Tomorrow was supposed to have been our last day in this house. By our original agreement, we rented this house only until April 30th. But a couple of days ago, we signed a new lease to give us another year here. I feel profoundly grateful for this -- to have left now, with the first leaves just beginning to come out on the strawberry grape vines and the cherries still tiny on the tree outside the kitchen window, with the hillside covered in poppies and buttercups, to have left when the fig trees are just putting on their first leaves like green flames at the tips of their fingers, to have left now would have broken my heart. 

But the Signora, whose house this is and who told us very clearly when we first rented it that it is not for sale and it is not even for long-term rental, has, out of her kindness, allowed us another year here, another year in our haven above the sea.

I am very lucky and I am very grateful for many things. Here are some of them:

Today I talked to a dear friend of mine for a while. Her friendship is precious to me.

Lately, I have been painting with egg tempera, losing myself in the joy of it.

We have found people here in this little town who share our politics and our ideals -- and they own the pub!

We are having fresh peas with dinner.

The sky over the sea is watercolor.

There is more, of course -- the boys, Jonathan, another old friend from Colorado Springs I talked to earlier this week, my much beloved brother. But I don't have pictures of those people today.

 

We are awash in flowers here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. That and the birdsong.

 

Here is a completely factual and objective description of the events of yesterday afternoon exactly as they happened:

1. I was sitting on a chair in the living room shelling fresh peas.

2. A pea escaped and rolled under my chair.

3. I saw it go under.

4. I immediately lumbered down to the floor to retrieve it, but it was not there.

5. It is a bare tile floor and there is no other nearby furniture under which a pea could hide.

6. I had a clear view in all directions and there was certainly no pea. I looked all around very carefully. No pea.

7. Anywhere.

8. Instead, there was this fifty-centime piece sitting right where the pea should have been.

9. Earlier in the day, Jonathan and I had been talking about money -- specifically, how to get some more of it.

10. Obviously, the pea had changed itself into the coin.

11. There is no other explanation.

12. This house is enchanted.

(13. p.s. I know what you're thinking, but we ate the rest of the peas.)

 

An interview with me in Rev magazine went live today with this fabulous illustration by Natalie Foss. The part where I wax rhapsodic about public bathrooms was kept in. The part where I used the phrase "In a dog eat dog world you just end up with a bunch of chewed up dogs" did not. Probably just as well.

The article is here: https://www.lyft.com/rev/posts/how-weak-ties-build-strong-communities

When we first moved to Italy, Jonathan and I were overwhelmed with the beauty of it. Every day, we marveled. Every day, we ate up the world around us in delight. Every day it seemed as though we had at last somehow -- magically -- found our way through that tiny door into the enchanted garden beyond.

Naturally, we worried. We worried that somehow we would over time become insensate -- numb through familiarity to the constantly unfolding loveliness around us. We worried that we would lose the ability to see it, to marvel at it, when our eyes were accustomed to it.

A different thing has happened, though. As we have adjusted to living here in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea, with its sweeping views of the sea and the clouds and the green of the olive groves and the hillsides covered with wildflowers, we seem to find more beauty, not less. We notice things all the time that have been there, but that we were perhaps too dazzled to see before now. 

I have walked past this planter, for example, on the main street in Pietrasanta easily a hundred times now, but I only noticed it a few days ago -- the beautiful terracotta fruits and vegetables at the base of it. It is a lovely planter, sitting quietly on the wall, waiting to be seen by someone paying attention. And all of Pietrasanta is like this -- tiny treasures everywhere once you notice them.

We have not lost our sense of wonder, after all. The more accustomed to our world here that we become, the more magic that we find.

 

We did not win the giant chocolate egg in the Easter raffle down at the pub, which is actually a bit of a relief. It was instead won by Mirio's two grandchildren, further confirming my suspicion that the drawings are rigged -- but in the best possible way. The kids were very happy and excited and shared the chocolate around very sweetly with everyone. It was the best of all possible raffle outcomes.

We are going for our Easter lunch there tomorrow -- planning on having nothing but a nap for our dinner afterwards. Daniele will be gone for a week teaching a cooking class in Amsterdam next week. He says that if we can come up with a group of ten people, he will teach us how to cook traditional Tuscan food. I would love to do this. But where would I get ten people all at once here? I do not think that the old men in the pub who make up most of my social circle these days are interested in learning how to cook traditional Tuscan food. Eating it, of course, is a different matter.

After a spur-of-the-moment but nevertheless overwhelming urge that necessitated an unplanned immediate trip to the fish section of the grocery store, I painted my Egg Tempera Painting Number Two yesterday. The paintings never come out like the images I see in my head, but I am happy in the belief/delusion that someday they will.

 I worry.

I know that it doesn't do any good, but I worry anyway. One of my big worries about moving to Italy, where I don't know the systems and don't understand the logic behind the processes by which things happen (and I am not alone in this, btw) is what would happen if we had a medical emergency.

Now I know.

Some friends from the US came to stay with us for a couple of days and one of them had a medical emergency their first day here -- not life-threatening, but incredibly painful and needing real medical attention.

So we went down to the little hospital at the very foot of Via Capriglia, where there is an after-hours walk-in clinic. The doctor warned us that since we are not Italian, we would have to pay upfront for the care. Being Americans, of course, we are used to astronomical medical bills. I once had to pay upfront at the emergency room in Colorado Springs when one of the boys had broken his arm, even though I have medical insurance, because the other boy had broken his leg (jesus!) the weekend before and my insurance payment had not made its way through the system yet. If I had not been able to instantly cough up several hundred dollars, they would not have treated my child because his injury wasn't life-threatening.

This is the reality of US health care and so we were prepared for the worst -- especially because we were so carefully warned. The doctor there treated my friend and then the bill came.

Twenty bucks. The entire, uninsured cost of the visit was twenty bucks.

We went to the all-night pharmacy to get his prescription filled thinking, "Ah, now -- here it comes! Prescription medicine with no insurance -- this will certainly cost a pretty penny!" Once again, we were carefully warned that because we are not Italian, we would have to pay.

Thirteen bucks. Entire, uninsured cost -- thirteen bucks.

The whole process took less than an hour. There was no waiting anywhere. The total cost was 33 euros. My friend is doing well. We dropped them at the Pisa train station yesterday to continue their trip.

Jonathan pointed out that the reason for all of the careful warnings about payments was because an Italian would have paid nothing. Ever. So that is what happens when you have a medical emergency in a country with socialized medicine. Just fyi.

We also discovered that in the duomo down in Pietrasanta, you can take communion, should you wish, with the gluten-free version of the Body of Christ. Again, just fyi.

And I have tried out egg tempera painting using the pigments that I got from Zecchi and a traditional recipe from the early Renaissance for mixing up the paint using egg yolks and white wine. It just takes a splash of wine, but since you then have an open bottle, you can have quite the relaxing time while painting. I painted a tiny artichoke. I think I'm in love (with both the paint and the produce.)

We have made reservations for Easter lunch this Sunday at the pub. They are holding a raffle to win the big chocolate egg that didn't get sat on. We are number 49 -- our hopes are high!

Jonathan and I blew into Firenze today -- hoping for one last visit before the summer tourist season roils in. That horse, however, turned out to be already out of the bag. We threaded our way carefully through crowds and I felt sorry for the people who only get to see lovely, stony, serene Firenze all filled up this way. I began to feel guilty, even, that we were there. We, after all, were just parts of their crowds -- they who perhaps only had Firenze this one time in their lives. 

So we visited a few of our best friends in the Uffizi (via the joy of our annual pass that means we don't pay and we don't wait in line -- which now feels like cheating somehow. Although one of the big selling points of the pass is that you don't have to stand in line, but just go right in whenever you want, there has never before actually been a line to cut to the head of -- until today.) 

Then we went over to Zecchi, the lovely art supply store on a tiny side street near the Duomo. After drooling over the jars of powdered pigments for all these months, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy some.

The staff at Zecchi are very kind and very helpful and patient, explaining things to me and helping me choose colors. They even took the time to specially make me a little jar of cadmium yellow because there were only big ones in stock. They let me try all the brushes to see which ones I liked best. Everyone so jovial.

But there was a woman in there, who started shouting at one of the other salesmen, the head clerk, I think. She was being just awful to him -- rude and demeaning and preemptory -- because she couldn't get the wifi to work on her phone. He was trying to tell her how to connect to the store wifi and she wouldn't even let him talk -- she kept interrupting him, wouldn't listen to what he was trying to tell her, but was just berating him because she couldn't check her email in the store to find her supply list of the things she needed to buy for an art course she was taking for a week.

It was horrible. Jonathan and I were in an agony of mortification, because of course she was speaking English and, although it was hard to tell because of her anger, she sounded American to me. I was paralyzed with embarrassment for my whole native country.

She stormed out and in the silence that followed her exit, Jonathan and I just stood there, feeling so much shame. I apologized in my best (very broken) Italian to the men working there for all Americans. They were, of course, lovely. "There is no problem with Americans," the head clerk said to us. "There is just a problem with her." We all commiserated together. Then we turned our attentions to more pleasant topics -- the different types of spolvero paper and their various uses. Nice men so happy to share their extensive knowledge of art materials with us.

And then, lo and behold, she was back! She had her list. She wanted to shop. So the head clerk she had been berating helped her with all her purchases, subdued, but correct and perfectly civil. She paid (rather rudely). She left. 

We stood frozen as she made her way out of the shop -- the three men who worked there and Jonathan and I, no one moving or saying a word. I had my back to the door, but I could see the head clerk's eyes as he watched her leave, watched the door close behind her, watched her walk off. Then his body relaxed. "It's OK," he said to me. "She's Irish."

We all laughed. 

They gave us a 10% discount on our entire purchase, for no particular reason -- maybe just for not being her. 

 

I had this history teacher, Mr. Baker, in high school -- in the fabulous Arkansas public school system where I learned many things (e.g., that it's bad to be smart and how to play dumb. Also, kickball.) One day I said something in Mr. Baker's class that I had read in a book and I remember even now, decades later, the contempt dripping from his voice when he responded to me, "You don't get your ideas from books, do you?" I could have committed no impropriety more distasteful. (Mr. Baker later served several terms as the very popular mayor of my home town.)

Yesterday, I noticed that the wisteria outside the kitchen is putting out flower buds. Every day now, something new blooms. It's not quite April yet, but flower pots that have seemed empty and dormant all winter long are now sprouting shoots and even a few early flowers from long-hidden bulbs. The grass is filled with daisies and violets. Trees that I don't recognize are flowering. The Signora tells us that some of them are cherry trees. And Mimmo tells Jonathan, in their many talks together about their shared passion, that we should expect the olive trees to flower any time now.

The air has been very clear lately so that for three days running we have been able to see the coast of France from the living room windows. Why it is so especially exciting to us to see the coast of France rather than, say, our usual view of the sunset and the ocean and the ships heading in and out of the sea lanes towards the harbor at La Spezia, is unclear. But somehow it is.

The birds are riotous lately and I have been stuffing myself with fresh peas. Suddenly today the forsythia is covered in yellow flowers. I probably originally got the idea to move away to Italy, to a place with wisteria and sunshine on the shores of the Mediterranean, from reading about it in books. 

Fuck you, Mr. Baker.

 

Apparently, the country with the most McDonald's franchises in Europe is France. Those people are savages.

If you want to befriend someone in Italy, talk with them about food. It takes us ages now to do our shopping because we discuss (at length) the food with everyone in the shops -- advice, recipes, tips, thoughts, cooking techniques, information, opinions, fervently held yet apocryphal beliefs. Then we come home and gorge ourselves.

Here are some things we have been eating lately, as spring has come to the market:

Agretti: tastes like spinach, looks like grass.

Fresh fava beans (shelled by me): eaten raw with good olive oil, a tiny bit of sea salt, and little pieces of fabulous cheese.

Fresh peas: again, lovingly shelled by hand. Well, maybe not "lovingly."

Jonathan has baked bread today. The sun is out and we can see the waves still left from last night's storm crashing on the beach. Every day, I know that I am profoundly lucky.

Tonight in lovely Capriglia-by-the-Sea. It may seem like just a bunch of old guys singing to an out-ot-tune piano in an out-of-the-way bar, but to me it is paradise.

 

Jonathan mentioned to Mimmo, our trusted gardener, the fur that we had seen by our front gate.

"Wolves?" Mimmo said, instantly. This was rather unnerving seeing as how we had really only been kind of joking about the wolves among ourselves and had not said anything at all about them to Mimmo or anyone else.

"They won't hurt you," he said, all twinkly-eyed. Then he shrugged, "Unless they're hungry."

Of course, he was just kidding. Probably.