When I was a kid, my Grandmom was always telling my brother and I that we needed to “learn some culture.” I’m pretty sure it was because she was worried we’d grow up in Deep South Mississippi and not know anything about the rest of the world. She didn’t have to worry about that, but it was always funny to hear her say it after my brother showed up shirtless at the table or when she discovered one of us didn’t know how to set the table with all seventeen hundred utensils Emily Post says are important. In order to teach us some of this all-important culture, she took to teaching us how to dance. As in, the waltz, the two-step, the cha-cha, and the salsa. She’d always turn on one of her Rat Pack CDs, pick one of her favorite songs, and we’d have an impromptu dance class in the living room. I loved it.

I specifically remember listening to a lot of Dean Martin during these dance lessons. She’d be counting out the steps, “ah ONE two three, ONE two three, ONE two three,” and I’d be following along, trying not to squash her toes and daydreaming about seeing the full moon over Napoli or spending an evening in Roma. At 10 years old, those dreams seemed far, far away and probably unattainable, but I dreamed them anyway.

One day around that time, Grandmom brought over a new movie she’d bought called Return to Me. It’s a love story that stars David Duchovny (before anyone knew him) and Minnie Driver. It features a lot of Rat Pack music and is partially set in Italy. I loved it immediately and have watched it repeatedly ever since. I can now recite every single line and sing every song right on cue, and I still cry every time the dog won’t leave the front door (IYKYK). That movie and the memories I made watching it over and over with Grandmom added fuel to the fire that was my dream to visit Italy when I grew up, maybe with Grandmom, and see the places we sang about when we sang along with Dean and the Rat Pack.

As I grew up, Grandmom kept playing Dean Martin and I kept daydreaming. I got to high school and the urge to see the world got stronger everyday. By then I’d realized how difficult international travel could be, but I still had a need to see as much of the planet as I could, and I still very much wanted to see Italy. When I went off to college I majored in Spanish and fell in love with Spain too. I decided then I’d just have to figure out how to live in Europe one day, or at least take a very long trip across the Atlantic.

When I was in my senior year of college I found myself planning a semester-long trip to study as an exchange student in Spain; my dreams had come true! I was finally going to get to see the world! I started making plans to explore as much as I could, maybe even Italy since I’d be so close. I thought maybe I’d convince Grandmom to meet me there so we could see it together. I couldn’t wait.

Then, shortly before I was supposed to leave, my world got knocked off its axis: Grandmom died. She was my best friend and the person who understood me the best. It was (and still is) the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I didn’t go to Spain, I scraped through graduating, and all my future plans got derailed. I was devastated, and I spent the next sixish years figuring out who I was and what I wanted my life to look like. Losing Grandmom was a catalyst that shifted my entire perspective, and as devastating as it still is, it’s the best gift she ever gave me.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my office in my Italian apartment listening to Dean Martin’s Greatest Hits (original recordings!) on vinyl as the moon comes up over Napoli in the distance. Return to Me just played, and I cried big, hot, bittersweet tears. I wish Grandmom could visit me here and see how beautiful this country is. I wish we could eat pizza and drink limoncello in Sorrento. I wish we could drive up to Rome and see the Colosseum together. I wish, desperately, that we could dig our toes into the warm Mediterranean sand and float in the turquoise water and gab about how it’s one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever seen but it’s not our Pensacola sugar sand. No matter how much time passes, it still feels wrong that she’s not here to see that my dreams came true.

But she is here, too. She was in the crystal clear, bluest-water-I’ve-ever seen water I dove into in Capri with friends last month. She’s in the moonrise I get to watch from my balcony every night. She was at the Colosseum with me a few weeks ago on my birthday. She’s in the warm Italian sun I got so sick of over the summer. She’s in the streets of Sorrento every time I wander through the markets, sipping on fresh limoncello and listening to street musicians play Dean Martin for the tourists. For that, and for all the dance lessons, I’m unspeakably thankful. Even when Dino makes me cry.