There's a few days before the daughter starts University so we head up to our mountain home. It takes us eight hours by public transport; it's probably only four with a car. We organise the one local taxi driver to pick us up. He's so friendly and he's so proud of the daughter's skills with his language. He knows of the Vecellio name (our surname), #Auronzo is full of them he says. He's a chatterer and he will be our way in and out of our small mountain village in the #dolomites for the year.
It's a different scenario now, most of the snow has melted, the trees are still stark, the grass wintered. A lot of the shops are closed, it's a bit like a ghost town. I shop and feed the extended family; the nephew, wife and his kids. The littlest one makes us all laugh, she is wise beyond her four years on this planet.
I get out the paints, the paper and try to be creative. My idea was to paint my way through my travels, journalling as well. So far, I've jotted down a few sparse notes; the painting feels a bit the same. I am uninspired. I feel like the ice in the crevices that hasn't started to melt yet; and always after a few days here I sink a bit, surrounded and hemmed in by the massive grey limestone mountains. I still feel quite numb, as if a part of me has wandered off and hasn't told the rest of me where she's gone. That part is the feeling, enjoying part of me and I'm missing her dreadfully. I begin to worry whether I'll ever 'feel' again. I'm not missing anyone or anything from my life on the other side of the planet. I'm drifting in an environment of constant change and yet not needing an anchor in my life. It feels odd. Having had a childhood of changing schools most years, I craved being in one place but maybe another part of me became gypsyfied during that state of constant movement and it's allowing me not to need to be tied down.
I have to have my fingerprints taken in order to get a residents permit that will allow me to stay in Europe for a year, I have to go to another town (which is one of those medieval hilltop towns) for this procedure, the department is at the bottom. My finger doesn't imprint, eventually she decides dryness could be the issue and we add a bit of cream and I'm fingerprinted. Now I have to go to the top of the town to the police for some other sort of identification but when we arrive we're told the President of Italy has arrived for a visit and the police are out and about making sure he's safe, the police station is closed for the day. We'll have to return tomorrow. The next day, more prints are taken and at some stage, they tell me, I can return to get my permit. It seems a highly secretive procedure, this resident's visa. From picking up a packet in Venice, to filling it out and dropping it off to the post office in my home town here in Italy, to paying for strange tax stamps that were pasted onto the paperwork, to waiting for another text telling me what to do next. They don't know when this will happen and when it does, I have to go within a day to pick it up. Why? No one seems to know. My nephew's wife has been here a year and still hasn't received hers so I won't hold my breath. But I am on my way into the Italian bureaucracy (or bureau-crazy) system and I am feeling well pleased with myself. It's the closest I will come to being Italian via marriage.
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