The boarding doors are closing, Jeanne Bonner

It began maybe two days ago -- perhaps more. Pre-emptive sadness. The time in Florence (and in Italy) non basterebbe -- wouldn't be enough.

Odd to think I didn’t see it coming. But I try not to be greedy and I thought, in the case of Florence, a week sounded like plenty of time. Now I see it’s plenty of time to become situated, settled -- and receptive to a longer stay.

People are without work, some children go to bed hungry, Covid has been raging and the political systems of so many democratic countries seem frighteningly fraught. So the notion that soon I will be heartsick over leaving this small Italian city that I called home years ago is a notion that should cause no one any harm. Not even me. And yet.

This is the second to the last full day in Florence, and I’ve come to Leo’s room in our flat on Borgo Ognissanti so I can write with a view of green shutters and red tile rooves.

I do not want to leave. 

I want instead to begin some research grant like I had at the New York Public Library (maybe on 'nostalgia tourism'?! I wrote about it for CNN after a trip to Turin -- just joking or magari! as the Italians would say). I want instead to enroll Leo in Italian lessons at the British Institute (which is also quite good for foreigners who want to learn Italian) or some other school as I had planned. I want instead to go back to Siena, seeing as we came close the other day with Mike’s friend, Dante, during our hike near Arezzo.

Last night I went to meet Jacqui for a drink at one of the most delightful places I have ever seen – an outdoor bar in Oltrarno between two medieval gates to the city (one leads to Via Pisana, where the large supermarket is). While we spoke, I glanced up at one of the stone archways – rare that the backdrop for a drink is gorgeous, historic, monumental. (The alt title for this post was 'In Florence, picking up where I left off' -- gloriously true with Jacqui!).

Yesterday morning I must have walked five miles. I was out for two hours while the other two slept. I went along the Lungarno to San Niccolò (and through the old city gate, I gazed up at the steep, narrow road I once took to Forte Belvedere on previous monumental walks) and then across my other old bridge (by Santa Croce) then through the old Etruscan streets, to Piazza della Signoria (which was delightful, half-empty) where I realized maybe I could try to get tickets at the Accademia to see the David (the real David) (alas, no).

I will need to transcribe the streets I roamed because it was a monumental walk. Even I lost my bearings at one point (where the streets curve around the Duomo). I feel alive when I am walking (perhaps I've mentioned?). (Like my father before me). And my meanderings were fruitful in in one way: I snapped another picture of a pietra d’inciampo commemorating an Italian victim of the Shoah – in Via dei Pucci.

What I bought yesterday:

Una ciambellina (of course)

Friday’s edition of La Repubblica (which comes with the Venerdi mag)

3 packs of (Italian) Pokemon cards

 

What I bought the day before

Florentine paper goods -- including, of course, a journal

A book by Tabucchi that I wanted (Si sta facendo sempre più tardi)

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Yesterday: the Boboli gardens. Yesterday: the new museum about the Italian language in Santa Maria Novella (only two rooms so far – one day it will be a proper museum – lots of mentions of Pietro Bembo -- too late to read his treatise on language?)

Also yesterday: realizing seriously the holiday is at a close. You will have to leave Italy, Jeanne Bonner (again). Last call. 

In fact, I am not even going to write much more here because Italy beckons me – from the window of the second bedroom of the Borgo Ognissanti flat where Leo never did actually sleep. I have opened the shutters and the windows, as I mentioned, and the sounds of Italy as it wakes up are filling the room. They are loud and in some ways unforgiving – how urgent all the cars and trucks sound, roaring back from the sleepy Sunday chiusura -- but since I want to be out there with them, they sound just fine. Plus I hear the distinctive sound of the saracinesche -- the shutters -- loudly opening as business for the day gets underway. 

Not to mention the purring of pigeons on the roof above me. 

Even the sound of pigeons is lovely right now. God help me!