Bass Notes

A couple Sunday mornings ago I was sitting outside Martin's on a bench, cupping a cappuccino with the sunshine in my eyes. It was so warm I had unzipped my jacket. Caitlin was sitting next to me; Lia was across the table. We were just...talking. We laughed. I lamented about something and Caitlin reached over and rubbed my back. Towards the end, we argued playfully about who was going to go inside and elbow her way through all the men at the bar and pay. Since Caitlin had already gone in once to get sugar, I volunteered. There was only one barista, so I stood there a while before she took the money. I didn't mind waiting. I didn't mind just standing there in the bar, full of men drinking wine and families sitting down at the tables enjoying coffee and eating brioche. Ah, Italia.

Thanksgiving came and went. There were a lot of late nights full of baking involved. I did make the hugest apple pie I've ever made, and whenever I entered the kitchen I did so with good intentions, but mostly I ended up sitting on the counter, watching Bollywood and eating cheesecake and pumpkin roll past midnight while Caitlin and Lia did the work.

Late nights in the kitchen, and then early mornings picking up fresh bread, the blustery wind blowing the leaves around the road, lifting the fog off the mountains. I love those mornings. They are subtle, they are mellow magic, like notes on the E string of a bass.

It rained here for a really long time. It flooded down south, and the vineyard paths turned into rivers. I didn't go running in dry sneakers for ten days. Tom called the storm something, said it had come up from Africa, but I don't really remember because that was at breakfast and I was not entirely awake.

I have stopped drinking coffee except for special occasions, once again. For some reason, my body stopped metabolizing it when I was drinking it every 24 hours. My sympathetic nervous system spazzed out. So I'm back to only drinking socially. I'm a little put out, but one must know one's limits.

I'm learning what is good for me. Aspects of Italian culture are good for me. I was talking to an old man last week, as much as we could since the only common language we had was my few words of Italian, and he said I must like it here better than America because here it is tranquillo. I said sì, è vero... He touched my arm goodbye.

I found my heart here, and that is changing everything.