I read in the news yesterday that there is a "heat dome" over southern Europe. I had not known until I read it that we are officially in a crisis -- the news does not, however, come exactly as a shock. It was 84 degrees at 4:10 a.m. in our bedroom this morning, where Jonathan and I lay side-by-side gently sweating into our sheets and waiting for it to be morning so that we can go down to the beach.

Our beach club is very tranquil and sedate in the mornings -- mostly just old people like us reading their newspapers or taking a stroll along the strand. Every now and then there is a parent or grandparent with a baby still asleep in their arms. Paolo smiles and greets us by name while the sleepy teenagers who work at the cafe clear up the remaining evidence of the previous night's festivities. (It is only in the evenings when the Riviera beach parties really get hoppin'.) Jonathan sits at the cafe and keeps me up-to-date on the developments in the love triangle among three of the teenaged cafe workers. 

These mornings even the sea seems sleepy -- like glass, clear and olive green. Every now and then a pale little ghost fish flicks by, hiding in the light refracted on the bottom sand. I wade out and stand waist deep in the cool water staring off at the watercolor horizon, washing away the sticky feeling of a hot and sleepless night. This morning, I saw a jellyfish, also ghost white but with a deep blue-violet edge around its cap, waving along just under the surface of the water. At that exact moment, I felt refreshed enough to head back to our umbrellone on the sand.

Back at the house, it is fresh fig and lavender season. We have made fig jam twice -- once with lemon and once with amaretto. But now it is too hot for jam making and we just eat the fresh figs whole and cold from the fridge.

And there are bundles of lavender hanging upside down, drying, all over the house. When it is dry, I will make lavender sachets with it to put in all the clothes drawers to keep away the moths. And when the winter comes, every time I pull out a sweater, there will be a little aromatic burst of summer and I will long once again for the heat. ("I won't," Jonathan says.)

Nonno's birthday party was last Friday night. We all chipped in and bought him a helicopter flight over these mountains that he has loved so much and that he used to hike in as a young man, but now cannot reach. At our house, almost at the top of the mountains, we saw the bright red helicopter fly over us late Sunday afternoon. We knew it was Nonno because it buzzed the terrace of the pub twice and we could hear the cheering.

"He seemed as happy as a bambino," Alice said, having gone with him to the helipad to see him onto the flight. "And now he will have a new story to tell." We will go down to see him sometime in the next couple of days and tell him that we saw him and he will tell us the story of it and I will be happy.

That is quite a statement, given the general situation. I'm starting to feel about ice the way Harrison Ford did in "The Mosquito Coast." The Italian word for jellyfish, by the way, is "medusa." (If nothing else, my vocabulary is expanding.)