Yesterday, on a whim, Jonathan and I decided to go see if the gelato store at the beach was still open. The beach clubs are all closed now and the striped umbrellas and beach chairs have all been put away for the winter. The sand is empty. But, miraculously, the gelato store was open even though no one was in it and the owner was sitting on a chair out front under the awning watching the white geese in the park quack at each other and the misty rain fall. We chatted with him a bit and he told us that today would be their last day of the season and then they would close up until next spring. "So come by tomorrow," he said, "and get something to keep in your freezer."

So today we went down and bought two big tubs of gelato to put in our freezer and eat this winter while we dream of hot sand and cool ocean water and sunshine. And then his wife (we don't know their names -- yet) said to us, "Would another container fit in your freezer?" And they gave us as a gift another giant container of gelato and a bunch of cookies -- the kind that I always associate with gelato on the Riviera. The white geese came up almost right into the store while this was going on, honking and looking around. There are no tourist crowds these days to shoo them away.

These are the six flavors of gelato we got:

1. Mango (mango), 2. Frutti di Bosco (blackberry, raspberry and blueberry, mixed), 3. Caramello Saltato (salted caramel), 4. Cioccolato (chocolate), 5. Pompelmo e Campari (grapefruit and Campari), and 6. Limone, Salvia e Menta (lemon, sage and mint). They did not have my favorite Cinnamon Apple today, but that gives me something to look forward to next summer. We brought them home and took all the ice cubes out of the freezer so that we could fit the containers in. 

Sometimes, it seems like Jonathan and I have behaved in a very rash and foolhardy manner by moving to Italy on a whim like we did, instead of acting sensibly, with forethought and prudence. And so we keep expecting one day to get our comeuppance. We keep expecting to have to pay the price for our recklessness. So far, though, for at least today, the comeuppance seems to mostly have taken the form of free ice cream and cookies. I've had worse comeuppances, quite frankly.

For the past few days, I have been thinking about a line that I read somewhere, but I couldn't remember exactly the line or where I had read it. Then yesterday, it suddenly came to me that it is from The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham -- his book that is a highly fictionalized retelling of the life of Paul Gauguin.

My life has been nothing like the Stickland character's life -- or like Paul Gauguin's (well, there is that whole Polynesian island thing, but...) I certainly don't think that I aroused "detestation" in my former associates (although I might be flattering myself about that). But, nevertheless, living here in our little forgotten village in the hills, I think that the thing we have found, most of all, is sympathy. Although Jonathan and I are queer fish, they are used to queer fish and the holes here are all any sort of shape. We never expected sympathy, but somehow we have found it.

Sometimes I think I must have followed a coniglio bianco down a Tuscan rabbit hole. This place seems more and more like Wonderland every day.

 

The olives are really coming into their own now and Mimmo has sent a text saying he won't be able to be around much these days because of the harvest. I myself was out this morning gathering a small batch of ripe olives from our own trees to brine here at the house. I would have gotten more, but I walked face first into a big spider web, danced around a bit like a lunatic out there in the middle of the olive grove, and immediately after that decided that we probably have enough olives for now.

The autumn wildflowers are blooming all over the hillside and we are being deluged with the corbezzoli. Jonathan and I have made a pact between ourselves to never buy commercially produced jam again. Even so, we will never eat all that we have already made.*

We went yesterday to a food and wine festival in Pisa. We bought tickets (10 euros each) to go to a Cheese and Honey Tasting run by the National Organization of Cheese Tasters, the representative of which was jovial, but also gravely serious when it comes to matters of tasting cheese. We sat in a room for an hour with 30 other people paying very close attention to cheese -- sniffing it in the approved manner (one piece in each nostril) and tasting it very solemnly and deliberately while the cheese guy discoursed knowledgably about the attributes we should be noticing and the festival photographer wandered around taking pictures of people putting cheese up their noses.

We were given four different spoons to taste four very different types of honey and then pair them with the cheeses. The honey came from a place called the Queen of Nuts and if they had had a t-shirt, I would have bought it.

We wandered around the festival and bought three types of pasta, two types of pasta sauce, two jars of Tuscan soup, honey vinegar, melon liquor, honey-and-orange-flower-infused gin, and a cake. The best part, though, was that for three euros, you could get a wine glass in a pouch to hang around your neck and then when you went up to one of the numerous wine stalls, they would give you a free taste in your glass.

We each got a glass because we thought they were funny, but we actually drank no wine because when we got back to lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, we were going to the regular Sunday night Giro di Pizza at the pub and it isn't wise to begin drinking too early in the day if you are going to end your evening with the professionals.

We are in the midst of a slow-motion tragedy there. Our beloved Renata is moving back to Poland after 22 years in Italy. Her mother passed away and her father is now alone and needs her, so she is moving back in November. It will be a terrible loss for us all and they did not tell Nonno right away.

She spent the evening teasing and playing as usual, making Ugo's hair stand up like a shark fin on the top of his head and turning Nonno's baseball cap around backwards. But at one point, she noticed that Geppolino's shoes weren't tied because he has a hard time now bending down that far, so she tied them for him, very tenderly and sweetly, and I thought I might cry.

Of course, how Geppolino would get his shoes off again once he got home is anybody's guess.

*Here is the recipe for the Italian Polenta Cookies with Corbezzoli Jam Thumbprints:

1. Make the corbezzoli jam by getting a lot of corbezzoli berries out in the garden, washing them gently, putting them in a pot with about half their volume of sugar, and a big squirt of lemon juice. Heat until boiling, stir frequently, and cook down a bit until it seems jammy. The corbezzoli berries are naturally very sticky, so this shouldn't take long. Let it cool while you proceed with the cookie dough.

2. Make the cookie dough by first creaming together one cup butter, one half cup sugar, and two tablespoons honey. When it is light and fluffy, add in one egg, one teaspoon lemon zest, and half a teaspoon each vanilla and salt. Mix thoroughly. Then add two cups flour and a half cup polenta (or grits or cornmeal). Mix until just combined. Then cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour. Entertain yourself during this hour possibly by brining some olives or drinking some wine.

3. Assemble the cookies by rolling the dough into little balls about the size of a jumbo/colossal olive. Press you thumb down into the middle of each ball to make it into a little cup. Fill each little dough cup with corbezzoli jam. Bake in an oven at 325 degrees for 13-14 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

4. The texture is supposed to be gritty like that, I swear. Also, tragically, I'm sorry to say that this will not use up very much of your jam.

 

The nets are out in the olive groves now, waiting for the harvest. They look like ghosts floating in the trees. We are all happy that there will be a good harvest this year after last year's disaster.

The autumn mists have moved in and, in between days of startling blue-skied beauty, we have wet red tile roofs (which are so much more vivid than the dusty red of summer) and mossy stones and storms sweeping across the sea.

The chestnuts are ripe now and I have made chestnut butter twice this week -- coffee, chocolate and cinnamon. And the corbezzoli berries are ripe -- much fatter than they were last year when we all gasped in the heat until late autumn and waited, anxiously, for rain. Our persimmon tree even has ripening persimmons in reach, just waiting for me.

So I have been playing at being a good farm wife -- brining olives and making chestnut butter and corbezzoli jam. And tonight we are having a fall vegetable lasagna -- a "lasagna bianca" with cream sauce instead of tomatoes. It has baked sweet potatoes and fresh sage mixed into the ricotta. And more sage with sausage and caramelized shallots. And, of course, porcini mushrooms sauteed in rosemary-infused olive oil. Then there are roasted carrots and butternut squash and mozzarella and well-aged parmesan. I wish I had a sprinkling of pine nuts to add, but I didn't think about that until just this minute.

Later, we will go down to the pub and have a glass of wine with the boys and then come home and eat lasagna together and then go to sleep curled against each other while it rains in the night.

 Been a bit damp lately.

 

While we were in the US, I took the opportunity to be finger-printed (again) and request my criminal record (again) from the FBI, who have not yet discovered any crimes I've committed. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that my various misdeeds have all been so trifling as to be beneath the notice of any authorities, but it does come in handy now.

So with my clean record in hand and an Apostile for my long-form birth certificate, I now have a three month window to apply for Italian citizenship. After three months have passed, they figure I might have had enough time to begin a new life of major crimes and I would have to get new fingerprints and a new copy of my record. Having waited this long, though, I really can't see myself being bothered to begin any hard-core criminal activities now. At 62-years-old, it just strikes me as exhausting.

My one stumbling block is the language test, so I have signed up to take it on December 5th and am now kicking my studying into high gear by hanging around more with the boys down at the pub. Last night we discussed our various attempts at making alcohol at home.* Jonathan and I once failed miserably in our attempt to make honeysuckle-infused vodka, turning out some glaucous beige shit that smelled of dirty feet and rotting cabbage. But Nonno tells us that he has had great success making liqueurs with both plums and figs. It is good to have a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. When people tease him about being old, he says that he will outlive us all. I hope so.

We sit inside now that the weather has turned colder and talk about this and that while the card players play at the table in the corner and Renata gives us a platter of sliced meat and cheese and bread because Daniele and Alice have stayed home now that the tourist season is over, so there is no great pasta bowl of one of Daniele's fantastic dishes to appear out of the kitchen tonight. Jonathan and I walk home holding hands and we can see all the islands very clearly out in the sea and all the boats heading into the harbor at La Spezia. The air is very clear and cold. We are glad when we get home that the heat has come on inside.

*If the language test is food-and-booze-related, I'm a shoo-in. Otherwise, I'm toast.

 

It's rainy today, with clouds and mist huddled around the house blocking our view of anything other than the dripping chestnut trees and the moss-covered stones. There are no sounds.

Jonathan is baking bread. The first corbezzoli have started to fall, so soon we will make corbezzoli jam. And then it will be chestnut season again and we will make our famous (if only to us) butter-rum chestnut butter. I feel somehow that I should learn to knit.

Instead, I have made a caramel-apple pie and a batch of late plum jam. We have been gorging ourselves on wild porcini sauteed in rosemary-infused olive oil. We are cautiously hopeful about the upcoming olive harvest.

Last Friday night, we celebrated Oktoberfest at the pub, even though it was still September. In these precarious days, we feel we should not delay our fun.

And Avi's father passed away early Saturday morning. He was a musician, a violinist, and Avi was his only child. We went to the funeral and then home alone in the rain. It's hard to believe that only one month ago, we were so hot and so tired of the katydid song and so glad to go into the cool water at the beach.

 

Aiden and I moved to Colorado in 1996. He was one year old and I was 33 and for a long time it was just the two of us. Then Tris was born and it was the three of us. I went to work and knew people there and made friends. But that was all outside my real life in those early days. My real life was Aiden and Tris and me and the magical little world we inhabited alone together.

That first autumn, back in 1996, Aiden and I drove up into the mountains west of Colorado Springs and got lost on a dirt road on the back side of Pikes Peak. Bumping along the ruts, we came around a bend in the road and suddenly a ravine filled with aspens opened out beside us. It was a sunny day and breezy and the aspen leaves had begun to turn yellow and the whole glen was filled with luminous, fluttering gold. I remember that I gasped. It was like being stabbed through the heart with beauty.

Over the years, we went back to that place many times, all through the year, but especially in the autumn when the aspens were turning yellow. So last week, when Jonathan and I were in Colorado to supervise the loading of all our worldly goods into the shipping container, we went back one last time to our secret hideout off that rutted dirt road in the mountains on the back side of Pikes Peak. Purely by chance, it was aspen season and a sunny day and breezy and I gasped again when the glowing, trembling ravine opened out beside us. And I thought, "I will never see this again" and I said goodbye to it and goodbye to all those days when it was just me and my babies alone together. They were good days.

But Jonathan and I are happy to be back home.

Now, in September, the house is at its most magical and when I go up the drive to pick a bay leaf for the dinner I am cooking, turning and coming back to it, I have to stop, breathless for a moment, at its russet loveliness in the light from the setting sun among the dark green chestnut leaves, with its red tiles and pots of geraniums and ancient stone walls and serenity. This is our hideout now.

Coming through passport control in the Pisa airport, the separate line for Italian citizens that we got into (thinking that it would be the fastest) was, in fact, the slowest because of the large number of arguments that people in line chose to have with the border police. One man even got through and then came back to argue one further point. The Italian word for "to argue" is "litigare" and, truly, Italy must produce the greatest litigators in the world. 

"Ah," Jonathan said, as the line came to another standstill, "it's good to be home."

 

It took Phineas Fogg 80 days to go all the way around the world. It took Jonathan and I twenty-five hours to go from lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea to Anchorage, Alaska, ten times zones away, to see my all-grown-up-now baby. But we might just have well have gone all the way to Alpha Centauri for the difference in culture from our tranquil little world in the olive groves.

An example: We took Tris to a store to buy some new clothes and there were many, many large taxidermed animals strewn about the place. But even weirder (to our no-longer-inured-to-America ears) was our conversation with the chatty and jovial cashier. Here is a transcript of our conversation, as exact as I can remember it:

Her (referring to the previous little boy in line): He just passed his driver's test.

Me: Wow -- he looks so young.

Her (laughing): Well, up here, they can get them at 14. You can start working at 14, too. That's when I started working. At one of those places with the trays (looking at Tris and laughing more.) You wouldn't remember them.

Me: A cafeteria. We used to go to Furr's Cafeteria every Friday to eat with my grandparents.

Her (still laughing): That's it -- Furr's cafeteria. That was one of the big chains (really laughing up a storm now.) That was were the first mass shooting ever was -- in a Furr's Cafeteria in Texas. A guy went in with a gun and just mowed everybody down. When my mother heard about it, she said, 'Well, he went to high school with me!' (Uproarious laughter)"

Me (backing away slowly): Have a nice day.

We are not in Capriglia any more, Toto.

The Trofeo del Leone is happening this week and we went Tuesday evening to watch a couple of the games and eat grilled sausage sandwiches and hang out in the cool night air with our friends. There was a horse and a pony for pony rides and much excitement because the soccer field here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea is less than half-sized (the steepness of the mountain slope making big flat places nonexistent up here) and so the players kept inadvertently kicking the ball into the spectators or even into the people who were not really watching the game, but were instead standing chatting to their friends or quietly guzzling inexpensive prosecco out of plastic cups until they were blind-sided by an incoming soccer ball to the head.

The teams themselves were made up of players of varying ages and abilities and although Daniele was the coach of one of the teams and although the teams had names like "The Drinking Monkeys," I didn't know any of the good players. It is possible that there is a connection between being able to run around with agility on a soccer field and not spending all day drinking in the pub. That might explain why the good players were unknown to me. Just a thought.

There were children and lemonade and laughter and bright stars slowly making their way across the summer night sky. But there was also the moment of silence at the beginning of each game when we bowed our heads and remembered Leonardo. And at one point, I noticed Geppolino, Leonardo's increasingly frail father, standing by himself looking lost, all alone in the crowd.

Today it is raining and the forecast is for rain most days all next week. Jonathan and I went down for one last ice cream at the beach yesterday afternoon. I have put the comforters back onto our bed. Summer seems to be over.

 This morning at the Frutta D'Oro, there were these little round peppers. 

"What do we do with them?" we asked Barbara.

"Well, you cook them in boiling water and vinegar for a few minutes and then you stuff them with things," she said.

"And what are they called?" we asked. "What is their name?"

"They are called 'those little round peppers that you stuff with things'," she said. 

Presumably, it sounds better in the original Latin.

The summer tourists all had to leave their rental houses yesterday. So today, even though it is still as hot as ever and sunny, the beach has an atmosphere of winter coming on. Only a few of us are left. We have been nodding at each other all summer and now we recognize each other -- not only as faces, but as members of the fraternity of permanence.

The sea is strangely flat and still and clear today. The cold water feels lovely after a sleepless, sticky night. I saw four dead meduse washed up on the sand. Their season is coming to an end, too.