…. As cooking together is a large warm hug.
Many years ago, sitting at a table in a restaurant in Firenze with my dear friend Sue Campbell, she was able to take out from the bottom of my stomach the secret dream. The dream was so deep into my viscera as was almost hidden to me as well. Since then on, I have been calling her my midwife.
The dream was a school on the island where I was born, Giglio. A school that would have allowed an extension of the economic life on the island, abandoned for lack of jobs: an island with a crazy touristic life in the summer and almost dead in the winter.
All the inhabitants could have participated to this project: hotels, pension, rooms rentals, restaurants, groceries could have extended the working season. Not only. Artisans, fishermen, farmers, musicians, bees keepers, wine producers, wicker baskets makers could have taken parts to the project teaching their instinctive wisdom and “know how”: the same that has been making so the little islands have remained self-sustainable through the centuries.
I was confident that a project like this would have brought enough jobs to reduce the abandon of the island.
With her positiveness and pragmatism typical of Americans, she said: “it is doable!”.
This is Sue, watching and listening
I started to visualize the project on the surface of my “inside” and I started to write… to write everything concerning it: the actual project to present to the authorities, included business plan, the Statute with regulations and purposes, the academy programs. I started to contact teachers ( biologists, archaeologists, agricultural technicians and so on) and to search for contributions. The project did not come to fruition, because the request of contribution was non accepted, although I haven’t forgotten it: it is still there in a well visible corner of my mind.
Instead, I started Gigliocooking School in Florence.
Anyways, when I started to visualize the project and to see it like a functional machine, this was the matter of many conversations between my friends and me. Although all the talking, I didn’t have a name for the project yet.
Again, in front of wine and food – we were at Procacci, in via Tornabuoni, the historical place known for the truffle sandwiches – I was still wondering on what the name could have been.
Sue – always Sue – wide opened her eyes, exclaimed: “This is a sign!” and she pointed the finger against me.
I fell from the cloud, as I did not understand what she meant. I thought I had a bug on me.
“The name of your project is there, you are wearing it!”
I was wearing a red sweater where there was printed, with glittered letters “EMBRACE THE FUTURE”.
After many years my sweater was worn out, thus I threw it away. I regret it now. Because I have learned that life can be a large warm embrace, if we want and if we “empty” ourselves of all the superstructures that we build, of all the garbage that we accumulate in our mind, if we are able to sweep away crusts and dust and free the jewels we keep secret at the bottom. The sweater could have been a reminder of all that.
Laury, Suzanne, Mary and Chris…
… felt the warm embrace of the cuisine and they felt all what I must have expressed without saying words. Just cooking together.
Thank you all, Ladies: you proved me that feelings travel on waves….