Silence after guests

Our friends Adelle and Michael have left.  We drove them to the train station at Terontola and they are on their way to Rome and then on to the long trip back to the U.S.  It is a trip we will make ourselves next week.

There is a silence that settles into the apartment now that the Stoic One and I are alone. We miss the spirits of our guests and their observations of life here in the Piazza.  The silence of the apartment reminds me of the Italian sounds I have come to know and love.  The chatty tweeting birds. The men who are playing cards, their cries now muffled by the large lemon colored umbrellas that have just appeared. Their murmurs rise to crescendos as the game progresses. Car doors being slammed in the lot down the street.  The sharp sound of metal as the windows are covered and locked for the night.

Until we came to live in the apartment, I did not realize that the Piazza is washed every morning.  It is washed by something that looks like a zamboni machine, but the driver only goes in curved curlicues around the Piazza.  I wonder if he learned this in Piazza washing school.

The nonlinear sweeper

The cat has found a safe place to nap, away from the black and white dog that likes to torment it.

Summer is coming, and with it another season of life on the piazza.