Now that winter has stripped all the leaves off of the chestnut trees around our house, the sea has once again become an overwhelming feature of our lives. We have a startling view of it from the windows in the living room where we lurk together all day long. Around sunset, particularly, it is sometimes hard to get things done.

And now that the tourist season is over, there is plenty of free parking available down at the beach, which is mostly deserted and has the feeling of a summer place that has been abandoned. The gelato store where I had the best gelato of my life back in 1984 is still there, but closed up now until spring.

It is all very beautiful and a little melancholy -- as winter beaches and sunsets always are. And we have started to talk just between the two of us about where we will go next. We have agreed to stay in our house in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea until April 2025. And we are very happy here. But this was never intended to be forever.

When we started the whole project of figuring out the rest of our lives, we had a dream list of places where we might want to visit or live for a while -- some that we had been to and some that we hadn't: The Marquesas, New Zealand, Iceland, Uruguay, British Columbia and others. We came to Italy first because Jonathan's citizenship and language skills made things easier here. But sometimes when I'm looking at the Mediterranean, my head is all filled with South Pacific memories of the turquoise lagoon at Rarotonga, lined with coconut palms and thickets of hibiscus, and I see my boys on horseback galloping through the gentle surf out by the reef. It's not that we don't love Italy, because we do. But there is a whole world out there -- other places and other seas.

So we are once again in the position of not knowing what will become of us. The future is very uncertain. In the meantime, I am trying to savor this place where I am now for this moment,