Last week my cousin, actually my dad’s cousin (which would make her my aunt here in Italy), came to visit for a few days, so we took the opportunity to ride down to the town where my great-grandmother, her grandmother, was born. The town is Riccia, in the province of Campobasso, in the Molise region. Riccia is about an hour and a half away from where I now live. (We ended up getting lost and it took quite a bit longer, but we won’t get into that story here.)

But, I didn’t visit the historical sites of the town. No castles were included in the tour even though there is one in the town. We were more interested in walking where she walked and seeing where she lived. Of course, this included the old part of town with it’s cobblestone streets and steps.

I was disappointed to find that the house is gone and now is just an empty paved lot. It is a beautiful town though.

Of course, as you can probably imagine, this started me thinking about my great-grandmother, what she must have been like and how she must have lived. Unfortunately, she passed away before I was born, but my cousin was able to tell me a lot about her since she spent her days with her while her mother was working.

Many people tell me that the fact that I picked up and moved to another country where I didn’t speak the language well, was a courageous move on my part, often saying how brave I was to do so. Believe me, compared to the move made by my great-grandmother, what I did looks like a task for the cowardly lion. Here’s a woman who at the age of 16 left her parents and the only home she had ever known. With 3 dollars in her pocket, she took a boat trip to stay with an aunt and uncle she had probably not seen in years, in a country where she did not speak the language, knowing that she was destined to marry a man, my great-grandfather, whom she had never met. Now that’s courage.

When she was leaving, did she know she would never return to Italy? More importantly, did she have any inkling that she would never see her parents again?

But, the story doesn’t end there. How nice it would be to be able to say that she and my great-grandfather married, had children and lived a happy life together. Unfortunately, it was not to be. We like to believe that she and my great-grandfather were happy together, but it was short-lived.

Sometime after they were married and my grandfather was born, his father bought some land to farm in New Jersey. When my grandfather was 8 years old, his father died during the 1918 influenza epidemic at the age of 30, leaving my great-grandmother with 6 children ranging in age from 8 to 1 and a farm to manage. Needless to say, it was an impossible task and she ended up moving back to the city. To add insult to injury, her youngest child was taken from her and given to someone else to raise and she would never see her again.

She later got remarried and had more children with her second husband. But, her life would never be an easy one. The immigrants of those times did not have easy lives.

Reflecting on that life, I often think about how strong a person she must have been. And the stories I’ve been told don’t disappoint me in that regard. I often wonder, would I be able to face such diversity with the strength that she did? Hopefully I won’t ever have to find out.

Here she is when she married my great-grandfather

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