It is a blustery day and from where I am sitting, if I turn my head I can see the waves breaking in frothy white rows at the beach.

We spent New Year's Eve at the pub -- a more melancholy evening than it was a year ago. A year ago, Mirio came to our table and joined us and welcomed us to the family of the regulars. That night we first met Almo and finally learned Renata's name and a man that we had never seen before -- or since -- grabbed Jonathan in the sort of passionate and loving embrace that betokens many, many bottles of wine.

But there has been much death and other sadness in this past year and, for all the food and wine and fireworks, the party was a subdued affair. Daniele and Allice were long gone before midnight came.

And now January is here. We have yet another rental car, but still no driver's license for Jonathan or visa for me. The police will supposedly do a surprise check to see if I actually live here, but since we don't know when they are coming, we don't have any way of making sure that we will be home when they do. But I guess one excuse is probably as good as another for them to get out of the office and enjoy a ride up the lovely Via Capriglia.

We went into Firenze on Wednesday to go to a van Gogh show and then to lunch and then the Palazzo Pitti.

But we spoke only Italian to each other at lunch to keep from interacting with the loud English-speaking tourists seated next to us. For now, it feels like all we need is just the two of us. We hibernate together up here in our aerie, watching the surf break and the lights glitter down below us on the plain. At night, especially, it seems like we are very high up in the air.

I have taken some pictures of some of the doors here at the house. It seemed seasonally appropriate.

 

 

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,

We still don't know for sure what "sn" means, but whatever it is, it includes us. The power went out at 9:01 yesterday morning and, although at first it was delightful to sit in the sunlight coming in through the windows and read from books, houses made of marble and stone cool off more rapidly in the February chill than you might think and we abandoned the place in late morning.

We had a good time down in town paying the cell phone bill at the tobacco store and being told at the Post Office to go downstairs behind to check for the Posta Fermo that we could see very plainly sitting on the shelf behind the teller. Then we went over to Viareggio, where M.C. Escher got married and where they take Carnivale therefore unsurprisingly seriously, and failed to find a food processor.

But in the end it didn't matter because by the time we got home, the power was back on and our lives in the sunshine progress peacefully enough without processed foods or mail.

In Pietrasanta, we've been having the celebration of the Feast Day of our Patron Saint, San Biagio, who is one of the lesser-known saints -- known as (according to Wikipedia) the "so-called Auxiliary saints." This seems needlessly dismissive to me. He is a famous intercessor for the healing of throat maladies and we celebrated in town by having a traditional Blessing of the Throats in the piazza in front of the church and with an equally traditional and somewhat more popular Luna Park set up just outside of town. Actually, Jonathan and I attended neither of these, but we could see the lights and hear the calliope music from the main street up here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. It is nice to know that people are eating tons of greasy carnival food and then riding contraptions that whirl them around wildly, even (or especially) if we aren't among them.

 What to do while the power is out:

 It is winter here now and there is no one to serve dinner for down in the pub even on Friday nights. Alice and Daniele stay home. There are just Jonathan and Renata and I and the old men playing cards and drinking wine by the fire. Everyone wears their coats even though we are indoors. We greet each other like friends now.

Down in town, the cafes are mostly empty and the women waiting in line outside the butcher shop have scarves pulled tight around their heads. There are no tourists.

Jonathan and I stay home most days. I am wearing wool socks and two sweaters over my thermal underwear in an attempt not to be a spoiled American cranking the heat up to 11. The sun feels good on my face when I bring in the garbage bins or, ever optimistic, check the mail. Only a handful of the most stubborn persimmons still cling to the trees.

It is winter and I, who abhor the cold, find that I am nevertheless very happy in these days of solitude with Jonathan. We look out over the sea and shiver with the beauty of it.