Primavera

The Italian word for spring, “Primavera,” gives a clear understanding by its very music how this season is viewed here. I’ve always been partial to autumn, even though it signaled the start of another school year for most of my formative years, but here I, too, love the spring. There aren’t many deciduous leaves in southern Italy, and the winter landscape still has a fair amount of green in it (nearly as much as Ireland’s, in fact). Spring, however, is when a green and brown world explodes into brilliant pinks, reds, yellows and golds as dozens of wildflowers burst from the earth like fireworks in celebration of the warmth to come.

It rains a lot during the Neapolitan winters, and no one hates the rain like Italians. This is a land entirely given over to celebration of the sun. Outside seating at restaurants may have an awning over most of their tables, but Italians will stand and wait indefinitely for a table inside if it’s raining. The great Italian hangout spots—walking along the promenade and the wide pedestrian zone streets, posing along the waterfront, lounging in the park—are all empty if there’s a hint of water from above.

“How was your vacation?” they’ll ask.
“Wonderful, we went to Ireland, we saw the—“
“Did it rain?”
“Of course, but we got to see the—“
“Oh Mamma mia, it must have been terrible!”

But spring signals the end of the rainy winter. The sun has come back from wherever you banished it, malocchio, and we can emerge from our sadness to once again live. The farm hands all have smiles on their faces as they ready the fields. Soon, gold then green stalks in narrow rows greet my morning bus ride into the office. April, here, is the cruelest month because you have to show up for work occasionally, and you can’t just rush outside all day to soak up the returning sun.

Jackets stay on even in temperatures well into the 70s, but the zippers get lower and the buttons start popping off one by one. Soon the men’s skin-tight shirts with impressive popped collars will be unbuttoned to the navel, and the girls will celebrate that which nature and a decent surgeon bestowed. The prosecco and caffe di nonno will be cold and the summer evenings’ warmth the subject of a million songs. But just now, when the chilly mornings make you debate wearing a jacket and the noontime sun nibbles at your ear and whispers of a hammock and a brief repose, the whole earth’s foreplay, like a lover, gives new life.