CHAPTER THREE: "How Italian Comes Alive Inside Me!"

Looking back now, I know that I never would have connected to my Mom or to my bis bis nonna Filomena, or to any of my other ancestors if I hadn't started "speaking" Italian.

Italian has been inside me for as long as I have been alive.

My Mom was fluent, and she always spoke to her parents in Italian. So often when I was growing up, the three of them would be conversing and I would be sitting with them at the dining room table, listening to Mom and Grandma Mish and Grandpa Claude. I was absorbing words and sayings without realizing it. While I couldn't speak Italian, I could understand much of what I heard growing up.

In high school, I studied Spanish and French for four years. Italian wasn't offered. But in college, when I could have immersed myself in the language and in Italian history, I wasn't the least bit interested.

It wasn't until I fell into that endlessly frozen pit back in 2020 that I turned to Italian to rescue me.

And the strangest thing? I had no warning, and absolutely no idea that it was happening!

One morning, early in February of 2020, just a month or so before the GP descended, I found myself staring out into the meadow, which was blank with fog. I sat in the living room, on the sofa, feeling blank myself. Completely empty. Confused and lonely.

I thought it might help if I wrote about what I was feeling. But every time I opened my laptop, I just stared at the screen. My breath felt frozen inside me. My heart felt like a dark stone.

I felt lonely and scared. And the worst part of it was, I wasn’t sure why I was feeling so desperate.

At some point I started crying. A few minutes later, without really thinking about what I was doing, I opened Google translator on my laptop and set it to translate from English to Italian. And then I started typing:

“Try saying it in Italian." Instantly that became:

Prova a dirlo in italiano.

I spoke the words out loud. Once. Twice. Three times. I really liked the way the Italian sounded coming out of my mouth. Better yet, I liked the way the vibration felt as the sumptuous words resonated throughout my chest.

It was as if somebody had turned on a warm faucet inside me.

I sat there, translating every sentence that came to mind. And the sentences came fast and furiously.

“I am so afraid of being frozen.”

Ho cosi paura di essere congelato.

“I want to melt the ice inside me.”

Voglio sciogliere il ghiaccio dentro di me.

“Let go of the fear and feel the love!”

Lascia andare la paura e senti l’amore!

“Why am I so afraid?”

Perche ho cosi paura?

I was no closer to understanding why I was so frightened. But there was something about the soft round sounds of the Italian -- I couldn't get enough of them. They were just so... comforting.

And affirming.

The melodic words made my chest feel alive, like it was filled with a thick garden of pale green ferns and palms, with orchids

growing here and there; at the center of this garden was a beautiful fountain sprouting sparkling blue water.

Saying the Italian words out loud made me feel like I was speaking something very true and special to me, something that was peculiarly warm, and beating incessantly inside my heart.

For days I wrote the translations down in my journal. I wrote the English sentences in red pen. And then I wrote the Italian sentences in green pen. Soon I enrolled in an on-line Italian class. A Babbel class, in which I started...

Babbling in Italian!!!

The desire to speak the language of my grandparents had taken over!

How come, I wondered, had it taken me until I was 68 years old to want to speak Italian? And why was it, now that I was locked in a frozen pit with no way out, that I couldn't seem to get enough Italian?

And while the answers to those questions were really very simple, and should have been obvious to me, it would be almost four years before I figured them out!

****** That first morning when I began "speaking" in my native tongue, I lost track of time. I was writing down sentences for God knows how long.

Finally I got up from the computer. I walked into the living room. Poco was resting in her fluffy little chair, the way she always does at this time of the morning.

“Let’s go Miss Poco,” I whispered to her as I attached the leash to her halter. I opened the door to the meadow.

Together, we strode out across the brown tufts of grass. A layer of fog still sat on the far hillsides. There were no birds. Where were the birds? Where did they go? And why was there no snow?

Every so often we stopped. I inhaled. The air was so fresh and clean. I held my breath. We walked to the very edge of the tall tufted marsh grasses.

It started to rain, a spiffy little sprinkle. Here it was February and it was 44 degrees out.

I turned to face the house. My husband was on the back porch, sitting on a bench. He waved to me and I waved back.

I continued standing in the field, inhaling the cool moist air.

Soon, Poco and I headed back to the house. Suddenly there was so much I wanted to say. But now, I wanted to say it solo in italiano.

Oh. And it was right about that moment that I began writing a fictional story. A story about a character I called Leah!