a summer vignette
A Summer Vignette
I have a blog post for May which I didn’t post; it’s almost finished, but not ready to post. I haven’t looked at the blog post for two months.
May was busy; May was fun. May was my first summer 2021 trip across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to St. Michaels, Maryland, a camping trip in the woods of Virginia, and a postponed 2020 trip to Boston and Maine.
I felt obligated to write and post about May. Why? I’d set myself the challenge of posting about every month in 2021. At the beginning of the year, a monthly post - especially during the winter, and as winter turned to spring - was therapeutic. It helped me deal with the winter, a time of year where the darkness always makes it difficult to see the light, and this winter the pandemic brought more darkness. Writing about how I sought light during the darkest months of the year and the pandemic was healing. As the sun emerged in March and April, the posts and processing of the month and my feelings, too, healed. In May, and then June, I had no energy to process and capture the mood of each month creatively. Academic years closed; I could get back on the road. Why can’t I write one blog post? Instead of forcing a post in May and June, I took a break. Recently, I read Omelette, a short memoir by Jessie Ware full of vignettes. On the beach in Skopelos, Greece, reading her vignettes which centered around food, I found a return to chronicling.
Vignette: a brief evocative description, account, or episode.
I’d love to write a detailed blog post or chapter about my return to Europe after eighteen months of pestilence and exile with the theme of reunion, but the inspiration and energy to write that shouldn’t be forced. Instead, here is a short vignette of one afternoon at a beach in Greece. Maybe, I’ll want to write more than a short episode, but I won’t force my feelings until they’re ready to be evoked and detailed.
Limnonari Beach, Skopelos, Greece
The Island of Skopelos rises like a green mountain from the Aegean Sea. The Fiat Cinquecento cabriolet winds down the narrow cliff roads to the sheltered bay of Limnonari. We park the car under a tree; the shade will keep the white vehicle cool from the July heat. Lunch is on the patio of a white taverna sheltered from the sun by olive trees and lilac blossoms. We order a cooling, aubergine dip - garlicky, yet subtle. A watermelon and feta salad sprinkled with black sesame seeds on a bed of crisp, green lettuce and drizzled in a berry dressing. Bread is served to dip and clean the plates -- on Skopelos, unlike Athens, we’re never served pitta bread. A carafe (0.5L) of dry white local table wine is our drink of choice along with cool mineral water - the bottle sweats, but the content stays cool. Fresh oily pasta dishes - one with shrimp, calamari, and mussels; the other penne with summer vegetables (peppers, zucchini, and eggplant) - follow our mezze entrees. The background noise to the meal is cicadas; the unwelcome guest is the faint buzz of wasps attracted to the sweet blossom in the trees, one of the only irritants we find on Skopelos. After lunch, we snorkel in the turquoise clear waters of the bay. Fish swim below our feet and yachts are moored beyond the buoys. Leaving the water, we nap under olive trees on the grass beyond the rocks. A deep sun and wine-induced sleep, where the only way to wake from the slumber is to order Cappuccino Freddo - strong iced coffee with local milk and a hit of sugar. They provide enough caffeine to drive the winding roads back to Glossa; the winding roads are lined by pine trees and fill the car with a sweet and refreshing scent of summer in Greece.
