Saturday is freezing. I pass by the big tubs of paint every so often and resist the urge to open them. I don't know what I'll find inside. And why do I have to add water? Maybe it's just powder and I'll have to stir and stir. Anyway, I have to get all the strange paintings and carvings off the walls. Paintings of old Australian scenes, Balinese paintings, Aboriginal carvings, faded 60's Madonnas, strange religious reliefs. Furniture is waiting to leave the premises and I'm going to paint the walls in a honeyed terracotta shade, paint the yellow kitchen cupboards a teal green and colour up the old furniture with different shades of grey and beige.
And then we walk around the lake, the wind is iced, my teeth turn cold behind my lips, my nose is numb but the walk reveals wildflowers starting to peep out, struggling to be free of the frozen ground . But it's cloudy so the carpet of crocuses are closed waiting for better days. Finally, the cafe by the lake is open for the spring and we head inside to an open fire and sit by the windows overlooking the lake. A few fisherman throw lines in across the water as we sip on Bombardinos, - Vov liquor and brandy, warmed and topped with whipped cream and cinnamon for the same price as a coffee back home.
The daughter forages dandelion greens, the ones before the flowers appear and cooks them for our dinner with garlic and olive oil. She worries slightly that she might poison us but we survive and they're good. That night there's slurries of snow, short lived.
Sunday arrives to the sound of the church bells. There are people at the church with olive leaf sprigs in hand, something to do with Easter no doubt. We're heading up to the cemetery. On the way, we pass by information on a very early church that they've found the remains of on the hill, with artefacts. But we're here to pay our respects to my late husband and his sister who went to join him eighteen months ago. The sun is shining and the view magnificent. We look at the photos of the older generations in the Vecellio tomb and see that someone has left Maria's favourite Darrel Lea ginger chocolates next to her photo. She'd be happy with that. But I don't feel grief at the photo of my husband because so many things have happened to us on this trip that I know he is with us.
Then we walk up into the mountains behind our house, more flowers and the leaves of cyclamen and wild strawberries are everywhere. We see a couple of guys walking a tight rope high up across the road and stay still so as not to distract them. I can't watch but he makes it through almost to the end and then suddenly he drops and hangs by his harness.
We are becoming nature nomads, just the daughter and I, up in this village. The daughter has made friends with a group of old men that climb up the hill to the left of our house and sit in the sun there in the afternoon. They chat to her and try and work our her lineage in the village and she gets to practice her Italian with them. Every time she goes up they ask her to sit with them and then they tell any newcomers how she fits into this town. She's even had a proposal. She thinks it's from the same man who met me at the bank one morning when they wouldn't open the doors at the usual time of 8.35. He asked me for a coffee instead of having to wait for them. And then when I finally got my business done in broken Italian and google translate and went for a coffee myself, there he was, telling me how beautiful I was. Italian men and the 'dolce far niente' belief of Italians, basically translated to the sweet art of doing nothing. Instead of getting annoyed that the bank wasn't opening, the old guy (the potential boyfriend) said: Let's go for a coffee. And that, my friends, is how the Italians do it.
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