Auronzo - Spring has sprung.

We hang out in the spring. There are wildflowers everywhere, fields of them swaying gently, the river like aquamarine flowing over the white limestone rock. The daughter and I take the pathway up the back of the house, up a very steep hill.

In all the 30 plus years of coming here, I've never walked there. I was always hanging out ready to leave, to visit other places in the short time that we would holiday in Italy. The pathway affords incredible views of the lake, the mountains and comes back around via the gelateria in the town. We sit with the old ones and consume our gelato and go down to sit by the lake to listen to the water flowing over the rocks, to watch the swallows flit and skim over the water.

This is the time of year that the wood sculptors come to town. They set up workshops along the streets and in the squares and create works of art during a few days. Every day we wander down to check the progress. The village comes alive. When my late husband was around, he would hang out most of the day with the sculptors, getting to know them all, watching them at work. As a tree lopper, he had a passion for wood and his dream was to retire one day and sculpt and create things of beauty out of the wood that he had collected over the years. It was not to be. A reminder to all of us to do the things we want to do and not to wait.

At night, the large dominant mountain that defines Auronzo, that I once felt overpowering, becomes a beacon that showcases the sun's path towards it and it's disappearance behind it, casting patterns of golden rose tinted light stratified across the blue grey peaks.

Often rainbows hover over it and the last deep fissures of snow glint metallic copper in the last rays of day. I finally see why my husband fell in love with his family's hometown when he arrived here from Australia at the age of thirteen. Upon returning to Australia, every year he made the trip back to see his family and breathe in the mountain air. This time, I have given myself the time to fuse with it's wild beauty, it's delicate wildflowers, it's ice cold streams and I've finally found purchase here. Maybe a part of my husband's soul has flowed into me and I see it as he did and I'm finally at peace here.

Quarantine blues. Who has it?

Sitting here on my bed in the middle of the day eating cheese corn chips, MSG'd to the max and the large Toblerone half price atm (have consumed two large chunks). I don't want to go out but I don't want to stay in and I'm seriously considering making myself a large Negroni (which I only allow myself to have at the best of times after 5.30). I don't feel like exercising or going for my morning walk, both of which have got me through the last few Quarantine months. What has happened? I have spoken to others who feel the same and we have decided we are not dying of exhaustion or other dis-ease but just plain uncertainty because we no longer can make plans. Our normal control mechanisms can't operate in a pandemic. And we all like to be able to have some sort of control in our lives.

I didn't realise how much we rely on making plans, even small ones. It's a first world issue I know. I haven't really moved forward in my brain that we can move in and out of states and even if we can, I still don't feel safe about the new order of travelling on planes and trains. Going two hours away to Bowral seemed an enormous undertaking for a birthday dinner last weekend and yet last year I travelled all over Europe. I have broken the barrier of driving two hours away so I may venture out a bit more...or not.

The world seems so fragile at the moment, our freedom is in tatters. I must stop waking and falling asleep to the latest horrifying figures of deaths overseas. That probably doesn't do anything for my well being. I awake as tired as when I go to sleep. I worry that I have something wrong with me but everyone seems to be as exhausted as I am.

As humanity are we linked to everyone's fear as the uncertainty continues to escalate? We are all on hold, waiting anxiously with terrible music in the background that is on repeat and then we finally get answered and then we get cut off. That's how it feels to me. Does anyone else feel the same?

Italians are locked within their cities, unable to spend Xmas with loved ones outside their towns; I'm assuming it's the same throughout Europe. Snow is falling but the ski fields are closed. Over four hundred families in Italy lost a family member yesterday; in the US, over three thousand families are in the same position. It gives you a small insight into how it feels to live throughout a war - the unknowing must have been crippling. And yet, humans survive one way or another. Eventually our resilience comes to the fore and we learn to adapt. But no one loves the idea of being unable to plan a future.

I'm hoping my tiredness is my reaction to the world's pandemic forces at play and that if I stop looking at Worldometer statistics, eat corn chips laced with the lovely saltiness of MSG, have another piece of humungous Toblerone and maybe write these feelings out of me and into the computer, then I might pick up. I'll let you know but I can recommend the corn chips/chocolate combo.

This morning, I saw this web above my fountain; obviously a spider was diligent during the night and just got on with it - I am jealous of the spider.

Modena. Marches and Negronis.

I meet the daughter in Bologna at a hotel where we’ve stayed before, right in the heart of the city. All Italianate rooms, a beautiful old wooden elevator and a smelly dog that sleeps most of the day in the lounge. It’s pouring so we decide to order in Indian and watch Eurovision; as you do in Italy.

Next morning we have a belated southern hemisphere Mother’s Day. The daughter has found a great cafe where they have the most amazing selection of flavoured croissants. I choose pistachio. When I bite into it, it oozes thick pale olive pistachio cream; divine. They have raspberry, chocolate, hazelnut, you name it, they have invented it. It is a croissant above and beyond, taken to a new level that only Italians can do. It’s a student town so it’s packed with young Italians and those less fortunate beings who are trying to get the casual glamour that we all try to attain but without the inherent success.

I find a beautiful little linocut shop run by a woman and buy a small print of when Bologna also had a system of canals, which have been all but cut off except for one that we found the year before when we came to check out the Bolognese citta to see if the daughter would want to study here. She didn’t. She chose the smaller version of Modena.

We consume a platter of different cured meats and cheeses for lunch, sitting high up on stools in a crowded lane full of restaurants and market shops and people. That night we go for cocktails in a converted old chapel. I have a passionfruit margherita which is so strong I am very conscious of not falling off the stools we’re seated on. It’s a beautiful setting, frayed, decayed and softened with time, the coloured frescoes take us back. I can’t walk to the next planned restaurants. We eat here and the next day we’re back in Modena.

I stay in three different apartments during my week's sojourn here. The first apartment is huge and you can tell it has been decorated by a man. Huge blown up photos that he’s taken of rose thorns, nature turned into hills, mountains, dangerous places with enormous insects. I strangely love the place and settle in for a few days. The daughter comes to join me as she discovered that her room, when she was in Madrid, was being advertised on Air bnb. The owner was always a bit strange, making sure her tenants cleaned everything daily until the place was spotless. The daughter is feeling anxious so she said she’d move out but there’s the issue of the bond and the woman is being pretty nasty.

I spend a few days cooking and the owner of my apartment brings me homemade ricotta from a friend in the mountains. This is what I love about Italy. There are friends everywhere with connections to cows, lambs, olive groves, wineries etc that gift their homemade produce onto others via the familial networks operating. The ricotta is creamy and divine.

The next day, we join a climate change march, Greta Thunberg organised. Half of Modena seems to have turned out, lots of singing and much gelato consumed at the end.

One day we return home to a message from the lady in the apartment next door that is rented out by the same owner. An American lady who invites us for drinks. How civilised! Normally I don’t accept offers like this as what if we don’t like each other and it’s awkward but the daughter is going out with her friends, so I accept. Her apartment is grand as well. Her bedroom is huge with a beautiful ancient looking desk and windows overlooking the main street of Modena. She has a small well loved dog, compact and friendly whom she has brought from America with great difficulty. We sip Lambrusco and talk about life. She’s my age, full of vim and vigour, well dressed, well lived and interesting. We talk for hours. She asks me to come and see a property that she’s looking at the next day.

I breakfast on a pistachio croissant and discover that an antique market has taken over the huge square around the church. The sun is glinting off a veritable array of crystal chandeliers, beautiful haberdashery items, old paintings, vintage doorknobs and paraphernalia from long ago. I wish I could take it all back home with me. I return home to pack as I have to move up the road to a beautiful old building converted to a hotel and then we’re off to see a house in the countryside. We pass by such lush, foliaged countryside to a lovely home which is deluged by a heavy shower upon arrival.

The house is full of art as the couple had a gallery. They show us around and then they have prepared lunch, of course they have, they are Italian. There is no such thing as a refusal. The table is piled up with melon and prosciutto; wine procured via a friend from a vineyard not far away; beautiful cheese and fantastic bread.

A couple of hours later, we’re released but the house isn’t what my new friend was looking for. Later that night we dine at a restaurant down the road. The owners welcome my friend lovingly and we dine on fennel mouse with radicchio sprouts; fried zucchini flowers; asparagus pasta with crumbled quail egg; hazelnut tart with apricot marmalade, little truffle chocolates, fresh cherries from a friend with a tree close by and three different types of bubbly drinks - Lambrusco from Modena, Prosecco and Spumante to end the meal. Oh Italia!

One night at this beautiful hotel and then another night at an Air bnb in the centre. Very modern but in a stunning old building. The daughter is trying to get help from the University in regards to the landlady who refuses to give her back her bond even though she’s been clearly advertising the daughter’s room. The language barrier isn’t helping. The mad landlady rings every now and then to harass the daughter by saying she can have her deported. We go for Spritz and then a Negroni to help soothe the nerves.

My anxiety has come back, if I’m not walking myself through the days, it returns with a vengeance. I don’t know that the antidepressants are doing their job but maybe I have to give them more time. The Italian contingent of our drinking group, says it’s going to flood tonight and that they have to get home. We google the weather advice, it mentions rain. The daughter said Italians have a day off from University if it rains heavily. She has doubts as to whether flooding will occur. She’s right. It doesn’t and the next day we travel back up to our mountain home. It takes us nine hours to get there.