Roses blooming in the rain
Photo by Kristina Kasparian
This post is a sequel to my previous post “Growing Smaller“.
~ April 20th, 2013
I had been in Italy for nearly two months. I had grown accustomed to my Italian life – to my quiet neighborhood on the bank of the Adige river, to the melody of Italian filling my ear, to the resounding church-bells that sliced each of my days up into half-hours, to the kitchen drawers and cupboards and supermarket aisles, to my bicycle Isabella, to the yellow house on the hill that always caught my eye as I’d wait for the bus in the morning, and to all the faces — of strangers, and colleagues, and new friends – I would see on a daily basis in the small town. Reluctantly, I also grew used the way the weather would go from sun to rain in fifty seconds, the way the mountain-tops were destined to remain snow-capped in this impossible spring, and the sight of the shivering vineyards, desperate to become green and full, and to keep their promise of wine and life. I had even grown accustomed to the towering mountains, standing like an edgeless backdrop to the scene. They had become my anchor, so much so that I noticed my posture had changed, and I walked much straighter, looking ahead rather than down.