Letter from Trevignano

Happy Friday! 🥳

On Monday, after a seven day trip through France, we arrived in the Italian village where I spent a large part of my childhood and adolescence. 

It’s great to be back. This place has a pull on me that nowhere else has. It is a combination of its timeless beauty and visible remnants of ancient worlds; and the fact that its tiny cobblestoned streets and dank cellars make up an archeology of my own distant childhood.

In a place that as beautiful as this one, it is so incredibly soothing to slip back into the ways of your own past. Each day has a specific rhythm, revolving around eating and other physical pleasures like swimming in the cool water of the lake. 

The day we arrived, after a seven hour drive that ended when I successfully drove my car up the tiny medieval streets, around several hairpin turns, before reversing into the small square in front of the 15th century church that is above our house, I took the dogs up behind the church where there is a ruin of a 12th century castle on a steep hill. I spent hours and hours of my childhood on this hill, scrambling up to the top where there is a stunning view of the lake and its surrounding towns. In the spring, there I would find wild asparagus growing out of the rocky ground, then a bit later in the season wild fennel and wild mint. On Monday I was delighted to find the hillside still covered in the mint and fennel, two of my favourite scents in the world and ones that I have only ever experienced here, on this very hill. 

The top of my mint-scented hill.

The warmth and beauty of the Italian people is similarly timeless. Gorgeous young bodies populate the beach, plump grannies smother their grandbabies in kisses, and reuniting with old friends is as lovely as always. 

But it would a misrepresentation to imply that it is all rose and no thorns. One interesting thing about small town rural life is there is a proximity to death that I don’t think exists in most suburban lifestyles. As a child it was common to find dead animals in the streets, or pass by the stench of a rotting animal carcass that someone had unceremoniously thrown into a bin. I vividly remember the grim fascination I had when, at age seven, I came across the blood stained chopping block used to behead chickens, on the hilly street where we used to live. Not to mention the human deaths — in addition to one dear friend of mine who was killed by her mother at aged 15 in 1990, the memory of which still haunts me when I’m back on the streets where we shared a part of our girlhood, this year’s return has an added poignancy. It’s the first time I’ve been here without seeing Truman, the town’s grandfather; and since the death from alcoholism two years ago of another old friend — whose two brothers died from heroine overdoes a decade ago.

The fresh-faced loveliness, in happier times, of a recently deceased friend.

These losses cast long shadows, it’s true. But it’s also true that being in a place where people have lived and died for thousands of years brings a calming perspective. 

And now I’m off to take a dip in that lake I mentioned.

Tempus fugit, aeternitas manet. Time flees, eternity remains.