Eight months ago, as required by law, we started the process of switching Jonathan's Swiss driver's license over to an Italian driver's license. There is an international treaty regarding this -- it is an automatic process (no tests or anything else required). "Oh," the man behind the counter said, "it takes five minutes. Come back when you have your new identity card and we will handle it." That was eight months ago.

We are now dozens of visits, emails, and phone calls in -- so many that we have lost count -- and still no license. The highlight of all of this for me was having to get a verified photo of Jonathan. This involves going to a photo booth on the street, taking a picture, and then making an appointment at the city offices for someone there to look at the photo, look at Jonathan, and officially confirm that this is a photo of him. The people at the driver's license place are not able to do this sophisticated task.

The person at the city offices, having looked at both the photo of Jonathan and at Jonathan, then issues an official piece of paper to say that the photo of Jonathan is, indeed, a photo of Jonathan. The piece of paper has many stamps on it, including one that cannot be purchased at the city offices or at the driver's license place , but only at a tobacco store. Naturally.

The verification of the photo actually took two visits because the first attempt was rejected. "It needs to be a recent photograph," the woman at the city offices said. "And I can tell this is not recent because you are wearing a different shirt." This is the kind of keen-eyed attention to detail of which the driver's license people are apparently incapable. So Jonathan had to go home and make another appointment to come back the next week wearing the same shirt he had on when he took the picture. As God is my witness, this is the truth.

But he was successful on his second attempt, got the paper all stamped and verified and signed, and brought it to the Driver's License place, where (having been the ones who told him he needed this in the first place) they now told him that they didn't need it.

In any case, we are now waiting for the official license to be available for pick-up. We have been waiting for about a month. Tuesday afternoon, Jonathan called to see if there was any news of it. We are now on a first-name basis with Magdalena at the Driver's License place (I left out the other dozen or so visits that the whole process has entailed). When Jonathan called and asked for an update, Magdalena just laughed. "She laughed at me," Jonathan said when he got off the phone.

We continue to wait.

Then yesterday we had to meet our immigration attorney at the Post Office to continue the apparently incessant process of procuring my long-term visa. We met her at the Post Office because that is, of course, where you make appointments to go to the Police Station and the Police Station is where the Immigration Office is. The procedure is that you mail the Police a stamp that you have bought in the tobacco store and when you do that, the clerk at the Post Office gives you an appointment with the Police. (Even after more than a year here, this seemed so convoluted that when our attorney told us to meet her at the Post Office, we thought there must have been a translation error somewhere along the line.) We had a couple of letters to throw into the wind mail, so we had already taken a number and were actually at a teller window throwing our letters into the wind mailing them when our attorney arrived. She joined us and tried to conduct our visa business, but was told that she couldn't and would have to get a new number and wait in line again -- not because you can't do two things at once at the window, but because she had walked into the building when we were already at the window. Our attorney took this completely in stride as a reasonable thing to do, which is why she is our attorney -- she understands what is going on, which we pretty much never do. In any case, the Post Office had just opened and there was no one else there, so we got a new number and then were seen right away.

So last night, to calm our nerves after so much bureaucracy, we went down to the pub, where we had not been since the "Incident Festival of the Big Chicken." Nonno was waiting for us -- he had a present for me. It was a book from his own library of the history of Pietrasanta, illustrated with beautiful maps and paintings and photographs. He was giving it to me, he said, because he thought I might be interested and because after he dies, he says, his family will "just throw everything out." So he is glad for me to have it, even though I only understand about one out of every ten words. I am better than no one.

This reminds me of when I lived in the South Pacific and once the old people on the island found out that I was there, they came to me in a steady stream with objects for me to see or old photographs or stories. I did not have to go searching for informants or pry secrets out of people through some sort of devious means. They said the same thing to me over and over: "No one around here wants to hear my stories. My children and grandchildren aren't interested." But they themselves needed so badly to speak, to know that these treasures would not vanish from memory when they died. I spent long afternoons sitting on Emily's shady veranda hearing these stories or seeing these photos and objects -- an ancient corset that the missionaries used to make the women wear, the photograph of a lover from long ago, the remnants of a dancing costume they had worn when they were young. They needed someone to see it, to hear about it, before they were gone.

I lived on Rarotonga twenty years ago. I am much closer in age to Nonno now than I was to the elders of Raro back then. And so now, when I sit and listen to Nonno's stories, I wonder if anyone will come around when I am 90 who will ever hear my stories and show an interest in the books in my library or look at the remnants of my old dancing costumes. I will need to speak about my treasures, too. So I write blog posts and throw them into the wind.