I remember the joy I felt when I stopped to snap this picture.

That’s the church in Montegroppo behind me. I’m about to drive up the mountain once more.

Unlike the first time, on this day - I know exactly where I’m headed.

This last day in Italy was special. After having one last cappuccino and pastry at the cafe across the street, I had driven into Albareto to see if I might gather a bit more information about the Ferrari family side. Once in the office, however - it was clear that they were too busy. While walking to my car, I thought about how grateful I was to have gone on a quiet day the time before. When I got into my car, I wondered where I should head. Should I go look for some other cemeteries? This was essentially my last day in the region. I had planned on finding a hotel room in Bologna that night so that it would make my morning easier. My flight left at 6am, and I was 2 hours from Bologna airport. It would be an early morning, and there was snow in the forecast.

Just then, an email came through from Chiara. She said “Hi Sarah, can you come to my home At 16 p.m? We’ll cook together TORTELLI for dinner and you can sleep here.”

I was thrilled. Of course I’d prefer to go back up that mountain in Montegroppo - and she wanted us to cook together? Yes, yes, yes!

I went back to my apartment and tried to use up the remaining groceries in my fridge. My cozy apartment had been the perfect place for me to prepare my own meals. I enjoyed my simple lunch, and gathered the remaining items to bring with me.

By the time I had the apartment clean, and my things packed - I was running late. But because I had driven these roads back and forth now for the past week, it was easy to find my way.

Knowing this would be my last drive here during daylight - I tried to memorize each bend in the road, tried to take in the views of my favorite stone villas amidst the oaks, and the rolling fields flecked with wild fennel.

After greeting Chiara at her home, I walked back across the street to say my goodbyes to Ubaldo and Maria. They wouldn’t be joining us for dinner, and I wanted to give them one last hug. This was the fourth or fifth time now that I’d entered their little kitchen, and with each return I could see more warmth on their faces. As I worked hard for the right Italian phrases, explaining how glad I was to have met Ubaldo on the road that day, he smiled and nodded. I got teary. Ubaldo talked and talked to me, as he had done on every visit. I guess he expected that I understood him. By this time, I actually did understand most if it. He was telling me to be careful. There would be ice on the road in the morning, and I needed to watch out for wild pigs, too - he was saying.

Maria got up and brought me the calendar off the wall. She pointed to the date I was leaving - Jan. 17 - and said “Antonio”. I looked at where she was pointing and this time said “Antonio Scarpenti”. Our mutual relative (her Grandfather - my great, great Grandfather) Antonio Scarpenti, had been the one who had first immigrated to America. Now I was about to head home, but before I did - Maria wanted to show me that she thought it wasn’t an accident I was heading home on the feast of Saint Antonio.

Even though I could barely speak with her, and although I’d only just appeared into her life a few days before, Maria reminded me that we were family. My heart was touched by her thoughtful gesture.

I walked back to Chiara’s house and was met by the smell of her delicious Torta di Mele (apple cake) baking in the oven. We had many good laughs together as we talked about dinner. I was curious about how to make the Tortelli - and what shape it would be. I had always called these Ravioli. No, Ravioli were much smaller, she explained.

She put me in charge of hand mixing the pasta dough, (since she had been looking at my book I’d given her) she said I knew what I was doing. (I sure hoped I did!) I began mixing flour and cracking eggs, in my usual way- without a recipe (use as many eggs as people who are eating, then add the two types of flour) while she cooked and explained everything she was preparing for the Tortelli’s filling. She chopped steamed chard with a Mezzaluna, a crescent-shaped, two handled knife, then mixed it with ricotta and salt.

Her husband Ivo (my second cousin) came home, just in time to help us attach the pasta roller to the table. He was quiet and kind, and reminded me a lot of my husband.

Chiara praised the texture of the pasta I had made, which felt good. All those times practicing at home using Gennaro’s technique, and my grandmother’s tools with my girls - I had wondered if I was doing it “right”.

We continued to talk while we made and filled the Tortelli. We were covered in flour and having so much fun by the time her son Federico and his girlfriend Mara joined us.

As Chiara made her Sugo di Funghi, I got to know Federico and Mara. With Mara’s excellent English, we had an easy time talking about our lives. It was so special to be in their home, to laugh and show pictures and talk about them coming to visit us in America.

The Sugo di Funghi that Chiara made was very likely the same sauce my mother remembers Grandma Scarpenti making when she was a girl. My mom had said - It was so good - it had porcini mushrooms in it, and I don’t think it had any meat.

Chiara’s sauce began with rehydrated Porcini mushrooms (picked and dried, from the surrounding mountains), white wine, garlic, tomato puree and at the end - fresh parsley. As I smelled it, I told her this would be so good on Polenta, and she looked at me and shook her head.

No, never a red sauce on Polenta! she said.

This made me laugh! I obviously had more to learn about this region’s cuisine.

Chiara also served half of our Tortelli with butter and fresh sage. Yum!

Mara had brought over a dish of roasted fennel, and we had a platter of Salumi with it as well. It was a lovely meal.

After a long evening talking, laughing and eating - it was time for me to go to bed. Chiara had prepared a bed up in their attic for me, and had also gifted me a large hunk of Parmesan and some Parma ham to try and squeeze into my suitcase. As I said goodnight, I told them I would be leaving at 3am, so I would quietly sneak out in the morning. I did not want to wake them. They refused this, and said they would wake up with me. I was overwhelmed by their kindness and generosity.

As I laid in bed that night, staring at the ceiling - my mind was unable to rest. For so long I had hoped and dreamed of visiting Italy and learning how to cook the food from the regions where my grandparents came from.

In 2013, I had written this on my blog:

I dream of traveling to Italy. The land of my maternal heritage holds such a strong personal draw for me…

I do not have many Italian relatives left with whom I can learn from. I want to visit Italy - see the villages and towns that mia famiglia came from -and meet some of them. I don't need to do the typical tourist thing... I hope to find a sweet Italian mama who will let me sit in her kitchen and watch her cook. Someday...

At the time I had written those words - actually visiting Italy felt like an unreachable dream. I had carried the ache of disconnection from my heritage, and the more I lived my life at home surrounded by my gardens, animals, baking bread in my outdoor oven - the more the longing had grown.

I had felt crushed that neither my mother, nor her parents had learned to speak Italian. Whatever connection my grandmother had to her heritage, hadn’t really been passed to my mother, and so very little had been given to me.

I had made friends with a woman online to practice Italian/English together around the time my book was published. She lived in Treviso, Italy and after reading my bio on Amazon she had reacted in anger that I had described myself as “a passionate Italian”. I don’t understand why you would call yourself an Italian when you are not! You don’t even speak the language! I had been crushed by her response, embarrassed that as an American with Italian heritage, I had overlooked the fact that from a world-wide perspective, my description had seemed dishonest. I removed the description immediately - my heart tender with shame.

When I took a first look at my Ancestry DNA results, I saw - 42% French, 38% English and 14% Italian. It felt like a punch to the gut - like a cruel joke. (Upon further investigation - I learned that the region listed as France included Northern Italy).

Toko-Pa Turner writes, in her book Belonging -

“In the mystical way of understanding it, longing is a memory of belonging to God. As we follow our personal longing, we are coming back to that original coherence. Though we need to learn how to live with the grief of having lost the traditions of our ancestry, we can reconnect through our longing to the origins from which those traditions were birthed.”

This was exactly what I had done. I had felt the grief, and followed my longing.

Now I was falling asleep inside the home of one of my family members.

I’d been led by that ache and had been brought even closer to my Italian heritage than I could have hoped. Driving into the Val Taro mountains I had felt my heart stir with anticipation. The hillsides covered in oak leaves were drawing me in by their beauty. On my third day, I had been honored by a mayor and interviewed by a journalist. My wonder grew every day, as my great grandmother had mysteriously whispered words I didn’t understand into my mind, like a riddle for me to solve - each one a word of encouragement and guidance, helping me to feel less alone. I had seen my picture on the front of the Parma newspaper, the story of my search had been shared with thousands. Most amazing of all - I had walked up a road my family had once traveled, asking my ancestors to guide me. In less than an hour, my own cousin (of all people) met me on my way back down.

Being invited to eat and then sleep in my family’s home, felt like being sheltered inside the heart of a mother’s love - inside the embrace of Italy herself.

-

I woke at 2:45, showered and quietly crept downstairs. Ivo and Chiara greeted me with sweet, sleepy faces and with coffee, as I apologized for the early hour. I drank the coffee she had prepared and gave Chiara a long hug. Ivo helped me de-ice my car and carry my suitcases. Because my car was facing Ubaldo and Maria’s house, my headlights were shining directly at their front window. Ivo pointed to show me that 86 year old Maria was standing at her door. I felt terrible for waking her, but ran up to kiss her once more. She squeezed me and said quietly, “Buon Viaggio”.

As I drove carefully down the icy mountain roads that were now so familiar, my tears turned to quiet sobs.

There is no way I could have imagined, as I drove into these mountains with my eager, yearning heart - how fulfilled I would feel driving out.

I was so very grateful, and so sad to be leaving.

I’m amazed today, that I was able to make this life-changing journey and return home, just one month before the COVID 19 pandemic swept the world. Northern Italy, the very place I had been this winter - has been particularly hard hit with a devastating loss of life. As I’ve kept in touch with relatives and friends from my recent trip, I’ve also been paying attention to how this crisis feels.

As a world, we’ve been pulled into a surreal time of reflection and pause.

We are being forced out of our busy routines to stop… and I can’t help but feel that there is something we are meant to remember.

I love this word remember.

One of my favorite authors, Glennon Doyle has said: “ The two most repeated phrases in the Bible are FEAR NOT. and REMEMBER… Re-member is the opposite of dis-member. When we shut our doors to our own family: when we are afraid of each other - we are dismembered. The kingdom of God comes when we treat each other like kin. Like family. When we RE-MEMBER.”

As the great granddaughter of Italian immigrants, I felt the ache of being dismembered from belonging. I belonged to my Italian culture, but somehow over time, that connection had been lost. My experience this winter proved that my connection to those Italian mountains had always been a part of who I was. My affinity for acorns and mushrooms had been with me all my life, and my love for cooking and growing food was just waiting to burst out of me - and did, once our financial and health struggles hit. It had been a deeply painful time in my life which had begun my process of re-membering.

For some time now, as I’ve looked at our world - I’ve been feeling an even deeper ache for humanity. As people, we have been living like a body - dismembered.

I think we’ve forgotten that we belong to one another, we belong to the natural world and we are woven together by one Divine Source.

As Charles Eisenstein so beautifully expresses it - we have been living for too long in the story of Separation. We have forgotten our interconnection and instead, believed the lie that we are separate selves - in a world of dangerous ‘others’. This belief has leads to an ever increasing war mentality, to Us vs. Them thinking, to a life motivated by scarcity.

While there is so much grief to feel right now, I can’t help but also see that there is priceless beauty in being still and feeling the ache. We always have a choice, whether to let our longing lead us with love or fear.

In this time of quarantine, we can remember that we are not separate - but that what we do for others, we also do to ourselves.

In our need for social distancing, we can remember how precious human to human interaction is, and how badly we need physical touch, and closeness. (What a joy it will be to hug our friends again!)

As we see illness and death statistics rise, we can remember to cherish those in our lives, and open up more fully to Divine love.

At the grocery stores, we can remember that food doesn’t come from store shelves, but from our generous earth. Many people are returning to the joy of growing their own food, of baking their own bread and buying as much as possible from local producers.

With stay at home orders, we can remember how desperately we need the beauty and healing of sunshine, water, air and earth - because we too, are nature.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from Charles Eisenstein:

“To be alone is a primal fear, and modern society has rendered us more and more alone.

But the time of reunion is here.

Every act of compassion, kindness, courage or generosity heals us from the story of separation, because it assures both actor and witness that we are in this together.”

The last chapter of my Italy trip left me with a feeling of being deeply seen, known and loved. Flying home away from Italy - I knew that I belonged to her.

I see this painful time in human history as a new beginning - and an invitation into a much deeper belonging for us all.

.