Tuesday, February 18, 2025

AMID THE MADNESS

The world appears to have gone mad, so let us pause and gaze upon something that takes time, patience and art - from the Cicara Caffetteria in Modica:


I also marked my birthday at the Cicara last week and was presented with a lovely, miniature cheesecake dessert:





A seventy-fifth birthday is a landmark of sorts and the occasion set me thinking about how different it was from my seventieth, just before the first Covid lockdown in Italy. In my memoir, I began my chapter on that period in this way:

Two days before my seventieth birthday in February I sat in my local bar celebrating with friends. It was to be three long, miserable, terrifying months before I would see friends or sit in a bar again. Within days, all of Italy was in lockdown.

In abnormal times, we long for the "normal", even the mundane, so what can we do? I now feel neither young nor brave enough to weather the social media backlash and pile-ons that publicly expressing all my thoughts on world events would entail, though I am working on my lack of courage. I would, however, call out prejudice and unfairness when I see them in my own environment. Other than that, I can take pleasure in the day to day small things in life, I can thank those who provide them and I can be kind. That, I think, is a beginning.




1 comment:

CherryPie said...

Happy Birthday (a little bit late).

I found that the world didn't get back to normal after the Covid restrictions. And in some cases when the restrictions were lifted people forgot to be kind.

Did you ever publish your memoire?

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