We are back to what I now think of as home after two weeks in the United States, specifically Alaska, where we watched my tiny baby boy run the Anchorage Marathon and where we saw an excessive amount of both taxidermed and not-yet-taxidermed (although clearly that lies ahead) wildlife.

Jonathan had never before watched Tris in a marathon, so this was his first experience standing not too far from the finish line and having runners collapse literally at your feet, requiring the immediate assistance of the medics, while you wait, heart pounding, for your own precious child to come into view.

And wait.

And wait -- so much so that when you finally see him coming, your screams are less of support than of relief. Far less.

He actually shaved some time off his record, which is an amazing thing to realize about someone whom you had feared collapsed somewhere, all wild and vivid imaginings so terrible that ten seconds seems like ten years. I have done this before so marathons in my mind are forever tied to stretchers on wheels and dread. But Tris seems to like them. It's a mystery.

The border guards at the airports both leaving and returning from here have begun to take an uncomfortably keen interest in me and my temporary visa. The permanent visa was supposed to be ready six months ago, but a bureaucratic morass the likes of which it is beyond my (or possibly anyone's) powers to explain has swallowed it and our immigration lawyer will buy a lovely seaside villa with the fees we are paying her to sort it out. We are hoping to be invited down for weekends.

And last night we went down to town to watch our friend Fabio, who lives across the street from us here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, play in his bluegrass band at a little club near the Porta Lucca. He is very good and he and I obviously admire the same music. Such similarity of tastes is unexpected (at least by me) in our tiny medieval village and is a true testament to the globe-spanning power of songs about heartbreak, moonshine, grinding poverty, and dogs.