postcard 30: melting into summer
we are outdoor cats
It’s the first properly hot day of spring and though it’s still early, we’re sweating by the time we make it to the post office. There’s a care package waiting for us with Flaming Hot Cheetos for Topher, a warranty harness for Hazelnut (sea water + too many Croatian street cats and she busted right through hers) and my favorite brand of chapstick. It’s like Christmas all over again (thanks Scott and Jenny!)
The dye on the Cheetos looks strange after so many months of muted, carcinogen-free European chips. Topher eats them, enrapt, and we pack our bags for a day at the beach.
The sun is beating down as we follow the now familiar path to our favorite spot. We balance on the thin strip of wall above the inlent, follow the path through the woods, past the beach grills where meat-scented smoke wafts towards us, through a tunnel made of thick, overgrown bushes and out to a finger of land with a little secluded beach. Hazelnut splashes in immediately and I strip off my clothes and follow her, plunging in for the first time since the fall. The water is frigid but it feels amazing and I pull the 60 lb. fluffy baby out into the deep water and convince her to doggy paddle a few feet before she can touch the bottom again. I’m still not convinced she can swim. My skin is deathly pale, so I hide under a towel poncho I bought on a whim and slather on the SPF. Topher refuses and spends the afternoon slowly frying.
I pick out itty bitty shells from the rocks and watch the snails make their way across the shorelines. It feels glorious to bask in the nothing and everything of an afternoon spent in nature. I’m reminded of long summer days wandering my backyard kingdom as a kid, lost in a world of my own creation.
Hazelnut chases the waves that come in when a boat passes by and the little lizards that sun themselves on the rocks. On the way home we get gelato and eat it in the dying light in front of the colosseum, our skin still salty from the sea.
We’re still learning that perfect weather doesn’t have to be savored to the last drop here like it does in Colorado. Every day is clear and sunny and beautiful and we linger too long on our walks and sit on the patio at lunch and get gelato two nights in a row. We aren’t the only ones. Everyone here seems to live outside as soon as winter is over. Cafes and bars and restaurants have full patios and there are people walking and lounging and enjoying the out of doors wherever we go. Even our laundry has migrated outside, our clothes finally flapping in the sun to dry like real Europeans, even though I kind of hate the idea of pollen and cigarette smoke seeping into my clean shirts. I love this life, spent more outdoors than in.
The older gentleman at the second gelato shop looks taken aback when we ask, in broken Croatian, if he speaks English. “What is this new language I have never heard of!?” he bellows to his colleague who plays right along. Chagrinned, we let him tell us a convoluted story we can’t decipher about spumoni and laugh the whole walk home.
Our next few weeks will be filled with road trips and visitors and so our days are filled with the tedious preparations. We go to the ministry for our quarterly visa check-in (still, nothing) and feel like old pros as we navigate the ticket machine patiently while others have meltdowns, and sit outside with our coffees and croissants alongside the elderly man who smokes an entire cigar at 730am while he waits for his number to be called. At the grocery store we stumble upon squash blossoms and we cannot break the golden rule. They get purchased, fried and eaten that evening after I get off work, tasting like fleeting summer sunshine.
-Mikaela