A "So Long" Solstice

This past Thursday evening, after loading my two youngest children into the family car to attend a parent-teacher conference and end-of-school-year aperitivo with their classmates in Florence, I promptly ran over our 19-year-old cat Silvestra as I backed out of the top section of our driveway. I was not in much of a hurry (although we were still late to the event due to heavy traffic) and I didn't roar down the drive. I didn't even realize what had happened until around 30 minutes later, when one of our guests called to say that Silvestra was limping about, meowing loudly and bleeding heavily.

My eldest son Elio was soon on the scene, and he prompty took Silvestra to a nearby veterinarian where injuries were assessed and the decision taken to put her down. Giovanna and I were still in conference with Max's teachers. Numb from the news, I asked Elio to say goodbye for us.

A deep sense of loss and a long night of second-guessing, as shock turned to grief, followed. Silvie had been with us since the spring of 2006, when my kids found her, not four months old, moseying about by our swimming pool. From that day and for many years, she was the "family cat". While the kids and I lived abroad from 2009 to 2012, she grew particularly close to my mother. And after my mom died in late 2023, it was as if a part of her remained present in Silvie. Deaf as a post in her old age, Silvie's meows were sharp and strident. We all sensed something of a rebuke in them, and also a claim to her share of the attention which, over the past couple of years, she'd had to share with new arrivals (there are four other cats in our care).

Over the past many months I'd noticed that Silvie was ever slower to move away from large moving objects, be they whirring lawn mowers or clattering wheel barrows. And, like all cats, she had an unnerving tendency to shade herself, even sleep, under parked cars. I might have checked around and under our vehicle before starting the engine, but I didn't. She either didn't hear the engine start or wasn't able to move away fast enough. The top portion of our driveway is paved with large and irregular flat stones, so the soft bump that was her midsection didn't even register as strange. We just drove away and left her there.

It's been a week of difficulties, leading up to the summer solstice, and this loss was the capper. Several days earlier one of our guests alerted me to a non-working AC unit in one of Begonia's bedrooms. It was a Sunday, no chance to set up even an emergency service call, so they had to endure a night of fan-no-cool: a drag considering how hot it's been. The next day the techs came in, after which the unit performed a bit better, but within 24 hours was back to mostly blowing room air, not cooling it. Another pair of techs came, and replaced a part, still to no avail. The problem may have been correctly identified yesterday evening, after a fourth service call. These are top-end, brand-new Daikin units which were installed in March. The old units, still working well after 15 years, were replaced, at considerable expense, precisely to avoid this situation.

The heat has brought other problems. For the first time in nearly two years we had to call in a water truck, since by June 14th Poggiosole's spring and cisterns had run dry. Considering the record-breaking rainfall starting last October and running through early May, to have to truck in water this early in our dry season was very dispiriting. And you don't have to venture too far into our upper grove to note that several of the olive saplings we planted in 2023 are suffering mightily from the dry weather. I'd marked my calendar to start watering them at the end of June, but, after we re-filled our cisterns, I moved that up 10 days, and was out at dawn this morning giving each of them 30-40 liters.

To have old Silvie die such an agonizing death alongside all the rest has had me reflect on how far we go to keep all the balls in the air, planning and stretching, throwing money at problems and improvements, doing "whatever it takes" and running the tightest ship we can only to crash regardless (sometimes) into disappointment and grief.

After I finished watering saplings this morning, with the help of a small backhoe I buried Silvestra at the top of our lower grove. She'll rest next to Graffione, one of a litter of kittens born here at Poggiosole in April 2024. Last November, just seven months old and zipping about everywhere and endlessly, he was hit by a car on the asphalt just outside our front gate. Odd as it may sound, when I found him laying stiff on the side of the road after a call from our neighbor it brought me some relief to see his squashed head. Unlike Silvie he had been killed instantly. The young buck who didn't manage a single year and the old lady who soldiered through almost two decades will now keep each other company, him darting up and leaping from tree after tree, her braying like a goat, even in the afterlife.

And with a nod to Whitman's poem, I promise my next post will be happier.