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That cooler air

Sandra waited September. She waited since June 29, the day when the family moved bag and baggage to Ischia, carrying mattresses and even refrigerators. The school was finally over, Sandra with siblings and cousins disembarked by ferry on the day of St. Peter and Paul with a vibrant happiness made of waiting. The “promised land”, she called in her heart, and she thought about which foot should touch the ground “coveted” of the green island.

From the first evening, the ‘pizza a Ponte’ by “Di Massa” - but then we always ended up eating meatball with red sauce running down the sides of the meatball stuffed with mozzarella - among the stalls of the festival. In the air, the prohibited smell of cotton candy, roasted almonds and nougat, those plastic toys colorful and alluring terribly “peasants”, water guns, soap bubbles and tambourines, was the beginning of an endless summer. Yes, because the summer in the sixties never ended. In Naples, it was back to the beginning of October, with the reopening of schools. The beach on the Lido, then huge - the parents, to get from the boardwalk of crabby Mimi until the first row of umbrellas, bathed with buckets hot sand – was the immutable theater, serene and vociferous of long months of July and August. Perhaps it was a little bored, every day alike, with Mom who chased us to smear on the body Nivea cream (protective!). We plunged with a running start and that pangs of hunger almost painful to the stomach when passed the small man in suit white. Oiled hair and a large scented tray brought into balance between the shoulder and the arm pointed on hip. “Graffeeee”, screamed, but Sandra knew that she would never have that inviting bite fried donut sprinkled with sugar grains. Then we came back home, everyone at the table at two o’clock, after a shower and a clean shirt, with the requirement of the “rest” in the hottest hours. However, Sandra, on time, closed the door and went out the window going to “hunt” of newborn kittens in the pine forest that no longer exists. There, behind ‘Piazza degli eroi’, there was only a large pine forest bordered by Via Variopinto, small hotel Geronda and joinery where Sandra, Cicci, Antonella, Piero did do - secretly - long wooden swords for their battles with Ischians for winning the “fortino”, a rock raised through a pine forest. In the afternoon it was allowed back down on the beach where we were going to play “in caps”, behind the colored cabins of Bagno Sirena, doing the “track” with the butt of Piero, the more round and light-weight, which was dragged by the feet on the wet and compact sand. It was a party when we rarely left to have breakfast on the beach and mom went down later with the picnic basket full of rice balls and breaded cutlet freshly made ... Sometimes, but only when the grandparents arrived, it was allowed to book Ciro and his white horse to go up to Mezzocammino by horse drawn carriage. However, Sandra waited September. She waited that air finally cooler in order to wear the “pullovers”. She waited for those autumn afternoons when people planned to go around the island and stopping to eat bread and salami (only in September, only in Serrara Fontana) on the breathtaking terrace suspended on the sundown and Sant’Angelo.