Italy in winter - PART EIGHT - The End and a Beginning

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.

Arrividerci Italia - grazie a tutti!

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.

.

Italy in winter - PART SEVEN

I woke on Tuesday morning with a text message on my phone from my friend Giorgio, the journalist. The article he had written in the Parma newspaper was out.

I drove up the road to the cafe, bought myself a cappuccino and pastry, and waited until I could look at a newspaper on one of the empty tables. It was a surreal feeling to see my face at the top of the front page.

According to my research, the Gazzetta di Parma was founded in 1735 as a weekly newspaper and with a circulation of approximately 43,000, stands as the oldest newspaper in Italy.

I had just arrived in this place four days ago, knowing not a single person. From the moment I exited the autostrada and entered the winding roads of these mountains, I had felt a generous welcome. Now I was sitting in a cafe, reading a story about myself in the Parma newspaper. Was this really happening??

The story was titled, “Sarah, from Colorado, on the path of her ancestors” subtitled - “The entrepreneur, who runs an organic farm, is in Alta Valtaro to discover her roots. She succeeded in sifting through the municipal archives to look for her great-grandparents”. The amazing thing was, between the time the photos had been taken and the story came out - I had already found my family!

I drove down the road to the supermarket and purchased a couple of copies and headed back to my apartment. There had been so much to take in over the past few days. I wanted to be sure I had things written down in my journal, as well as update my ancestry family tree with the new information I had gathered from meeting my family on the road.

I sat in my cozy apartment, typing away, when the buzzer rang. Unsure as to who might be calling on me - I slipped on my shoes, and found my sweet friend Angela (who owned the store below me) walking up the apartment stairs with a plate of food for me. The memory of this moment brings tears to my eyes as I type, and I can still smell the aroma of that lovely plate of Torta di Riso - (a traditional food of the Alta Valtaro region) as she handed it to me with smiling eyes. Angela didn’t speak any English, but I understood what she was saying … I thought you might be hungry - it’s nothing!

Well, it was much more than nothing. This gesture meant everything to me.

How could she know that for so long I had sat in my home kitchen, looking at the photos of my Italian family, wishing I knew the type of food they had once cooked? This was one of the main reasons I had come. I wanted to connect with the land, look for relatives - and my deepest desire was to learn how to cook some of the local food. Without asking, I was given a taste of some simple home cooking.

Torta di Riso is a baked dish made of Arborio rice. There was a layer of breadcrumbs on the bottom of the dish, and it tasted like she had sauteed onion, added some zucchini and the rice was mixed with ricotta and parmesan. The result was aromatic, comforting and delicious. Crispy on the bottom, chewy and moist in the middle.

Eating Angela’s cooking reminded me of years earlier, studying the regions of Italy with my girls - and how my heart had swelled with love and longing, discovering the BBC Series Two Greedy Italians. Watching chefs Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo traveling to different regions of Italy, cooking the traditional food, I had felt the ache of not having been given any traditional recipes from my own Italian relatives. My mother had taught me how her grandmother had made Chicken soup, and my mom had certainly cooked many wonderful dishes, which I knew how to replicate. But there were no recipes from my Mom’s father’s side (Southern Italy and Sicily) or her mother’s side (Nothern Italy) that had been shared. It seemed that once my family had immigrated to America - they assimilated and after two generations, the old food traditions had been lost.

I fell so in love watching Two Greedy Italians, that one evening I looked up the chef Gennaro’s website and sent him an email. I’ll admit I may have had a bit too much wine that evening. I gushed my longing into an email telling him how he reminded me of my Italian family, shared my blog and how much I appreciated the show. (oh dear!)

Sometimes allowing your passion to lead you straight into a gut instinct isn’t all that bad… Gennaro actually replied to my email! I have become online friends with his wife and enjoy communicating with his daughters online as well. Following passion and a gut instinct is also what had landed me on this incredibly journey.

My heart and stomach were filled to the brim after enjoying Angela’s lunch prepared for me with love. But why was I sitting in my apartment alone? I had found family - and with only three days left of my trip, now was not the time to be shy. I wrapped up a couple of gifts and a copy of the newspaper. I hopped into my car and decided to drop in and visit Ubaldo and Maria.

They welcomed me inside, and I quickly saw that they already had a copy of the paper spread out on the table. Ubaldo went to the phone, and called to his brother Ivo’s house next door. In a few minutes, I met Chiara, his sister in law. She was a school teacher and spoke some English, which was such a gift! I shared photos of my family with them, opened my laptop to show some photos of my life at home. I asked her some more questions about food from the region, which prompted Ubaldo to show me his stash of Porcini mushrooms. We spoke about the mushrooms he and Maria had sent to my mother long ago. They both remembered exactly how they had packaged and sent them to her. That had been thirty years ago - and yet they remembered. I paused and recalled the word that had entered my mind on the drive into the Alta Valtaro mountains that first day - before I knew what it had meant: ricordiamo - we remember.

Ubaldo located a bag, and gave me a generous portion of the mushrooms, saying that they could never eat all of them. Oh, my heart.

Chiara walked me across the street to her home and gave me a tour. There was more family history to learn. Ivo and Chiara lived in the old stone house that Aunt Clotilde had built by hand. (Clotilde was one of my great grandfather’s sisters). Chiara’s husband Ivo was a home builder, and had done a beautiful remodel on the old home. Chiara told me the history of the house, gave me a tour, and we had coffee. She was dealing with some uncertainty with family that week, so we weren’t sure whether she would be free to meet up again before I left, although she told me she wanted me to meet her son and husband. I was thrilled to have met her, and told her I would wait to hear more.

I felt immediately at home with Chiara. Her warm smile and kind demeanor were so welcoming. I walked back to Ubaldo and Maria’s house and he offered to take me on a drive. I understood that he wanted to take me to see the house of my great grandfather, Luigi Scarpenti. I snapped a selfie with him before we got in his car. It was fun coaxing some warm smiles out of him.

We drove about ten minutes up a road, into the forest. What a beautiful place! He was very talkative, and just kept on speaking to me in Italian, as if I understood it all. I tried to keep up, and did understand some of what he was saying. I took video so that I could translate it later.

We arrived at a point where the road ended. There was some construction fencing up to keep people out of some old stone homes which had caved in. Ubaldo led me up the road a bit further, and I gasped to see some beautiful old stone homes tucked into the edge of the forest. The first one, he told me was Aunt Carmela’s. Another sister of my great grandfather who had never married. Then, he pointed ahead to a gorgeous little house covered in ivy.

This was the home my great-grandfather had lived before he left for America. It was the one that Antonio Scarpenti had built after returning from work on a ranch in San Jose.

There was another small home next to it - where Aunt Carmela lived. The picture below is her with Ivo, as a boy. I enjoyed seeing how tiny she was, just like my grandmother - who was 4’11’’.

Ubaldo explained that these homes were getting so old, they were in danger of collapsing. Many years ago, they were sold. (This must have been just after Maria, his mother had written letters to my Aunt in San Jose). The home where Luigi had grown up was now owned by a music teacher, who lived there in the summer, and who had done some improvements - like putting on a new roof.

Ubaldo pointed to the trees, Castagne he said, which meant chestnut - a word I wouldn’t forget. He picked up a chestnut hull from the ground, careful not to poke himself, and said a few more words about them which I tried to follow. I realized that this had been an important food source for the family. Something growing all around them.

When we returned to Ubaldo’s house, he wanted to show me la casa vecchia. The old house where his mother had grown up. Before we did that, he had to go put away his chickens. Solo le due galline - he only had two chickens left. All the others had been eaten by predators. (I could relate. The same had happened to my hens this winter. We were down to just four at home.) The way his face lit up when he saw his hens was the absolute highlight of my day. Ubaldo is sort of a sober man. But when he bent down to pet his chicken, his face spread into a broad, joyful grin. He collected two eggs, and then walked me in to the place where his mother had once lived.

He pointed to a place above the wood stove. There was metal mesh in between the ceiling rafters. He explained that they would place their chestnuts above the fire to dry. Once dry, they would grind them into flour.

I was amazed and so happy to have spent some time with my cousin that day. He had not expected me to stop by, but was willing to show me all around. I could see that it brought him joy to show me the old buildings, the place where the cows had once been kept, and his chickens. I was thanking him, and getting ready to leave, when he pointed to the house and seemed to be asking me to stay. It was dinner time, and I didn’t want to impose, but he insisted.

When I walked inside, I saw that Maria had been boiling some potatoes, which were now cooling on the table. He walked to the cupboard and picked up his bag of farina di castagne. He wanted to cook something for me with the chestnut flour! I could hardly handle this. Not only was I about to share a meal with these two sober and quiet relatives of mine, but Ubaldo was going to cook for me. He carefully mixed hot water with the chestnut flour, mentioning that it was naturally sweet. Here, taste it! he said. Before I knew it, he was pushing a spoonful of the plain flour into my mouth, which immediately turned to paste. I couldn’t speak because my lips were stuck together, so I just nodded with a smile. He made a batter and dropped this simple mixure of flour and water into hot oil in a pan. I watched him mumble to himself as he cooked, and he pointed out the ones that had just the right amount of color. After the chestnut fritters were cooked, he asked if I wanted a fried egg or boiled. Those two eggs he had collected from the hens would be dinner. Since I didn’t know how to say - I’ll have whatever you’re having, I said boiled. We sat in silence as he looked to the clock, saying ancora un po di tempo - a little more time and the boiled eggs would be done.

Maria sat peeling her boiled potatoes. I reached over to help. She began mashing hers with a fork. Should I do the same? Or was that only because she hadn’t many teeth? They brought out two bottles of olive oil and began to drizzle the oil on their boiled potatoes. Maria pointed to the oil, suggesting I do the same. Ubaldo placed my cooked egg on the plate. They pointed to the fritters - and I took two of those as well.

My phone died just before Ubaldo began cooking the fritters, so I don’t have a photo of what we ate that evening.

Although this was probably one of the simplest meals I had ever eaten - with no salt or seasonings of any kind, I can not quite describe the way it tasted. It was satisfying on a level that went far beyond my taste buds. It had been cooked for me with the simplest of ingredients that my ancestors had surely eaten many times before. This had not been the kind of Italian food I had imagined learning how to cook, years earlier, the way I had watched my favorite professional chefs do on TV. On the BBC show, Gennaro and Antonio had served their authentic Italian food on antique china in an outdoor setting under a tree in the woods. My cousin Ubaldo served my egg, boiled potato and chestnut fritters to me on a plastic plate. His was a simple life of just him and his mother. No frills. Just simple food.

Though this meal had not been romantically presented or gourmet in style - the food I ate that evening had been prepared for me by my own relatives and was delicious. This was something I had dreamed of for so long. I had found my Italian family, and they had welcomed me into their home. What Ubaldo and Maria had made for me left me feeling deeply satisfied and humbled, too. The reason I was used to eating such diverse meals at home in America was because my great grandfather Luigi had taken the risk of traveling across an ocean to find greater opportunity. He had married Marina and they raised my grandmother amidst the abundance of American life. But was it really any richer? I wasn’t sure.

I had grown up with a mix of fresh as well as processed food. We ate roasted chicken with fresh pesto, but also Kraft American cheese singles and Frosted Mini Wheats. I raised my own family the same way, and was totally disconnected from where my food came from until my first daughter got sick. Learning how to grow my own food changed my life, our family’s health, and in many ways - brought me right back to the simple, Cucina Povera that my ancestors had always known.

Of course - I enjoy the diverse selection of food available to me in America - but there are many evenings where our dinner is a big plate of salad picked from the hoop house - or sauteed swiss chard from the garden - topped with soft boiled eggs. When we eat this way, we feel rich. Just like Ubaldo and Maria.

I went to bed that night in quiet appreciation. I had shared a meal with my family. I had learned about and tasted two types of regional foods common to the Alta Val Taro mountains.

I was beyond content.