when you have a friend visit from Italy

When you have a friend visit from Italy, a friend with whom you have shared tears and laughter and sorrow and joy, you may think you need to scour the house, do all the laundry and polish the woodwork. But life will get in the way, as it is wont to do, and you will be content to vacuum and dust and spruce a bit here and there.
You might expect that your children will stay home all morning, waiting for it to be noon, so they don't miss meeting your special friend - but then you will realize that they have their own lives and have made plans and may come up from the basement to greet her, but might be out when she arrives.
And, you might assume that your friend will want to tour the neighborhood or go shopping or be taken to lunch and be somewhat relieved to learn that she is just as happy to have a jaunt at Anthropologie, have coffee at home (left too long on the stove!) and share dozens of photos of the places you could not visit.

We had Friday with Paola. We drank her in and soaked up all of the Positano we could get from her....

She brought linen things for each of us, a gorgeous woolen wrap for me (I've hardly taken it off), and many delicious treats (which I promise to write about later).
We sat and talked and looked and listened to so much that I felt full by the time she left that night.



She brought her laptop and we had a wonderful chat with Fabio and Brizio - from the mountain top in Italy to my dining room table.

It was an extraordinary thing to sit with her at our table -



(Paola, you see, is all about beautiful colors and bright happy laughing.)



The very first thing she did was return my bracelet of saints. I had slipped it on her wrist in the airport in Naples last September as my promise to return.
We did not say goodbye on Friday either.
We may be lucky enough to see each other before she returns.
But now it is my turn to go to her house.