A Hard Rain

If you haven’t heard, it’s been raining in Italy. After several years of mercilessly hot summers and bone dry winters, the Big Payback arrived. Not with a shower, but with three weeks of non-stop pelting, ranging from first gear level drizzle to fifth gear monsoons, stopping only for moments, then accelerating seconds later like an Italian motorist from a stoplight.

The damage has been dramatic, with more than a dozen people dead, landslides and flooding that closed autostradas and left whole towns half-submerged in a bathtub of mud. The storm’s  effects have also been quietly insidious. On a recent trip across Emilia-Romagna, one of the country’s most important agricultural regions, we passed fields of fruit trees and vineyards languishing in a swampy pond. It will likely take years for the area to recover.

In our own neighborhood,  the countryside is something between a science experiment and a battleground. The grass on the roadside  looks like my Covid-era hair style—  everything all at once— leaving only a sliver of pavement threading through the overgrowth. At the same time, the collateral damage is everywhere: trees down, roads  cratered, chunks of farmland scattered like shrapnel  in the street.

Only the poppies seem impervious to the weather, their ebullient red cutting through the foggy murk, as they dance deliriously in the rain. Their wide-open faces are the sole reminder that spring has not been completely squashed. Hope is  hiding out there somewhere.

Because we’ve been fortunate enough to experience this natural disaster more as an inconvenience than an emergency, what I’ve noticed most amidst the deluge are the moments of brief respite. It’s the old joke about hitting yourself in the head because it feels so good when you stop, If only for a few minutes,  the rain ceases pummeling the window pane and the landscape flashes up in technicolor across the dark screen…

Suddenly the whole world comes alive. The air is fresh and full of fragrance, the scenery sparkles with clarity, and the warmth of the sun sneaks through the clouds and lands gently on your shoulders.

We had one such moment in Rome. Descending the Spanish Steps, we waded into a sea of colorful umbrellas clustered around the rain-streaked fountain below.

But as soon as we made it to the apartment, climbing out onto the roof terrace through a tiny set of stairs in the kitchen, the soaking stopped. You could feel the skies exhale.  The clouds rolled back, and the timeless light of the Eternal City broke through at last.  The view stretched from  the Villa Medici all the way to the dome of St. Peters— an open book of history and art laid out in front of us.

Later that afternoon, we met a friend from New York in the Umbrian town of Orvieto. Even when it’s the result of careful planning, it always feels like a happy surprise to see a familiar face in a completely different country. It’s a reassuring reminder that the world is both bigger and smaller than we imagine. The rain came along of course, but it’s hard to dampen the spirits of friends reunited for a new adventure.

When  another set of New York friends visited our home in Marche a week later, the downpour was still gathering momentum, rather than losing it. The meet-up on Saturday was an ordeal, with cancelled trains and a last-minute opening of the autostrada after the floods. The scenery on the three-hour journey from Bologna to Marche was a dismal snapshot of destruction, rendered in a thousand shades of grey.

But this Sunday morning, the lights flicked on again. The sun has returned from its three-week holiday, and church bells are ringing in our town of Monteleone as if in celebration.

Along the road below us, the poppies are back, like old friends popping up in unfamiliar places. Swaying in the breeze, they remind us to find strength in one another. And to keep our faces to the sun.

To any of you with friends, family, homes or just happy memories of the places in Italy struck by the floods this month, I send my thoughts and prayers.