I

I generally don’t like color other than the color of earth, the color of soil, the color of dirt; the color of sand, the color of stone, the color of snow. I love neutrals of all kinds: white, ivory, cream, marshmallow, beige, mushroom, taupe, coffee, chocolate, toffee. Give me natural parchment, white lace, raw linen, flax or mother of pearl. I live on a spectrum of optic white to deepest cocoa. These are my favorite colors and I only came to know it when I had my son, suddenly wanting everything unbleached and pure: natural living, natural birth. I lined his crib in cotton, linen and flax, tethering ourselves to this earth.

II

It feels like a bout of empty nest again. I know that empty is another way of saying spacious and is fertile ground for something new to become. Maybe that’s why I’ve been collecting eggs and piecing them back together. I’m taken by the space, the empty space left behind. I pile the repaired shells on the hearth. I am a magpie. My altar is a nest.

III

It’s a powerful day, the Feriae Augusti merges with the Feast of the Assumption, when ancient ritual and Catholicism align, at the peak of the hot season. The neighborhood is muted and it’s such a relief. I allow the quiet to wash over me. In the distance I hear the softened rhythms of the sultry city. I know that downtown is crowded with melting tourists. In my mind the centro storico is a black dot, the center of a wheel, and the rest of us outside le mura, extend out from that point in spokes.

I’m not the only one to be home on this holiday. I see the neighbor in the building across the way going out every so often to check her clothes line. That your laundry dries in one actual second is one of the few joys of a summer in Rome.

When it’s this quiet it’s easier to remember how much I need to slow down; to return to myself, putter around the apartment, water my plants, make art just for fun. Not that I don’t do things like that across the year, but there’s a wonderful sense of freedom that comes with the Italian summer break. It feels like the liminal days between Christmas and New Year’s when we get lost in time and every day feels like a lazy Sunday. The city slows down just enough so that we can come up for air.