”Ciao, Cecilia,” shouted my mother as we looked down across the steep vineyard. ”Dove stai?” (”Where are you?”) she cried.
A door from a hut nearly lost in the great green vines opened. A humped figure dressed in black waved. Her dress was muddy, her shoes torn.
At 90, this frail woman still worked among the grapes of Massa Marittima, the Tuscan hill town where my mother was born. She hobbled toward us, leaning into her cane.
”Bella, cara, tesora,” said this strange bundle of crumpled black reaching up to caress my face. She was calling me ”beautiful, dear, treasure.” I bent down to kiss my great-aunt. Once, more than half a century ago, she had held my mother`s little-girl hand in the piazza. Now her hand clasped mine.
In the days that would follow, many more hands would clutch mine and lovingly stroke my face. My mother finally had lured me to Italy to meet the relatives. At the time, I was 23 and not particularly keen about vacationing with my mother in the Old Country. But when she insisted on paying my way, I couldn`t resist. And I was, at least, curious about her place of birth.
Mother has six names
My mother, the fifth of seven children, was christened Ida Pia Eleka Arnella Elena Androvandi. As a child, I used to impress friends by rattling off her name-litany as a tongue twister. But that was all that I`d concede was different about my mom. I preferred her to be 100-percent American, not Italo- American, as she would identify herself.
I never could understand why she was, well-so darned Italian. You know, kissing everyone and making such a big fuss about the family. As for all these people in Italy with odd names, they were her relatives, not mine.
And her childhood had been so poor: not enough to eat, living in two small rooms, no running water, no electricity, only owning two dresses and no other outfits when my grandmother took her brood to a new life in America.
They had settled in southern Illinois in 1923, where my grandfather had been working in a coal mine for several years. In this New World, my mother, at age 9, had enough to eat but not much more.
Never had a doll
In all her girlhood, she never received one doll, a fact she told me every time she reminisced about her upbringing. My growing-up was a carefree, secure existence with two younger sisters and a brother in a well-off Milwaukee suburb. And I had a new doll every Christmas.
”Joy-a, get into the car. (After only one day in Italy, Mother had taken to pronouncing my name Italian-style.) We`re going to drive Cecilia back to Massa Marittima and then meet your Aunt Anita.”
She was in her element. At last she was opening the doors of her childhood to me. Clearly, Mother was in command. For one thing, she knew the language. I didn`t. What`s more, people in Massa Marittima treated her like visiting royalty, hugging and kissing her.
(She`d been back several times and had become a kind of town heroine. And just because I was her daughter, I too was instantly beloved.)
Of course, I was impressed.
I was also astonished by the beauty of Massa Marittima, a walled, Medieval stone city teeming with arches, alleyways, stepped passages, red-tiled roofs, green shutters and wrought-iron balconies rimmed with flower pots. Below, olive groves, vineyards and wheat fields reach 10 miles to the sea.
On an exceptionally clear day, I could see all the way to the island of Elba, where Napoleon was exiled.
Massa, as locals call their hometown of 10,000, was immaculate, just like my mother`s house in America. And many of its people had her same handsome features: fine bones, narrow hips, straight noses, blue eyes, smooth light-olive skin.
The women, petite like she is, were ”dressed to kill,” as mother says and does. That meant looking ”molto bella,” especially when promenading arm- in-arm in the piazza at dusk.
Three-layered city
Massa Marittima, acclaimed for centuries for its artisans and nearby silver and copper mines, is sectioned like a three-layered cake. At the bottom is the Borgo (little village). At the top is the Cittanova (new city), where my mother was born. In between is Cittavecchia (old city).
”All eyes notice you here,” Mother warned, frowning at my bermudas and tennis shoes, as we strolled into the main square.
How proudly she showed me the nooks and crannies of her memories-the big stone basins at the foot of the hill where she washed clothes as a small girl, the huge clock tower with its sweeping view of the valley, the frescoes in the mighty Romanesque cathedral and her favorite place of play, the 500 Steps, a steep, wide passageway leading to the Cittanova.
And, of course, there were all the parenti (relatives). Each morning over cappuccino in the piazza we`d review who was who.
”Let`s see,” I mused, ”the old woman in the hospital, with the broken hip, is Maria, another great-aunt. Narisco is the man with the little farm who gave rabbits to GIs during World War II; he`s your cousin and therefore my second cousin.”
”No, no,” she interrupted. ”In Italy, you don`t have second or third cousins-just cousins.”
Before long, the names of my mother`s relatives no longer sounded so foreign. Mazzini, Liana, Sergio, Caesare, Bruno, Fulvia, Nuncia and a whole string of others were now my family, too. I liked having an Italo-American mamma. In Massa Marittima, she was bequeathing me my inheritance.
One day, my mother announced she had something special to show me-the tiny two-room apartment in which she had lived with her four cousins and two brothers. It was on the fourth floor of a rundown building at the end of Via Bogetto, an area where the poor miners lived when my grandfather was a young man.
”We`re lucky,” she said. ”The rooms aren`t occupied. They`re going to be renovated.” Excitedly, she opened the door and said, ”This is where I took my very first breath.”
I entered cautiously, not anxious to confront what I thought were bleak memories. There they were, the walls and floors of my mother`s childhood, as dark and dreary as I had imagined. And here was the hearth where she`d severely burned her elbow, the tiny back window where my grandmother sat wet- nursing other women`s babies to earn a few lire.
I couldn`t wait to get out, to leave this moldering old building that testified to my mother`s dismal start.
Yet my mother lingered cheerfully, recalling instead games she had played with her ”toys”-pebbles from the street-and the good minestrone her mother cooked and how all her sisters and brothers giggled together on one mattress. Finally, outside again in the bright, fresh air that was Massa, she sighed happily.
”It`s fine to return to the past, but I live for today,” she said simply. ”Andiamo.” (Let`s go.)
My mother is now 70-something and still, like I am, making almost annual pilgrimages to Massa. She remains a happy woman, full of life and Italian embraces. In fact, in all the years I`ve known her, I`ve only seen her cry once.
It happened a year ago, on Mother`s Day, when I gave her a present I`d bought in Italy. When she saw what was in the box, she was flabbergasted. Tenderly, she lifted the gift and clutched it to her breast.
”Bella, bella,” she murmured over and over.
At last my mother had a doll.
