Lens-Artists PC: Surprise visit

First I intended to do a fun gallery for this challenge, a compilation of unexpected moments, but then one specific memory came up and wouldn’t go away, of the time when I was the most surprised in my life.

This April will be six years since I moved to Italy. Not even a month later, on the night before my birthday, amore was late from work without a good reason.

The dinner was waiting for him and I was anxious. I was so new that there was no bestia yet, for another month. I was so new that I didn’t know yet of the website where you can learn of train delays in real time (a bare necessity in Italy). When I finally heard noises outside and went to see, I gave out a little yelp and had to hold on to the gate.

Despite the fact that I fancy myself a bit of a detective, I couldn’t see the slightest sign that something was up. No hush hush, funny looks, strange questions. Amore arranged a visit by my parents together with them, for my birthday, without giving out a single signal. Deadpan, efficient, proactive, that’s him when he wants something. No wonder I am where I am.

And so my parents arrived for a day and two nights, the single biggest surprise and best birthday present of my life. It can be rivalled only by the SMS asking “How would you like to live with me in Tuscany?” but that is another story.

I hope that Leya – who asks for unexpected for this week’s Lens Artists challenge – and everybody won’t mind if I share today’s gallery with my father, no matter that this is a photo challenge and everybody should be posting own photos. All five photos with me in them, including the featured photo, are his and the rest are mine (taken with my first digital camera, a tiny Canon that you can see in one of the photos).

Our only day together started out windy and cold for May in Maremma but the sun showed up when we reached the beach.

And the next day it was two trains for them and about ten hours until Trieste, and then another hour to their home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Reaching me was not easy but so worth it. Thank you to all three. They return often, about twice a year on average, but you never forget the first one.

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  See how happy I was to have them there? I had this photo in my About me on my first blog.

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  First we went to see Capalbio on the hill. Our home is down below.

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  Birding for beginners.

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  How did Tuscany get to mean home?

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  Happy parents.

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  The view up.

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  Mom’s a supermodel. Posing like a pro…

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  …while actually it was THIS cold!

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  Poppies were out yet though.

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  Father is a pro too.

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  Niki de Saint Phalle’s statue Nana in front of the entrance to the walled town.

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  This access to our beach looks so different now, much more orderly and less wild.

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  Manja and the sea. I often answered the question “What would you like to do in life?” with “I’d like to live by the sea.”

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  Mom picked me flowers. ❤

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  The end of our beach at Ansedonia.

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  The sea was quite angry that day.

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  This is how it is here. Empty and old. Only the summers are busy.

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  In this house there is financial police. Really.

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  The next morning time to go yet. Mom is inconsolable one moment…

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  …and rapping about seeing each other soon the next. Thank you all for this memory!

For Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Leya of To See A World in a Grain of Sand…: Unexpected