Lunch, Olives, and Peace on Earth

Day 3

We gathered with ex-pats of one degree or another — a dozen or so adventurous souls from the U.S. and Australia who have transplanted their endemic roots to this ancient village. This is a swing time for the English speaking fellowship within this Italian village.  Some have just returned to Spello after a season away; others are preparing to leave for a time.  The luncheon was a chance to convene in the brief overlap.  Few of the group had visited this new oileria which had opened during the summer, and so was met this happy constellation of benefits — fellowship, culinaria, and support of a new local business.  

A single long, wood-plank table dominated the space.  After greetings and introductions we took our seats and the festivities began.  The proprietor introduced us to different varieties of olives from different regions, in different degrees of ripeness, moving on to the oils derived from them.  We sampled them on breads, moved on to vegetables — potatoes, cabbage, shaved fennel, zucchini— and ultimately hand-crafted pasta, with a post-scripting dessert conspicuously devoid of olive.  

In the course of our experience, a couple on the sidewalk outside paused at the door to inquire about lunch.  Virginians themselves, the two were visiting Spello for the day and, as it turned out, there were two empty places at the table.  They gratefully but hesitantly took their seats, and before long their English happily merged with our own.  They were a few courses behind the rest of us, but never mind; we weren’t in a hurry and our host could juggle the sequencing.  The food and the mountain, the commonalities and conviviality quickly enfolded us.  Strangers dissolved into friends.

What is the enzyme that enables such bonding to occur?  Is it the rarified air of mountainous antiquity or simply the common cause of meeting on foreign soil?  Is it the truncated nature of our acquaintance — a clean start devoid of the trailing stories, entanglements, misjudgments that often stain our presentiments and hobble our interactions?  Is it the stage of life that delivers us happily beyond our former competitions?  Is it the food or the wine or a shared exploratory curiosity?  Is it the possible but unlikely providence of a congregation of disparate individuals who simply “click”? 

All of these or some combination or some factor altogether different?

I haven’t a clue.  I only know that in the company of occasional neighbors, recent arrivals and total strangers it was present around that table.  Lives effortlessly mingled.  A different kind of oxygen filled the lungs of our soul.  Smiles flickered like holiday lights.  And hours passed.  The church bells above the piazza rang four o’clock as we pushed our chairs away from the table and bid each other farewell until who knows when.  

And I know how much I wish I could distill it, cultivate it and disseminate it freely like open-pollinated seeds.  

Because the world could use more of this kind of fruit...

...and the olive branches from which it grows.