Three Tries Before I Can Say "Sono Lucchesi!" to a Living Relative
First Try
Ever since my first trip to Italy in 1982 with my mother, I have yearned to meet someone connected by blood to her father, my Italian grandfather. On that first trip, we got as close as Florence, but I couldn't convince Mom to go further west from Florence to Altopascio and Badia Pozzeveri to search for family. I think she was self-conscious about depending too much on the willingness of a guide to bridge not only the language gap but also the decades of broken connection with her father's birthplace since he had emigrated to the U.S. never to return.Second Try
In 1998, I traveled to Tuscany again, this time with Kit and friends Bill and Mia. We hadn't planned to visit the Lucca area, but fate intervened in the form of a little car accident (a woman talking on her phone ran into our car) and we found ourselves on the road to Lucca. When the signs for Altopascio began to appear, we decided to take a look at this (fabled, in my mind anyway) place. No matter that none of us spoke Italiano, we rolled up to the post office where I inquired (with creative sign language and my repertoire of five Italian words) about the local cemetery where I hoped to find a few residents who shared my grandfather's surname. Miraculously, we were able to understand enough Italian to follow the directions to a cemetery where we found so many gravestones bearing grandpa's surname that I cried in amazement at all these ancestors together in this ancient place. I felt rooted to the spot.
Third Try's a Charm
When I went to Lucca Italian School last May, one of my goals was to learn enough Italiano to be able to talk with relatives in Altopascio or Badia Pozzeveri if I were lucky enough to find anyone. But where should my search begin? Could I find that cemetery again? Was it the one on my maps, outside of Altopascio? I really had just two slender threads to follow, a 31-year-old address for someone in Badia Pozzeveri who might or might not be related and a 60-year-old letter from my grandfather's sister to my grandmother.
Again, fate intervened. A friend of a friend produced another friend who works as a guide in Tuscany; David Beatty, guide and raconteur, calls his business "Follow Your Nose." I immediately followed my nose right to him, and "yes!" he had a day available to take me in search of my relatives. David and his trusty GPS got us to the Altopascio cemetery, but, alas, it didn't look familiar to me and there were just a few familiar surnames, not the scores I'd remembered. Undeterred, David encouraged me to put my Italiano to work by asking a couple of cemetery visitors if we were in the "right" cemetery.
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| Per favore, signora...
Three weeks of Italiano made me fearless in approaching them, but it was the 60-year-old letter in Italiano from my grandfather's sister that bridged the language gap and produced answers. We were advised to go back to Altopascio to pick up the road leading to Badia Pozzeveri and its cemetery. There we would likely find the gravestones I sought.
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| Dritto, poi a sinistra, per via Francigena... |
After a couple of hiccoughs (GPS loves exact addresses and abhors place names or proper nouns), David put us on the right road to the cemetery. I hadn't remembered the small medieval church outside the cemetery wall, nor the fact that it lies on via Francigena, the ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury Cathedral in England to Rome. Although no one was working on the day we visited, archaeological work in the area and church restoration have begun, and relatively new directional signs now mark the pilgrim path. No doubt the growing interest in these medieval survivors has been fed by awareness of potential tourism opportunities in difficult economic times.
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| Abbazia di Pozzeveri, founded in 1103 as a Camaldolese congregation of the Order of St. Benedict |
I considered finding the cemetery and paying my respects to the ancestors a great coup and would have happily wandered on to some other adventure, but David, for whom "follow your nose" is not just a business but a way of life, reminded me that I still had the 60-year-old letter from my grandfather's sister and a 31-year-old street address for her son in Badia Pozzeveri to use as clues in the search for relatives. So, we plugged the address into the GPS and went to find a dwelling that could potentially yield information about my family.
We found this house at the address, but before we even approached the door, a neighbor came to greet us. Like the kind people at the Altopascio cemetery, she spoke no English, but I produced the 60-year-old letter pronto having learned that it could explain the reason for my presence and my questions better than I could do in my fledgling Italiano. The letter released a torrent of information along with regret that I had come too late to meet the relatives who once lived here. Indeed, my grandfather's sister's son had lived here, but mother and son were both deceased and someone else, most certainly not a relative, lived in the house.
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| My grandfather's nephew lived here. His mother wrote the 60-year-old letter in my hand. |
I pressed the neighbor for information about any other relatives, perhaps descendants who might live in the area. As if to throw more resources into this language-challenged exchange, she briefly disappeared into her house and reappeared with her husband who produced an index card and pencil and began to write what seemed to be a rough family tree. I'm not sure what I finally said that made him understand I was interested in finding a living relative, but he took out his cell phone, dialed someone, talked for a minute, then hung up and smiled. Whoever had been on the other end of the line was going to join us.
Soon, from across the street, I saw a man coming toward us. As he approached, I was amazed by his resemblance to my grandfather. Same body build. Same facial shape. Same nose! He didn't speak any English, but by this time, English was irrelevant. He took the index card with the names written down by his neighbor, then added more names, including his own, Vasco. If I followed the outline of the index card lineage correctly, Vasco's mother was my grandfather's sister. That made us cousins. Davvero!
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| Vasco |
I can't express how surprised and thrilled I was to meet Vasco. But no sooner had I begun to absorb this happy event than Vasco's son arrived home from work. Another cousin, another generation! When I learned his name, Luca, I tried to explain that my beloved dog (who I imagined was languishing at home awaiting my return) is named Lucca (feminine, after Lucca, the city). If only my Italiano had been good enough, I would have mused romantically about the thread in my life connecting Lucca, Italy with Lucca my dog, and now Luca my cousin.
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| Luca |
Dizzy with the realization that I'd fulfilled a wish held for most of my life, and overwhelmed by the language challenge, I bid farewell to my new-found family with the promise that I would return. In my "I-can't-believe-this-just-happened" state, I forgot to ask for their addresses! Thanks to David who followed his nose back to Badia Pozzeveri a few days later, I now have addresses and an e-mail for Luca. I can retire the old address and put away the old letter and look forward to a future in which our Italian and American families stay connected.
I sure hope I interpreted that family tree on the index card correctly! What a great incentive to keep working on my Italiano so that the next time I visit I can confirm I didn't just will this connection into being! To be continued...
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| Cousins |
Ciao!
