January 1, 2012

After days of chilly wind and rain, 2012 started just purrfectly.

There was bright white sun on the piazza.

And a gigantic, baroque Kiss-Fest.

I smooched with my newspaper-tobacco man. I don’t know his name, but he held me in a tight embrace.

I pecked the pink cheeks of the myopic, eccentric composer who once invited me and my husband into his house to show off his antique objets, family coat of arms, and pianos.

I kissed the village aristocrat, who towers head and shoulders above all the other little men of his WW II generation.

My husband, a rather shy and undemonstrative sort, had to embrace these same men. Their abrasive stubble unnerved him, and he got his sunglasses tangled up in the specs of the myopic composer. “I’d only let Sicilians get away with this,” he said.

I did not get photos of him cringing and doing the Sicilian Smooch-Smooch Ritual (darn), but here are others from New Year’s morning on the piazza:

brioscia integrale con miele

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