Homes and apartments here in the South all have pretty shutters on their windows, most of them painted in prescribed shades of blue or green. When you cross over into nearby Italy this all changes dramatically, at least near the border. I don’t really know why; maybe it is just to make the statement, ‘we are not French.’ I love the moment each morning when we fling open the shutters of our private world and welcome in the new day. It is a ritual. It is a signal to our neighbors that this residence is occupied today, and that its inhabitants will welcome a discrete ‘bonjour’ spoken from the street below.
We almost always wait for the first church bells of the new day before we open up. Then we take note as the other shutters unfasten, one by one, telling us that the inhabitants are up. The tourists who made their presence known late last night, with their whisperings and endless cigarettes on the balconies nearby, may not respond to our invitation until mid-morning. The locals who leave for work at eight, may wait to unseal their shutters until they return home at the end of the work day. Eventually, all will respond in one way or another.
I hate to see the sad shutters; the ones that never wink at us, that never feel the warm touch of a hand on their ancient surfaces. Those across the rue from our home have not been open once since we arrived. They weren’t open last year either. We hear that the woman who owned the property may have passed away. Now that I think about it, we see mostly closed shutters on all our walks around the neighboring villages that border the sea. It may be the times of year when we visit, or that second homes may have a lot in common with the equally lonely boats we see bobbing in the yacht harbors. They were all once the joy of joys to their proud owners. Now they are burdens to be constantly paid for and maintained. Some have villa stewardesses to care for them. They are the lucky ones.
