My elderly Italian born neighbor worked often in her small garden to which her window opened. After years, and years in France, she still felt Italian. Told me lots of stories from her life when young girl in the Italian mountain.
She told me a lot about her life. When young, in a house up the mountain in Italy, she had to sell her hair so they could buy tissue from which make dress to be able to go to school. Later, a young man working in France come to ask for her hand. She had to learn French to work.
She used to come and knock at my window : are you there?
And true, sometime, I did not felt like chatting. Most of time, I did go out in the garden between us, sit down and chatted or went to her house. When she come inside my small house, it seemed the visit never ended.
Every year, in November she asked me to take her with my car to the cemetery adding flowers to her husband tomb, who left her early.
Alas, one day, I had to go and add flowers for her. And the garden, even with a new owner, remained neglected.
But a year after I have taken the sad picture, with the neglected garden, I looked along the wall, to the other flowers she had put on. They thrived and vent almost to the sky! For years!
Here is the exit from our common garden, you see the flowers?
Higher then the wall with the other house.
Then one day, my grand children where with me and I asked them to stay near the flowers.
Bellow is the picture I took from them. One generation goes away, the other comes. And that was many years ago. Now, my dears are 19 and 18!
And Madame Filipetto? I looked up to the Hollyhocks. She must be looking down to us from the sky, they did grow so high! Again, I learned: it depends only to what I look. And what we choose to remember.
I have left that place, ten years ago, but these pictures bring me back instantly.
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