Looking back on Summer ’23
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Silver linings explained to our Italian friends
Sicily is hot! July and August are made for those who are well seasoned to high temperatures and searing heat. For let’s not forget, that although a Mediterranean island off the toe of beautiful Italy, it’s also only 140km off the coast of Africa. The closest point is the Cap Bon Peninsula, located on the northeastern coast of Tunisia. So with that in mind it makes perfect sense that Sicily is hot!
At the end of June I headed home for a few weeks. Although in Ireland the focus was on how disappointing a summer it was, I relished those ‘soft days’ of drizzle and cloudy skies, and the cool evenings that made sleeping a doddle.
Heading back to Sicily in mid July I knew I was facing full summer mode and that of course I’d need hours in the sea every day just to keep cool, a never-ending supply of watermelon in the fridge and endless bottles of water to stay hydrated. Approaching my second summer here I considered myself to be a bit of a pro, so the thought didn’t faze me at all. But then I hadn’t counted on Cerberus.
Cerberus was the fearsome three-headed dog of Greek mythology. In Dante’s Inferno and the classics that inspired it, Cerberus was a monster associated with the underworld. As I arrived back in Sicily, Cerberus arrived too, a blistering heatwave that swept across Europe bringing temperatures of up to 48°.
It’s hard to describe what it’s like to deal with temperatures that hot. Traditionally when we hear the word heatwave, we think of trips to the beach, ice-creams all round, summer barbecues and sun kissed shoulders. In the past, heatwaves always got good press, particularly in Ireland when three or more days over 25° warranted that grand title.
But Cerberus was another beast altogether.
Everything was hot! Take a glass from the cupboard to get a drink – the glass was hot.
Slip off your flip flops to feel the relief of cool tiles underfoot and it was as if we had underfloor heating, operating on high.
Turn on the cold tap and hot, no, not warm, but hot water came out.
The car was like a furnace.
Our attic flat was even hotter. We found ourselves getting impatient that our house still wasn’t habitable so we had to manage another summer living in ‘the oven’.
Only one room – our bedroom – has effectively functioning air con so we turned it on high, nicknamed the room ‘Ireland’ and retreated there any time it got to be too much. To be honest, I practically lived there for a while! “I’m heading to Ireland” was a well-worn phrase during those hottest weeks…
While the heatwave soared we had a greater problem to deal with however! One that put everything else into perspective. Fabrizio fell. He fell down stairs and suddenly we were thrown into the panic of ambulances, emergency rooms, surgery, a chest tube and a painful recovery.
Life was thrown completely upside down. We held tight to the fact that it wasn’t a head injury or a spinal one, but with four shattered ribs and a punctured lung, we knew recovery would be painful and slow. The hospital experience here was so foreign to me. The ten day period Fabrizio spent there was one of those times that made me feel so far away from home, and from what’s familiar. The stress of trying to deal with hospital personnel, our builders, the heatwave and the road works on Via Nazionale four times a day, as I went back and forth to be with Fabri, could have overwhelmed me. But instead, together with Fabri I looked for silver linings… and I found them!
First and foremost, Fabri would recover, nothing else really mattered.
We felt first-hand the power of friendship to support, nourish and sustain us when things were really hard – the kindness and care we were showered in – well, safe to say, it’ll never be forgotten
We realised how lucky we are to have found our tribe here
We were so grateful too for family and friends in Dublin and Rome who helped us get through with constant calls and messages. We can now say for sure that love from a distance is still love and it has magic powers!
We got to spend the whole summer together in a totally different way than we’d expected, Prior to his fall, Fabri was spending ten hours a day at the house. Instead we got to hang out together all summer long, chat endlessly, read books, make plans and live in our own little bubble while Fabri healed.
We marked milestones – first day out and about, first sneeze that didn’t hurt, first decent night’s sleep
And now here we are heading out of Summer and into Autumn… We’re getting ready to harvest the olives. We’re at the final stages of our renovation. We’re daring to dream of moving-in day. We’re even planning Christmas in our new home…
Summer ’23 may have brought us challenges but we’re still standing and the best is yet to come.
| Always look for silver linings… |
