We arrived to autumnal air, crisp at the edges and cooling to our souls and bodies. Now I know why Italians escape to the mountains. Our apartment has been rented out throughout August to people from Genoa who've been coming here for twenty years.
The sister-in-law isn't great. I wonder what we should do next if her conditions worsens. She's in her 80's and not getting out and about since a fall the year before. We make meals and take them in but she thinks everything tastes like chilli. She asks for gelato and tells me what to get but they never taste right according to her, at least they don't taste like chilli.
The next day is my anniversary, woke up saddened that the husband's not here with us, enjoying the mountains that he loved so much, seeing his daughter on her independence journey, being able to speak Italian with her, sharing with her his love of this place.
I walked down to the lake, holding his imaginary hand. The water is turquoise and still, everything is mirrored over it's surface. There's mauve crocuses poking up on white stems.
We lunch at a weird cave-like pizza restaurant that the sister-in-law recommends but she's scathing that we would eat pizza for lunch as Italians supposedly only consume pizza in the evening. We're Aussies so we have pizza and drink a little too much wine and as we pay the bill, homemade Limoncello is poured into frozen glasses. We return home to rest and a storm comes in, we watch as the rain sluices over the mountains, ending with a rainbow straddling it's gigantic peaks.
It's our last day here for a while. We're on the move the next day to Spain and Portugal and from there I'm off to Morocco. It seems nothing to say that to Italians, they're like - yep, see you when you get back. And yet, being Australian and living on the far side of the world, it never fails to have an air of old fashioned adventure with slight fear and longing attached.
Writing this, from a place of pandemic still, I am so grateful for us being there and travelling without any constraints. I can't imagine now how it will be when we return.
Comments