We've had a short snap of cooler weather -- temps in the low 80s or even high 70s. Having assiduously acclimated ourselves to Inferno Italia, naturally we now feel chilly -- so much so that I wore long pants and a jacket to go down to the market in town on Saturday morning when the temperature was a mere 82 degrees. I'm not saying that it's logical; I'm just saying that it's real.

At the market, we bought extremely local honey from the road just below ours off the lovely Via Capriglia and also a big bunch of sunflowers. It is possible that our very own bees from right here at the house may have played a part in the production of both. 

Saturday night was the annual performance of the Cappezzano Monte Chorus, held in an abandoned quarry behind the church. Our friend Valerio gave us very specific and detailed directions for how to find it. "You can't miss it," he said. 

We missed it. But our adventures in the bustling metropolis of Cap. Monte (pop. 355 -- so half again as large as lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea) turned out okay in the end when we we rescued by the director of the chorus herself, who led us through their rehearsal room where all the singers were warming up and where Valerio smiled and waved and, if he wondered how we ended up there after his very careful instructions, didn't say anything about it to our faces.

The concert itself was lovely and, although we won none of the raffle prizes (including a gift certificate for a free haircut), we were only one number off from winning the 5-litre can of local olive oil, which is probably the best outcome possible.

Since then, I have made a painting of one of the sunflowers, which is, I believe, legally required of of everyone who stays in Italy longer than six months. They check at the border when you try to exit and you are turned back if you haven't made at least one (photographs can also count, but nothing involving AI is accepted.)

And I am still plugging away on my new novel. I have no idea why. Maybe it doesn't matter why. Another piece of it is below.

We neither one of us even stayed in the state of Arkansas, which, for all its spacious piney woods and river bottom land is still not quite big enough for us and our mother at the same time. Brother teaches English 101 and Beginning Composition at a junior college in Oklahoma City and I managed two fried catfish houses in Memphis. It was hard work, but I liked it. Plus, there’s not a single alley cat in a 50-mile radius that wasn’t my friend.

            But the real reason I lived in Memphis is on account of my husband, Caleb. He’s the database administrator at the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center. He started out as a nightshift network administrator and worked his way up. The first time I ever laid eyes on that man, I knew he was the one.

            It was high summer – the 4^th of July – and I was visiting my friend Betty at her folk’s place in Marked Tree, Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Memphis. It really tells you something about Babbitt that folks from there would vacation in Marked Tree and consider themselves lucky to do it. There was nothing in Marked Tree but about seventeen churches and a Dairy Freeze. And the Dairy Freeze looked to be about on its last legs.

            Still though, Betty’s folks lived there in some bottom land off Highway 308 and they were having a big 4^th of July barbecue and there I was, standing in a patch of boysenberry brambles and swatting away at the State Bird of Arkansas, the mosquito. Mrs. Dewlap, Betty’s mother, had sent all us young folks out to pick boysenberries down by the river for her famous boysenberry cobbler. Betty had already snuck three cases of beer down there to help fortify us for the task ahead because she still had hope then that some of us would come to visit her again someday. Betty was nobody’s fool.

            So we were swatting and picking and fortifying ourselves. Betty’s brother was there with a bunch of his friends from his job in Memphis and, let me tell you, those city kids were suffering. The only reason they think they have mosquitos in Memphis is because they have never been to Marked Tree.

            So this boy there who was originally from Louisiana and was pretty well fortified already tells this story about how one time back home he was walking down the road and he came up on two mosquitos that were in a ditch eating a baby cow and one mosquito says to the other, “Let’s you and me carry this baby cow over behind the barn and eat him there.” And the other mosquito says, “Nah, if we carry it back there, the big mosquitos will take it from us.”

            That boy was not Caleb. Caleb was a different boy, standing there listening to the story about the two mosquitos and then laughing. He laughed this bright, sharp laugh and his eyes crinkled all up. Well, a girl notices a man who laughs and his eyes crinkle all up. But that wasn’t all.      

He was kind of quiet, for one thing, which was unusual at that stage of the fortifying, and when people talked, he actually listened to them, paid attention to whatever foolishness they were saying. A man who will pay attention in such circumstances will surely pay attention when it comes to more important matters.

To tell you the truth, there was maybe not as much berry picking going on right then as Mrs. Dewlap might have hoped, what with the swatting and the fortifying and the foolishness, but this boy Caleb was doing more than his fair share. I watched him, his hands going gently through those brambles, slow and easy, one berry after another, careful so as not to bruise them, but firm. Those were some fine hands and that boy clearly knew how to take his time with them. Lord, I almost fainted right there in the mud. It might have been on account of loss of blood from the mosquitos, but it sure felt like passion.

I spent the whole rest of that day kind of sidling up next to him and then getting chicken and sidling off. But I kept on looking at his crinkled eyes and his slow hands and feeling faint and I knew he was it. It was long after midnight, after the cobbler and the bottle rockets were done and even the fireflies and Betty’s brother had gone to bed or at least passed out and only the katydids and the bullfrogs and the stars were out that he finally kissed me. That was almost thirty years ago and, even now, seeing his eyes crinkle all up when he laughs is still the one thing I miss most about being dead.