When you’re younger, you usually choose your friends, in large part, on the basis of proximity. You’re stuck in your hometown, whether you’re happy there or not, not by your own choice but by your parents choice. The people who come to be your friends are also stuck in place, so your options are culled from a circumscribed pool.
When we’re older, however, the pool of friendship widens, and we’re able to have close relationships with people who live in other towns, other states, other countries. We now bond over the deeper things we have in common, as opposed to creating bonds because we’re starting out life in the same locale.
As my dear friend John Viola often likes to say—Sharing blood makes you related, but sharing values makes you family.
I’ve been in Sicily for the past two weeks with my husband and son, along with our friends, including John, and Stuart and Shaye Elliott of The Elliott Homestead. It’s been a special experience to share these adventures with friends who see the world in a very similar way. Even more so, we’ve been spending time with Italians here in Sicily who, even though an ocean and time zone away, also live by similar values.
It often feels like the world is marching to a different beat than the one I feel in my heart, but here in Sicily, that hasn’t really been the case.
I want to tell you about two of my Sicilian friends, Fabio Sireci and Melissa Muller, stewards of Feudo Montoni, an organic farm and winery in Sicily’s interior, which is situated on a property built in 1469, more than three hundred years before America even became a nation. To me, Fabio and Melissa are kindred spirits. They value their families, the land, their history, their culture, and the work that they do. They see themselves simply as the current caretakers of a timeless property, including the grape vines, some of which are more than two hundred years old. The grapes are picked by hand, grown in accordance with nature and with respect for the ancient land that nourishes them. They live surrounded by natural beauty, their children and families, and in friendship with their neighbors.