The Little Lark Still Sings: A True Story of Love, Change & an Old Tuscan Farmhouse

By Victoria Smith

In this memoir of life abroad, a married couple discovers the charms and challenges of Italy when they buy their Tuscan dream home.

Happily married for two decades, Victoria and Larry decide to move to their favorite hilltown in Tuscany. But what begins as a romantic adventure soon becomes a drama of change and perseverance. Alongside Italy’s wonders—its beauty, art, architecture, food, and history—come the challenges of daily life in a foreign culture, surviving the chaos of construction, navigating narrow roads, longing for friends, stumbling with language, and so much more. As these struggles undermine Victoria’s confidence which, in turn, wears on Larry’s patience.

Though they share a dream, they discover their personal goals are different. His are to study and write, hers are to create the perfect Italian home and make friends. He needs quiet time; she needs his help. From the joys and near disasters of renovating an ancient stone farmhouse to celebrating their first Italian dinner party, Victoria learns about Italy, herself, and their marriage. In The Little Lark Still Sings, she shares their humorous and character-stretching experiences with uplifting insight and wisdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781631952203

Victoria Smith

The author spent seven years in the Middle East (primarily Iraq) working for a contractor that provided support to the U.S. Military. A native Texan, she lives with her family in the Texas hill country.

Book preview

June 2006

When I turned sixty, I intended to throw away all my underwear, empty the drawers of my life, and start over with La Perla. I never bought the fancy lingerie, but we did buy an old stone farmhouse on a hillside of olive trees where I learned more about Italy, marriage, and myself than I ever imagined. Moving to a foreign country was far more revealing than La Perla ever would have been.

Dreams Can Be Unsettling

We have landed in Italy, but this is not vacation. On vacation we would collect our well-packed bags, breeze through airport exit doors, claim our rental car, don our sunglasses, and drive south to relax in our favorite Tuscan hilltown, Cortona. But this morning we claim two luggage carts and pile them high with four maximum weight suitcases, three bulging carry-ons, a bubble-wrapped antique sconce I insisted on safeguarding during the flight, and a cardboard box Larry locates in oversized baggage.

As of today, Italy is home.

For three years my husband and I have worked to make this move. Year one, we chose a town, bought an uninhabited farmhouse surrounded by abandoned olive trees, and hired an Italian architect. Year two, we collaborated with the architect on restoration plans, then waited months for township approvals. During year three, we visited as often as possible, watching with curious anticipation as our Tuscan home grew out of a near-ruin.

Back in Chicago, we took Italian lessons and did our homework. We sold our city condo overlooking Lake Michigan and sorted through belongings, putting each item in one of four piles: sea-container for Italy, long-term storage, giveaway, trash. We assembled documents required by Italian immigration law including proof of financial resources, fingerprinted FBI clearance, and international health insurance. After long applications and personal interviews, the Chicago Italian Consulate approved our visas to stay in Italy more than ninety days. Lastly, we said goodbye to three parents, five grown children and their families including five grandchildren, and thirty years of Chicago friends. Larry and I had retired and were reaching for our dream.

But dreams realized can be unsettling. Even now, in the Florence airport with luggage collected, our move to Italy feels like something in the future. Perhaps it’s like this for everyone who yearns to live abroad, this disorientation when the day finally comes. I stand motionless in baggage claim, wondering what to do next.

Let’s go handle this box, Larry says, pushing his cart toward the sign for Dogana, Customs.

Trailing him with the second cart, I press the handlebar down with my right hand to unlock the brakes and hold my left hand atop the unstable stack. As I struggle to steer and keep up, my handbag slips off my right shoulder and lands on my bent elbow. I lose my grip, the handlebar pops up, and the cart jolts to a stop. Do I look as clumsy and conspicuous as I feel?

Larry is waiting at the customs counter. The stylish officer in his fitted blue uniform looks at Larry, then at me, and then at our luggage. He seems baffled. Larry gestures to the cardboard box and explains he wants to pago la tassa, pay the tax. The officer confers with his buddy nearby, then goes into an office partly visible through Venetian blinds and talks with a different agent inside. They rifle through a tall metal cabinet and our officer returns with a faded form.

Larry and I glance at one another. Can we be the first-ever foreigners to choose the Goods to Declare lane in the airport exit? We still need in-country approval for residency so would not even consider trying to sneak through with our brand new, high-tech sound system. Electronics are restricted imports in Italy, require customs tax even for personal use, and our box is not only big and new, the well-known American maker’s logo is proudly printed on every panel.

Larry writes the details on the form: name, address, description of goods and cost. The officer does a quick calculation and scribbles our tax on the bottom line.

"Cinquecentocinquanta euro," he says, five hundred fifty euros. I do the exchange in my head. Seven hundred dollars? Almost half the value?

Seeing my dismay, the officer strikes through 550 and writes 500.

"Sconto," discount, he whispers, leaning toward me as though it’s a personal favor. Larry steps between us, hands him the cash and takes our signed copy of the form, proof we complied with Italian law.

I hope the cash goes to the right place, I murmur as we exit with our carts.

Larry frowns and looks down. Shhh….

We push our precarious cargo out of the air-conditioned terminal into the sun, across the bumpy pavement to the car rental kiosk, then down the cracked sidewalk to the gravel lot where we find our silver-gray Volvo SUV, and organize to fit our belongings inside. Larry does the loading. I open the doors to let out some heat, perch sideways on the front passenger seat, and think about what we’re doing. This move to a foreign country is the boldest adventure of our married life and, though we expect it to be a dream come true, we cannot predict how it will turn out.

As we drive south on the A1 autostrada with cool air on full blast, I mentally retrace the evolution of this yearning. Our Italian honeymoon nineteen years ago exceeded our expectations. We’re both romantics. We enjoy superb yet simple food, fine wines, Renaissance and religious art, opera, history, and adventure. We returned to Chicago exclaiming, Italy has the best of everything we love! For the next sixteen years, before each vacation, one of us would ask, Should we go back to Italy or try somewhere new? At least once each year, Italy won our votes. When we were visiting three times a year, Italy had won our hearts.

We decided to try living there for six months. For one long winter, Larry and I rented an apartment inside the walls of Cortona, a small medieval town where we had vacationed with friends years earlier, and had returned again and again.

That winter, we braved bitter winds whistling between ancient stone buildings, climbed steep stone streets, cooked in dented pans on a toy-sized gas stove, ate amazing dinners in barely-heated restaurants, and laughed out loud when our freshly-laundered garments froze on the pulley clothesline outside our kitchen window. In thirty Chicago winters, I had never felt so cold.

But there were sunny days, misty and atmospheric days, leisurely car trips to Siena, Orvieto and Assisi, all within an hour’s drive, and easy train rides to Florence and Rome. Cortona had been eerily beautiful that winter, with church domes peeking through dense fog. Life moved more slowly. Conversations were completed. I stopped rushing.

New Year’s Eve, held in Piazza Signorelli, one of Cortona’s two main squares, was a family affair. The Comune, town government, provided endless bottles of Prosecco, Italian sparkling wine, and hilarious live entertainment. A few Cortonesi adopted us so warmly we forgot the cold. In all my life, I had never felt so alive.

Our decision to move to Italy was not running away. We had not lost jobs, split with a spouse or hoped to escape children or parents. Larry and I had met twenty-one years earlier and built a good marriage. He was and still is the most interesting man I’ve ever known. His penetrating eyes, pale blue with darker rims, disquieted me in our early conversations. He’s six feet two, lean and blonde, with gorgeous long legs. His upper body is narrow, as if his Creator had held his shoulders and stretched his torso upward when he was being formed. He carries his left shoulder ever so slightly higher than his right. Except for an aquiline nose, his features are delicate, like English aristocracy. When he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle and his chin turns up, forming a shallow dimple in his chin. My heart had quickened when he smiled that way, especially when he smiled at me.

It was impossible for us not to meet. His oldest child, Angela, and my youngest, Amber, were best friends in fifth grade, so I knew him as Angela’s dad long before I knew his name. One afternoon when Angela’s dad came to pick her up, he told me a mutual friend, Joe, had suggested he talk with me about being a single parent. He was getting divorced and would have custody of his three children. I had been a single mom for thirteen years and quite liked it. The girls were playing in Amber’s room, so I invited him in to chat right then and there. That afternoon, sitting on my living room sofa, I learned his name was Larry and that he was intense, smart, sensitive, and fascinatingly attractive.

Soon after, also thanks to Joe but unbeknownst to either of us, Larry and I were assigned to the same project for Kraft Foods. Larry, a Vice President at The Boston Consulting Group, was responsible for advising Kraft on business strategy. I worked for Needham, Harper & Steers advertising agency and led the team responsible for creating consumer demand. Before I knew Larry was on the project, our team had given it a code name to protect confidentiality: Project Romance. It was a market test of imported European cheeses, often called romance cheeses, under the Kraft brand.

Early in our work on Project Romance, Larry invited me for a sail on his boat, ostensibly to discuss advertising strategy. He brought a lovely plate of cheeses for us to sample as we sailed. About a mile off Chicago’s shore, a gale kicked up, Larry sat on the cheese plate and I got seasick. He still insists he was impressed with the way I hung over the hull and heaved my guts into Lake Michigan. He says he fell in love with me that very afternoon, which he now claims was our first date. The market test failed, but our romance flourished.

Larry was and is a deep thinker. From the beginning, I admired the way he engaged new challenges, analyzing every detail. Only thirty-two years old when we met, he was already a partner in his consulting firm. He loved to study history, art and theology. Every morning, he got up at five-thirty to read. He compiled excerpts and quotes, reflections and observations in a growing document he labeled his florilegium, Latin for gathered flowers. Though an introvert, he had no fear of new experiences and encouraged me to seize the unknown, asking about my dreams, stretching and supporting me in ways that were new to me.

Like most women, even more than how he looked or acted, I loved how I felt about myself when I was with him. For the first time in years, I felt pretty, smart and playful. I charmed him, he said, insisting I was the funniest girl, even though I’m not very humorous. He loved my voice and wouldn’t hang up the phone when our conversations ended, lingering and listening to me breathe, and then murmuring more goodbyes until one of us finally broke the connection. He looked at me in a tender but searing way that made me feel desirable and desired. My blood raced when we were together and my heart became wax. He was cute, competent and committed, and not the least bit intimidated by my success or independence. He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him and I felt it was true. I loved feeling known, more deeply than anyone had ever known me, respected and valued.

When we married two years later, we were blissfully blind. We merged our families of five teenagers — four daughters and a son — a dog, two cats, a hamster and a fifty-gallon tank of fish. The pets were from my side, as Larry and his kids were allergic. We both had full custody with no relief, even for weekends. My former husband had remarried and moved to Florida; Larry’s former wife took only one teen at a time. The early years were incredibly more difficult than we expected, but the kids endeavored to get along and the dog wooed Larry by curling up on his feet while he worked. By the time we considered retirement abroad, our kids were adults, some with kids of their own, and the pets were long gone.

Many of our reasons for moving to Italy were shared. We both wanted to experience living in a different culture while we were still healthy and energetic. But we had different dreams.

Larry thrives on the challenge of anything new and complicated. Living in a foreign country, learning a new language, restoring an ancient farmhouse with unfamiliar building techniques, materials and codes, and relying on a confusing and archaic banking system, would create a complex and compelling life for him. Once restored, our farmhouse on a hillside of olive trees would be an idyllic setting for reflection, contemplation and writing. He hoped to study, read and write without interruption. When we sent our belongings to the cargo ship, he announced he was not retiring, simply shifting focus from clients to study – like a sabbatical. A natural scholar with many subjects on his list to explore, I doubted he would ever go back to gainful employment.

I longed to live closer to the land. My parents were from farm families. My father was a university professor, but his passions were growing and building things. Dad designed and built my childhood homes, one in Statesboro, Georgia, not far from Savannah, and one in Carbondale, Illinois, near the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. In both places we had land. In Statesboro, Dad grafted different colored camellia varieties onto the same bush. In Carbondale, he specialized in chrysanthemums and roses. He named his new chrysanthemum with straw-colored flowers Krista, after my very blond little sister. His favorite rose, Peace, was creamy yellow with pink-blushed petal edges, ironically cultivated in France just before World War II. Dad raised corn, tomatoes, eggplants, green peppers, melons, pears, strawberries, raspberries, honeybees, hunting dogs, barn cats, chickens, ducks, geese, and horses. He built a downsized, hip-roofed barn to shelter our horses, store the hay he grew and bailed, and protect his aging miniature John Deere tractor. Next to the barn was a pond with a white wooden dock he built for fishing. As an adolescent, I sat on that dock for hours, reading The World Book Encyclopedia, writing lovelorn poetry, and catching bluegill on a bamboo pole with a red and white bobber.

Mom was a homemaker in the best sense, turning Dad’s houses into homes. She cooked, canned, pickled and froze Dad’s produce and prepared the comfort foods he liked best. His favorites were chicken-fried round steak and coconut cream pie. I preferred her deep-fried eggplant, home-caught catfish, and hushpuppies. When my girlfriends spent the night, Mom insisted on fixing their favorite foods. She made my clothes and taught me to sew. She hung the laundry on a retractable clothesline in our back yard. Mom’s giant white irises with yellow beards and exotic perfume were from her mother’s beds, carefully cultivated to preserve the legacy. She loved caring for our family.

I was the oldest. Jim was born two years after me and Krista came seven years later. I adored my family, the land, and our gentle, rural yet intellectual life. At age eleven, I decided I must be the luckiest girl alive.

Now in Italy, nearly five decades later, I am still a farmgirl at heart. I dream of picking olives and pressing our own oil. I will cook in-season vegetables from local markets or my garden, and shop daily for fresh bread unless I decide to bake it. I’ll make marmellata from the wild cherries, figs and plums on our land. And I will grow flowers and herbs that evoke aromas simply by their names: lavender, rose, jasmine, sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, bay leaf, lemon verbena and mint.

In my mind, I can see the gardens at our Tuscan home. There, I’ll write, play the piano, and learn to speak Italian by living life rather than studying a book.

While Larry continues to drive, I close my eyes, lean back in my seat, and take a long breath. Yesterday, my life was predictable. Today, I can’t even imagine what tomorrow will bring.

First Glimpse

What are you thinking about, my love, as you stare out that window instead of paying attention to me, Larry teases, pulling me back from my reverie. He looks across at me with a grin that lights up his face.

Oh… just imagining life in Cortona, I say, smiling back.

Suddenly he grips the wheel and jerks his head left. Our SUV swerves as a black Mercedes sedan zooms past too fast and too close. Larry glares ahead as the car gets smaller and disappears.

I hate the A1, he scowls. It’s a battleground. Seriously. Drivers are so aggressive it takes concentration not to get blown off the road.

He continues to grip the wheel and grimace. I think he may be over-reacting, but choose not to break the magic of our first day living in Italy. After an appropriate pause, I restart the conversation.

How ‘bout you? I ask. "What were you thinking about while I was not paying enough attention to you?"

Not much, just driving… wondering about the house, what life’ll be like. Same as you, I suppose.

Remember all those towns we tried? I start to chatter nostalgically, loosening my seatbelt and turning toward him. "And the house we bought four times?"

Choosing the town had been a serious project for Larry. Ever the analyst, he studied the map, identified which Tuscan hilltowns had easy train access to Florence and Rome, were big enough to have good museums, restaurants and cultural events, and yet small enough to offer a simpler Italian lifestyle. He wanted our town to feel Italian and be run by Italians. Choices narrowed, we stayed in several towns for at least a week, looking at houses with agents and imagining life there. Only Volterra, with its rich history, excellent museums and wildly rugged landscape, rivaled Cortona.

I had endeavored to give Larry my open-minded participation. For me, the choice seemed obvious from the beginning. Since we’d made friends in Cortona and had returned again and again, I thought it was already our town in Italy.

Describing our dream house was easy, finding the right one was not. We wanted to live on a hillside with olive trees — secluded, yet close enough to walk to town. The house, preferably ancient and stone, could be small, but needed space for a good kitchen, guests and a piano.

Early in our search, we had been intrigued by a house near Cortona with a worn date of 15-something carved on an interior keystone. It had been a refuge for Franciscan monks as they walked from town to town, the representative had said. Excited, we agreed on a price and both parties signed the deal, sealed with an escrow check. Back in Chicago, we received word that they wanted more money. Each time we made yet-another agreement, usually for a higher price, we celebrated with a bottle of Prosecco. Not long after the fourth deal and fourth bottle, Mama accepted a handful of cash from a foreigner who came to her door with a lesser but immediate offer. Our deal was dead.

Our first lesson in Italian real estate was that it does not follow American rules. The more important lesson, we now know, was how naïve we were.

I’ll never forget our first visit to the house we bought. A Cortona real estate agent, Lorenzo, had emailed photos of a stone farmhouse within walking distance of town. He was certain it was perfect for us. We looked at the photos, but concluded it was too small. Lorenzo urged us to reconsider. When we said our decision was final, he sold it to a couple from Rome.

When we visited four months later, Lorenzo, a native Cortonese, said he knew hundreds of properties and still believed this was our perfect home.

In his charming, lilting English, he said, The owners think to make a few improvements, only to look better… then to sell. They improve nothing yet. I have the keys. He smiled impishly and dangled the keys. We agreed to go.

We took Lorenzo’s car because, as he said, the house was impossible to find. After a hidden turnoff under a gigantic umbrella pine, the winding uphill lane seemed nearly impassable. From the long driveway, I peered ahead expectantly, but the house that emerged looked like a boring, single-story ranch.

Lorenzo rolled the car to a stop where the driveway petered out into a patch of weeds. By then, I could see the house had two stories, with a lower level built directly against the hill.

The main door was upstairs in the back. Cracked terracotta pots with dead geraniums flanked the door and the entry terrace was cheap industrial terracotta tiles. It was October. Crimson Virginia creeper dangled from the gutters, the only pretty thing about the place. A burned-out garage was on the terrace above.

Lorenzo unlocked the door, pushed it open, and motioned for us to enter. Once inside, I was even more disheartened. Everything, including the stone perimeter walls, had been slathered with whitewash. Whitewashed electrical cords, stapled to whitewashed plywood interior walls, ran up to bare bulbs and down to protruding outlet boxes — clearly not installed by professionals.

In contrast, the high ceilings with huge wood beams and terracotta tiles were nearly black, probably from centuries of smoke. A massive fireplace, the centerpiece of the main upstairs room, sat directly on the floor. The wood-beam mantle was held up by chiseled stone side pieces. One was broken, propped up with a wood stake.

Let’s look in here, Lorenzo said as he walked through a low doorway near the fireplace. We entered a modest-sized, corner room with two windows — we guessed a bedroom. It too had been whitewashed. Beyond this room was a long, narrow space containing a rusted shower stall, white enamel washtub on bent legs, and toilet with dirty standing water. I flushed the toilet to see if it worked.

Lorenzo led us back across the fireplace room to a smaller room on the opposite side. We guessed it was a second bedroom, but without a bathroom.

This is a total gut, Larry said conclusively, standing in the central room and looking around. The only thing worth saving is this fireplace.

No kidding, I thought silently.

It is like a camp, but not a house, Lorenzo replied, You will make it a home.

"Making this a home would be an enormous undertaking, I resisted. And I’m not sure it would be worth it. It’s even smaller than I thought and there are no closets."

At least we won’t pay for someone else’s bad renovation, Larry said, already imagining the project and ignoring my obvious lack of enthusiasm.

Ready to go downstairs? Lorenzo asked, moving us along.

At a hole in the floor, he stopped and looked down.

Is that the stairway? I asked, stunned.

Lorenzo nodded and smiled, offering his hand to help me. My eyes narrowed in disbelief. I took his hand.

The ladder had planks, not rungs, and each plank had a half-circle cutout on alternating sides. If someone started on the correct foot, they could climb down more like stairs, pulling alternating feet through the cutouts. I went down backward, gripping the sides, but started on the wrong foot and had to switch. The cutouts helped.

Downstairs, Larry could barely stand.

The ceiling is low because this was for animals, not people. In Tuscan farmhouses, the family lived upstairs and the animals below, Lorenzo explained.

They must’ve had pigs and sheep, not cows or horses, Larry mused, ducking under low beams.

The floor was covered with tiles, but I could imagine dirt and dung under my feet. It smelled moldy and felt damp. Every wall was whitewashed stone. The central room had no natural light, only a solid wood door to the outside. A bare bulb hung from a beam.

Larry and I followed Lorenzo through a low, wide opening to another room we guessed was a living room. Whitewashed stone benches lined the back wall. Lorenzo explained they were originally mangers for feed, filled in and bricked over to use for seating or counters. In this room, a small high window and a side door with filthy glass panels let in some daylight.

On the other side of the central ladder room was a heavy curtain. Following Lorenzo, I held the dingy fabric back and stepped down into the worst kitchen I had ever seen or smelled. Putrid odors of decayed food, kerosene and mold made me turn my head and suck air through pursed lips, avoiding the full impact of the stench. The only window was small, with glass panels clouded by grime. Below the window, a stained enamel sink leaned on uneven legs. An under-counter refrigerator door hung open and a coffee pot sat on the warped wood counter above, frayed cord dangling to the floor. Across the back wall were more mangers, filled in, whitewashed and gray with soot. A potbellied stove next to the door was likely the source. I tried to discern if this cave-like room could become a modern kitchen and could not imagine it. As I retreated back past the curtain, I touched the whitewashed stone wall and a chunk fell off, exposing black mold beneath.

Larry and Lorenzo had already escaped to the front yard and were looking up at the front of the house when I joined them. I turned and saw it: two stories of gray-brown fieldstones. Not grand, yet stately. Three windows were evenly spaced on the upper floor, two doors and a small window on the ground floor, all with gray stone frames. Its simplicity was surprisingly elegant and inviting.

Like the back yard above, the front yard was dirt and weeds. Along the entire front edge, less than twenty feet from the house, was a tall, dense hedge of dark ivy enfolding the house and obscuring any view of the valley. I wondered what happened in that hidden yard that required such privacy.

Despite the small size and crumbling condition of the house, we were enchanted. The posizione, position, was squisita, exquisite, Lorenzo said. Posizione in Italy is as important as location, location, location in America. He assured us we could walk to Cortona in under thirty minutes, rare for country houses. The property was steep and terraced with over a hundred olive trees, two streams and dense forests. The land, long abandoned, could be reclaimed into productive olive groves, and landscaping would transform the house.

"The house’s name is La Lodolina," Lorenzo explained as we walked back to his car. He said that in pre-postal times, before houses had numbers, even the most modest Tuscan houses had names. How egalitarian, I thought. Tenant farmers lived in homes with names.

"A lodola is a lark, so lodolina means little lark, he continued, opening the car door for me. This hillside is known for songbirds, especially larks."

That evening Lorenzo sent me an internet link to the song of the lodola. I listened over and over, imagining waking up to those melodious warbles, trills, and chirps. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare calls the lark the herald of the morn, because its song marks the new day. Francis of Assisi felt a special kinship to the lark because of its plain brown cape and hood, humble manner, and love for singing. Then I read that male and female larks have no real color differences and are monogamous. I was smitten.

We went for a second visit, accompanied by Francesco, an Italian architect who spoke English, and learned what La Lodolina could become. He believed the burned-out garage could be converted into a guesthouse. Tuscan law does not allow any increase in cubic meters of old structures, so the garage volume was molto importante. Upstairs in the main house, Francesco suggested combining the fireplace room with the smaller bedroom to make a large, open study-library-sitting area, adjacent to a single bedroom and bath. Upstairs would become our private space for working, reading, watching television and sleeping, warmed by glowing fires in winter.

Using modern building techniques to control humidity, Francesco said we could enlarge the downstairs rooms by incorporating into the house the scannafosso, the air passage between the house and the hill, traditionally used to control dampness. That meant the kitchen could be larger, we could have a small laundry area and powder room, and there would be space in the living room for my piano.

Importantly, he was confident we could get permission to lower the ground floor by digging into the hillside to create sufficient ceiling height. To feel more free, Francesco had said, taking an expansive breath and opening his arms toward the ceiling. Two inches taller than Larry, Francesco could not extend his arms upward because the overhead beams were too low.

Larry and I immediately went back to Lorenzo.

You were right, Larry told him, The house is perfect for us. We should have listened to you months ago.

We then learned our second lesson in Italian real estate: listen to local experts. The new owners increased the price by one hundred thousand euros without making one improvement except the whitewash. They would not budge. We paid.

The purchase was not difficult. There were no restrictions against foreigners owning property. After a local lawyer reviewed the contract, we went to the formal closing accompanied only by our agent, Lorenzo. Stefano, the Notaio, a combination lawyer-accountant-notary representing both parties, handled the proceedings flawlessly. Ilena, a caramel-voiced Canadian, read the contract aloud, translating the twelve pages of small type into English. Oral reading was a legal requirement to be certain both parties understood what they were signing, a law to protect anyone illiterate or foreign.

The sale was concluded with multiple signatures, a flurry of rubber stamps pounded onto the pages, vigorous handshakes and lots of kisses. It was a uniquely Italian experience, lasting hours and followed by a long, celebratory dinner.

Step by step over nineteen years, from honeymooners to homeowners, we were taking root in a foreign country. Once we owned the property, we fantasized about the house and our future Italian life. We worked diligently with Francesco on plans for renovation, ristrutturazione, which he reviewed with the Comune and submitted for approvals. After very few modifications, building permits were issued and demolition began. Scaffolding surrounded the exterior, the roof was removed, and the interior nearly gutted, saving only the fireplace, some interior stone walls, and the three-foot-thick exterior walls.

We have opened the heart, Francesco warned when the roof came off. Now we must do the surgery.

It was an enormous project. Every fragment that could be reused was saved. For anything new, we went on fieldtrips with Francesco to Tuscan artisan workshops. We relished every minute and every mile.

There it is! Larry says, lifting his chin toward a distant hill and again drawing me back to the present. One of us always says, There it is! when we first see Cortona.

Dusty yellow stucco and gray-brown stone houses with faded tile roofs nestle against the hillside, spreading like a bird’s wing across the lush green slope. As we get closer, domes, bell towers, and a lone umbrella pine create a jagged silhouette against a cobalt sky. At the summit, a bell tower and corner ruin of an ancient fortress stand guard. Bathed in sunlight, Cortona looks like one of those storybook towns vacationers wistfully observe from the window of a speeding train.

Snaking up Cortona’s hill, we pass Santa Maria della Grazie al Calcinaio, a landmark cathedral, active for nearly five hundred years. As we curve up and around the ancient gray stone structure, I open my window to breathe fresh hillside air, truly different than Chicago air, and admire the church’s perfect Renaissance symmetry and weathered gray metal dome.

Nearing the city walls, bells ring from the centro, city center, calling the faithful to Sunday morning Messa, Mass. I so hope we hear church bells at Lodolina.

We skirt the city walls with their massive Etruscan stone foundations from as early as 700BC, and take a single-lane blacktop road along the ridge overlooking the vast Chiana Valley. The road was once a Roman road, we have been told. During the Middle Ages, the valley below was a malaria-infested swamp, but today it’s the most fertile farmland in Tuscany. Looking south we see part of Lago Trasimeno, Lake Trasimeno, mostly hidden by the hill where Hannibal defeated the Romans in 217BC.

To think… this will be our drive to town. Every day. So much history, I marvel.

Larry inhales slowly, deeply. Less than ten minutes and we’re home. Are you ready for our new life?

My eyes open extra wide at such a big question. I guess it is a new life, certainly a new way of life. I wonder if Larry was reading my mind earlier when I felt disoriented, or if he has similar mixed feelings of apprehension and excitement. Life is funny that way, giving us opposing feelings and letting us wonder which will become true.

Though I can’t predict how, so early in our adventure, I sense our move to a foreign country, without friends or family, will change us — individually and as a couple. I expect our new life to be fascinating and our marriage to deepen, but this is an adventure. There are no guarantees on adventures.

The Hidden Door

Am I ready for our new life?

Wow, that’s a big question, I reply, catching my breath. This is not something to take lightly. "Yes… I think so. Are you?"

Larry nods; his eager schoolboy expression charms me.

His query makes me thankful our marriage is solid. A new life is a serious undertaking, and marriages, like these old buildings, need diligent tending. If it has a solid foundation plus loving upkeep, the structure stays strong and can support new endeavors. If crevices are ignored, the structure deteriorates. It’s a major project to restore anything left untended — houses and relationships.

I’m curious to see how we have changed La Lodolina, but I’m even more curious to see how La Lodolina will change us.

Larry eases the Volvo SUV down a steep, cypress-lined curve above Il Palazzone, literally the big palace. Its massive stone tower has dominated and defined our side of the Cortona hill since the Renaissance. Crowned with a double row of swallowtail crenellations, cutouts allowing marksmen to shoot but not be shot, this majestic tower’s true function was to impress. Its construction was started around 1520, long after noble families needed watch towers for protection from invaders.

Cardinal Silvio Passerini built Il Palazzone as a summer palace — with twelve decorative-only fireplaces — to proclaim his noble position. Appointed by his life-long friend, Giovanni di Medici (Pope Leo X), Silvio became governor of Florence, Bishop of Cortona, papal finance commissioner, and a Cardinal. Mostly due to the wealth Silvio accrued, the palace remained a Passerini family residence for four hundred fifty years, until 1974 when Count Lorenzo Passerini and his wife Lyndall donated the palace and its contents to the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa for use as a conference center.

Immediately below Il Palazzone, Larry turns onto a country lane nearly hidden between a soaring umbrella pine on the right and an ancient stone wall as tall as our SUV on the left. On the top corner of the wall stands a tiny shrine encasing a blue-and-white glazed tile of the Virgin Mary and Child. A cluster of wilting wildflowers is tucked inside.

His side mirror brushes blackberry brambles, iris blades, ferns, ivy, and red poppies, all clinging to the ancient wall. To our right are a dozen rows of well-tended grape vines, a farmer’s family vineyard. Down the hill, as far as I can see, are terrace after terrace of silvery olive trees. And at the bottom of the hill is La Pieve di San Michele Arcangelo, my favorite neighborhood church. Lombard Christians built it in the seventh century on the ruins of a Roman temple. It was renovated around 1000 and declared a Monumento Nazionale in 1907. A parish church for over a thousand years, services are still held most Sundays and the exquisitely unadorned sanctuary has become a frequent choice for weddings.

Larry… listen, I say in a hushed tone.

Frowning, he whispers, To what?

"Except for the birds and our car, there’s no sound."

Larry chuckles and steadies the wheels. We know this bad road all too well, having driven it dozens of times in the past three years, but we’ve never attempted it with such a big car or heavy load. He accelerates and skids around the first uphill turn. A dust cloud rises from tires spinning on loose gravel over dirt. This strada bianca, white road, as these country lanes are called, is a rutted, rocky trail, more like the set for a Jeep commercial than a proper road. Spring rains have left gullies and heavy construction vehicles have not helped. Larry presses up the hill and rounds the top curve cautiously, our car bouncing from side to side as it crawls over bedrock jutting into the road. I brace one hand against the dashboard and hold the door grip with the other.

At the top is an ancient lichen-splotched stone wall and, above the wall, a hunter’s stone cottage. The trunks of three cypress trees, planted too close to the tiny structure decades ago, encase the edges of flat roof stones in a row of toothless grins.

This is worse than ever! Larry says, now squinting. Once Lodolina is done, the builders must work on this road. We’ve got to get it back to pre-construction condition, which was bad enough. This is absurd.

After a flat stretch of another hundred yards, we turn right and slightly downhill onto a newly-graveled lane through a small forest. Our driveway.

Overhead, tree branches create a sparse canopy. Since I was a girl in Georgia, I’ve dreamed of having a driveway with a leafy canopy like Tara in Gone with the Wind. I’m sitting tall now, barely breathing. My earlier apprehension has vanished and I feel only joy and wonder. Flowering wild ginestra bushes, broom in English, grace the edge of the lane with bright yellow bouquets, welcoming summer and, I want to believe, Lodolina’s new residents. I take it all in like it’s my first visit instead of my hundredth. I hope it’s always new for me. Our car crawls in slow motion, my eagerness stretching time like a child waiting for Christmas morning.

Larry and I have visited every couple of months since construction began. The last visit was February, four months ago, our longest lapse. Francesco sent weekly email reports with photos to keep us up to date, but absorbing the real thing with my own eyes will be different than viewing parts and angles on a laptop screen. I stare ahead, but cannot see the house.

Where a trickle of water from a spring uphill makes a little ditch across our driveway, the forest opens to a vista of terraced olive trees and the blue haze of the distant valley. Here our driveway widens and the house starts to emerge. Yet my eyes are drawn, not to views of the valley or to Lodolina’s restored rooftop, but to piles of building materials lining both sides of the driveway for at least thirty yards. Half-used pallets of roof tiles, terracotta blocks, small wood beams, bright blue and red plastic conduit, flat roof stones, stacks of field rocks and heaps of rubbish have been here since construction began, but we assumed they’d be removed by today. Disappointments always come from unmet expectations, and this one takes us by surprise.

What a mess! Larry blurts, as he slows the SUV. "Did you expect this?"

Of course not. It’s awful. I’m not sure if he’s upset with the situation or with me. His tone says I should have warned him. Though he thrives on adventure, Larry does not do well with disorder.

For a fleeting instant, I wonder if we’ve made a mistake. Our life in Chicago was calm, organized and interesting; our home finished and furnished. I recall the day Larry suggested we try living in a foreign country. We’d relocated to the city only seven months earlier from a pristine northern suburb along Lake Michigan. Larry had wanted to move to the city for years. We designed our ideal urban home in a new, mid-rise condominium overlooking Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan. I thought moving to the city would satisfy his need for diversity and stimulation. But soon he was itching to move on. I, like most women, need my nest.

Tell me where you most want to live, I had pleaded. You can choose the location. We’ll build our dream house and I’ll make it home. Just tell me where.

He paused for a long, pensive moment and said, Wherever we’re not.

It was supposed to be a joke, but in every bit of teasing is a little bit of truth.

Wherever we’re not has become one of those iconic phrases we replay as we try to explain to friends and family why we’re moving so far away. Larry loves change and the challenge of wherever we’re not.

My sincerest dream for our new life in Italy is that Larry is happy here. If he is, I can be. But if he is not, it will be a long summer and a costly experiment. In a real marriage, unless each spouse is happy, neither can be. We’re still in the car and he’s already agitated.

Let’s hope it’s not this bad inside, he adds with more than a hint of sarcasm as he turns off the engine. We pause for a few moments.

Francesco is standing at the end of the driveway, grinning and waving with his wife, Rita, and architect-associate, Gabriele. Francesco had insisted we call when we landed in Florence. He said he wanted to guide our first inspection of Lodolina and, I suspect, explain a few things. Since he was kind enough to come on a Sunday morning, we suggested his wife join him. Gabriele, who has managed every phase of our project, wouldn’t miss today either.

When we first met Francesco three years ago, we had been impressed with his creativity and knowledge, thankful for his good English, delighted by his humor, and valued his desire to listen, consider our concerns and ideas and, without ego, design a better solution. I thought he was strikingly handsome, unusually tall for an Italian with broad shoulders, thick wavy black hair, searching dark eyes and a winsome smile. When I asked him why we should hire him, he said, playfully but not in jest, Because I am clever. Indeed, in addition to many other qualities, he has been very clever. It has been a charmed alliance, one Larry and I hope will blossom into a lasting friendship.

Francesco should have been clever enough to hide these piles, I say to commiserate, or tell us to expect a mess.

Looking at the bigger picture, Larry softens, It’s his only transgression in three years. I’ll bet it’s all gone in a couple of weeks, at least before we move in.

I silently disagree about the piles being gone soon, but this is not a time for voicing doubt. Larry looks at me, smiles, squeezes my hand in solidarity, opens his car door and says, Let’s go see our new home.

The materials unmentioned, we greet our welcoming party warmly, lightly gripping right hands as we lean forward to brush-kiss both cheeks, Italian style.

"Piacere," I say to Rita, who I have never met. A pleasure.

Turning to Francesco for reassurance, I ask, So! Lodolina is ready for us?

Yes, but of course. You will see, he replies, assured but modest, and gestures toward the house with his open hand, inviting me to go first.

I walk in anticipation, almost dancing down the driveway. Larry reaches to take my hand, probably to slow me down. I want to run ahead, but restrain my exuberance to remain part of the group. Stopped by the chain-link and orange plastic safety fence still surrounding the construction area, I peer inside. What I see makes me lower my expectations even more. Francesco unlocks the padlock and pulls the metal gate open enough for us to enter one by one.

The back yard is uneven dirt littered with rocks, broken roof tiles, a flattened cardboard box, bits of wire, pieces of conduit, wood scraps, and cigarette butts. There is a deep excavation surrounding the half-built guesthouse. Orange safety fences are everywhere. I glance at Larry, whose eyes have widened.

Toward the valley, a rusty corrugated-metal tool shed leans right. When I tilt my head in the same direction, Francesco explains. It blew over in a strong wind in March, after you were here. The workers needed a place to protect their tools, so they pushed it back up. It is still a little… leaning.

Like in Pisa, he adds, an ironic reference to the elegant Leaning Tower.

We step gingerly through the rubble to a narrow concrete slab along the back of the house. Originally this entry terrace was covered with broken tiles; now it’s newly poured concrete. My imagination starts to compensate. One must hold fast to dreams when reality is unpleasant. I imagine handmade terracotta tiles on the slab and, against the wall, three pots of waxy-leafed lemon trees with sweet white blossoms and ripening yellow fruit. I envision a grassy lawn, roses in bloom, jasmine climbing the stone walls, and an herb garden. Looking at the current scene, I wonder how long it will be before Lodolina has a level backyard without debris, to say nothing of a lawn or landscaping. I may need my imaginary gardens for a while.

Francesco’s voice reminds me of the reason we are here. For the first opening of the hidden door, he says in his endearing way. He puts his hand in his pocket like reaching for a treasure and ceremoniously offers Larry the key.

The hidden door, upstairs and on the back of the house, is tucked into a vestibule that, before our renovation, had been a family’s wood-burning oven. An outside oven, forno, was typical in Tuscan homes before electricity or indoor gas. Francesco suggested we move the back door there for privacy and create a small vestibule with a roof.

I am so curious to see your face, he whispers to me.

Before inserting the key, Larry pauses to run his hand over the thick chestnut planks in the new-but-traditional double door and admire the hand-chiseled ribbing on the new-but-traditional doorframe of pietra serena. This dove-gray sandstone is ubiquitous throughout Italy as church columns, streets and sidewalks, as well as window and door frames in grand palaces and modest farmhouses.

Gabriele snaps photos as he has throughout la ristrutturazione. Francesco’s firm must have thousands of Lodolina photographs. Someday I’ll put the best in an album, but today I’m focused on what’s behind that door.

As Larry inserts the key, I place my hand over his to share the significance. He looks down with that smile I love, his chin dimpled in delight. Every marriage is made richer by creating iconic moments to cherish. I sense this first opening of the hidden door will become one of our moments, like wherever we’re not. Simple, meaningless phrases in the abstract, they represent milestones in our union.

I wish Larry held a big iron chiave of centuries past, instead of a small stainless-steel key. He turns it several times, rolling back interior bolts to release the door’s modern, secure locking system. He gently pushes both doors open wide, then moves aside for me to enter first. I have the sense of stepping into our future — elated, but tentative, unable to predict what life at Lodolina will bring.

For the first time, I see the walls of pale peach hand-troweled plaster called grassello di calce, the ceiling with massive axe-hewn chestnut beams, floors of handmade rose terracotta tiles, all one soothing earth-toned palette. I take in the overall effect, then walk forward so others can follow.

It is perfect… just perfect, I whisper to Francesco, who is grinning broadly. We have seen all the elements arranged on a table in his studio, but not installed. They integrate better than I had imagined.

An elegant arch soars overhead in the center of the main upstairs room. We didn’t want an arch; Lodolina is too rustic. But the Comune, township, said they would not issue building permits unless we added an arch as a reading key to show that what we now call the sitting room had been two separate rooms. It will be Larry’s office, a library, our television room, and an overflow sleeping area for grandchildren.

"I’m so glad the Comune insisted on the arch. Look at it!" Larry says. The curve draws our eyes upward to the chestnut beams and bestows this simple farmhouse with unexpected grace.

I open a window, pulling both sides toward me like little doors, and push the solid chestnut shutters outward, flat against the exterior stone. Light floods in, magnifying the textures. The walls look like flesh-colored suede.

I glance at Rita and wonder if she interprets our body language and voice tone even though she doesn’t understand our words. She silently walks to a different window and opens it. By her clothing, manner and direct gaze, I surmise she has a curious mind, a strong sense of style, and some interesting opinions. But today she stays respectfully in the background. I wish I knew what she is thinking.

Lodolina’s transformation is remarkable. After one year of planning, three months for permissions, and thirteen months of construction, this space — once inhabited by a farmer, his family and their livestock — has new life, ready for our new life. It is rebuilt, re-wired, re-plumbed, re-walled, re-poured, re-roofed, re-plastered, re-trimmed and re-finished. The foundation has been reinforced and every crevice mended. It even smells new.

They buy a pod and make a butterfly, the geologist said when he came to inspect for seismic regulations to insure Lodolina can withstand an earthquake. He told Francesco that he had known this house for much of his life. We were touched when he described our renovation as the metamorphosis from cocoon to butterfly.

Larry, look at the fireplace. It’s clean… and fixed, I say.

The original pietra serena surround has been cleaned just enough. I love its chips and worn places that indicate age, more apparent since the grimy soot is gone.

Larry turns every iron latch on every window and shutter, pushing each wide open. A gentle breeze comes from the valley, surprising me on this still, scorching day. I lean out of a window to look all directions. Each vista is a postcard of Tuscan landscape. Larry squeezes in beside me, turning sideways since the window is not wide enough for two. I hear a tractor in the distance.

The views are breathtaking, I murmur, as though seeing them for the first time.

To the left, at the top of Cortona’s hill, stands a fragment of the stone fortezza, a Renaissance fortress with Etruscan foundations. About a third of the way down, a line of cypress trees encircles the hill. Six hundred cipressi were planted, one for each Cortonese soldier killed in World War I. Imagine, a town of less than five thousand residents losing six hundred men and boys in their prime. Most of a generation. The cypress-lined road is officially Viale Passerini, named for the noble family that built Il Palazzone, but townspeople call it Via della Rimembranza, Road of Remembrance. The cypress trees stand like soldiers, fifty feet tall, resolutely guarding their beloved town.

Near the fortezza, but beyond our view, reigns La Basilica di Santa Margherita, the church dedicated to Cortona’s patron saint. At the front altar, Margherita’s eight-hundred-year-old shriveled body is on display in a glass and silver case. In a side chapel, the names of the six hundred fallen soldiers are hand-painted, grouped by neighborhood. It is haunting to recognize surnames of people we know: Ghezzi, a local realtor and friend; Nocentini, owner of the town’s bookstore; Magini, the family from whom we rented our apartment that first winter in Cortona; Lovari, our builder-friend who keeps local monasteries and churches in good repair; and Rossi, a Cortona artist who carves exquisite sculptures in exotic woods.

Only one generation after the losses of The Great War, we’ve been told that occupying Nazis during World War II imposed a brutal retaliation: ten locals for each German killed. When a German soldier was killed near Cortona, Nazi soldiers lined up ten schoolboys before a firing squad. A local priest stood in front of them, saying, If them, first me. The firing squad backed down.

Larry and I see elderly priests in town and wonder who was the hero. When I asked an Italian friend which priest saved the boys, she said tenderly, Many Fathers did that. I do not know which one you mean. The wars are not only a part of Cortona’s history; they inhabit Cortonesi hearts today.

Still leaning out the window, but alone because everyone else has vanished, I look to my right, directly into two cypress trees — the same size as those along the road — and wonder if they were planted in memory of farmers’ sons lost in the war.

Beyond our cipressi is a long valley bordered by the foothills of San Egidio, one of the tallest mountains in Tuscany. The forested foothills fade one into the other, each more mysteriously hazy than the one before.

Across the stream, yet with intimate closeness, is a hillside of meticulously tended olive trees. Some terraces still have stone retaining walls. Three widely-spaced stone farmhouses are partially hidden by trees and shrubbery. Rising above the crest is the sagging roofline of a long-abandoned casa padronale, landowner’s house. Once important but deteriorating for decades, it’ll be a monumental project to restore. Near the bottom of this hill is a stone arch, perhaps once a small chapel, now mostly a pile of rocks overgrown with bushes.

High on a more distant hill stands a grand hunting lodge, a three-story, yellow stucco villa, built in the Renaissance by five leading families of Cortona. Locals say those families were so wealthy they could ride their horses from that lodge to Florence, seventy miles, and never leave their own properties.

I am struck by the sheer beauty of this land and want to linger at the window taking in every leaf and stone, but the others have gone outside.

Aren’t you ready? Larry urges, calling me from the hidden door.

Sure… I say reluctantly, glad we’ll move in soon and I can take my time.

We must go downstairs by the outside, Francesco says when I join them. You will see why.

Larry, Francesco, Rita, Gabriele and I step back through the debris and walk in single file down a dirt construction ramp at the side of the house. The front yard is like the back: dust and rubble. The old ladder, once the only stairs, is on the ground half-covering an empty cement bag. I make a mental note to rescue it.

From the lower level, Lodolina’s façade looks renewed, yet still stately. Scaffolding, surrounding the house for a year, is finally gone. Cleaning the stones, repairing patches, re-grouting and tuck-pointing was a grande lavoro, a big work, workmen told us.

By law, exteriors in our area must not change. We were not allowed to add openings, enlarge doors or windows, change the stonework, or alter any positions. Fortunately, there is great care to preserve the authenticity of Tuscan farmhouses, especially in Cortona’s Belle Arti area that includes our hillside.

Turning the same stainless-steel key, Larry unlocks the downstairs front door, now our main door for guests. This time I simply watch, standing close.

Shall I carry you across the threshold? Larry whispers as he looks up, his twinkling blue eyes and boyish smile tempting me.

You missed your opportunity upstairs, I purr. It would not be pretty to have him try to lift me, especially with an audience. Since he’s not serious, neither of us is at risk.

Downstairs, like upstairs, Francesco has attended to every detail and the quality of the workmanship is superb. We remove our shoes and step on sheets of styrofoam, strategically placed across freshly waxed rose terracotta tiles.

The ceiling height feels expansive with the floor lowered a meter, roughly forty inches, giving us the breathing space Francesco promised. We were