For me, there is no more exhilarating an experience than being suspended in a warm sea with sparkling visibility. In this weightless realm, voices and terrestrial sounds vanish while other senses are intensified.

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.