Leaning her head back, she is already sweating. Mama had bought Leah a cheap economy ticket, Boston to Naples, and that meant Leah would have a hard time getting any sleep tonight! And here she is having all she can do not to worry: when Leah returns, Mama expects her to tell Filomena’s story — based on nothing more than a single photo from 1919!
Fi, as Leah has come to refer to her “bis bis nonna” — great great grandma —was born in 1852 in the southern Italian region of Calabria, exactly 100 years before Leah.
Moreover, Fi’s son Pasquale was born to his unwed mother in 1870 — exactly 100 years before Leah entered Brown University as a completely naive freshman!
The sun is dissolving into an orange and red puddle as it sets over the wing. The jet is making a giant circle around Logan. It never fails, when Leah flies over the ocean, she holds her breath most of the way and keeps praying for a safe landing.
Suddenly she is 19 again, about to fly to Norway. She has never been on an airplane before and Europe seems like more than a world away. She recalls all the agita she and her father had over which camera she should bring. Leah and her father were always arguing — mostly about politics — but not just that. Consider the time Leah insisted she could easily tell Easter bunny chocolate from regular chocolate and her stubborn father made her sit down, blindfolded, to do a taste test — which she passed, hands down!
She is chuckling now at the thought of it. Pouring Sprite over a plastic glass of ice, she is missing her dad — Ric Ricci — so much! He was a force to be reckoned with, but at heart a very loving man, and now gone almost four years! How can it be? Luckily, her Mama — Dee — is alive and miraculously healthy at 95!!
And of course tonight she is missing the love of her life, Joel, her husband of more than four decades! Add to that their three children: Elle (for Eleanor), Anna and Henry — all grown and married and out of the house. The older one — mother to grandchildren Ben and Lucy — lives in Boston and the two younger live in Denver, where Leah’s first grandson was born six months ago.
Leah is forever telling Joel how “lonely” she is — she is constantly forlorn and yearning for time with the kids and grandkids. Joel counters by saying “Leah, honey, we have a full life together by ourselves” and that they visit the kids as often as possible.
So when Leah poured her heart out to her therapist last month, Mary replied:
“My dear Leah, as I’ve told you numerous times before, you carry all your loved ones in your heart all the time and forever! No one ever leaves, and no one ever dies! Don’t give into the old fashioned notion that we are separated from one another! We are all together in an infinite and unending universe of love!”
Darkness now surrounds the jet. Leah looks up into a splatter of bright stars above her. She is getting sleepy. Is that possible so soon? The ice has melted in her Sprite. The jet begins bouncing in some gentle turbulence. Leah’s eyes close and soon she is asleep.
*****
She keeps falling asleep but then she wakes, over and over. Her neck is sore and her back aches. But after six bumpy hours of flying, the flight attendants are passing out breakfast.
All Leah can think is “I’ll get a good cup of coffee in the airport!” And soon enough they are safely on the ground and she is in a long line for customs and immigration.
Of course she would have loved it if Joel had come. But they had both agreed this “fact finding” trip back to Italy was something Leah needed to do on her own.
After retrieving her suitcase, she heads out of the airport to get a taxi to the train station in the center of Naples. The morning traffic is thick and car fumes in the street beside the station are making Leah slightly nauseous.
From Naples, she will head south to the tiny town of Paola, where her great great grandma had fallen for a man who got her pregnant but for whatever reason
Who was that man and why had he abandoned dear Filomena? How too had Pasquale managed to survive?
It was truly a miracle! Leah had recently come across a book that revealed how hundreds of thousands of illegitimate babies had been taken from their mothers during the 19th century in Italy (and other Catholic countries). The poor babies were housed in foundling homes where they ended up dying because of the horrific conditions!
Pasquale lived, even though a whopping 93 percent of illegitimate infants born in his region of Cosenza, died in 1870, the year he was born!
As Leah climbs into a taxi, she wonders once again how she will get to the bottom of Pasquale’s story! Would she ever learn who had raised him and how he had maintained contact with his birth mother? And would she ever discover who had given him his sorry last name, Orzo?! Yes, just like the tiny macaroni! Was this a way the church and the municipal officials added insult to injury, ensuring that Pasquale would be subjected to humiliatiion throughout his life?
Soon Leah is at the train station. Bleary-eyed, she finds another cappuccino bar and eats a “cornetto,” an Italian croissant. Then she uses her basic Italian to identify the train going south and once situated in a first class car, she promptly falls asleep. Again!
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