Corners of Expectations

What’s around the corner? In the case of the photo above, the answer is an elderly lady with a broom sweeping a cobblestone walkway in Montefioralle, Italy. She’s sneering at me in the photo that hung in my living room for a time. Given her displeasure of falling prey to a tourist with a camera, I’m not posting her sneer.

I enjoy the corners found in the country where what’s ahead is usually what’s behind. There was a beautiful bend in in the wood-lined road that ran past the house I grew up in. I could hear dogs and cars before I saw them—we were that close to the sharp turn that crossed over a stream before straightening for the stretch up the hill past our house.

My life-long fascination with what’s around the bend contrasts dramatically with the trepidation of people raised in a concrete city where corners attracted idlers and those up to no good. Too many children have never witnessed a winding country road except on TV where a monster often lurks just out of sight. I applaud programs that give inner city kids a chance to be in in places where streams replace gutters.

But not all my country corners were peaceful. At the age of 10 or so, I was chasing a basketball rolling down the road in the dark—remember, I lived on a hill. I overtook the ball, heard a noise, looked up and saw a gigantic horse with a rider masked by the dark coming right at me. I have never run so fast in my life.