14 Apr Veronica
Corniglia
“Yes, I would have loved to have gotten married, mostly for the white dress. Yes, I know, there’s still time but at my age it would be ridiculous. When you get married here in the Cinque Terre there’s this tradition called the Benediga, it’s where they throw flowers and candy throughout the village.
I remember my mother telling me about her wedding day. She’d say, ‘Oh! Those candies were so hard, they were like pebbles!’
I also would have loved to have a child, around 40. But you know what? When you get old your children send you to a rest home. I don’t want to go there! So forget about the kids, maybe it’s better this way — at least I can decide where I want to die. The beauty of living here is that when you die, people notice your absence. This is most definitely not one of those places where cops discover a body at home two weeks after they died.What’s bad about living here is that neighbors are sometimes loud. I have moved three times since I returned home after living in Sardinia for a stint. I had so many dreams when I left, I was so young, but now those dreams are gone. In their place there’s serenity, the conscious kind of serenity that you inherit living in a place like this.”