Arrivederci and Radici

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

It seems as if each time we leave Montone, it gets harder and harder. As one of our neighbors said, "You have roots (radici) here now."  Sunday evening, one of our friends gave us a "Ritorniamo dinner", a dinner celebrating when we will return.  It was much too sad to say that it was a partiamo dinner.  I did learn a valuable lesson, you must take the chestnut semifreddo out of the freezer at least an hour before serving! We had run out of clean silveware, so Ikeja thought we could use plastic. Did you ever try to beat a frozen gelato into bite size pieces with a plastic fork?? It made for good entertainment at any rate.
Once again, the gifts came.
… a whole wheel of a young pecorino from our friend Claudio, the cheese merchant at the Umbertide market. He actually chased us down the street to hand us the cheese. Carla from the gas station gave us a large jar of her honey.  More cheese from our Sardinian friends.
By Tuesday afternoon, I was a teary person and we snuck away from saying more good-byes, and went for a last visit to Moravola. We even got to see the elusive Rowl, a feral cat who has discovered that life with Christopher and Seonaid is a very good thing.
There was no more food in our house, the refrigerators were empty, so our only option was to satisfy my craving for a good steak so we went to this joint in  Citta di Castello.  By the time we got back to Montone, and bid farewell to Claudio and Martina, it was  all too overwhelming. 
Our last bit of drama: we had arranged for a 5:45 am taxi to take us to Rome, at 5:43, Gianni, our driver, rang our buzzer and was worried because the whole house was dark. He had reason to worry….our alarm never went off! Talk about a mad dash…but we made it by the very skin of the cat’s teeth, and now we are back in New York.