postcard 45: august slips away like a bottle of wine

slow days and tomato sandwiches

In July, we were gone more nights than we were home, bouncing back and forth between the glacier filled peaks of the Alps and Pula, hundreds of miles of hot, dirty Italian highway in between.

Now that it’s August, our brains and bodies are begging us to rest. For the first time in a long time I’ve found myself not eager to travel. I know that in a few weeks I’ll be chomping at the bit again, but for now I’m craving the slowness.

The humidity has lowered enough that we can be outside again at dawn and dusk without risking Hazelnut’s fuzzy body heat stroking, so we take our walks after work, dodging the figs that are beginning to ripen and fall, leaving sticky masses on the sidewalk for the ants to storm. The sky turns pink and orange and lilac and a neighborhood beagle follows us down the street, barking from a distance, more evenings than not.

I wait in line for almost half an hour to buy tomatoes and bread on a Sunday. It’s fascinating how our town has rubber banded from mostly closed and abandoned to swollen with tourists, loud with life. We take our picnic up the coast, down a dirt road that only the locals seems to know about, and assemble simple tomato and mayo sandwiches next to the sea. I forgot salt, but then Hazelnut shakes off seawater and everything is vaguely salty anyways. The same half-naked, feral children we see every day we’re down here jump off the dock.

Cooling off with a swim has become our default activity. We try a new spot, picked from Google Maps, and wind our way through the woods to a quiet stretch of rocks. The sea floor stays shallow for seemingly ever and we wade out to our chests while Hazelnut paddles around us in her life jacket. She spies a snorkeler and almost tows me away as I cling onto her handle, trying to convince her not to give one of her big, claw-forward hugs to the unsuspecting man. We chase crabs and Hazelnut picks snails off the rocks, her new fascination. Our skin is salt crusted and slightly sunburnt.

The city has installed a parking tower in one of the lots downtown and we drive our car into what’s essentially a vending machine and watch from the ground as it’s shuffled several stories up. I buy six pounds of tomatoes from the market, even though they’re not amazing, relishing in the fact that they don’t cost $8 apiece like my beloved Cherokee Purples from the Pearl Street Farmer’s Market back in Colorado. They become gazpacho and pasta sauce, panzanella and more sandwiches.

One night we head to a stretch of beach where a food truck park has been set up amongst volleyball courts and more permanent beach bars. We order burgers and sweet potato fries from an knock off Airstream and laugh about how hip it all feels as the sun sets and the sky turns a deep pink. The crescent moon casts a silver reflection on the waves.

-Mikaela