Summer’s End
We eat panzerotti piping hot — freshly fried dough, mozzarella, tomato sauce that is salty, tangy, thick — on a bench behind a van parked in the piazza off of Via Garibaldi in the town of Macerata, Italy on this, the feast day of San Giuliano. My mouth forms little puffs of mozzarella steam in the cool of this summer night, the last of these nights perhaps. Or maybe they are already gone, ended a week ago and even earlier, when we weren’t paying attention, when we spent the days complaining about the heat, this heat wave, the nights when not a single breeze could cool us, when we slept sticky, woke up in pools of sweat. Those days are gone, and (how cruel) we miss them, even in this magic festival, this last day of August, in fireworks, in panzerotti, in cotton candy and Italian hazelnut brittle. No matter how we beseech them to stay: those days are gone.
So tonight we keep our eyes open. We watch the vendor pack up his wares in blue plastic bags and store them, ready for the next fair, the next city, the next end-of-summer night. This piazza is shell shaped, a half circle, so that the wind gathers her things here — scrap paper, old receipts, a bottle, a plastic bag, leaves that rustle in the breeze, tumble, creak and crackle: speak of autumn, the ghost of things to come.
Later we will walk through these streets with their lights on, their crowds and stalls, marvel at things for sale, the spiderman masks and carved wooden dolphins with girls names painted in pinks and yellows: Ilaria, Giada, Martina, Katia. We will eat sugary almonds from paper cones, run into friends, family even, walk the tail end of summer at ten o’clock at night. Isn’t it true that we celebrate the things we lose the day we lose them? The way we say goodbye to seasons, years, lives and those we love. It is not grieving that we do, but this: balloons and music, dancing, too much wine. We wait till the days are gone, the whole town bundled up in scarves and leather jackets and the first breath of autumn and then we say goodbye. We mourn in celebration. As Antonello and I walk, he will point out the memories of his youth, graffitied on the ancient brick walls. Even at night you can see it in his eyes – how this city shaped him, the roads that fold and crease, run labyrinthine through his mind. Times with friends, childhood at the pizzeria, a first beer at that bar (the one with the green sign, the girl working inside, wiping down the countertops in the tilted light). Even this very day: the feast of San Giuliano, the times Antonello and his friends watched the procession of saints down to the church or set off fireworks from the back yard, raced ducks and chickens down the narrow stretch of street in front of his house: all hail the summer! He laughs (his eyes crinkle) in memories that are not my own. Memories that are at once here and gone, like this night, the moon, a pearly puddle in the sky. Like the summer that is fleeting.
But back there in the shell shaped piazza when it is just us, when the van has packed up, the crowds are thinning, the wind is picking up her trinkets and tucking them away (reaching her fingers into our hair too, to keep us) we get up from the bench and I turn around. Wrap my arms around Antonello’s neck and kiss him. Happy summer, I say. Buon estate. Let’s hold it tight this one last time. Summer and Macerata and this night, all lit up: fantastic. Crowded and shimmery and full of fanfare, of San Giuliano and a thousand shuffling feet. Our endless grief parade.
