Adriatic Dance

Written September 9, Riccione, Italy

A cool ocean breeze blows through a louvered glass balcony door. From the chair where I am sitting I can see the city lights outside the door, hotel signs blinking in neon reds, pharmacy symbols in green. Blue fluorescent tube lights from a hotel façade announce that the Hotel Fedora is open for travelers. All these lights are being filtered through the leaves of trees adjacent to the balcony, the leaves doing their own slow Adriatic dance as the sea breeze moves through them. It’s a picture perfect September evening on the Adriatic coast of Riccione, Italy.

Across the room I watch BEG in the small apartment kitchen. She’s busy preparing dinner for our roommate and other teammates in the apartment below. I am reflecting on how many years she has been taking care of me and caring for others as she is doing on this gorgeous night. She loves travel. She loves to cook. Tonight she is happy. She’s smiling and talkative, exchanging sweet words with all that cross her path.

While I have been writing our friends and teammates have returned to our apartment where the food smell has attracted them like the nearby sea attracts vacationers.

It’s loud and chaotic again, the sweetness and quiet of my earlier reflections broken, but I continue to watch BEG and observe her undiminished happiness. Now, for all the right reasons my own happiness is lighting up my interior like the hotel laden strip of beach that glitters outside the window.

The voices grow louder. The plates clatter. The silverware rattles and the food disappears. She smiles at me from across the room. Days like these stamp their imprint in my memory and lay their blessings at my feet.

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