"The Orzo Ancestors Speak Up!"

Not long after I started "writing" in Italian, the world fell prey to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was March of 2020. It took me a few days after the quarantine began to go grocery shopping.

When I did, I went to two different grocery stores in search of whole wheat pasta. I couldn’t find a single box. What I finally found on the bottom shelf of the third store, however, were the last two containers of

WHOLE WHEAT ORZO.

Orzo is the smallest form of macaroni. You might say it's the most humble of macaroni's. It resembles rice.

That night, I posted a photo of the ORZO container on Instagram with this caption, "Maybe my ancestors are trying to speak to me!"

I wrote that because my grandmother's -- my father's mother's -- name was Albina Orzo Ricci.

My grandmother’s middle name, Orzo, came from her father, my great grandfather – Pasquale Orzo. Oddly enough, Pasquale was the first person in the family to have Orzo as a last name.

At the time, I thought it rather amusing that all I could find in the grocery store was ORZO.

But a few days later, I was really astonished by what happened.

My sister Holly texted me saying, "Ya’ gotta follow the ORZO FACEBOOK PAGE. Look at this post."

Holly had written a Facebook message to our cousin Donna Ricci, who is the family’s informal genealogist. She lives up in Maine. It was Donna who uncovered the secret about great grandpa Pasquale. She was the one who explained to the family why Pasquale Orzo was the first to have that last name.

My great grandfather was illegitimate. Born in 1870 in southern Italy, he was taken from his unwed mother at birth and given the random name ORZO – the smallest form of macaroni. He was given the name, we believe, by the municipal authorities of Paola, the tiny seaside town in the region of Calabria where he was born. He was raised by a woman named Annunziata Sessa, wife of Raffaelle Signorelli.

His illegitimacy was a source of extraordinary shame for my grandmother (his daughter Albina) and her sisters, and by extension, for the rest of the family. We never knew the truth about Pasquale until well after my grandmother and her sisters had passed.

Back to Holly’s Facebook message. She wrote to Donna saying: "I can't thank you enough for being the caretaker of all this ORZO family history." Donna replied: "My hope is that someone in my lifetime will be interested in writing a book about our ORZO family (hint hint cousin Claudia Ricci????)"

I was stunned. How could cousin Donna possibly know that just in the last few day, as I was starting to write more and more in Italian, I had begun to think about writing such a book?!

I am not a Facebook fan, but the next day I posted a message on my cousin's wall: "I hope you are patient because it takes a long time to write a book.”

Then I wrote in my journal:

“Yes, maybe I have started learning Italian so I can write the stories of my ancestors.”

I write that line in green ink, and then I translate it and write the translation down in purple ink:

“Si, forse ho iniziato a imparare l’italiano per poter scrivere le storie dei miei antenati.”

I am astonished to find that the word “ancestors” in Italian is

“antenati.” Like antenna.

I write in my journal: “I will be happy to be an antenna for the Orzo’s and for any other ancestors interested in speaking to and through me!”

“Sarò felice di essere un’antenna per gli Orzos e per tutti gli altri antenati interessati a parlare con e attraverso di mi.”