Summer on the Lago di Garda, Pizza and Love.

A View of the Lago di Garda

In these postings of life many years ago,  I’m presenting you with a multicolored past.  It’s probably not all the TRUTH. We filter the past through the rainbow of the present.  Happenings and people take on a rosy glow in the misty past.

In the summer our friends and acquaintances all left town,  heading for the mountains and the sea. One summer we spent several weeks in an apartamentino: a very small apartment above the Lago di Garda.  The complex was built on a hill.  You parked at the top and walked down stairs and along pathways to your apartment.  We had a small living/dining room with a sofa bed and a table with 4 chairs.  There was one bedroom where the 3 children slept, a miniscule bathroom and a postage-stamp kitchen with the essentials.  From the front door, there was a lovely view of the lake through the trees.  There were lots of children running around and my kids soon found playmates.  We spent a good part of the day at a hotel/club with a swimming pool that was located up the hill from our complex.

We spent time swimming and sometimes had lunch on the terrace above the pool.  I remember so well sitting in the warm sunshine, drinking sparkling San Pellegrino mineral water and looking down at the panorama of the Lago di Garda shimmering in the distance.  I still like a bottle of San Pellegrino.  I close my eyes and transport myself to those times - à la Proust and his madeleines.

View from the terrace, lake in the background.

Boys swimming.

Christopher taking a break.

In the late afternoon we would return to our apartment.  While the children played I did a lot of reading.  I had gotten a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in English.   I had read it as a girl but I remember relishing the rereading on those warm summer evenings with the children giggling outside.  I also read A Farewell To Arms for the 4th time but in Italian.  I’d read it in English, Swedish and French.  I find that reading a favorite book in a new language is a great way to enlarge one’s vocabulary.  Even if I didn't understand every word I would plunge on because I knew the story.

Marie-Juliette dried off after a swim.

Vincent stayed in Verona during the week and came out on the weekend.  I’m sure he was hot in the Verona apartment.  We looked forward to his arrival. 

I don't have many pictures of Vincent because he was the prime photographer!  Here he is at work.

Here is Vincent, second from left, with his Italian colleagues.

One Saturday we were invited to the home of a colleague of Vincent’s.  The man was a jolly fellow, round and cheerful.  There were a couple of kids, maybe 10 and 7.  They were attentive to our children.  The wife, a sturdy woman, spoke very little.  Her smile was warm and generous, but I could sense something was not right.  She gestured to me to follow her into the kitchen where she was about to make pizza dough.  She dumped flour on a wooden board, made a well in the center and with her fingers mixed in olive oil, a yeasty mixture and an egg.  She did this almost mechanically.  Her children watched and patted her arm. My children watched.  No one spoke.  She kneaded the dough in a smooth, rolling motion humming softly. 

Later the pizza emerged from the oven.  It was about two inches high, brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with herbs and salt.  I don’t remember a heavy tomato presence.  It was more like bread or a focaccia, but they called it pizza.  It was delicious.  We ate it and our host hugged his wife and she beamed.  The gentleness of the husband and his quiet affirmation of his wife was a beautiful thing to behold.

The pizza looked something like this.