being part of our story, for remembering Brickle, for loving Fruitycake and for helping us believe there are still beautiful things waiting to be made from all these broken pieces.
With love and gratitude,
Girl Person, Boy Person and Fruitycake ❤️
