Our main reason for returning to Florence was to Cosimo and Elisabetta, who have become dear friends.  However, there was one thing I hadn’t been able to accomplish on my last visit.  I hadn’t been able to attend the Puccini concert in Lucca in the chapel where he was baptized.

Cosimo was dear enough to drive us there (together with his faithful Adriana in his new Fiat!).

He was a dear and handsome as ever and I warned him severely against Hollywood.  The drive through Tuscany was lovely, and when we arrived at Lucca, we had to park outside and take a spooky passage under the city wall.  Cosimo had never been there and was almost freaked out by an entire city with no cars or scooters!  We quickly found the chapel and then had a bite of Pizza.

The Concert was thrilling.  They sing different arias every night, and I wish we could have stayed an entire week to hear all my favorites.  The soprano was superb, and the tenor smooth and obviously talented, but didn’t have the lung capacity to compete with the piano and the soprano!  But it was molto enjoyable.  I was thrilled, and determined right then, that a future trip must include Milan and La Scala and an entire Puccini opera.  He was such a genius.  His music stirs the soul in a way that I can’t describe.  It feels inevitable, as though we knew it well before we entered mortality.  It soothes and then exalts.  And to hear it where he was raised as an infant was a tender experience.

By the time Tuesday 5 am rolled around, we were indeed ready for home.  The flight was difficult, especially the 6 hr. layover in NYC, but I slept from there to SLC, from SLC to Provo (my son informs me that I snored), and once I found my bed I did not wake up until Thursday morning.

My grandchild was born sometime during that time period.  My sister called for a report.  I found I couldn’t remember the baby’s name, I was so deep in sleep.  I said, “It’s something like Milo or Malachi.”  Now, of course, I have memorized it and it takes me only a second to remember that it is uh, um, ah! Micah!!  The pictures Buffy has sent of Jack cuddling with him are making me way too anxious to see him next Saturday!