Last updated: October 2026
This happened just before I moved into the village. I was in the middle of buying my apartment, and I’d nipped into the little village café to buy some bread.
As I was paying, an elderly lady sitting at a table asked me to join her for a coffee. I had the feeling she just needed a bit of company. So I dropped my shopping by her chair and happily sat down to a caffè macchiato and an Italian lesson.
Coffee and a lesson
We talked about the apartment I was buying and how exciting it all was. She corrected my Italian. I nodded a lot.
Then her mood changed.
She told me she’d had to shovel the snow from outside her front door that morning, all by herself, and now her back hurt.
I took a sip of my coffee, trying to work out how to put a sentence together, and noticed she was fighting back tears. They trickled quietly down her face. It was sad to see.
It wasn’t really her back
I offered to help next time. From her reaction, I understood it wasn’t the pain in her back that upset her. It was the other pain. Not being able to get by as easily as she once did.
For some people, letting go of that pride so someone can help is just as hard as shovelling seven inches of snow from your front door.
She pulled herself together quickly, like the proud lady she is. Then her face lit up, and she smiled again at the thought of me bringing my two little girls to live close by.
Spare a moment
I think about her every time it snows.
In these villages the young people mostly leave for work, and plenty of older people live on their own up steep steps and narrow lanes. A coffee, a chat or a cleared doorstep costs you nothing.
So always spare a moment for our elders. You might get an Italian lesson thrown in.
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Susan
