After a week of living in sunshine and wildflowers, it is so misty this morning that we can't see even the hills right behind the house. I like knowing that we are living inside clouds.

We are in a generosity spiral with Barbara and Sara at the Frutta D'Oro. After they were so kind to me about being on my own while Jonathan was away in the US and also gifted me a giant bunch of yellow mimosas, Jonathan brought them back some Vermont maple syrup from his trip. They reciprocated with a large jar of honey from their own hives and then an 11-pound bag of lemons from the tree in Sara's yard -- "So sweet that you can just eat them," Sara said.

So we made lemon marmalade with ginger and Cointreau and gave them two jars of it and two loaves of our own fresh-baked bread. Heaven only knows where this will end. Probably pie.

Sunday we went to see Fabio play at a little osteria high up in the hills above Seravezza. The staff there all wear t-shirts that say "Moriremo ma non di sete" -- "We will die -- but not from thirst." I laughed and laughed at this and the owners, Silvio and Daniela, let me take their picture and then gave us some free homemade liqueurs -- pale green tasting of pistachio and pale orange tasting of melon.

Jonathan still has no driver's license, but the Polizia dello Stato in Forte dei Marmi say that my Permesso di Soggiorno (long-term stay visa) is ready to be picked up -- a mere four months after my last one expired. We are going there to get it tomorrow morning. I will believe it when I see it.

 

It is wild garlic season here and it is possible that we have gone a bit overboard. We went to a presentation at the pub a few weeks ago about foraging wild plants and came away from it with the ability to confidently recognize exactly one plant -- wild garlic. So when we discovered it growing in great swathes along the path to Capezzano Monte, naturally, we lost our heads.

After our initial brief foray, we went back yesterday with bags to get more and then spent the rest of yesterday afternoon washing it and then making wild garlic pesto, which was delicious and quite zippy. We have many other plans -- wild garlic risotto, wild garlic focaccia, wild garlic frittatas, wild garlic pickles. There are so many options! And it is good that we have all this cooking to keep ourselves entertained here at home, because the consumption of this much wild garlic will likely mean that we are exiled from the larger society for quite some time to come. 

At least we have each other.

Wild Garlic Pesto

Clean and wash the garlic, trim off the roots, and cut off the white parts at the bottom (save these for the pickles, below). Chop the long green stems roughly and then put them in the food processor. Add a generous amount of olive oil. Blend and then start adding chunks of excellent parmesan cheese, lots of pine nuts and a bit of salt. Continue to add olive oil as needed. Taste frequently to get the balance of flavors that you prefer. You can add a bit of lemon juice if you would like. Serve over pasta or with anything else that needs a little zip. If you eat this alone, you must stay alone afterwards for the good of the community. If you eat it with someone else, you must be truly committed to a life together with just each other. At least for a while.

Wild Garlic Pickles

Sterilize some jars by boiling them in water for ten minutes. While that is going on, make a brine of one cup sugar, one tablespoon salt, one and a third cups apple cider vinegar, and two thirds of a cup of water and bring it to a boil. When the jars are sterilized, while they are still warm, put some mixed (black, red, white and green) peppercorns and some mustard seeds in the bottom of each jar. Then take the white garlic stems saved from above and pack them into the jars. Pour the boiling brine over and close the jar. Let sit for at least two weeks before tasting. Refrigerate after opening. Hopefully, these will neither taste terrible nor poison us. I guess we'll know in two weeks.

Yesterday was just a normal day. These are the hardest to write about because it is hard to describe a "nothing special" that is at the same time so happy.

The loudest sound here these days is birdsong. Sometimes there are church bells mixed in and behind that, almost imperceptible, is the shushing sound of the sea. The spring flowers are starting to bloom. I saw the first poppy of the year on the roadside down near town.

We have been going to town to buy groceries every day this week since the refrigerator died. We went on Tuesday to the UniEuro in Massa and bought the smallest fridge they sell to hold us over until a new big fridge arrives. The nice man at the UniEuro loading dock didn't bat an eye when we rolled up with our clown car expecting to drive a refrigerator home in it. 

"Oh, no problem," he said, cheerfully. And sure enough, by putting down the back seat and sliding the front seats up so far that Jonathan was driving with his knees up under his chin, we were able to close the hatchback with zero millimeters to spare.

So yesterday we bought some chicken for our dinner at the butcher shop (founded in 1907) where three generations of the Lane family work and where we are advised about our meat by Susanna or Babbo, who knows what's what when it comes to meat. Then I bought a new purse for 25 euros in the weekly Thursday market at the Piazza dello Statuto because my old purse finally gave up the ghost.

Then we zipped over to the Coop, which is just outside town and sells things like shampoo and paper napkins that are not available in the charming but tiny stores where we do most of our shopping. The real joy of the Coop, however, is not the access to shampoo and paper napkins, but the regular arrival of the bollini every six months or so. The bollini are little stickers that you get with each purchase. Then when you've collected enough bollini, you can trade them in for prizes.

Our first bollini-fest had Pyrex for prizes. We went nuts getting bollini enough for Pyrex crostata pans and Pyrex mixing bowls and Pyrex measuring cups -- things that are not actually for sale anywhere around here that we know of. The next bollini-fest was for sporting goods, which was not as exciting, but we did get some quick-dry towels. Currently, we are nearing the end of a bollini-fest for bed linens. We've already managed to nab a complete set of sheets and pillowcases for a single bed and are now working on the "matrimoniale" size.

We are supposed to get one sticker for every 15 euros that we spend, but we have noticed that the cashiers exercise great leeway here and that if we say "please" when they ask if we are collecting the bollini, we tend to get more bollini than we are supposed to. We have sometimes gotten as much as twice the number we are owed. Seeing what heights of politeness I can reach with my limited Italian and what largesse of bollini this elicits is one of my great entertainments.

In the afternoon, Jonathan had zoom meetings and I chatted with Aiden for a while about the state of the world and his life. The state of the world seems very bleak, but my son has such a good heart and is so thoughtful and kind and brave that I can't help but feel that everything will turn out OK in the end.

Then, while the sunset was turning the sky and the sea into melted roses and gold, we walked down to the pub to see Renata, who is just back from over a month in Poland visiting her family. She and I talked together for a while, standing behind the bar, about how hard it can be to live far away from the people you love.

Nights like these are my favorites. There was no one there except for Renata, seven of the beasts, and us. We share wine around the table, pouring each other glasses from the communally purchased bottle, and eat the "snacks," which really constitute a full meal -- starting off last night with a large meat and cheese board with baskets of bread and followed up by meatloaf and mashed potatoes, served family style -- Salvatore dishing it out last night -- and then after the fist serving, everyone just helping themselves, all of us seated around the big marble table -- the "tavolo di marmo." 

How the economics of all this free food works is beyond me. We pay for the Dreams & Poetry wine that we drink at 10 euros a bottle, but unless Daniele and Alice are making it themselves in the bathtub at home, there is no way that they turn a profit on these perfect nights.

We told them all the story of our broken refrigerator and about how now we have a giant bag of formerly frozen peas that we have to eat right away. The discussion of what to do with all those peas -- like any discussion of food -- was exceptionally lively. "We should have brought them here for us all to eat," Jonathan said. And it's true.

Jonathan had another meeting at 8:00, so we began to leave at 7:30. "He could go and you could stay here," Renata said to me. "Oh, no," I said, "because I am a very good little wife and while he is working, I am cooking." The boys all thought this was quite funny and wanted to know which dishes I cook well. "Nothing," I said and they laughed. "I don't cook anything well, either," Nonno said. And while we were laughing at that, Guglielmo filled my wine glass again on the sly.

But Jonathan made it to his meeting with seconds to spare and I cooked the chicken while he talked. So that is a typical day here except that every day is a little different.

 

Jonathan blew back home on the Mistral winds Saturday and we had one lovely evening before we woke up Sunday morning to a suspicious (and tragically familiar) chill in the air. We spent Sunday going back and forth to the furnace controls in the basement laundry room and then running around feeling all the radiators and saying, "Nope -- still nothing." 

The wind was blowing so hard that we lost a bit of the roof over the place where we park the car and we actually had to tie one of our windows shut with string. On Monday, the furnace repairman showed up about 5 p.m. and replaced the thermostat which (fingers crossed!) was the ultimate culprit.

The heat did come on and is now working away trying to once again warm up an old stone house that had gotten very deep down chilly.

"Gosh," I said to Jonathan at one point, "it's actually warmer inside the refrigerator now than it is outside in the kitchen."

Then later I said, "Like really warmer."

Then later, "OK, so I just opened the refrigerator door and an actual blast of hot air came out."

So now we have everything from the refrigerator sitting out on the kitchen table while we try to figure out what the fuck is going on. The panel at the back of the inside compartment that usually feels cold is now hot to the touch. There are some instructions with no words, but only pictures and numbers, on the inside of the freezer door. These do not help at all.

But the good news is that there are violets and tiny white daisies and purple crocuses blooming all over the yard. Barbara and Sara, who run our veg store, gave me a giant bunch of mimosa flowers before Jonathan left and also gave me their telephone number and told me not to hesitate to call them if I needed anything at all. Jonathan brought them back a bottle of fancy Vermont maple syrup and now they are giving us some honey from their own hives.

And I continue to plug away learning Italian. I have a lesson once a week with Cristina, but also have a grammar book that I read on my own and some flash cards that I bought at Title Wave Books when I was in Alaska last June. The flash cards have vocabulary words on them, but also sentences that I have to memorize: "Doctor Rivetti, it's a pleasure to meet you." -- "Dottor Rivetti, e' un piacere conoscerla." "I'll take the pants, the shirt and the sunglasses." -- "Prendo i pantaloni, la camicia, e gli occhiali da sole."

Tomorrow, I have an appointment to have a pap smear, which I will almost certainly have to endure without Jonathan there to translate.

Me to doctor: Dottor Rivetti, e' un piacere conoscerla.

Doctor to me: Prendo i pantaloni, la camicia, e gli occhiali da sole.

 

Jonathan has been gone for a week -- first to Switzerland to see his kids and then to New Jersey to see his parents. I stayed here because my permesso di soggiorno still has not arrived, shockingly enough. (Neither has Jonathan's driver's license, for those of you innocent enough to have believed that something promised for November would be ready no later than February.) And so I can't leave the country. Or at least I can't come back in if I do.

The first day that I woke up without Jonathan, the house felt lonely and empty and a little cold to me. "Ah," I thought to myself. "Everything is so bleak in the absence of my darling Jonathan that I actually feel cold from it. It is not the house that is cold -- it is my heart!"

It was the house.

It turns out that the furnace was malfunctioning and for those three days while the naughty gods waited waited for the truth of the situation to dawn on me, it got colder and colder in the house. Rain poured down outside and the Mistral blew through, searingly cold. Eventually I did come to the realization that this was more than emotional cold and figured it all out and everything is fixed now. But for the space of those days, it seemed like the house and the world outside it were all just a reflection of how much I missed him.

Also, this is a photo of what it looks like around here when we do laundry while it rains. Glamorous. They don't show you this side of things in all those romantic movies set in Italy.