On a recent evening I drove to Le Piazze to buy some wine from a local winemaker, la Cantina Gentili.

Le Piazze is a frazione of Cetona, a separate town in the same municipality, eight or so kilometers away by a curvy and narrow road. It has been cold and rainy here, and indeed, it was pouring and windy. I considered choosing a different day to make the drive, but I wanted a break from writing. My friends are working, and I like to set out by myself and go places.

I had not been to Le Piazze in a long time—and indeed, I have not been in Cetona at this time of year in many, many years. I have missed the turning of the leaves, the wintery rain, the smell of firewood, the dark drives. Living in tropical Charleston now, used to the sultry heat and a closet nearly devoid of winter clothes, it has been easy for me to say to myself that I don’t like the cold, that Cetona in winter is miserable and lonely, that I don’t miss that. It closes the door on a time of discomfort, perhaps; indeed our house was damp and unpleasant in winter, and I don’t miss that. But at some level, as I have discovered in the past few weeks, it is not true.

It was nearly dark when I set out from Cetona, but not entirely. I could make out the outline of the countryside around me as I drove the winding, curvy road, and I could make out the hills and the cypress trees on the farther horizon. Rising above me, Monte Cetona was covered in dark clouds, and around me trees were blowing.

Some old song came on, some Italian pop song. I was driving carefully, studying the road, when a peaceful feeling settled over me. I realized how familiar the road was, how it still is. How I know the cut of each curve, where to upshift and downshift, where the curve might throw you off. I suddenly remembered how, when I first came to the States for college, at night when I was homesick I would lie in bed and drive the road to Le Piazze in my mind, rounding each curve carefully, recalling exactly its degree of ascent or descent, shifting as the car did, or the bus, as if the road right there in my mind could take me back home from New Haven to Cetona. I did the same for the road that goes from Cetona to Montepulciano, which I traveled for five years every day by bus to go to the liceo. Lying in bed I would revisit the bus stops, who got on or off where, on which curve, revisiting their faces, their names. I remembered the image of a similar road in the dark, from Sarteano to Cetona, lit by the headlights, in the winter, in the rain, when an old boyfriend would drive me home, in the early evening, so I could make curfew and finish my homework. He drove a little forest green Mini and you felt like you were sitting directly on the ground.

On my drive to Le Piazze I remembered a jacket I owned once, a burgundy jacket, that my parents had bought me for the winter. It was not a great jacket, it was not particularly warm or nice looking, but I liked it, I needed a new jacket, and my parents, who did not have a lot of money, bought it for me. We settled on that jacket as a compromise in a world of expensive leather that my parents could not afford and puffy jackets that were in vogue then but that I did not like. I was proud of my new jacket until I wore it out to the piazza and my then boyfriend, who was five years older than me, wearing his heavy gray leather jacket tied at the waist, smug and superior, said, Ma che giacca e` cotesta? What kind of jacket is that? I felt so sad and inadequate.

Driving on the rainy road back from Le Piazze I remembered when Alessandra and I were best friends, when we were fifteen or sixteen, we would go to the back room of the Bar Cavour to play cards and smoke cigarettes. There was no other place to go when it was cold and rainy and the Bar Sport, which was nicer and much more welcoming, was closed. In Cetona there was no movie theater, no library, nothing. But we found things to do, not all edifying, not all exciting, but they got us through the winter. I read a lot too, and studied, and loved to walk in the woods, but I loved my friends. I adored my friends, and my entire inner world was colored by them and their company. Every moment I could spend with them, whether it was Alessandra at that time, or Francesca later, or Lucia or Fabiola or Patrizia, it was a gift, they were all a gift. I stole my moments away every afternoon after I finished my homework and I walked up our road, Via Sobborgo, no matter what weather, and found my friends. In the rain and the cold Via Sobborgo was dreary and dark, and on weekends, when I stayed out later, I favored a street that went through the town. Every chimney in town bellowed smoke and the smell of firewood pervaded everything. I have missed that smell, and when I occasionally have smelled it in Charleston over the years it has stopped me in my tracks and put me right back on that street through town, the stone walls, and the echo of my steps on the stone pavement.

Later, my last years of the liceo, winter days were spent with my friend Antonella in her clothing store, Mr. Up, now the fruit and vegetable store. It was my refuge, warm and cozy, with good company, laughter, and conversation. Winters were good then. There were weekend nights toward my late teens when we went to the vasche in San Casciano, past Le Piazze, natural springs that pooled hot sulfurous water in these huge baths where the women of the town also did the laundry. In the deep of winter, sometimes with snow on the ground, we would pile in three or four cars, drive to San Casciano, down the steep treacherous road that led to the vasche, strip our clothes off in the freezing cold, shaking, with goose bumps, and climb into the baths and soak, sometimes till dawn. We got out with our skin tingling from the heat and dry off with our clothes—no one ever thought of bringing a towel—pile back into the cars, cigarettes burning, music blaring, and head back to Cetona. It was a favorite winter pastime.

The aversion to winter in Cetona is an adult construct, I have realized. In my heart I have missed winter in Cetona as much as I missed the reawakening of spring and the openness and flowering of summer. Indeed, without the dreariness of winter there is no exhilaration of spring. I realized that in my heart there is a place, deep-seeded and forgotten, to revisit and celebrate the rainy roads, the fields laying fallow or awaiting seed, and the blustery times, the desolation of the piazza in the rain, the feeling of no place to go but right here, the feeling that everything is right here even if it is raining, here in this place, and it is perfect as it is. There is an important and sacred place to notice the quiet, bare beauty of the winter landscape, the sound of the water rushing in the streams, the silence of the fields. All of that is built into my flesh and the programming of my brain as strongly and equally as the blossoming of spring and the lush heat of summer.

And I love it all equally, still.

Sybil Fix©2014