It was a completely free morning; no family to visit, no formal lunches, no obligations of any kind. Finally on the last full day, a vacation had started.
Once again, I headed for the beach. I had enjoyed myself so much there that it was hard to stay away. Maria and her daughter Anna kept saying that I had come at the wrong time of the year if the beach is what I enjoyed. They said I should have come in August when there was plenty of action there. But they soon understood that a calm beach is exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t bear to spend a whole week laying in the sun, but a few hours each day? I could live with that.
Essentially deserted is the way I found it save for a few members of the Italian version of the Joy Luck Club who were walking in the water so as not to stress their arthritic knees. This time by the sea would be my calm before the storm…my prep time.
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| Looking south: nobody |
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| Looking north: still nobody |
After lunch I took my leave; grabbing my camera I said only four words: “I have to go”. My dramatic exit was dashed when my mother said “can you drop us off at Lidia’s first?”
I’ve always liked the dramatic exit, like leaving through a window and down a fire escape. Not that I get to do that much, if ever. Or the endings to phone calls in movies and on television; I’ve always liked how they never say goodbye, they just hang up. Me putting on my sunglasses and saying “I have to go” was my attempt at the window and fire escape exit, only in my anticlimactic television show my mother stops me and says “don’t forget, we need milk and bread”.
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