THOSE SCARVES

Spring, la primavera, has arrived in the beautiful hill towns of Alto Lazio. Dozens of shades of green appear up and down the hillsides, as trees and plants begin their annual display. Purple and white irises are popping up in the most uncultivated of places, as if they were wildflowers and window boxes and sidewalk planters are bursting with spring flowers. I'm not immune to Spring Fever and was compelled to plant a few pink and red geraniums (and a basil plant) in the concrete planters on the condominium terrace outside our kitchen window.

The people who live here are justifiably proud of the fresh air at this altitude of about 1,000 meters. Indeed, it is one of many places to which the Romans escape on hot summer weekends. But spring takes it's time up here and we’re still wearing scarves.

I used to think that those scarves Italians wrapped around their throats, twisted and knotted into chic and elaborate shapes, were simply affectations...pure fashion. Whenever I tried to wear a scarf at home, it seemed like a useless accessory…decorative rather than functional. But, since I have been here, I haven’t left the house without one. Not one of those heavy woolly mufflers that Americans wear in a snowstorm. I mean a lightweight, colorful pashmina kind of multi-tasking flowy type scarf.

No one leaves their house without one of these around their neck, because everyone walks. And they hate drafts, believing they can cause all kinds of maladies. And from one step to the next, from one street to the next, the temperature, the wind, the sunshine, the cloud-cover changes the temperature dramatically. One minute, I'm strolling along, basking in the warmth of the sunshine, then I'll step through an archway into a narrow vicola where castle turrets block the sun and its bone-chilling cold. Or the clouds will move in and the wind will attack from several directions and whip my hair into a tangled nest. Then I'll reach the top of the hill where the road switches back downhill, the wind subsides and the clouds part to let the sunshine through making the air calm again. I just whip that scarf on and off and ward off all manner of Italian ills!