CHAPTER FIVE: "Smile From Your Heart!"

The more I wrote in Italian, the more excited I got about the language, and about how it was opening me up to new feelings. Italian was infusing my life with vigor; it felt sometimes like the words, and their rolling sound, were filling me with passion and energy!

Each morning after I finished meditating, I sat down with my journal and used the translator program to write all kinds of phrases and sentences that appealed to me.

“Each moment is a gift.”

Ogni momento é un regalo.

“Life is a precious flower.”

La vita é un fiore prezioso.

“May you enjoy all the small and the large miracles today.”

Potresti goderti tutti i piccoli e grande miracoli oggi.

I felt a kind of thrill when I spoke the sentences out loud. I just loved the way they sounded. Using Babbel, I tested my accent -- I spoke Italian into a microphone, and if I had the right accent, the program would ring a little bell!

One morning out of the blue I recalled one of Dee’s (my mom Dena’s nickname) favorite sayings. "Li cascado lu caso sober le maccheroni." Translation:

The cheese fell right on the macaroni!

Meaning, things worked out perfectly well for me!

My mother said that to me frequently after I left for college. I suppose she was right. After all, I was attending an Ivy League school on an academic scholarship. But when I met and married my husband Richard in 1978, she said it more than ever. My in-laws were fairly well off, and they were in the gourmet catering business, so my wedding – which we announced only five weeks before it happened – was quite an elaborate affair.

There was another saying my mother used to say to me: “Hey, tu se fortunata!” – Hey, you are so fortunate!

Honestly, though, I had never really considered myself fortunate!

Looking back, it is fair to say that I spent most of my life in a low level of depression.

My first dip into depression occurred during my sophomore year in college. In March of 1972, my high school boyfriend (who was a freshman at Harvard) and I parted ways in a rather romantic, sweet way: he and I sat in Harvard Square long into the night. He, being a musician, serenaded me with his beautiful blonde Martin guitar! We hadn't fallen out of love; we were simply recognizing that we needed space in order to live our lives fully at college.

Well, so, back at Brown that spring, I found myself nosediving quickly into a state of torpor. I wandered around Providence feeling lost. Lonely. Unable to focus. I tried going to the counseling center, but they couldn't seem to remember my name from one visit to the next.

And then, a rather remarkable physician, Dr. Horace Martin**, who was my lab instructor in microbiology, reached out to me. He called me up to his desk after class one day and began talking to me. As we left the classroom, he told me about his family -- he had seven children. And soon enough, he asked me to come over for dinner. So that night, I accompanied him home to eat spaghtetti and meatballs.

He and his wife were incredibly sweet; after dinner, they insisted that I stay overnight.

I guess I must have worn my depression all over my face! What I didn't learn until later was that Dr. Martin had suffered from depression himself. He was keenly aware of the signs and he had recognized them in me because he knew them so well himself!

The next morning Dr. Martin drove me back to campus and when he dropped me off, he told me to play my guitar. He also gave me a very simple piece of advice that I have remembered for more than 50 years!

"Remember to do something really nice for yourself every single day," he said. "Even if it's just treating yourself to a candy bar."

I think back to my Mom's saying: “Claudia, tu se fortunata!” And I realize that Mom was right. God knows what would have happened to me if Dr. Martin hadn't reached out to offer his incredible kindness!

I recovered from the depression in 1972. I was again, very fortunate! I was invited to spend that summer in Norway, living with a lovely young woman named Liv Bremer, who had been the foreign exchange student in my high school. Liv and I had bonded, and now, she really wanted me to come to Norway, and miraculously, even though I had very little money, I did! She found me a job in a "margarinfabrik," a margerine factory where I wore a white coat, a white net on my hair and a pair of white clogs. I packed huge slabs of margerine, and also, on a separate machine, peanut butter.

Liv and her friends and I trekked all over Norway's gorgeous landscape, from the remarkable fjords in the south to the beautiful mountains and bay of Bergen up north.

I was so smitten with Norway that I actually wrote the Dean of Students at Brown in August of 1972 and asked him if I could spend the semester at the University of Oslo. It's hard to believe, but I really thought that I would be able to take chemistry in Norwegian!

Thankfully, reason prevailed and I returned to Brown feeling excited about my junior year!

I had managed to steer through my first serious episode of depression. Miraculously, I would go through most of my adult life before it did flare up in a big way.

Looking back, however, I realize that I lived most of my life under the shadow of a low level of depression. That feeling of being frozen. That inability to experience deep joy on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis.

It's quite apparent to me when I look back at photos. My husband and I would always bemoan the fact that I couldn't seem to smile.

He on the other hand had a knockout of a smile.

"Honey, just smile from your heart," he would say, aiming the camera at me.

Over and over again, I would try. Over and over and over again, I would fail.

Honestly, I didn't understand what it meant to smile from my heart until I finally embraced my ancestry, deep in my soul!

And I didn't embrace my ancestry until I allowed the Italian language to pour out of me!

**The kindness that Dr. Martin showed me back in 1972 cannot be overstated! I hope readers will click on the link to the story I wrote about him and his wife Florence, both of whom deserve metals for their deep and abiding humanity!