We both woke up groggy, stretching out sore limbs indicative of a bug of some sort, before slowly getting out of bed to look out the window and see more snow on the ground. “In like a lion,” indeed. And then, I walked out of the bedroom to see that the one remaining pink blossom on the bougainvillea, which we had bought to remind us of life in warmer climates, had fallen onto the floor. Harumph.
We spent a long, lazy morning inside drinking coffee and reading. At some point, we felt the need to actually get dressed and get out of the house. And so, we set out for a walk on the Eastern Promenade, our usual Sunday destination, with views of the islands of Casco Bay and open spaces for Manny to romp. Looking out the window, the sun was blazing crisply through blue skies and the snow had stopped, leaving a pretty dusting to reflect the light. We made it about half a block out the door before the bite of the wind turned me around to get a hat, which I had optimistically left behind, eager to expose my head to the sky for the first time in several months. Better prepared, we continued on, sniffling at the breeze, but happy to be squinting in the sun. Once at the park, we headed down the path, which I walk on at least once a day and know the contours of quite well. But, we were quickly schooled by the icy layer hidden beneath the freshly fallen snow. After a few warm days, the ground made briefly soft and pliable, the moisture had now refrozen like lumpy, uneven scar tissue. Chad promptly took a comic-book-worthy wipe-out – feet literally right out from under him, followed by a nose dive by Manny straight into a snow bank, leaving all four legs pointing in opposite directions. I took a lesson from them both, and scrambled up the slope to the cleared pavement - on all fours, feeling a bit defeated, but happily unbruised.
Once home, we decided to stay put for the remainder of the day and drink cups of tea – a safer pursuit than our walk had proven to be. Then, it dawned on me that it had been a year to the day since we’d arrived back in the United States from Sardinia. I remembered our last days there - leaving good friends behind after a farewell coffee at Circolo, the Italian officer’s club, riding the ferry for the last time into the port of Palau whereupon we waved goodbye to good friends as our taxi pulled away along the pines and past Acapulco beach, where I walked Manny every morning, and flying off to Rome, where we spent the night before flying all night to Atlanta and then Boston, finishing our trip with a warm welcome by Chad’s parents at Logan airport accompanied by the barking of Manny, a happy sound, as it signaled that our pent-up pup was still alive after 18 hours in his crate. After all that and a sound night’s sleep back in New Castle, NH, we awoke to snowfall. It was March 1st. And, it was magical.
After living through four months of winter in Maine, March is not as charming as it was upon first arrival from the Mediterranean. But, I am able to relive a bit of the charm through my own eyes, in reading my thoughts of a year ago. It got me thinking that I ought to look for more tricks to enjoying the fifth month of winter amongst my old writings, and so I dug up the journal I kept during my year on Chebeague. That winter was the ultimate test – alone in the winter on an island just after leaving behind the comfortable, socially rich life of an undergraduate. Upon rereading my journal entries from that March, I found many of the same frustrations with winter and also the same solutions – stay busy to pass the time, stay outdoors as much as possible, spend time with good friends. And, leave. So, 24 hours after the last bougainvillea blossom dropped, we bought tickets to return to Sardinia in May.
I realize that I may be disappointed in some ways, upon returning there - good friends gone and our life there finished. I also imagine that much will be the same, which can present its own sort of disappointment (Chad often says that he doesn’t like to see the weather report in a place after he’s left because it is confirmation that the place goes on without him), but also provide a sense of comfort. With the perspective of a year, I now understand the things I miss the most about life there and those that I don’t, but which I appreciate in being back here. What I do look forward to, in returning, is the insertion of warmth, an escape from winter in Maine, and an infusion of slow pace and simplicity, which I hope to bottle up and bring it back with me. I read once on a sign outside a local wine shop, “Wine is sunlight trapped in water,” a quote from Galileo. Perhaps I can at least bring back some bottled up Mediterannean sunlight in the form of wine, or, even better, Mirto. In the absence of the ability to literally bottle up the full experience and bring it back with me, one way of storing experience is through writing, which I will have to do upon our return. In the meantime, in midwinter, it is nourishing to read my notes from March 1, one year ago, when a fresh morning’s snowfall was cozy and delightful.
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