Under the Shade of an Olive Tree

In Italian there is a beautiful word, meriggiare, which means to escape the heat of the midday sun by resting in the shade.

I love the word because it sounds like marinate, which conjures up images of languidly reposing, too relaxed, satiated, sun-warmed to do anything other than to be cocooned within your thoughts. Slow thoughts, that float and hover, within reach, but just barely. 

And then you come back to yourself, changed. 

This week our book club met to discuss Frances Mayes' book, Women in Sunlight. This is the third book I have read by Mayes and, like the others, it was as so achingly beautiful that it left me wanting, like having the need to take a big gulp of water but forced, instead, to sip through a straw. By the end of the book, I was a little sad, more than a little melancholy, but also infused with a deep joy and a reminder to embrace the basics: family, friends, food, and faith, blended with tradition, swaddled in the seasons, and served with a glass of vino rosso. 

And during our Book Club meeting, gathered around a table littered with wine glasses and dessert cups of homemade gelato and sorbetto al limone, all of us friends discussing a book about friendship, I realized that meriggiare also describes what it is like to read Women in Sunlight: the feeling when language, poetry, food, and the Italian countryside offer respite and wonder, all while sitting under the shade of an olive tree.