by Shey Cannon

Created on: June 06, 2008

A FINE VINTAGE WINE

I placed the tattered box onto the dining room table and pulled out an object that made my grandfather's weathered face beam with delight. Taking it from me he sat thoughtfully in his wheelchair, wiping the dust from its antique body and reflecting in silence.

" My goodness, has it really been this long?" he smiled again and carefully placed the object down into his lap.

" It feels like only yesterday when i was a boy. Me and my friends would regularly run barefoot through the dry, dusty streets of Castello di Castagnoli"

Turning his head slowly, staring out the big colonial window, he watched my four year old daughter play on the sunlit lawn. The smile never left his face as he closed his eyes beneath the warm coppery light.

" I remember, vividly," he continued, in his aged, husky italian lilt and scratching at his silvery white whiskers.

" All of us kicking this tatty leather ball that belonged to my friend, Vincenzo's father. Signora Bellasconi swept these brittle heap of leaves from her doorstep every morning, always singing. Ahhh, she had to be the most beautiful widow in all of Tuscany!"

He opened his eyes and turned to look at me as i sat down at the table listening to every word he spoke. He giggled as he went on with his childhood memory.

" She had this mad, unhinged canary, Ciao Ciao, that flapped and squawked relentlessy in the sweltering heat, and it would always, i mean always, crap on her red and orange flowers she had in the window box"

Lenita, my daughter squealed with delight in the garden as she tried to catch a butterfly in her fishing net. She would sway the bamboo handle to and fro but, the butterfly always fluttered away onto the face of the next sunflower. My grandfather chuckled, slapping his lap and proudly chirping,

" Just look at that! Bella!"

After a few moments passed he placed the object on to the window sill in front of him.

" All the men in the village were in love with Signora Bellasconi, including my father, i believe. She was young. Too young to be a widow, anyway. I remember some time later, I was no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. I watched him secretly for days, as he snuck into Raul Valenti's orchard and unworked a couple of cratefuls worth of fruit from their branches. Raul never knew this, of course."

He turned and looked at me again though he was still deep in his reverie. I smiled at him proudly.

"It was early morning and i remember being more amazed at the colours i was seeing rather than my father pinching

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