The Amalfi Road

      I've been thinking a lot about my Italian mother these days here on the Amalfi coast. So much has been reminding me of her.

      Yesterday evening, we took a sunset drive along the Amalfi road.

      For those of you who don't know this road (are there any foreigners left who don't?), it may just be the most picturesque road in the world, a tiny two-laned street full of hair-pin curves that hugs a coastline of dramatic, craggy cliffs and pastel-colored towns that cascade down into the Mediterranean.  

     If there is a more beautiful road on this planet, I don't know it. 

     One of my most treasured possessions is a watercolor my mother painted of the Amalfi road. It now hangs in our living room in London. It used to be in our bedroom in the States.

    I love that watercolor. It's very simple -- just the blue sea and the winding road and the cliffs. I love it because it's sunny and fresh and always reminds me of southern Italy. I love it also because my mother painted it.

    As we were driving, I tried to pinpoint the exact spot my mother depicted in that watercolor. And I thought about my mother's life then -- and later what it became in the States.

    It must've been so hard for my Italian parents to leave this magnificent area, this majestic country, to make a new life in America. They only left because my father went broke. It hurts to even think of their sacrifice.  

    We passed an ad that used a phrase that also reminded me of my mother -- "gonfie vele," or full sails. It basically means to go full steam ahead, under full sails, confident and with plenty of wind behind you.   

    My mother gave me a gold pin of a sailboat on a birthday once, a pin she said my father had given her when she was pregnant with me. She explained the "gonfie vele" saying to me then, and said my father had given the pin to her for good luck with her pregnancy. 

    On the day I was born at a clinic overlooking the sea in Naples, not that far from here, my parents had planned to take the ferry to Capri for the day with my grandparents. I wasn't due for a couple of weeks yet, and it was a beautiful July day, my mother explained.

    They never made it, because my mother went into labor in the morning.

    So I was born overlooking this sea on a sunny July day when I was supposed to be going to Capri instead.

    Is it any wonder this place makes me weak in the knees?