My father died at home the day after New Year's Day five years ago. My brother and I were with him that final month and we had a semblance of one last Christmas together there in the house that we had grown up in. That is some consolation, I guess, but it wasn't my best Christmas ever. We miss him very much still and when one of us does something lovely that he would have done or enjoys something that he first introduced us to, we send the other one an email that says, "Thanks, Dad."

When my boys were still living at home, we would drive up higher into the mountains every December to cut our Christmas tree in the State Forest. You could buy a permit for $10 (later $20) and cut designated trees (less than six inches around the bottom of the trunk) in a designated area. The money from the permits went to support the parks and it was basically a way to cut back undergrowth as a wildfire mitigation method. But to us, it wasn't wildfire mitigation. To us, it was magical.

We always went early in the morning and hiked deep into the snowy forest and brought bacon and egg wraps and hot apple cider and Christmas cookies and hot chocolate and the sky was always delphinium blue and the wind in the trees was always the only sound. On the way up, I always made the children listen to a CD of John Denver's Greatest Hits and on the way down, with the tree tied precariously to the car roof or even stuffed inside, coming up between the seats and filling the car with evergreen aroma and a thousand persistent pine needles, we always listened to the original Broadway cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof as an acknowledgment of our multicultural family heritage.

I remember one year Aiden drove all night after his last final exam to get home from Los Angeles in time for the last day permitted for cutting. We always decorated the tree right away, all of us together.

So, although we are busy and happy here and the holiday season is filled with kindness and good cheer, I am a little bit blue, missing them. 

So two days ago, acting under the influence of the Recipe Section of The Guardian, we decided to make Christmas cookies again. Jonathan and I spent hours mixing and baking and frosting and decorating -- and eating. It was lovely, the two of us working away together and listening to the original Broadway cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof.

Later, I called my brother and told him about our baking and about how we used to take cookies and hot apple cider with us to go up into the snowy forests in the clear morning light and listen to John Denver on the way up and Zero Mostel on the way down. "Twenty years from now," he said, "when they hear one of those songs, one of them will send the other one an email that says, 'Thanks, Mom.'" And I burst into tears.

 

One of the nicest and most surprising things about living in our hidden little world in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea is how much music there is here -- not music to make the musicians famous or music to sell merch or music to impress a sea of social media followers. But music for the joy of making music, for the love of it -- music among friends to make the winter days and nights more lively and more beautiful. In the past two weeks, Jonathan and I have marched in a parade through Capezzano Monte (pop. 355) following the Filarmonica as they played to unveil a new mural in town, gone to listen to our neighbor Fabio play in his blues band at the little cafe near the Lucca Gate (first video below) and driven to Pruno (pop. 90) -- far back in the hills above Stazzema, deep along winding roads to an ancient stone town with cobbled streets -- to hear Avi and Adele, our friends from the pub, play a concert in the tiny 13th century church of San Nicolo on a rainy, windswept night (second video below).

But there is also the casual music of everyday happiness. Below is a snip of the usual lunchtime pandemonium at the pub as it existed last Friday during lunch, the regular exuberance (Avi playing again -- this time on the wildly out-of-tune piano, which sounds so weirdly beautiful that I hope it never gets tuned.) I would say that this sort of commotion is nothing special -- meaning nothing out of the ordinary -- but that would be wrong because, of course, it is special and I am very aware that this will someday come to an end.

Some other updates:

Property is bondage: We have begun the process of bringing boxes of our stuff from the storage unit in Lucca to our house and unpacking it. This is tricky because the house was already full and there is no space to further absorb our belongings.

And, although opening box after box of our books is like greeting very dear old friends after a long and lonely absence, I somehow wonder if maybe we were better off when we had nothing.

The Netherworld: We went to visit Jonathan's son in Holland, where he is in school, and to visit the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which -- to tell by the pungent aroma coming off many, many of the other visitors -- is a favorite haunt of stoned people. Possibly this is not specific to the museum, though. We also went to a big Asian market and stocked up with ramen to bring back to Italy. It's funny the things you miss. Let's not judge.

Remembering What is Truly Important (Food): I took my language test for Italian citizenship last Thursday and now we're waiting for the results. Could go either way. Among the dozen people taking the test, I was by far the newest arrival in Italy, having arrived only two years ago. The next newest has been here five years -- most of the others have been here between 10 and 15 years. One woman has been here 26 years. So I may have some grave doubts about how I did, but in another 24 years, I think I will have a decent shot. 

In any case, when we finally arrived back home after my extremely trying morning, we found that Mimmo had very sweetly managed to get a bunch of ripe persimmons down from our tall persimmon tree and left them for us on the porch.

Personality Defects: We have made tiny little bottles of our olive oil to give to friends, but (being hyper-aware of our own novice olive-oil-making status) we are too shy to actually give them to anyone.

Dead Geniuses: The Campanile down by the Duomo in Pietrasanta, which is always locked up tight, was unexpectedly open for viewing one day and we stumbled across it and were able to go in, although not up (which is probably just as well). Michelangelo designed it when he was living and working here and it is famous to us all -- the spiral staircase reproduced on postcards and paintings and refrigerator magnets -- although most of us had never seen it in person.

Episode IV -- A New Hope: Walking up the drive last week, I caught sight out of the corner of my eye of what I at first thought was the daytime moon. It turned out to be a wasp nest as big as a beachball high up in one of our trees. The bad news is the wasps. The good news is that it now gives Jonathan and I plenty of opportunities to look at each other and say "That's no moon" and "I have a bad feeling about this."

Lights: Everyone is now decorating for Christmas. It is all very magnificent down in Pietrasanta. But my heart belongs forever to the two and a half strings of lights over the road up here in Capriglia. What we lack in flash, we make up for in convivial drunkenness and good humor.