Last night, I slept with my windows open. This morning, I awoke to the sound of my neighbor’s rooster crowing as the sun was rising. For a few minutes, I just lay there listening, and remembering all the mornings I awoke in Europe to the sound of roosters crowing or geep bells clanging. For a few minutes, I was transported back to places I loved so deeply that I felt at home.
I miss living in Europe sometimes. There was a time when I had planned to retire and take a civil service job in Naples, but life had other plans. Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that my life has taken the twists and turns that it has, but I do miss living in Europe sometimes…
It was common to hear the sounds of farm animals, even when living in a town. Most places didn’t really have laws about having chickens inside the limits of a town or city. Since I always lived out toward the edge of whatever town I was living in, I often found myself surround by other livestock – primarily goats and sheep, or the infamous “geep” on Crete (more on these later!)! So, the cock-a-doodle-doo of my neighbor’s rooster, combined with the cool morning air, brought me back to a time and place where I was young and adventurous and happy, a time of freedom – no worries about mortgages or kids or whether or not I forgot the tomatoes at the vegetable stand (my Italian family grew tomatoes and I was always told to help myself!).
The heady scent and bright fuchsia of the bougainvillea was ever-present and remains one of my favorite scents today. On the rare occasion that I walk past somewhere and smell it, I am immediately transported back to the Mediterranean. I wish I could grow it here, but the winters would kill it. Perhaps I will try it in containers next summer – that would be a gorgeous addition to the pool deck!
In Naples, I lived just off of Via Domitiana, which was once the main road connecting Naples and Rome and remains the main coastal road. I heard the whine of scooters and the whizz of cars as they sped past the house, rushing to wherever they were going. My Italian family lived just upstairs, and I would frequently hear the girls arguing: Antonella, the quiet one with the raspy voice, and Laura, the loud one with the singsong, high-pitched voice that was always full of animation. I once told them that they reminded me of my two dogs: Cocco and Cesare. Cesare was calm and quiet, while Cocco was a bit frenetic and loud (Mom compared her to a velociraptor! She wasn’t wrong.).
On Crete, I lived on the edge of Chorafakia, in the Chania Province. My house was literally in the last compound on the road, and there was a herd (flock? FLERD?) of geep across the road from my place. The geep are a cross between goats and sheep, and the herders all put bells on them so they can hear where the herd is grazing. I never heard traffic noise, but the cling-clang of the geep bells was often the background music of my life there.
The geep across the road were in a fence, but that was not a deterrent for them, and more than once, I found them roaming on the road outside the fence. One morning, as I was drinking my coffee and preparing for work, Rafikki began pacing back and forth in the house and yodeling, signaling that there was something amiss. I came out to the living room to see what the fuss was about, and I watched as the entire herd went over the wall and around my walk-in gate, and pranced ever so gracefully down the steps and across the walkway in a single-file line before breaking off in two different directions upon reaching my patio. It looked like some sort of half-time show with the precision that they performed this maneuver. Now, Rafikki could not see out the windows, so I am not entirely sure how he knew they were out there, but perhaps it was some unspoken connection that he had formed with the head geep just weeks before while we were walking the road… ah, yes, my little “Geep Whisperer”! I knew that my landlords had just paid a lot of money to have the yard sodded, so I needed to get the geep out of there before they destroyed everything. I laugh now as I remember running around outside in my short pajamas while yelling, “YAAAAHHH! YAAAAHHH! YAAAAHHH!!!” at the geep and herding them toward the gate. I am sure that I was a sight! And, don’t you know? Instead of going out the driveway gate, which I had opened to make it easier to get them out of the compound, they pranced, one-by-one in a single-file line, back over the walkway, up the steps and onto the wall to go around my walk-in gate!
All this from a rooster crowing as the sun rose over Shipwreck Resort this morning!
❣️😍 loved this!
A very interesting post. Thanks for sharing.