I walked from the where I am staying in search of the house I lived in when my family lived in Verona. It was not too hard to find thanks to Google maps. The last time I visited Verona – some 30 years ago, it was run down and seemed abandoned. This time when I got there it was under renovation. It looks like the entire building has been gutted and is being redone and renovated. The outside was completely redone and painted. It is nice to see new life being brought to a place that I enjoyed living and have many fond memories.

I remember Guelfa, the nice women who took care of us when we lived there. She was like my Italian grandmother in many ways. I remember that she did not want to learn English so we learned Italian to speak to her. The only word in English that I think she ever learned was mess and that was used to describe my room. She taught my mother to cook spaghetti meat sauce (bolognese) and that is the same recipe I still use to make spaghetti with meat sauce. The recipe was never written down and was learned through discussions and practice with Guelfa and my mother.

One thing that surprised me is that the garden looked so small. As a child, it seemed huge and contained so many plants. It had a small section with grape vines which the gardener would make wine from every year. It definitely was young wine as it only aged in the bottle for the winter before we drank it. There as a large almond tree that we could climb. A friend of mine once climbed the tree and then yelled at his father to catch and then jumped from the tree, luckily his father heard him and was able to catch him. There was also a fig tree that produced an abundance of figs every year. The gardener would plant seasonal flowers to have burst of color. Now unfortunately that is all gone and the yard is just barren rock and soil. Since the house is being renovated, I hope that the garden will come back to life and be as beautiful as I remember it.

The bittersweet part of this is that it brought back lovely memories of a childhood that was filled with adventure and excitement of living in a foreign land. All the first that the life can bring when in a different culture and language. Unfortunately, there is no one in my life anymore that I can talk to about those memories which is bittersweet. The memories of seeing the house and what it meant to my life was fantastic but not being able to share them with those who experienced them with you is sad.

This is why I decided to spend Christmas in Verona as it would bring back lovely, fun, exciting and memories that formed me as the person I am today. It really has so far been a wonderful and meaningful experience for me.

Future musing will not be bleak and bittersweet. I have enjoyed wandering Verona and just seeing the sights and experiencing them once again.