The Scent of Jasmine

It was an absolutely exquisite night tonight.  The day was beautiful too, clear enough to see the Alban Hills and the peaks of the Apennines, but the sun has already gotten too strong for staying out of the shade for long.  Once the sun starts to go down, though, you really are reminded of everything that makes Italy magical and timeless.

Particularly helping that magical feeling is the scent of jasmine rolling in through the windows.  I had thought that the green plants wrapped around the piers of the courtyard were merely ivy, but when I got back from the States and walked into a warm patch of heady fragrance, I realized that they had chosen the week of my absence to burst into flower.  Jasmine is a luxurious scent, that occasionally flirts with the edge of being cloying without ever really passing over the line.  It's not a scent I had ever encountered before Italy, it being a flower more suited to warm climates than New England (the same goes for the riotous bougainvillea, which I look forward to seeing spilling over the walls around the city this month).

At any rate, it smells like summer, and feels like very early summer--it's now too hot to sleep with the blanket, but it's not so warm that you need the fan.  The 'end of the year' feeling is in the air, too.  After the Romans vs Barbarians game a couple of weeks ago, a dozen of us were sitting around in a big circle on the grass, eating pizza and gelato, and someone commented that it felt like camp, like the last night of camp.  Now it's started to remind me of the end of the spring semester, that mix of excitement for summer freedom and wistfulness for the friends and the environment that had begun to feel like home.

Wistfulness is especially true in my case, since Sean and I will be staying here another year, with a different group of people.  I've been told that it's a commonplace among former two-year fellows that you always prefer the group you came in with to the group you leave with, and I have no doubt that that will prove to be the case for me as well.  When I think about being here next year without Stefania's acid, profanity-laced commentary on everyone else's behavior, without Denise's cheerful practicality, without John's terrible jokes and Vince's gruff-but-sneaky ones...it's kind of sad.  Sean registered this too, saying it would be hard to come back for two months, just enough time to really get used to everyone (even though they all love him already!) and then to say goodbye.

It will be nice that the staff is the same, at least.  Without Gabry's smirk or Tiziana's warmth or even Alessandro's aloofness, the place would really be unrecognizable.  In the meantime, it's time to treasure what I have, and to enjoy a night like this one.  The fountain is off, the birds have gone to sleep, and so for a rare moment, in the cortile, there is silence.