You know, when I left the streets for this life, I did give up a few friends out there—and they have not found nice homes yet, I’m pretty sure. But the feeling of leaving friends, especially in the summer, is very poignant (I love that word—have no idea what to do with it—maybe it’s what you feel when you eat that Hawaiian paste with your paws…haha).
But I’m a little sad, leaving my friends here—the kitty next door who growls with me, the nice lady across the street who goes back to America for a long time each summer and mama’s friend with the golden hair and her husband, the sweet physicist who is so, so funny, and all the dumb birds on the terrace and I’ll miss all the friends I have made through mama and papa who come here for aperos (that’s kibble with a little wine) and dinner and lunch and try to meet at the marketplace every week and who tickle me and rub me all the time. I’ll miss that for a few weeks while we reconnect with papa’s family, and some of mama’s, too. They may be pretty good at tickling, too.
Mama says that summers are lovely for her but also a little melancholy with all the memories of summers before and taking kids to various places, mostly the beach or the mountains or even a little place near a pine woods outside Rome where there was a wood oven the yard and the kids cracked pine nuts all day long, and then there was the lovely walk through the perfumed trees to the beach where you could pass the whole day just daydreaming and having a sandwiches-and-fruit picnic for lunch and then everyone would go home when the sun was lovely and slipping its golden self into the sea and everyone was a bit pinker or browner and tired from playing in the waves and the night sort of settled into itself and fireflies came out and kids would smush them onto their tee shirts and glow in the dark…
That was a summer.
And now, we’ll spend time with people we love and then the summer will be half over and we’ll be planning for autumn things and leaving all the lovely moments in the other place and then I’ll be back in my garden after having given the Jack Russells in the neighborhood the evil eye from my high window and I’m pretty sure, that when I have settled in again after my sweet summer, I’ll be missing all the people I left behind!
C’est la vie.
Papa’s sister once said to me, “But, Loulou, isn’t it great that you love two places so much. Lucky you!”
A summer haiku: I move from place to place, in golden sun, with quiet grace. See? Lucky me.
These paws weren’t made for travelin’
