The Personal Atlas of Known and Unknown Lands

  
Left: The two globes in the Sala Tassiana of the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai in Bergamo.
Center: Coronelli's two globes.
Right: Terraqueous Globe detail of Japan.

If you walk into the Sala Tassiana of the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai in Bergamo, the first thing that catches your eyes are the intricate ceiling frescoes. After that your eyes will naturally be drawn to two enormous globes positioned on the southwest side of the room overlooking Piazza Vecchia. The globes are by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650 - 1718), a Venetian friar, cosmographer of the Serenissima, and enthusiastic compiler of the world as it was understood in 1688.

Each globe is so large you have to walk around it, let's say orbit it, several times to take it all in. One globe is for the heavens (globo celeste) and one for the earth (globo terracqueo). Each globe has a circumference of 3 meters and 33 centimeters and is made of 50 sheets of paper, printed as segments that adhered to the spherical surface and watercoloured.

The terrestrial globe, in particular, is a kind of time capsule of global knowledge. Australia drifts at the bottom like a partially remembered dream — its outline incomplete, its proportions speculative. North America is traced confidently along the coasts, but the interior is a vast narrative improvisation: mountain ranges guessed at, rivers wandering like afterthoughts. Coronelli’s coastlines are often sharp and surprisingly accurate; the continents’ insides are where imagination filled in for evidence.

Standing before the globe, you can't help but fell the tug of its contradictions, the authority of its ink paired with the tentativeness of its knowledge. A world rendered boldly, yet only partially known.

Thinking about cartography and old (half-wrong) globes, I realized I’ve been carrying around a map of my own that has just undergone its own quiet redrawing.

Terra Incognita and Other Honest Admissions

Old maps leave blank spaces where knowledge fails. Terra incognita or the famous "unknown land." People often imagine all medieval maps saying “Here be dragons,” but only one globe actually used the phrase. The Latin version hic sunt dracones appears on the Hunt–Lenox Globe, a tiny copper sphere from the early 1500s, and its presence says more about us than about geography. Still, the myth persists because it captures something true: when humans face the unknown, we fill it with monsters.

Cartographers, ever resourceful, handled their ignorance with style. If they didn’t know what was inland, they placed a camel caravan or a decorative wind god in the region. The message was simple: We don’t know what’s here, but we’d like you to admire the artistry anyway. And sometimes the flourish was enough. Hic sunt dracones was less a warning about danger than a placeholder for everything cartographers couldn’t yet explain — a polite way of saying, “Your guess is as good as ours.”

I’ve been thinking about these blank spaces, how every map is as notable for what it includes as for what it admits it cannot.

And how, quietly, the same is true for the maps we inherit in life.

We’re often told these inherited maps are authoritative with their fixed borders, fixed routes, and fixed loyalties. They come bundled with warnings about venturing too far outside them. But like old globes, the authority doesn’t always match the accuracy.

On Personal Maps and the Places That Go Blank

Each of us begins with a kind of inherited map: family on one shore, childhood landmarks on another, a river or two connecting everything. It isn’t a map we draw ourselves. It’s issued to us, like a passport full of destinations we didn’t choose but learned to navigate.

Lately, two parts of my inherited map have slipped into blankness.

Not dramatically. No earthquakes, no torn parchment. Just… absence. One region faded through time and paperwork. Another through silence and distance. Two old territories that once felt central but now feel as if the cartographer simply put down the pen and moved on.

I’ve been surprised by how strange but right this feels.

Sometimes seeing the final outline of an old map complete with its omissions, its boundaries, its blank spaces is strangely clarifying. A territory I once assumed I belonged to turns out not to include me after all. Its borders close, not with malice, but with finality.

And like the medieval mapmakers, I’m left to decide what to put in the newly empty space: a dragon? A sea creature? A polite label that simply reads terra incognita?

Or nothing at all.

The Portolan Problem

Portolan charts were practical medieval sailing maps that showed coastlines with astonishing accuracy. Harbors were carefully sketched, headlands crisply rendered, wind roses scattered across the seas like compass confetti.

But the interiors? Blank. Portolan charts didn’t depict inland geography at all, not because the mapmakers lacked imagination, but because sailors simply didn’t need that information. Their job was straightforward: help you avoid running your boat into things.

This is oddly relatable in my own personal cartography. I know the coastlines of things, the visible contours of family stories, the major events, the places where people intersected with my life. But the interior terrain? The motivations, histories, silences? The land routes that might explain how these regions evolved?

Never mapped. Maybe never mappable.

Seeing the final shape of an inherited relationship sometimes feels like standing at the edge of a portolan chart: coastline crystal clear, interior completely unknown. And that’s just the nature of the document.

   

Left: Vincenzo Maria Coronelli's Globo terracqueo.

Center left: Terraqueous Globe - portrait of the author, dedications to the Republic of Venice and to the Doge Andrea Morosini.

Center right: Terraqueous Globe - showing the California Problem - California as an Island.

Right: Vincenzo Maria Coronelli's Globo celeste.

Aging, the Slow Redrawing of Continents

If family drafts the first edition of our personal atlas, aging is the relentless editor who arrives later with new measurements, a sharper pencil, and no patience for outdated geography.

I’ve noticed how aging quietly redraws my internal map in ways I didn’t authorize: 

• Hills I once sprinted up now have contour lines I’m obliged to respect. 
• New territories appear, which I never noticed before, while old ones recede.
• Bodily limits creep in like rising sea levels, reshaping the coastline. It’s not loss exactly. More like the natural erosion of certainty.

Aging teaches you that maps are temporary. Bodies change, habits change, desires change. The bright red “you are here” dot keeps sliding when you’re not looking.

And yet the movement brings its own kind of curiosity: What new shore is this? When did this path appear? Who added this mountain?

It's the same impulse that kept old cartographers revising their work — not despair, but discovery.

On Living with Blank Spaces

What is interesting about old maps is how their creators handled uncertainty. They didn’t erase the world when they guessed wrong. They didn’t tear up the parchment because a coastline had to be redrawn.

They just corrected it. Layer by layer, year by year.

A map was never a pronouncement. It was a working draft.

I take some comfort in that. The blank spaces on my own map — the ones left by two relationships that no longer hold coordinates — don’t need to be filled in. They don’t need dragons or speculation or a desperate search for forgotten detail.

They can remain terra incognita.

What matters more is the rest of the map, the life unfolding around me minute by minute, person by person, hill by hill. The routes I return to again and again. The territories of curiosity I didn’t know existed until recently.

As with old maps, the ongoing task isn’t to restore what’s missing. It’s to keep drawing.

The Beauty of Being Wrong

Perhaps we love old maps because they’re wrong. The distortions, the extravagant guesses, the charming errors reveal the world in transition. They show how much we’ve learned and how much we once didn’t know.

Maybe personal maps are the same.

The edges blur, the borders shift, some regions dissolve. New ones appear out of nowhere, like volcanic islands rising overnight. The dragons turn out to be shadows. The silence becomes a kind of border. The blank spaces stop asking to be filled.

Sometimes a map becomes more accurate not by adding detail, but by letting certain regions fade.

When I look back at the maps I’ve drawn at different moments in my life, what I appreciate most is not their accuracy but their evolution. Each one captured what was known at the time with the contours I could see clearly then. And each one changed as new information arrived and old assumptions fell away. In retrospect, the revisions matter more than the originals. The places where the coastline was guessed at. The parts where I ran out of ink. The occasional sea monster, added for charm.

Because a map, after all, is only interesting when it’s still in progress.

Notes on Deaths and Houses

Missing the missing ~ Our house ~ Deaths in houses ~

Closures ~ Photo justice ~ Flutes and whistles

We sold our house. In the middle of preparations to do that my father died. I was surprised that I was more upset over the loss of our house. Before you think of me a cold-hearted person, please let me explain, because I’ve had many years of mourning for my dad but not for the house.

Missing the missing

My dad and I were not close. I loved him and he loved me, but we weren’t close. I wish we had been. He was somewhat present when I was growing up, but we were 4 kids, he was running a business, he participated in the Lion's Club and Elk's Club, he liked to bowl and golf, and he had a situation at home that made it easy for him to want to stay away. A less-than-civil divorce when I was 14 didn't help matters. Could I have reasonably expected that after the divorce our relationship would have improved? No.

After some initial anger, I accepted that we just didn't have that relationship like some of my friends had with their dads. 

I little tinge of regret came back to me seeing my younger stepbrother at dad’s funeral. He was born from a subsequent marriage, which also ended in divorce but much more amicably. He grew up close to our dad, who gave him more attention than he ever gave me, at least by my reckoning. I’m happy that my stepbrother had that.

My stepbrother would be missing dad more than me. Being at the funeral service was more visceral for him and more abstract for me. I didn't have to go back to dad’s house and see dad's last cigarette in the ashtray. My stepbrother did.

Some math. My dad died at almost 90 years old. The first and last 30 years of my dad’s life trumped the middle 30 if you ask me, and I suppose in a way that was good because he seemed to achieve some degree of happiness in those two non-consecutive 30 years spans. The first 30 years: young, handsome and happy-go-lucky. The last 30 years: successful third marriage and family life. Unfortunately, I appeared in my dad’s life in that second 30-year span that wasn’t so happy – again, my opinion. The second 30-year span had lots of chaos and a bitter (upgraded the adjective thinking about it) divorce. After the acrimonious (new adjective) divorce, our relationship never went beyond an already limited one. So yeah, I loved my dad and miss him but had been missing him for some time.

A bright spot: in the last few years, we started to get a little closer as adults, with less focus on the past. Unfortunately, that getting closer got cut short with a call one morning on my last birthday with news of his death.

Despite the period of my dad’s life I appeared in, it nevertheless felt awkward that I wasn’t consulted in writing or contributing or reviewing the obituary or for any funeral arrangements. I know that the last 30 years of my dad’s life were important, but to write my siblings and me (of the same mother) off seemed to be an oversight. Perusing the photo boards posted at the service, out of 250+ photos I saw four of me and zero of my partner of 35 years. The lack of photo representation emphasized what I guess I already knew: my relationship with dad was tenuous. But what does it matter now, it’s just a photo board my partner - voice of reason - reminds me one day months after the service.

Our house

My partner and I lived in our house in Seattle, ironically, for about 30 years. We fell in love with the house at first sight. We lovingly remodeled it and had many good times in the house. You could say we had a strong relationship with the house. We had skin in the game with it. It was our first home that we owned. We grew up in the house so to speak.

Selling it was bittersweet. It was sadder that my dad’s passing in a way because there was more “relationship” lost in selling. And the loss was fresh, rawer.

But really, the selling of a house affected me more than my own father’s passing? I struggled to slap myself out of this feeling, but I couldn’t.

Unfortunately, my dad never came to visit my house, my life in Seattle. Yes, it was 3,000 miles away but so was my sister’s house and he visited her, and she didn’t even bother to come to the funeral. Harrumph!

The last 30-years, my dad and I lived separate lives.

Deaths in houses

There was a death in our house in 1967. The newspaper article said the owner went into a room and gunshots were heard by his wife who discovered him dead. So many questions. Should we include it in the history of the house that we created for the buyers or let them discover that themselves? What room did that exactly happen in, not that we ever experienced any bad juju in any room of the house. Did his wife ever sleep in that room again if it occurred in the bedroom? Was their marriage good?

One place where the marriage wasn’t good was in the house I grew up in. That house in the unpleasant (stop!) divorce went to my mother as did the kids. You could say my parents’ marriage metaphorically died in that house and we lived in the carcass of the marriage for many years. It takes two to tango, but a carcass is a carcass.

I remember many things about the house I grew up in. Three in particular: the wood-paneled Pledge® scented hallway, the day the house got assembled (it arrived in pieces I’m not kidding!), and the night my dad left. He left with a bunch of clothes in his arms. He asked for my help carrying stuff to the car. His car was parked in front of the house, the spot usually reserved for visitors. Clothes thrown in back, he peeled off in his car never to come back. It was 1978.

Another memory of that childhood house: I never saw my dad happily saunter down that wood-paneled hallway to the bedroom; my parents never slept together as far as I remember. They were seldom affectionate and loving. How awful for them. How awful for us kids. I hope that wasn’t bad juju for the next owners.

What little information I could get about my dad’s death, I learned he died at home, in his sleep with the TV on. He died just 2 miles away from the house he left in 1978. For all intents and purposes, it could have been 3,000 miles away.

 

Closures

Recently, I started to realize that who is with you at “the end” often drives who writes your story and closes out your life. My dad’s new family (the last 30-year span of his life) took care of everything for him during the last years of his life: finances, funeral, and the legal aftermath. From my outsider perspective, there seems to have been a genuine and loving sense of bonding between my dad and his third wife, and the blended family of his third wife’s family combined with my stepbrother from my dad’s second marriage. A pleasant last 30 years in all. Hooray dad, you got there!

When he passed, my involvement was nothing more than showing up and being present as best as I could at the funeral service. It was awkward to be at the funeral, but I wanted to be there. I needed the closure. The whole affair made me wonder who I’d be with toward the end of my life. What stories will be told, and which stories will be omitted after I'm gone? Who will be left off of my photo boards?

A story that reared its head at the funeral was something of a origin story for my dad in those last 30 years. It was an unpleasant event that took place sometime around the divorce that involved my dad, some family members, and an unwarranted pummeling. I wasn’t there. I only heard the story recounted by my dad, multiple times and in tears. It was a formative if not an extremely unnerving event for him. Many in the last third of his life knew of this event, or some version of it. Still, it was tacky and unwarranted when the spouse of a stepsister I didn’t know greeted me with the question “Why did it happen?” referring to the story. If she needed some form of closure, I could offer none.

The probate hearing for dad’s estate was on the same day we sold our house. Closures! We were on pins and needles most of the day waiting to hear news about the house. We did not worry about or attend the probate hearing.

In the final days of closing our house and saying goodbye, we had – what seemed like at the time – a flood of visitors who wanted to stop by and spend time with us. I was less than a gracious host. I kept wondering why is it now that everyone wants to come over? I just wanted to mope around the house the last weeks and days of our ownership saying goodbye in my own way, not serving people and cleaning up after parties. Then it occurred to me that these friends being there at the end (really a send-off of the house) were the right people to be there to help close out the house’s story.

 

Photo justice

As we got closer to selling our house, I ran around taking pictures and videos of everything I could. I wanted to capture the house, so I’d never forget it. Yet in the back of my mind, I knew it was a fool’s errand to try to remember something too well. It’s okay if the house like my dad are hazy recollections. Better for nostalgia to fill in and soften the reality.

My dad had a set of (photographic) slides mostly from the first 30 years of his life – happy times. Those slides were of his time in the army based in Germany and his travels around Europe. Scratched up and dirty slides of dad in front of the “Little Mermaid” in Copenhagen, dad on skis in some Italian alpine resort, dad on the Amalfi Coast, dad in Paris, dad in front of 10 Downing Street. Ironically, these are all places I would eventually visit in my travels.

The night my dad left with with his clothes in arms, those slides were not part of his exit. He longed for those slides for years and would ask about them repeatedly. Maybe he wanted some proof of his happiness in those first 30 years? 

My answer each time he asked me was “I don’t know anything about them.” And I really didn’t. Then one day 20 odd years after the divorce, the slides magically were shown to me in a sort of oh-by-the-way look at this. Were the slides kept out of malice or simply misplaced?

I sincerely hope my dad didn’t think I was a useless apparatchik, just following orders. I really didn’t know about those slides and was appalled to find out about their existence. I could appreciate the importance of those photos for him as photos are also important to me. To make some attempt at amends, I personally returned the slides and digital versions of them. A small gesture for closure.

Flutes and whistles

The Dead Can Dance song “Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Rules” (Aion 1990) has the lines:

“Fortune presents gifts
Not according to the book
When you expect whistles it's flutes
When you expect flutes it's whistles”

The song’s text comes from a poem “Da bienes Fortuna” by Spanish Poet, Luis de Gongora (1561 – 1627). The poem explores the theme of fortune and how she bestows gifts unpredictably.

We must comply with fortune’s gifts. This is one way to think about the relationship with my dad. It was what it was. The relationship we never had was partly my fault, partly his fault, and partly (okay largely) external actors. Some of these external actors decided to put a monkey wrench in the relationship machinery for reasons I will never begin to understand nor want to at this point. Fortune wasn’t feeling generous.

Despite the wrench in the machinery, what I do know about dad, I feel like we have a lot in common. And that makes me sad to not have understood that sooner and at a deeper level. The times I spent with my dad, I found him to be a decent person, not malicious and willing to help others. That’s all good in my book, fortune be damned.

An Orphan's Legacy: Maria's Secret

Caterina | Maria | Looking for Clues | To the Cemetery | Back to Ceva |

Andrea and the Note | First Contact | A Piece Found, A Piece Lost

Left: Caterina and Lucille. Center Left: Andrea. Center Right: Marcellina and Filippo. Right: Giacomo and Maria.

~~~Caterina~~~

The start of 2008 brought a lot of snow to Ceva, a small town tucked in the Langhe hills of Piedmont in northwest Italy.  Catterina, 76 years old, waited for a break in the weather so she could resume her weekly visits to pay respects to her husband, parents, and grandparents. Good weather finally arrived on February 7th. Caterina drove the two miles to the cemetery in her little green vintage 1950s green AutoBianchi, "a coffee pot of a car" as her brother Andrea liked to say.

Caterina is of slight build, a 5' 2'' sparrow with a fair complexion, unkempt white hair, and dark, distant eyes. She is warm and gracious in person, but when the cameras come out, she adopts a curiously expressionless and stiff pose, gazing anywhere but at the camera. The result is that photos of her look dour and sad, which couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, Caterina is very welcoming and is at home when her guests are at home. This being Italy, this means feeding them. As trains rattle by, only a stone's throw from the kitchen window of her 2nd story apartment, Caterina serves ravioli with ragu to guests while regaling them with stories of everyday life. In particular, she lights up when she talks about the summer months she passes in the old farmhouse she still has in the hills just outside town where she grows and cans vegetables and bottles Dolcetto wine.

As she enters the cemetery that February morning, Caterina nods to the caretaker and goes on her rounds. She removes snow and debris from the family tombs and niches, cleans photos and plaques, and straightens flowers. When she reaches her grandparents’ niche, she finds in the vase of fake violets attached to the tomb, a rolled-up green Post-it note. Her first instinct is to throw it away, but curiosity wins and she reads the note. Written in Italian, it refers to people and places that make no sense to her. She puts the note in her purse and finishes up her cleaning.  Later that day, when Andrea arrives for their usual dinner together, she shares the note with him. He can’t believe his eyes.

~~~Maria~~~

A few weeks earlier, in January 2008, Mark and I were in Piedmont visiting family and doing genealogical research. We were living in Florence at the time so we rented a car to drive the few hours from Tuscany through Liguria and into Piedmont. In the last hour of our journey we passed from the warm Ligurian coast, up over the Ligurian Alps to descend into the snow-covered Langhe hills.

The Langhe is located within the province of Cuneo, the southernmost province of the Piedmont region of Italy. The region is famous for its Barolo and Barbaresco wines, toma and taleggio cheeses, thin breadsticks called grissini, bagna càuda – a hot, garlic-infused dipping sauce, hazelnuts and their creamy incarnation as nutella, truffles, and a traditional breed of cattle called fassone which has a gene mutation that leads to abnormally large growth. As well as being the birthplace of the Italian reunification, Piedmont's largest city Turin acted as the capital of a newly unified Italy between 1861 and 1865, and was the birthplace of its first king, Victor Emmanuel II.

Over eight days, we ate and drank with family, visited old haunts, and collected genealogical information for Mark's Italian citizenship. We knew that his citizenship would come through a great grandfather on his mom's side of the family. And while we focused mainly on that branch of his family, curiosity drove us to collect everything we could about all his relatives, if only to complete his family tree.  My citizenship quest would unfold months later in Palermo, and eventually both Mark and I would get Italian citizenship.

We were also searching for a lost puzzle piece in Mark's family history. Mark's maternal great grandmother, Maria, was an orphan. Maria emigrated to America from Piedmont in 1921 and never said much of her life in Italy, not even to her only daughter, Lucille, Mark’s grandmother.  Lucille would say: "Momma never wanted to talk about it. I couldn't understand why." Maria was born in Ceva where she eventually married Giacomo, Lucille’s father, but that's all that was really known.

Maria died in 1967, but the question lingered in Lucille's mind. When Lucille visited Ceva with her dad Giacomo in the 1970s, they tried to make connections with the family still there to perhaps fill in some of the gaps in Maria’s past, but found nothing. For the 85-year-old Lucille, a widow living outside of Las Vegas, her mother's past remained a mystery.

In the first decades of the 20th century many immigrants from Piedmont settled in the La Puente region of Los Angeles, as Maria and Giacomo did in 1921. Soon after arriving, Lucille was born and Maria and Giacomo were busy running a 10-acre walnut orchard. Maria would ride out every day in a horse and buggy to bring lunch to her husband and the other workers. Maria had gray eyes and brown, wavy hair which she usually wore short. She was a stocky 5' 2". Lucille recalls that her mom Maria dressed in simple print dresses and plain shoes, and was a fantastic cook. Almost all of Mark’s family recipes are passed down from Maria. There was one other tidbit Mark’s grandmother told us: for years Maria sent money to an orphanage in Ceva.

While we were in Piedmont, we decided to see if we could find anything new about Maria. We felt a little like detectives picking up an old case that had gone cold, and not really expecting to find much. Mark didn’t need more information about Maria to satisfy his citizenship’s jus sanguinis requirements because his citizenship would come through another branch of his family. Yet we wanted to return something for Lucille’s sake, to give her peace of mind about her mother.

~~~Looking for Clues~~~

In Italian cemeteries, especially in small towns, the history of generations of families is written in stone and photographs. Italians use photos attached to tombs to commemorate and personalize tombs, more so than in the USA. In the past, we have sometimes found ourselves in cemeteries perusing these photos and lazily imagining the possible life stories behind them. This time, we had a mission, and were scrutinizing the faces and names more carefully. If those thousands of eyes were gazing at us as we strolled among their tombs, we were staring back as well.

In those eight days in January 2008, we visited a half-dozen cemeteries where we thought we might uncover genealogical clues about Mark's family. The process went like this: we searched first for niches (loculi) with a family name we were looking for, then checked the birth and death dates if given. If the dates made sense, we examined nearby niches for other relationships that might help confirm or invalidate the match. It's like trying to fit pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into part of a puzzle you've already assembled but aren’t really confident is correct. We spent hours upon hours in cemeteries scrutinizing these vague traces of lives past. It was Maria's story in particular for which we kept hoping for a break. By day 4 of our 8 days in Piedmont, we had found nothing promising.

Mark’s grandmother had given us an old photo that had belonged to her mother Maria. We assumed it might have been of her adoptive parents but that was only a guess as there was no written or oral information about the photo. In the sepia-colored photo, a woman and a man circa late 1800s sit dressed in their finest. Both are stern-faced, and the woman has a noticeable frown. They adopt a pose not unlike Caterina’s.


Views of the Ceva cemetery. Tomb niches (loculi), building, and close-up of photo on tomb.

~~~To the Cemetery~~~

On January 24th, we spend the day exploring the narrow streets and porticoes of Ceva. The Tanaro and Cevetta rivers encircle the historical center making for a compact old town. The surrounding countryside rises from all directions giving Ceva a dark, sunken aspect. We wanted to like Ceva, but it just didn’t have the immediate appeal of other villages we knew in the region, such as Cherasco, the birthplace of Maria's husband, Giacomo. Cherasco has pizazz as the self-proclaimed snail capital of Italy. The town sits on a small plateau overlooking the Lange hills and vineyards around it, you can find a great meal and buy bags of delicious baci di Cherasco - hazelnut pieces enrobed in dark chocolate. Ceva and Cherasco are both off the tourist track, but Ceva’s charms would be harder to crack.

We knew Maria was born and raised in Ceva.  She and Giacomo were married in Ceva. So, whether we liked the town or not, we wanted to find out something – anything – we could about her. Maybe by walking the cobblestone lanes we might conjure her ghost or some hidden clue would reveal itself in some dark, forgotten corner.

However, after a half day of inquiry, we had uncovered nothing new on Maria so decided to head back to our hotel. It was 3 pm on a sunny, crisp winter afternoon and as we drove out of town we decided to stop at the cemetery one last time.

Ceva’s cemetery sits just south of town perched high above the Tanaro River, three acres surrounded by a 15-foot tall perimeter wall. Within the cemetery, the wall encompasses the biggest part of an outdoor mausoleum with thousands of burial niches, honoring the majority of Ceva’s former citizens. The mausoleums have the feel of a cloister: airy, but protected. Families with more money have free-standing chapel-cum-tombs in the center of the cemetery, some saccharine and gaudy, others serene and touching.

A typical Italian burial niche is marked by a rectangular panel on a wall roughly 24 by 18 inches and running about 10 feet deep. When someone dies, the body may spend some time in the common, open section of the cemetery, and later be moved to their family niche. The remains in the niche of whoever was interned before are pushed backward to make room, falling into a common pile of bones and dust underground. We walked slowly and methodically through the porticoes of the mausoleum, endlessly scanning names and photos, proxies for the bones and dusty remains of all those who came before.

And then it happened. In the slanting light of the late afternoon sun, we caught a glimpse of the two unmistakable, stern faces we had been carrying in our pocket. We couldn't believe our eyes. We pulled out the photos and yes, these were in fact of the same image, perhaps the only photograph the couple had ever taken. The dates on the man's niche placed him about 50 years older than Maria but there weren't any dates on the woman's niche. It was promising: to match a photo in a sea of images surely meant something.

Their names were Marcellina Bottero and Filippo Bottero. Bottero is a common name of the region and a name that Maria had sometimes used on documents; the other name Maria used was Iuvara. Could this be the tomb of Maria's adopted parents? We weren't sure. 

The cemetery was closing. We were tired and excited, and unsure what to do. We decided to leave a note. A green Post-it. In the best Italian he could muster, Mark described who he was, who Maria was, when she was born and when she emigrated to the USA, as well as an email address to contact us.  We rolled up the Post-it note and tucked it into the vase of fake violets mounted on the tomb of Marcellina and Filippo and then departed. It was already dark.

~~~Back to Ceva~~~

We decided to return to Ceva the next day, buoyed by our find at the cemetery, to continue looking for clues about Maria. 

In Italy, vital records such as birth, marriage, and death certificates are maintained at the municipal level; every town has its anagrafe (vital records) office.  When we know what we are looking for, this is our first stop.  When we aren’t sure what we are looking for, we head to the cemeteries. After the previous day’s discovery at the cemetery, we now had some names matched to faces, so we headed to the anagrafe.

We explained what we knew about Maria and the two surnames she used: Bottero and Iuvara. They made us official copies of Maria's birth and marriage certificates - handcrafting official-looking certificates from the data they looked up in large massive record books. We learned that orphaned children were often given a surname very different from the names of families in the area. That explained the Iuvara name - a name not common in this part of Italy.

An employee of the anagrafe pointed across the piazza saying that the newborn Maria was likely left at mayor's doorstep by a desperate mother and from there she would have gone to the nearby orphanage. He advised us to inquire at the parochial church office for information about her time in the orphanage. We left our email and a cell phone number at the anagrafe and walked over to the church.

We spent an hour or so in the parochial office speaking with two kind nuns who braved our excited explanations in broken Italian. They consulted their dusty record books, searching for our Maria, but she wasn’t there. The orphanage had closed several years before and the records that we needed were still in storage. It wasn't clear when they would ever be accessible. As all things in Italy, we took a deep breath, smiled, and said va bene, grazie.

We were hoping that the parochial records would provide information about Maria’s date of adoption and possibly who had adopted her. But Ceva wasn’t giving up its secrets that easily. At least we had the satisfaction of imagining that this very orphanage might have been where Maria had been sending money for so many years, helping other orphans.

Back on the streets of Ceva, we walked aimlessly. The story of Mark’s great-grandmother Maria was starting to consume us. At this point, we were confident that Marcellina and Filippo Bottero (the stern ones) must have adopted Maria and that's why she used that name. But how to find anybody still living connected to them?  Filippo Bottero died in 1925.  We thought of calling Botteros in the phone book, but there were too many. By chance, we stopped in a clothing store with Bottero in its name. They listened to our story but could offer no help. The name was simply too common.  The Post-it note seemed to be our only chance, but how often does anyone visit the cemetery, and in particular to visit relatives who had passed away over 70 years before?

~~~Andrea and the Note~~~

On the evening of February 7th, 2008 when Caterina showed the note to Andrea, there was a loud howl in Caterina's apartment. Andrea was excited, at first cursing his sister for almost throwing the note away, and then cursing the world in general. Andrea, two years older than Caterina, was easily excitable. He never married and in some ways his relationship with Caterina was that of an old bickering couple. Caterina, the more cool-headed of the two was used to his excitement. She listened attentively as she cleaned up the dishes from dinner, tortellini in brodo.

Andrea looked similar to his sister, slight in build, and a few inches taller with a fair complexion and engaging dark eyes. He was always neatly dressed in a shirt, tie, sweater and sport coat. His white hair neatly combed and reading glasses suspended around his neck. Andrea was a respected science and math teacher. Of his siblings, Catterina and brother Eugenio, he was the most curious about the world. He had studied English in London and also lived briefly in New Mexico. He was also the family historian and realized immediately that the Post-It could answer a question he had been wondering about for years: a mysterious aunt who had emigrated to America before he was born.

On February 8th, Andrea sent an email to the address we left in the green Post-it note. It was cordially written in both Italian and English and started as:

        Io sono Bottero Andrea residente in Ceva  (Italy).

          I am Bottero Andrea living in Ceva (Italy).

        Ieri mia sorella Catterina è andata al cimitero e ha trovato il tuo biglietto.

          Yesterday my sister Catterina went to the cemetery and found your note.

We received the email and were shocked that someone had already found our note. We replied cautiously that we were happy and would write back in more detail shortly because we were in the middle of a two-week tour in Greece. Even as we were exchanging emails with Andrea, he was raising hell in Ceva, in particular, at the anagrafe. When he had found out that there were two strangers, two Americans nonetheless, asking about the Botteros -- his family -- and nobody had bothered to contact him, he went livid. He managed to cudgel our cell phone number from the anagrafe, and unsatisfied with just an email, he called us shortly after sending the email.

We are driving in the Peloponnese peninsula, when we receive Andrea's call. He politely restates in English the story of finding our note and urges us several times that we must come visit. We promise we will. We still don’t know for sure if we have found a connection to Maria, but an Italian invitation to visit is not to be taken lightly so we know we will go and then, hopefully, we will find out a little more about Maria.

~~~First Contact~~~

We first meet Caterina and Andrea on March 7th, 2008. When we pull into the parking area of their apartment building in Ceva, we see an elegantly-dressed man pacing out front. It's Andrea and he has been waiting for us. And as we would learn later, Caterina was watching from her dining room window on the second story.

Andrea greets us with a big smile. He is amused to find two middle-aged men in front of him. It's obvious that Mark is his relative, being fair-skinned and northern Italian in appearance. My shorter stature, hair and skin color testifies to my family's southern Italian origins.  That said, we’re both embraced as family, a feeling of belonging which would only grow from that moment.

After a few minutes of introductions and questions about where we are living in Italy and what we are doing, he guides us inside. We climb the wide marble staircase to meet the person that has made this moment possible: Caterina. Apartment door ajar, she is waiting, apron on.

We exchange the traditional Italian kiss on both cheeks as though we were old friends and are promptly shuttled to the dining room table to eat.  First things first in Italy: let’s eat!

The backbone of Caterina’s apartment is a long hallway with a small living room and formal dining room on the left; a kitchen and informal dining room on the right; and a single bedroom and bathroom at the end of the hall. The floors are marble and the walls sparsely decorated: a needlepoint proverb in Piedmontese, a map of old Ceva, and a pair of wooden praying hands. We would spend most of our day, as in all our subsequent visits, in her informal dining room and kitchen, which is the heart of her home.

During that first encounter, as trains rumble by, we begin to reconstruct the details of how Mark is connected to Andrea and Caterina. Andrea sometimes speaks in English, proud to show off his ability. Caterina could care less. She speaks in a mix of Piedmontese and Italian.

After several hours, we arrive at the following: Mark's great grandmother, Maria, was indeed adopted by Marcellina and Filippo Bottero sometime around 1906. The couple were older and already had six children. Maria was a step-sister to Andrea and Caterina's father; however, she had emigrated to America before they were born. Therefore Andrea, Caterina, and their brother Eugenio only knew Maria as the mysterious aunt who left for America.

Our bond with Caterina and Andrea grew over those few days in March that we spent with them. They wanted to know all about Maria's life in America, and all about her family.  Together we called Mark's grandmother, Maria’s daughter Lucille, who spoke with Caterina and Andrea for the first time ever, falling fluently into the Piedmontese dialect with even the same Ceva accent she had learned as a little girl from her mother Maria. Lucille was ecstatic; she talked for hours with her new-found cousins. Lucille now had a link to her mother's past.

Andrea took us to visit the old house in the hills above Ceva, the house that had belonged to his grandparents Filippo and Marcella Bottero, the house that Maria had lived in from when she was six years old until she married Giacomo and left for America. The house with its thick stone walls now in ruins, surrounded by tall grass and old fruit trees that Caterina still harvests herself. We peek in the doors and windows; the floor and parts of the tile roof now collapsed. We try to imagine it as it was in Maria’s time.

On the drive back to town, Andrea tells us stories of being harassed as a young boy by German troops during the Nazi occupation, and how he escaped. And later as a young man, studying engineering and going to London to work and learn English, of going to New Mexico, of returning to teach at a technical school, and of family stories past and present.

The serendipitous green Post-it note unlocked a family secret and reunited two long lost families, separated cross a century, two continents, and such different histories.

 
Left: View of Ceva, Italy. Center: Small square in Ceva. Right: At the anagrafe, records office.

~~~A Piece Found, A Piece Lost~~~

Here we are again in Ceva’s cemetery. It is a warm spring Sunday in May 2013. This time Mark and I are visiting with his grandmother Lucille, his mom Marianne, and dad Davis.  Andrea's passing only two months earlier in March dampens the mood. We had all been looking forward to seeing each other. Caterina meets us at the cemetery in her tiny green Autobianchi into which she has managed to squeeze Lucia (her brother Eugenio's wife) and Vincenza (a cousin).

The two American and three Italian women roam the cemetery together, sometimes solemnly arm-in-arm and sometimes laughing and holding hands. Lucille is in her element, all smiles, and even at 91 walking briskly so that her cane seems more a prop than a necessity. The women whizz around the cemetery visiting relatives and sharing stories. One story in particular is repeated often. It’s the story of how when Lucille visited Ceva in 1971. She and Mark’s grandfather Bernard were visiting the ‘old country’ with Giacomo, Maria’s husband and Lucille’s father. Maria had already passed away a few years earlier.  They had stopped at a farm that Giacomo had recognized. Perhaps the family was still there he thought. As it turns out, they met none other than Vincenza's mother who at the time knew nothing of Maria or that part of the family’s history. She invited Mark’s grandparents and great-grandfather inside for lunch anyway and they passed part of the afternoon together. This was the house of Maria’s adoptive family. These were the husband and the daughter of the mysterious aunt who had emigrated to America. But the Americans and Italians that day in 1971 never made the connection.

It amazes everyone – no one more than Andrea – that Lucille had been so close in the 1970s and that it would take a hastily scribbled Post-it note almost 40 years later to make the connection. There are no hard feelings though, just gratitude that they are all together now. Mark and I feel honored to have played a small part. Mark’s mom, Marianne, got to meet Caterina and Andrea in June 2008 when visiting us in Florence. And soon after in Fall 2008 Lucille returned with her son John to meet their new cousins. And of course, regular phone calls and cards have further strengthened our new-found connections.

We all stop before Andrea's grave. Caterina waters a rose in a pot at the head of the grave. She would later transfer the rose to her summer house in the hills above Ceva where it thrives today.

Broca’s Earlobe

I wish I knew more about my uncle Joey. The memory bits I have of him are organized willy-nilly in my mind like a kitchen junk drawer that has all sorts of little interesting things, but is never quite as organized as you want it to be. The bits are like shards of picture that I'm trying to assemble to catch a glimpse of him. Selfishly, as family memories go, perhaps I'm trying to assemble the shards to get a glimpse of myself. At any rate, among the bits is the memory of my uncle's obsession with earlobes.

My uncle Joey's was obsessed with touching earlobes, at least that's how I remember it. He would call you over, and he would talk to you in a low, authoritative voice, and fondle your ear. He died at 50. I just turned 50 and it recently occurred to me that his obsession with earlobes was a bit odd.

I suppose I let him do it for many reasons. He was a father figure and you didn't argue, and I was in need of that kind of attention. He was one of my 4 uncles that I wanted to know better. The attention and ear touching was the only 1-1 time we had together.

~Two Worlds~

As a kid, we rarely went to Joey's house, but when we did, it was a treat. His house projected an aesthetic that fascinated me. The living areas were like exploring a small museum displaying objects out of a cabinet of curiosities of a Renaissance collector. He had art, a real leather couch, and a cool stereo. The kitchen area in his house was slightly chaotic and well-used: a loaf of bread and butter out on the counter, and crumbs.

My mother, Joey's sister, kept a different house. We had living areas filled with ordinary stuff: a penny jar, empty chianti fiaschi, posters, and a fabric couch. Our kitchen looked like it was rarely used, everything neatly put away, not a crumb or anything to be found on the counters.

Joey built his house by hand, at least in my mind. It was part lodge, part tree-house, constructed in natural woods with an open floor plan, and views to the surrounding countryside. By contrast, our pre-fab house arrived on a tractor trailer in two halves that were snapped together creating a rabbit warren of small rooms with flimsy walls. We looked out on our neighbors in a suburban track development. We had puke-colored carpet that scratched our skin during wrestling matches. No natural hardwood floors for us.

I remember my uncle Joey projecting manliness and outdoor ruggedness with a touch of sophistication that seemed lacking in other people in my life.  His skills seemed practical. With his forestry degree, he could identify trees and tell stories about them. What could be cooler than that? Boy did he knew how to grow trees - lots of them. It seemed that people paid him well for that skill.

My dad delivered fuel oil, ancient trees in liquid form.

A case of the trees looking greener on the other side of the fence? Maybe so. I was always secretly envious of my two cousins, Joey's daughters. I wanted to be part of their family. Though, I’m guessing my cousins' image and experience of their dad is likely a tad different than mine.

Heck, Joey even had a waterbed and once, with my two cousins, we sneaked up and bounced around on it. Now that's living I thought.

~~Odd Satellites~~

I admit the line between fact and myth is a bit blurred in regard to my uncle Joey, but I kind of like it that way. I imagine him working for days in the forest, able to survive on wit. He seemed to know something about everything, and I was ever so curious. Yes, you can fondle my earlobe if you tell me a story about a tree.

It's odd that later I would gravitate toward traits similar to an uncle I barely knew, be it a love of nature and trees, a fascination for what things are called, or even an aesthetic about how to keep my home. (Not earlobes though.)

While my siblings and I spent a lot of time with my mother's family, my uncles were like distant satellites checking in periodically in their orbit around my grandmother. My grandmother was sort of gravitational force that once in her pull, it was hard to escape. One of my other uncles called my grandmother the "planet".

Figuring large into the physics my family was the tumultuous relationship between my mother and her mother, and the constant tension in the air between my mother and her brothers - at least perceived by this 10 year old kid. This was a solar system that had problems.

One uncle seemed to always be strung out and didn't want anything to do with pesky nephews and nieces. Another uncle lived far away, drove a VW bug, was viciously smart and cruel. We'd see him occasionally and that was enough. A third uncle was dark and handsome, but prone to bouts of anger. I remember him jumping up and down on a car roof and brandishing a gun.

That left my uncle Joey, the oldest of the brothers and seemingly most sane. So what if that came with a little ear fondling.

~~~Carl Sagan~~~

My uncle Joey once gave me the book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, the 1979 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan. I was about 15 at the time, and I remember the book being an invitation to enter into Joey's world. A book I ought to read. A book that Joey thought was important. The book's black cover and somber red title font conveyed seriousness.

I didn't read it, at least not right away. It wasn't until many years later that I made it through Broca's Brain, sorry for the lost opportunity to have discussed it with Joey during one of his ear fondling sessions.

If I had to give one image to fix in your mind the image of my uncle Joey, Carl Sagan would in fact be it. Joey, 10 years younger than Sagan, I imagine followed Sagan as a role model, in scientific leaning as well as in fashion. Joey's thick dark hair was always swept to one side, not too fussy much like Sagan's. As well, my uncle was prone to wearing a tan corduroy jacket, with elbow patches, and a simple turtle neck sweater underneath. I suppose the seventies were partly to blame.

Joey even spoke like Carl Sagan with a slow deliberate cadence. He gazed at you as if sizing you up, formulating the right question to catch you off balance. He wasn't the kind of uncle to ask you a quick math problem. No, it was a more serious question that made you think deeper. Something about stars and infinity, like Sagan would ask.

Joey attended Paul Smith's college in the Adirondacks where he studied forestry, and taught at the University of Connecticut. He was by all means the most successful in the family, if not the most revered. He was a Sagan in training. A few years after he gave me Broca's Brain, I left home and the unstable solar system, and slowly lost contact with my uncle and his life during the 1980s and early 1990s. I don't understand the details of what happened, but it's fair to say that his life got derailed: a divorce, drugs, and untimely death.

~~~~The Man Behind the Camera~~~~

All I have left of Joey are a few photos and vague stories about the photos. First, there's the black and white photo of me and my brother sitting in the grass. We are about 4 and 6 years old. I stare mischievously at Joey behind the camera, while my brother gazes bored at the ground. The photo transports me back to my grandmother's yard long the Farmington Valley River in Connecticut. It was our playground when we were young. If we were lucky, my uncle Joey would be there and with camera.

My grandmother's tiny dining room was the stage for countless family events. The room had two windows, a closet, a desk, a hutch filled with nick-knacks, and two doorways that took up most of the wall space in the room. What little wall space remained was taken up by examples of my grandmother's needlepoint and a photograph of Michelangelo's David taken by Joey.  In the photo, David is photographed from the side and superimposed on a photo of a galaxy. A master of the photography and photo-processing, the image is an example of the blend of art and science that Joey embodied.

My grandmother wasn't one for putting up much art, so this photo was important to her. If only that photo could talk and relate the what it saw over all those years. 

I have very few photos of Joey himself. He worked the other side of the camera mostly. Of the photos I do have, two stand out. The first is a 1975 black and white snapshot. Joey is bare-chested and holding my recently-born cousin. Both gaze out of the photo as if in a stare-down match with the viewer. The second photo, is one of the last taken of him in 1993, a year before his death. A very gaunt, shell of the man from the first picture stands by the same cousin, now fully grown and recently-graduated. Joey stands behind my cousin and my grandparents encircling them with outstretched arms as if swooping in behind them. Protecting or holding on, I can't decide. An impossibly bright bank of yellow school lockers dominates the photo. There is tension in everyone's faces.

~~~~~Earlobes and Star-stuff~~~~~

I remember the call from my mother: "Joey is dead. He froze to death." On a cold January day in 1994 he wandered into a roofless building that was under construction in the prosaic village of Pine Meadow, got locked in, and was found the next day. Some say maybe he went to the liquor store nearby, got drunk, and became trapped. Some say he knew he was dying and went there knowing the consequences. Others say it was an accident and he was too weak to get out. Whatever the explanation, he died in nature, which seemed strangely fitting. It was a cold, mysterious, and unfinished ending for me, much like my relationship with him. Our relationship froze at the point of the young boy who had a minute or two with an enigmatic ear fondler.

What are earlobes for? It seems the jury is out. Various suggestions include helping collect sound for the ears, acting as an erogenous zone, making us more attractive to partners, or just plain having lost their major biological function being vestiges of an earlier function. More ambiguity to live with, just like Joey's passion for the Lobulus auriculae, as earlobes are called in Latin and which I'm sure Joey would have known.

Many of my memories of Joey capture some aspect of truth, but never quite reveal him fully. But where there isn’t fact, fantasy fills in nicely. I’ll have to live with the ambiguity. I don't know what the purpose of an earlobe is let alone why my uncle liked to fondle them. So be it.

Carl Sagan died two years later in 1996. As Sagan said in his iconic Cosmos series: "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." Both Sagan and my uncle are now part of that star-stuff. I hope the universe can figure out the ear thing.

A Happy Sound in the Grotto

Left: My grandfather and grandmother just prior to departing for Italy in 1973. Center: A stash of letters written by grandfather in 1946. Right: Blue Grotto.

  

My grandfather sang in the Blue Grotto and he was extremely happy. Everyone applauded when he finished. The story has been with me since I was a kid. I wasn't there, but I can construct the details easily, part imagination and part borrowed imagery from a postcard my grandmother sent. Two dozen people in a boat, slowly being rowed through the cerulean water, and my grandfather stands and sings with the captain. The walls and roof of the immense cavern amplify his sweet baritone voice. People in other boats stop and listen, and are jealous that he isn't in their boat. That was in 1973.

Reading an old travel diary resurfaced this story and others about my grandfather. The diary, kept by my grandmother, describes their time in Italy, and the time they went to the Blue Grotto. My grandmother in her typical economical prose wrote: "Dad and the rower started singing and it was a happy sound in the Grotto. So very blue!"

~The diary~

My grandparents visited Switzerland and Italy in 1973, and Italy in 1979. My grandmother kept a diary of these trips in a small brown notebook that recently came into my possession. The diary took a convoluted path through our family to end up in my hands. After my grandmother's death, a family squabble ensued forming a rift between two sides. The diary was taken by an uncle on the side of the rift that I wasn't on. (Not that I chose a side, but in family matters, neutral is not an option.) Eventually, the rift closed, my uncle died, and the diary passed to my mother who gave it to me.

I give my grandmother credit for diligently keeping the diary during their long exhausting days of travel. I can imagine that she had a head full of impressions and ideas that she needed to empty into the diary, much like I've had with my time in Italy. Her diary entries provide a peek into what caught here attention, what fascinated her, and what annoyed her. For example, she:

• Tracked the cost of things.
  • Pompeii: "We arrived at Pompeii. Took a Fiat limousine to Pompeii 4.000 lira (we knew we had been taken) but were too tired to do anything about it."
  • Venice: "We had a coffee each. (Couldn't believe it when it cost 1.200 Lira ea. $2.00 a cup!) That's when we decided to leave." [I can't help but love that she hightailed it out of Venice over the price of coffee.]
• Pondered why women weren't shaving under their arms.
  • Rome: "An interesting note about Italian women. In the 6 years since we've here they've come a long way. Almost every girl, even women paint their nails, but for the life of me, I can't understand why they can't shave underarms. It's appalling to me. I've checked and observed, even the most fastidious + up to date modern Roman girl. Yet when she holds the strap on the bus, I can't believe it! "
• Lamented how hard the bed was at a relative's house. After arriving there she wrote:
  • Ceprano: "Then, hit the sack and that's just what that bed is - one hi and one low mattress put together."
• Noted food and customs.
  • Palermo: "All they do is eat, talk, laugh, eat again. Nice friendly people, but tiresome, repetitious and always ready to eat." [What's wrong with that Grams?]
  • Italy in general: "Good thing I brought Maxwell instant and Cremora. We can't stand their black coffee in the morning." [Grams: am I really related to you?]
  • Of Palermo on her second visit: "And of course the whole of Palermo has gone downhill. Now more than ever the people nave no scruples about throwing their garbage around. Everywhere one looks, there are piles of garbage in the streets. Their parks are dirty and dusty. Everyone eats and throws their remains on the grounds wherever they are. It's appalling to see how inconsiderate they are of cleanliness. Even with their dense population (they claim that's the reason for the messiness), it would seem if they were taught to observe clean habits, Palermo would indeed be a better place to live in, and visit."

The niggling, slightly cranky tone of her writing is my grandmother's "voice". I agree with on some points and disagree with her on others. Maybe she wrote these never expecting them to be published. Furthermore, I can't claim that my travel diaries rise to any better level.

When I spent time as a kid with my grandparents, I remember my grandmother more because she did most of the talking. Throughout the years, my grandmother sent me cards and letters such that I remember her in words as much as I do in person. In those cards and letters, her tone was similar to the diary: full of chit-chat, sometimes slightly irritable, and with few mentions of my grandfather. The travel diary was interesting for its few glimpses into what my grandfather liked and when he was happy. To be honest, my grandmother wrote and talked more all those years because my grandfather was barely literate.

~~Like a sardine~~

The literacy of my grandfather wasn't something I thought about until along with the arrival of the diary there also came a small stash of letters. The letters were written by my grandfather and are the only thing I have ever seen written by him. In 1946, age 34, he had hernia surgery, and stayed in the hospital from August 30th to September 7th. The stash I received are the letters he wrote every day to my grandmother.

Upon reading the letters, I was struck by the child-like quality of his writing. He wrote English like I write and speak Italian: choppy, and not quite right. The letters reveal that he had a very limited understanding of how to write in English.

In the letters, my grandfather wrote about mostly how he wanted to be out of the hospital and how much he missed my grandmother. It's clear from the letters that the separation from my grandmother was very hard for him. My grandmother was able to come every few days to visit him. And in one visit, she brought some pasta that all the other patients said was the best they ever tasted – my grandfather recounts to her in one letter. In another letter, he tells my grandmother to keep her head high in some family squabble that is only obliquely referred to in the letter. He says: "They are all a bunch of no good Lous[es], they all stink, I believe it."

Two other interesting aspects of the letters are his terms of endearment and his fish analogies. His terms of endearment toward my grandmother and their two kids at the time are conveyed in very physical terms like "…my baby’s Joe-Marie are they fresh if they are just tell them I be home in a short while to beat them up with the strap." and "I could beat you to death, And Hug you to death I love you Deeply in my Heart."

Then there are the fish analogies. Perhaps my grandfather really resonated with the ocean. Perhaps he liked to eat fish and it was on his mind. Or, more likely, perhaps these were the few idiomatic expressions he knew how to use in English to express how he felt trapped in the hospital, in his bed, hopeless and far from home. His fish metaphors:

• "I just feel like a dead fish I feel that I am in another world"
• "I felt so blue when I look through the windows was a beautiful morning here I am in bed like a dead fish its 6 days honey"
• "I felt like a herring in bed when you went home I did know what to do you look very pretty to me But don’t get Swell Head"
• "My dear beautiful wife, Today is 7 day 3 more to go or 2 more or 1 more I feel fine but I am still blue Holiday pass and I am still in bed like a sardine."

My grandfather's parents were born in Sicily and my grandfather was born in Brooklyn. He lived the first third of his life surrounded by other Italians, speaking Italian. He probably didn't finish high school explaining why he wrote at a basic level. As I remember it, his spoken English was basic, but serviceable. As a kid, I didn't judge language abilities as I might today as an adult.

The diary. Left: Cover. Center: Page listing family met. Right: Last page and overview of the trip.

~~~A pipe for Dad~~~

In the travel diary of 1973 my grandfather, Sal, is also referred to as "Dad". He is alluded only a few times, all positive. His life was always filtered through my grandmother's actions and words in her role as the main bread-winner, decision-maker, and spokesperson of the family.

A typical entry in the diary about my grandfather can be boiled down to this: "Sal was happy". His happiness was in simple things: touching the tomb of a saint in Padova, seeing the holy reliquaries in Orvieto, or sleeping with church bells. (My grandmother couldn't sleep at all in Orvieto because of the bells, but my grandfather slept soundly and peacefully.)

Excerpts from the diary include:

• Padua, at St. Anthony Chapel
  • "Then we walked around and saw and touched the tomb of the Saint. This made Dad very happy."
• Bologna
  • "We had coffee, bought cards and pipe for Dad." [He loved his pipes.]
• Florence
  • "We stopped to eat. Dad had tripe and mussels, ugh!!" [Go Gramps!]
• Orvieto
  • "Then we went back to hotel. I washed some things and wrote cards. But then try to sleep. The bells ring every 15 min! And they are right next door. Sal doesn't mind. He loves bells."
  • "Famous for its of relics of the "Miracle of Bolsena". We happened to be right there in the little side chapel when they had their yearly showing of the 'cloth' and we went up the ladder to see it and I took a picture! Sal very happy to have been here at just this time!"
• Capri, Blue Grotto
  • "it was a happy sound in the grotto."

My grandparents visited the Blue Grotto in 1973 as part of their first of their two trips. In that trip, they drove from Zurich to Rome stopping at Bergamo, Padova, Bologna, Florence, and Orvieto. Their itinerary seemed to be on-the-fly, something I could never do, but maybe should try. They had places they wanted to end up, but seemed content to stop here or there, or just as easily, leave a place if it didn't appeal to them. After dropping their rental car off in Rome, they continued further south eventually ending in Palermo. In the southern segment of their trip, they took public transportation, of which my Grandmother kept detailed notes of prices and quality of service, and more importantly, vented when she felt they got ripped off.

My grandmother's family was from outside of Rome, Ceprano. My grandfather's family was from Palermo. Ceprano had the sack-of-a-bed. Palermo had the eat-talk-laugh-eat-again people. Oh, to have been able to travel with them! My grandmother with her impossibly large handbags filled everything plus a sandwich or two, her constantly sore feet, and her shrieks of "Oh, Sal!"

~~~~Parlare~~~~

Both of my grandparents spoke Italian and my grandmother could write it. I learned to speak Italian and be able to distinguish dialects long after they died. Their "Italian" voices are too faint in my head to be sure, but based on their family histories, my grandmother likely spoke like someone who grew up familiar with the Romanesco dialect and my grandfather with a cross between the Neapolitan and Sicilian languages.

As a kid at Sunday dinner at my grandparent's house in Connecticut - naturally at the kid's table in the kitchen, separate from the adults - my grandfather would come in and make sure we all had our coca cola with a touch of wine added. As he poured he would mutter phrases of endearment or scolding. His phrases pop into my mind every now and then, teasing me, daring me to decipher them. Once in a while, one of his phrases does map to something I've heard in Italian. For example, his term of endearment: scungillo or scunciglio or sconciglio I believe maps to a common name for whelk (cf: ref and ref). Or maybe, he could have been saying scugnizzo - street urchin, which would make more sense in how he used it.

~~~~~The Blue Grotto~~~~~

I was 8 when my grandparents went to Italy for the first time in 1973. They were first-generation Italian Americans from New York, and the trip was very important for them and the family they visited. We received postcards ever few days, including one of the Blue Grotto. The postcards were dispatches from the unknown for me.

My grandmother was always good about sending postcards. In fact, in 1973, the night after arriving in Zurich she wrote in her diary: "Wrote a few cards (we bought cards and stamps at airport)." Now that's efficient. Having just landed and bought postcards is not something I would ever do.

The postcards my grandmother sent were addressed to the whole family, but they always ended up with me. I hogged them and poured over them, looking for revealing details about their trip. I saved those cards for 30 years. One postcard from the 1973 trip was of a big St. Bernard dog on an impossibly steep mountain slope. The dog stared out from a field of yellow and red flowers. It was somewhere in Switzerland and I can still see that dog's blank face. I guess my love of travel started with those postcards and I owe many thanks to my grandmother for sending them.

On the other hand, I am a little peeved at my grandmother for the lack of interesting details about my grandfather and the Blue Grotto. They visited the Blue Grotto on a day trip from Naples and there is a lot of information about how they came and went and who they met, like this passage: "We got up early, breakfasted downstairs in restaurant. There we met a mother and daughter, Mary Ann and Donna, from Hollywood, Calif. We talked them into the tour of Capri with us and off we went." While I'm sure Mary Ann and Donna from Hollywood were nice, I'd love to know more about the Blue Grotto and my grandfather. What song did he sing? How long did he sing? Did people ask for his autograph? What did my grandfather feel like later that day? Did he talk about the experience? Did he want to return to the grotto?

Instead, my grandmother wrote only this: "Then we were rowed back to the other boat and then shore. There a canopied mini bus awaited and we were brought up to Ana Capri."

~~~~~~Memory diary~~~~~~

My grandfather lived his life in the shadow of my grandmother. She dominated their relationship, out of character and necessity. The hospital letters left me with the impression of my grandfather as a child-man. And in some ways he was. The travel diary left me with the impression of my grandfather as a secondary character in a play, a character that never gets fleshed out fully. Singing in the grotto was one of his brief scenes. Who that man was singing in the grotto and why was he so happy? The playwright leaves us hanging.

I spent many summers with my grandparents. With my grandfather, it was mostly time together without words. We just did things. Maybe I need to judge him on his actions and be happy with that. So what if he didn't write well or much.

Thinking about our wordless time together, I can remember many things about my grandfather. He loved: wine - he was always sneaking it; pipes - I remember the wonderful tobacco smell; gardening - I remember helping him and enjoying it; going to church - boy did he nag me every Sunday morning to go with him. My grandfather didn't like certain kinds of pasta or conflicts. He wanted everyone to get along. He liked playing the lottery (he won $10,000 once) and he never had more than 2 or 3 dollars in his wallet. All facets of my grandfather locked in my internal travel diary called memory.

I remember his thick white hair, his smell, and the way he smiled. I remember his murmur: it was sort of cross between a low hum and rattle. He did it when driving, gardening, and when tending the fire on cold winter nights. I remember it well because I would sleep on the sofa near the fireplace. He moved slowly in the dark with only the glow of the fireplace for light, in pajamas and slippers, murmuring. He would tend the fire and then head back to bed. Sometimes, my grandmother, would kick him out of bed for snoring and he'd end up on the couch with me, his feet in my face. I remember those feet.