Harvest

Here in this land

where harvests really happen,

a long way from home,

this land where I now stand

and watch the gathering of grapes,

the press of olives just picked,

the harvest of gourds

that wear withering leaves like capes.

Strange that something so foreign

to my coordinates throws me back 

to where I began,

from harvest years to dawn.

A city child steeped

in one country's history

with hair and skin of another,

people in search of a land to dream deep.

And how those city ways

shaped me, formed the curve of my spine,

gave me the resolve needed for what I faced,

left me with enough for all my days.

Simple Joys

My Honey and I took a stroll through our town with friends. Summer weather, sunny and dry, is here to enjoy. We sat for awhile on a bench in a new square just built and planted. I love the old wall next to the newly painted one and the sculpture in the center. We have sculptures all over town. We ate gelato and admired the flowers. That's all. Seems like I've absorbed some of the Italian lifestyle.

It was our first gelato of the season from one of our cafes. I sat on the bench next to the profusion of flowers in the photo. Such lovely colors.

When we returned home my Honey made baked stuffed zucchini and salad with orange and fennel, served with a local white wine. Delicious. La dolce vita.

Wishing you summer's abundance and simple pleasures.

So Much has Changed

The windows are open since the temps are warm this September. I'm sitting looking at the verdant hills surrounding me and taking stock of all the has happened since my last post. I guess I needed a break to digest and integrate it. The biggest change is that my Honey and I put our Italian apartment/ condo on the market after nearly five years living here. We plan to move back to the states once it sells and relocate to Jacksonville, FL. The decision bubbled up after our vacation there in July/ August, being with family and having our grands (now 11 and 7 1/2) on our own for two weeks.

The easy reason to point to is the realization that I'm too far away from those who mean the most to me. Add to that the growing surety that Italians, as much as I have felt welcomed by them, enjoyed them and learned important life lessons from them, are not my tribe. I'm ready to volunteer in something I find meaningful and I'd like to have options that fit my skills, my perspectives, and can be expressed and understood without translation, figuratively and literally speaking. I might be able to shape such an endeavor here but it seems more monumental than I'd like at this time in my life. When I think about where I'd like to grow old and die, I know in my heart of hearts it's not here.

Sinking down a level, I want to be where those around me reflect the diversity in my own family. I want my family to feel at home when they visit, feel met and mirrored, feel comfortable. In my immediate family that means more people of color, bi-racial couples and mixed race kids. In my extended family it means more openly, comfortably gay individuals and couples and more complex families with fostered, adopted, blended and special needs kids. More basically, I'd like to be where my extended family can afford to visit. I cherish the diversity in my own family and I want to have that around me day to day.

There's more, I suspect, in the inner restlessness and eagerness to be living differently, more authentically. I, nonetheless, feel surprised by this change. I was going along feeling happy and delighted and then I wasn't. Makes me sad given how much I've loved living here and the good friends I've made. How does this just change from one day to another?

                                            (photo by Grazian Romanelli of our city and its dragon)

Cittá Sant'Angelo, My Fair City

http://youtu.be/c5xMDZVjrGM

To enjoy on this summer Sunday- a video by Bruno Rugiere with scenes from my lovely, medieval town, Cittá Sant'Angelo in Abruzzo, Italy.

November Weekend Update

How we do November here in Italy- the bougainvillea keeps blooming, the begonia which I cut back has sprung forward again and I replaced the fall decor with the winter decor despite all this and then celebrated the change by having friends over for dinner. The moon eclipsed, the air is slightly colder at night which makes it nice for running in the morning, the last of our hot peppers have been harvested.

We're back with our splendid Italian tutor after a break while traveling and today I read an article in Italian and summarized it. The article described a French movie, Amour, which tells the story of a couple in their 80s and their struggles as the wife has a series of strokes and develops dementia, won at the Cannes Film Festival and is now on my must see list. Check it out.

Finally, I'm reading a wonderful book by Carolyn G. Heilbrun- The Last Gift of Time, Life Beyond Sixty. I somehow missed it up to now although it was published in 1997. It's one of those books that I can't wait to open in the morning and then re-read passages because of the sheer pleasure of how she writes. Is there anything lovelier than good writing?  She gives her perspective as a woman in her 70s  on aging and its rewards. Gorgeous, grown up stuff.

This morning it started to rain. The chives caught the first drops.

Why I Love my Honey

Because not only did he do the food shopping, but when he returned home, he presented the last of the season's, super ripe figs in a lovely white bowl with a large, green leaf underneath them.

Love that man!

Three Word Thursday

A friend's gift.

This Abruzzo Sky

It canopies vineyards and olive groves, this breadth of sky
stretched from the Adriatic to Apennine Mountains
tainted with faintest evening pink, sunset colors.

Everything about this Italian landscape colors
my writing these days, instructs me: specific sky,
named sea, these particular mountains

that I see from my small balcony, Majella Mountains,
part of the Apennine's, darkening as twilight colors
of blue washed with pink change minute by minute this Abruzzo sky.

This strict instruction colors how I apprehend the sky over us all, the mountains we all climb.



This Tritina, a form described last week over at dVerse Poets Pub and offered tonight on Open Link night, came from a conversation with Erin from in search of white space about the importance of naming, and from today's view from my balcony (photo above) in my little corner of the world.

Summer Heat

Plants line my balcony parched
in the unrelenting summer heat.
Even with daily sacks of water, leaves
tip brown, flowers fall, unable
to hold. My neighbors say their herbs die.
Against all this my basil thickens, greens
and lushes, reaches to that scorching sun
and grows heedless of what withers others.

My neighbors come to beg basil. They want
what that plant offers, want to eat it, add it
to their food, feed it to their children,
watch it lurch up as most succumb. They tell
friends and friends seek some. The more its shared
the more it grows. Basil takes that blazing
sun, paints yellow on its green leaves, sports it
like a scout's survival badge and just keeps growing.


This is posted as part of Open Link Night over at dVerse Poets Pub hosted today by Natasha Head. It's a talented group, decidedly diverse, who love poetry so check it out.

Shooting Stars and Other Love Stories

Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon,
a bright, three point line strung between
Perseids meteor shower winging stars across the sky
to mark our anniversary. We count them as if counting
our years or all that shot into being through us.

Is that how stars fling themselves to the
far ends of the universe, scatter star dust on every
surface to be taken up and formed into all that is?
Is this why we love to stretch out under the sky as
streaks mark their way across our vision and feel
our oneness with the universe?

Or is it the yearly reminder of mystery and
miracle that thrills us because we know it's about us, too.
We scooped up star stuff and made our life, made
our daughters, aligned ourselves with universal
coordinates, took our place in the scheme of things together,
streaked love across our lives, hurtled it here and there
at random and on purpose for thirty nine years, scorched by its scions.




Our anniversary is August 11 and is often marked by visible meteor showers. This year, the richest of them, Perseid Meteor Shower , was active and showed its ancient self in the pre-dawn sky. My Honey and I went out at 4AM and saw 10-12 shooting stars. What a great anniversary gift. Venus, Jupiter and the moon lined up particularly bright as well (my attempt at capturing this is the photo above).
Happy 39th, Honey! My God, aren't we brave?

 "…The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo; adventures as I used to call them. I used to think they were things the …folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull…But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or stay in the mind. Folks seem to have just landed in them, usually–their paths were laid that way…But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.." ~from The Two Towers, © J.R.R. Tolkien.

This is posted for dVerse Poets Open Link Night hosted by Claudia who encourages us to share the "stuff you discover as you go". What more treasured discovery than love and shooting stars?

Presenting Peppers and Hot Pepper Oil

Our peppers added to our neighbor's olive oil add punch to all manner of food.

Presenting this year's hot peppers, grown from seed, blooming on the balcony.

By the dozens.

Takes eating locally to a whole new level. And bringing the spice of this land to favorite foods.

We Are One

WE ARE COMPLETELY INTERRELATED

If we begin to surrender to ourselves —begin to drop the story line and experience what all this messy stuff behind the story line feels like— we begin to find bodhichitta, the tenderness that’s underneath all the harshness. By being kind to ourselves, we become kind to others. By being kind to others— if it’s done properly, with proper understanding we benefit as well.

So the first point is that we are completely interrelated. What you do to others, you do to yourself. What you do to yourself, you do to others.
(Pema Chodron)

I'm thinking on and loving this thought lately and striving to practice it in my everyday life. And reveling in our summer abundance.

Three Word Thursday

Our neighbor's olive- oil:

(Yes, this was harvested last fall but we just ran out of our previous oil and picked up a new five liters of this gorgeous olive oil from our neighbor. Can olive oil be beautiful? It tastes of the earth and trees and sun of this place and carries their combined color. I can feel it making my heart healthy and happy.
p.s. These words don't count since they're in parenthesis!)

All That Remains

My grandson returned to his home in Trinidad today. He left the house too quiet, the space where he dropped his flip- flops when he came into the house too empty and two souvenir foot prints that I'm now reluctant to clean up. 

Oh, and lots of pizza boxes to recycle. That boy scarfed down pizza on every possible occasion in the month he visited!

   

I'm feeling melancholy already but so grateful for this wonderful opportunity to know and love him more in all his boy exuberance. 

Grow well and prosper, sweet prince!

The Sunlit Hill

ALREADY MY GAZE IS UPON THE HILL, THE SUNLIT ONE. THE WAY TO IT, BARELY BEGUN, LIES AHEAD. SO WE ARE GRASPED BY WHAT WE HAVE NOT GRASPED, FULL OF PROMISE, SHINING IN THE DISTANCE. IT CHANGES US, EVEN IF WE DO NOT REACH IT, INTO SOMETHING WE BARELY SENSE, BUT ARE; A MOVEMENT BECKONS, ANSWERING OUR MOVEMENT . . . BUT WE JUST FEEL THE WIND AGAINST US. ~ RAINER MARIA RILKE

Snippets

My grandson, as you know, is visiting me and my Honey here in Italy for a month. He's far from his home in the rain forest of Trinidad for the first time and is gobbling up this slice of life in our little corner of the world. Here are some snippets of his time so far.

He's learned some new games, like Sequence, that all of us enjoy:

and old ones that he's become better at, like Rummy Kub:

and introduced some new games to us, like Bakugan, Battle Brawlers, that go from this:

to this, thanks to magnets in the cards and clever design:

He, outside with our neighbors, watched the European Football (soccer) semis and finals wherein Italy beat Germany in the semis but lost to Spain in the finals. His t-shirt says Italia, much to our neighbor's delight:

He's a gamer and has higher speed access here than at home, much to his delight:

But this gamer also likes tea parties, much to his grandmother's delight. Our summer variation serves ice tea, home brewed on our balcony, rather than hot:

The days have been hot and dry so the beach nearby offers a welcome respite, to relax:

or to discharge some sheer boy exuberance:

Up to now, encouraged by my grandson, activities have been mostly close to home. Good way to start.

Single Grandparent of Small Boy Maturing By The Day

We returned from our vacation in FL accompanied by our grandson, age 10 next month. This is his first extended excursion away from his family so this month-long visit is a grand adventure for us all. After a few difficult days of missing his family, especially his Mom, and adjusting to a new time zone he's now off expanding his horizons in this land were kids speak a language not his own. My Honey is gone for five days on business so I'm a single grandparent and felt daunted by the prospect.

Two boys upstairs in our apartment building became his first playmates and he's worked out some ways of negotiating the language hurdle. The older boy studies English at school and can do fine if speech is slow. The younger one has very little English so when playing games on their iPads they downloaded a translation app to talk back and forth. Good idea!

Yesterday we went to a beach with plenty of kids but no English speakers. My grandson, on his own, came up with a few clever ways to engage and end up playing with the locals. He was flying his uber cool bat kite and, when other kids looked interested, he helped them fly it as well. A steady light breeze off the water made it easy. But the kayak rides topped that. He reveled for awhile in being captain of his own boat and, after paddling around himself, he soon drew other eager young sailors for guided rides, either pulled along or as passengers.  No surf in the Adriatic and shallow waters even 30 feet from shore makes it possible and safe. And later, his pump action squirt guns scored big with the boys his age.

We had a grand day topped off with pizza and his other favorite local dish, arrosticini, at a restaurant with a play area. As soon as he headed over to play, a boy joined him for see-saw rides and swing competitions with accompanying hoots.  Can you tell he didn't want to take time out for photos?

He stepped cautiously, even reluctantly, at first but now I watch his confidence grow, his stride surer as he succeeds. Our neighbor and friend next door introduced my grandson to a boy who lives just one street over and who wants to practice his fledgeling English. My grandson came back from a visit to his house breathless: "I met his family and his mother invited me to come for pizza tomorrow evening the very first time she met me. Wow!"

As he told his mother on Skype later: "I'm really expanding my social network!" Indeed he is. I'm proud of him but more importantly, he's proud of himself.

Home for a Quick Touchdown

The view above at Crossroads is from the gazebo where our clients start every day with meditation. It's also where a good-bye ceremony is held for each client who successfully completes the program. Although I had no ceremony, I nonetheless went to the gazebo and said good-bye once again to Crossroads as my six week contract ended. I love this spot in this special place of healing and was pleased to be able to help out these clients who want to turn their lives around and are willing to do the hard work to accomplish this. I treasure the opportunity to serve them in this endeavor. How could I not? Hard work so worth doing.

And now I'm home for a brief recharge, a great friend gathering and quick change of clothes before heading out again but this time for FUN! Fun on vacation with my Honey, our daughter and the grands. Fun for almost a month, fun in Disney World, fun at the beach and fun with my sister-in-law and friend and various nieces and great nieces/nephews as well!

A little more about the gathering of friends that my honey had arranged for last evening. Five friends were unavailable but fifteen friends came to share pizza, conversation and comraderie. It was a splendid night and so very wonderful to have all our good friends together meeting one another, some for the first time, and giving me the chance to talk with them all at one time when my time here is limited because of vacation. What a great time I had! How grateful I am for the friends we have made here. I love my life, in part, because of them. Grazie Mille i miei amici!