Episode 12: In Italy
In 1960 I was in the army, stationed in Ansbach, Germany, and I decided to take some leave time and go to Molfetta, Italy, the birthplace of both my parents, and home to two uncles, one aunt, cousins by the dozens, and most importantly, my paternal grandmother!
I traveled to Italy by train from Ansbach to Milano, where I boarded the Milano-Lecce Express. The express traveled the length of Italy along the coast of the Adriatic Sea, south to the tip of the peninsula. Molfetta was situated on a seaport just at the top of the heel of the boot, but the train did not stop there. Instead, I had to go on to the capital city of the province, Bari, and then take a bus back to Molfetta, about fifteen miles.
As soon as I saw signs indicating the city limits of Molfetta, I decided to get off the bus and walk into town. I should say at this point that I told no one that I was coming, so I had to find my relatives on my own. The only thing I knew was that my father’s sister, Zia Teresa, owned an outdoor cafe called Cafe Zaza. I walked for about fifteen or twenty minutes, when I decided I would ask the next person I met for directions to the cafe. A portly gentleman, wearing a navy blue suit jacket and a gray fedora hat was approaching me, and as he drew nearer, I was amazed to feel that I recognized him. My mother always showed us pictures of our family in Italy, so it wasn’t so strange that I knew this man. I was a little nervous, but I decided to talk to him, and in my best Italian, I called out “Zio Antonio!” The man was startled and drew back, placing his hands on his hips, and responded “Chi se tu...” or who are you? “I’m Marco from America,” I responded. With that said, my Uncle Antonio embraced me in a huge bear hug, tears streaming down both our faces—mine because I had found my uncle, his for reasons that became clear a little later.
He could not believe I recognized him, and kept saying over and over, “il figlio di Pasqualina” (“Pasqualina’s son”). He took me to his house, calling out to his wife, my Zia Rosina, “Look who I have brought home! It’s Marco!” Upon seeing me, she first was hesitant to approach me, then she began to cry, calling me by name, then almost fainting. Entering the main room of their small home, I saw something that made me understand this overly emotional greeting: an altar with votive candles burning on either side of a framed photograph of a young man, who resembled me quite a bit. He was their son, also named Marco, who had been killed in World War II! After all the tears and hugs, I also met their son Ilarione and daughter Anna, my first cousins. Later I was to meet their other sons, Stefano and Vito Antonio, but when asked what I wanted to do first, I said I wanted to meet my Grandmother.
It was a short walk to my Grandmother’s home. He knocked on her door, and when she answered, I saw a tiny old woman, dressed in black (mourning her husband who had died in 1949), with thick bifocal glasses, and—lo and behold—my father’s face. “Guess who I have brought to you,” my uncle said, and my grandmother peered at my face for a few seconds, then said matter-of-factly, “Gaetano’s son.”(!) Then she grabbed me and hugged me, asking how I got there, and if I was Nicola (my brother) or Marco.
The next seven days were a flurry of activity, meeting my Zia Teresa, my Zio Sergio, at least a dozen cousins, and sitting down to one huge meal after another. It was party time in Molfetta.
A couple of years ago, when my own family traveled to Italy for the first time, my daughter Stephanie remarked that her “DNA was vibrating and whirling about me.” I remember feeling that way myself when I returned to Molfetta a second time before I left Germany. That time I stayed for thirty days. My grandmother hooked her arm through mine and insisted I sit with her. The month was September, and the weather was warm. So as a dutiful grandson I sat with her and tried to ignore the hot foot I was forced to receive as my 94-year-old grandmother warmed her own feet with a coal-filled brazier. But the intense heat was nothing—my comfort came from being with my family, my people whom I had not known just months earlier.
When I returned to civilian life in 1961, my mother showed me a letter from her brother, my Zio Antonio, in which he apologized for the smeared ink, caused by his tears of joy while writing to her about our chance meeting.
