Eating Rituals - Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native - page 60

crumbs of the Italian language leading to Dante's Paradise. I saw rabbits skinned there,
sweaters patched there, card games won and lost. I nursed two babies under the chestnut
tree, both in the fall time of the year. I sat through countless discussions of weather and
what was the proper way to make bread salad. I lived the September spoke of the Tuscan
wheel of seasons under that chestnut tree for 13 years, and I never saw it lose its leaves or
imagined what it might be like in spring.
Then, this past spring I was there. The chestnut tree in spring is shocking. Like a wild Eng-
lish lady in a whimsical summer hat. A beehive sprouting white plumes of feathers. The
chestnut's five fingers of leaves swhirl around a long slender stalk projecting straight up-
ward and covered with shoots that end in delicate white lacy flowers—each petal stained at
the place where it pours out from the stamen: a pink crimson. It was a revelation of bloom-
ing,splittingopenallthememoriesoflifelivedunderthetreeinpastyears.Anditbloomed
and it bloomed as I sat under the tree and thought: bread, pane ; tree, paradise .
- Pamela Mercer