Yes, Capri’s Blue Grotto is mesmerizing. Yet it’s the burly men who smoke while rowing us through the grotto’s narrow, jagged opening who catch me most by surprise. 

When I mention the owl to the housekeeper Luisa, her eyes grow as wide and alert as the pygmy owl. Owls are a bad omen, it means someone will die, she says. Or, that you’ll have good luck. 

I have a wispy memory of the place where the neighborhood ended and the levee separated us from the river. If a hurricane had danced through back then, who knows if my parents would have had the resources or where with all to evacuate.