Siamo Qua.

This is the life I want. This is the life I have wanted. 55 square meter apartment with a terrace, early morning drinking water with lemon sitting at the kitchen table after an evening of friends for dinner, my loving husband off to work, listening to Bach's unaccompanied cello suite #3 and writing. The dishes from last night are in the sink, a bit of cleaning to do and Sunday lunch to prepare, possibly 2 or 4 more guests coming at the last minute.

And this is the life I want. It has been an oddly warm Christmas. A sirocco on the 23rd has kept us bathed in warm weather all this week, a bit of rain, but nothing to interfere with Christmas celebrations.


The lemons are sicilian, the terrace is in a strange town in Sicily. And I am ,as it would be, a stranger here.

I remember my Aunt Rita's cabin in Lake Lenape, NJ. And the important thing about that home was what she filled it with. I know Uncle Eddie was a sentimental, repetitive, needed to hear himself talk, compensating Piscean man of a certain generation, loyal to his Irish mom till the end. But they made it work. They did love each other. Both Aunt Rita and Uncle Eddie married when they might have both become an old maid and lifelong bachelor. By some miracle, they took care of their mothers in good Brooklyn Irish form, and when they completed their loving mission, they were not left alone in the world.

I know Aunt Rita might have liked to have children, she was a terrific aunt. And as I am faced with the consequences of my choice to put off motherhood until after Paris, After Florence, After London, After Cooking for xyz, after the Kurdish Refugee, ..... never having enough money, or the right man, or a decent home, and , and, and , and ,and , and.......I feel the grief of maybe having waited too long. ---But here I am , and it’s exactly where I want to be. Unlike Aunt Rita however, I have not been the greatest Aunt. Perhaps that can change.

Last night we had a friend of the butcher and her 5 year old daughter come to dinner. She is a single mom in Sicily. She is a female friend of my husband for probably 15 years, and the sister of his last girlfriend before he met me.

The specifics of this woman, this relationship, and our new found friendship are significant, and one day soon I will explain how.

I hear lots of stories about what life is like in Sicily. I hear lots of stories about what Family is in Sicily, I am told about life here, but now I am beginning to have my own life here ,and the information I experience is somewhat different than what I have been told. I am here, in my home whose wood beams and sleeping loft and loving Piscean (particular) husband all remind me of Lake Lenape and the genuinely loving couple in the history of my family.

Siamo Qua. We are here. A comment I here often after discussions about outside events, that may or may not affect the life of the person who says, siamo qua. Ready, for what life brings. It is both a passive and an active stance.

I look to the butcher as he goes to work every morning, spends the whole day there, and loves to go, loves to be there, there is a sense of preparedness that he brings to the shop every day. He rushes to finish the morning routine even when it feels like no one will come. He is ready. Even in his life when he could have taken time to prepare for a new adventure, learn english for example, he arrived to be as he was, ready or not.

I have not felt that much in my life. I have always felt that I was not prepared, I was not ready, I always had more to do before I could get to the thing I really wanted to do. No suprise then the present childlessness.

This has been an extremely trying year, being pushed out of our last apartment in the states, ( a justifiable and necessary incentive for the year that has followed) living in his brother's hotel in Livorno, the near miss purchase of the ferrari Butchershop in a 3 buggy town in the north of Italy, the uncertainty of where we would wind up, the very difficult and uncomfortable arrival and presence of his mom in our lives, my travels without him to Corsica, Florence and Austria, when it all got to be too much, my living at the school on the beach when it got to be too much once again; the constant feeling of missing my husband through all of this, being partners and barely husband and wife in the business, the jealousy and constant flow of opinions of others how to do what we both so clearly know how to do.....and more. There were power struggles, there were misunderstandings, there was stressssssssssssss. But now there is a butchershop with the best tasting veal and sausages that did the best of all others for Christmas or at least tied with who did the best, and the introduction of healing meals to our neighbors, starting with basic diet items in ready to prepare meals for the new year, and this 55 square meter flat, with a terrace, my bike that takes me everywhere, the ocean just 15 minutes away, my intuition and instincts that brought me here in the first place and the renewal of the relationship that brought me back.


The church bells are clanging without order, celebrating this 3rd day after Christmas. So my year rushes to an end in a cacophony of color, flavors, shouting young men and old women, burning wood ready for the Sunday fillets of rib eye off the bone, hand made sausage on the grill, and the bones and flesh of the dear animals that allow us to live this life in this manner.


It is 9am, Sunday December 27th and siamo qua.





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