Leaving on a jet plane

At Roma airport.

Aug 16
After a sleepless night for Jim, we got up, ate our last fruit and looked across the valley into dense fog that stopped the view at the street. All we could do was laugh. Our house is closed up. White sheets cover the beds to keep them dust free. It has the look of ghostly images of haunted houses in English mystery movies. Jim turned off all gas, water and electric and we didn’t look back. As we climbed into the mountains above the fog, Castelvecchio was still shrouded in mists like an Italian Brigadoon. It is strange to think that life is going on there without us. This is always the case all around the world. Where ever we are is just a small part of everything that is going on, but the mists have closed around Castelvecchio until next summer.

Things went well. The trip to the airport, returning the car, getting through four extremely long lines into the gate area and eventually on to the plane. We had plenty of time, but not too much. There were several tour buses of people checking in and the system was overwhelmed. Now we are airborne and I have time to reflect on the important lessons one learns while living in Italy.

Underwear. Yes, your mother was right. You need nice underwear, but not too “nice” (as in naughty) Your underwear and everyone else’s in town will be on display drying across town. There are underwear on clothes lines at street level. Underwear dancing in the breeze on clothes lines held out from the balcony by poles and underwear on the metal drying racks, like the one we use as our internet antenna. It is always nice to be on the computer and waving to people on the street while your underwear hangs below. At this moment you could wish you had gone shopping. The selection of underwear for Italy is critical to your image and image is important. Underwear that is old, stretched out and holy, underwear that came from Victoria’s Secret or giant white underwear is not the image I want to project. Luckily I bought myself some jauntily colored boy style underwear. Seeing my blue and white striped smalls hanging in the breeze was uplifting and I could wave to the mayor as he walked by knowing my image was intact.

Italiano weight loss claims made by Jim are spurious. He lost 12 pounds and I lost nothing. Ok, I ate gelato every other day according to the gelato spoon count, breakfast cookies for first breakfast and then a chocolate croissant for second breakfast, pizza lunch, afternoon snack and a huge dinner that never started before 8pm. Then there were the neighbor, Enrica’s, cakes. Every single thing was the best thing I ever ate in my life so there.

Not having a car is a tremendous asset to meeting people.


Being a painter gives one instant cache. Italians respect the arts.

Italians love Americans. Many of their relatives live there.

Ok, time to watch a movie on a tiny little screen with horrible headphones. No more epiphanies for now!