After finding a place to rest our weary
heads for il riposo, we discovered a wide new Palermo by turning
right from our appartamento.
I knew where I wanted to have my
birthday-in-Palermo dinner. As Edward will tell you, food is
important to me. He says this often by way of leaving all the eating
decisions when on vacation to me...and possibly every other time as well.
While I was in the throes of planning,
when all the flight decisions had been made and booked, I turned my
attention to places to stay. I relied chiefly on Airbnb, with a side
of Booking.com and lots of cross checking on TripAdvisor.
Then, my dear friend asked me, So, where
will you have your birthday dinner? !! I didn’t know! At that
point, I had still not booked all of our places to stay. But I did
know that this birthday dinner decision must be looked
into immediately. So I did plenty of research (a more businesslike way of saying
that I read lots and lots of drool worthy food reviews), and I
settled on a place, Ai Normanni. Well, we never made it past the foyer
there that night, but instead had to depend on a method which served us well
throughout our trip: wander the streets and peer at tables and menus.
Still heading for our dinner at Ai
Normanni, so we thought, we stepped from a narrow street, where we
had walked past an illuminated ristorante with tables with sunflowers, and the traditional Sicilian wooden carts, painted in colorful
patterns, lined up on the opposite side of the passageway, and out into a
surprising space.
Here was the open, beautiful and
historic Palermo. The cathedral was here, lit up in the night. Its
arches and turrets, acquired melange of Gothic, Catalan, Byzantine
architecture, glowing and leaking light out to the avenue and nearby
park.
So many people were in the courtyard of
the cathedral; nuns, priests, musicians, groups of business-dressed Sicilians.
Rainbow banners of PEACE, PACE, were held there, in front of the
ancient church. We took pictures and asked ourselves, What is this
demonstration?
It might
have been for the tragedy happening in Syria. (And indeed, it
was. When Edward looked it up later at the apartment, we found some
information about the gathering: On
the churchyard of the Cathedral A moment of prayer for peace in Syria and in other places in the world where wars are being waged, will be presided by the archbishop of Palermo.)
But we had just come from the US, and seeing the call for
nonviolenza, my thoughts also went to the unrelenting series of
school shootings happening there. To that loss, in the world's sea
of loss.
It is a terrible thing to lose a child,
and too, very hard to find a place (an emotional, or spiritual place,
though real place in the world is also important) where you can have
a moment, an experience, of being happy. Being in the moment. Without
the crush of sorrow, the overwhelming guilt. Guilt of surviving, of
the happy moment, of experiencing what your boy will forever not.
This burden laid heavy on our trip to
Sicily. Maybe because that child was our dark and gorgeous
Italian-beautiful boy. My grandmother said, about the infant Ian,
He looks like one of my babies. And as every journey is also a part
of the grief journey, I carried my love and my loss with me, through
the streets of Palermo, the flower bedecked cemetery in Ustica and
the glittering churches throughout Sicily.
But travel fills my heart and my senses in
good ways, along with the sad, and Italy makes me happy. And this
night in Palermo, the banners were a balm. A hope for the
(collective) future. As I said to my sweetie, a little gift for my
birthday.
all photos © 2018 Anita Barnard
