Son Jeff, Dad, Mom, Son Jeremy

My father has been gone for many years, but I still hear his voice almost every day.

“Speed, Accuracy, and Results.”
“Do what you’re told, when you’re told, as you’re told. If you know a better way, tell it to me. If not, do it my way.”
“What’s wrong, why is it wrong, and what are you doing to do about it?”
And my favorite: “Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.”

In LIFETIME, I write a great deal about my mother and very little about my father. But after Nonna, no one influenced my life more than my father.

He was the person I called when I was in trouble, even well into adulthood. He was always ready with advice. The truth is, he was almost always right.

We sang together – the songs of his youth: “On the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “Smile Awhile,” and dozens of others. Today, I sing them with my sons and grandchildren, and somehow Dad lives on.

My sons adored him. They often say, “Granddad earned the right to tell us what to do. He could talk the talk because he walked the walk.”

Born into abject poverty, he never forgot where he came from. He worked relentlessly, built an international business, and created opportunities for his children and grandchildren that he himself never had.

What I regret is that I didn’t ask more questions. I wish I had asked him more about his family. He adored his older brother Fred, yet I know only fragments of those stories. He was a Marine in the First Landing Battalion on Guadalcanal. What happened there? How did he build such a successful company? Why did he love all things Italian?

Family history is often preserved in conversation. And conversations have an expiration date. When our loved ones pass away, they take their library of life with them.

That realization is one of the reasons I pressed my mother for answers during the final years of her life. I knew the opportunity would not last forever. Time ends. Lives pass. Stories disappear. And sometimes all we’re left with are questions.

What about you? Is there someone you wish you had asked more questions? And if there is someone still living whose story matters to you, don’t wait.

Every region in Italy has its culinary traditions. In Florence, there is Bistecca Fiorentina; in Bologna, Ragù alla Bolognese; in Sicily, arancini.

…and in Rotondella, we have pastizz and falagone.

Food has a way of preserving memory, culture, and love across generations. One of my most cherished memories of Nonna Carmela is captured in this passage from Lifetime:

By the time I reached the thirteenth and final concrete step that led to Nonna’s kitchen, I already smelled the scents of cooking. I peered through the screen door as I had as a child and saw that nothing had changed. Nonna stood in front of the kitchen table and was hunched over her wooden pastry board that she called u scanatur, where I saw a large mound of flour shaped like a volcano. I could guess that she was making i falaoni, traditional Rotondellese spinach, potato, and meat pies, formed into half-moon shapes that resembled little crusty cushions. She must be making them today, I thought, to celebrate my coming home.

When your children come home – or when special guests arrive – what do you cook to celebrate them? What dish holds those deep and special memories for you?

I hope some readers enjoy trying this recipe. Our cousin Chef Marilena, who records a cooking show for Il Corriere Lucano in Basilicata, continues to preserve and share these culinary traditions with the next generation.

Buon appetito!

I’d be delighted to see some of you at one of these upcoming book tour presentations. Your encouragement and support have meant so much to me, especially during my previous tour for Stay Close.

Please feel free to share this with friends who might be interested in family history, finding their roots, or exploring the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation within their family.

It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live is a story about family, identity, and coming home to ourselves. I’ve learned that understanding our past can help us move forward with greater compassion, wisdom, and love. It truly does take a lifetime to learn how to live.

I hope to see some familiar faces along the way – and meet other new ones.

When you think about riding your bike as a child, what memories come to mind?

For me, riding a bike meant freedom. Pedaling hard down the alley behind our house, streamers flying behind me, I felt untouchable.

Those feelings came rushing back recently when my older son told me how much he was enjoying his new bike and his ride to work every morning in Los Angeles and my younger son wondered how old his daughter had been when she learned to ride.

In an instant, I was back on my own bicycle, escaping the chaos of our family home on what I came to think of as my “freedom rides.”

The moment my feet hit the pedals, I was Annie Oakley mounting her horse, Target, or the Lone Ranger riding Silver. Down the driveway and into the city streets, I zoomed past the Martinos, who raised chickens in their backyard, and past the Caputos, with twelve children—including two sets of twins.

At the end of our alleyway, I crossed a one-way street, checking quickly to the right for cars. Then I barreled into another alley, glancing toward Vito’s corner store, where they sold penny candy and my favorite pink Dubble Bubble gum.

The last street was a straightaway, and I picked up speed. My bicycle streamers snapped in the breeze.

Nonna was my destination.

Back then, bicycles gave children something precious: freedom without supervision. We disappeared for hours, expected only to be home before dark. Our world was made up of corner stores, sidewalks, and secret shortcuts only kids seemed to know.

I wonder if children today feel that same sense of freedom. Or has childhood changed? Maybe phones and social media keep kids connected every second, but somehow less free to explore their own imaginations.

For us, was it the speed? The adventure? The feeling that the world suddenly became bigger the farther we pedaled from home?

Maybe that’s why bicycles stay with us long after childhood. Somewhere inside us, that kid with streamers flying is still racing toward a place that felt free, liberating, and completely our own.

A friend of mine, Laura Oliver, recently published an article in The Talbot Spy entitled Love is an Action Verb. That phrase stayed with me.

Yesterday I spoke with my granddaughter. She is sixteen years old, finishing her sophomore year, and squeezing every possible moment from her day. She had exactly five minutes to talk before leaving for her internship.

I, on the other hand, had nowhere to be.

The contrast made me smile.

At sixteen, life is a whirlwind of classes, deadlines, friends, family commitments, and the endless small urgencies that seem so important.

Then life moves on. College arrives. Careers begin. Families grow. Children become adults and have children of their own. The years fill with responsibilities and obligations, and before we know it, we find ourselves standing where our parents once stood – on the other side of young.

When I was in college, I called my parents every Sunday. It was simply what I did. Somewhere along the way, those regular calls became occasional ones. I called when I had time.

As I thought about Laura’s phrase, I found myself wondering how well I had practiced it during those busy years. I certainly said “I love you,” but did I always make the phone call, attend every event that mattered, or stop what I was doing long enough to listen with my full attention?

I would like to say yes, but I know the answer: no, not always.

Now I understand something I couldn’t fully appreciate then: making the call is part of loving. Showing up is part of loving. Listening is part of loving. Love is not only what we feel. It is what we do. Love is an action verb.

So yesterday, I was grateful for those five minutes with my granddaughter. Even though we were thousands of miles apart, through the miracle of a video screen, I watched her finish getting ready for her day.

Then she looked into the camera and asked, “How do I look, Nonna?”

I smiled. “You look beautiful, my babydoll. You look just beautiful.”

And as we said goodbye, I realized that those few hurried minutes were their own small act of love – hers in making time for me, and mine in being there when she did.

Recently I reread Seamus Heaney’s poem When All the Others Were Away at Mass. It begins simply: a grandson and grandmother peeling potatoes together while the rest of the family is at church. Years later, after her death, he realizes they were “never closer the whole rest of our lives.”

I understood that line immediately because I found myself returning to ordinary Sundays with Nonna Carmela.

She was not a woman who spoke about feelings. Love was food, routine, and feeding everyone before she fed herself. “Mangia, nonnared, mangia.”

For me, it was walking into her kitchen and seeing her at the stove, stirring rich red sugo. It was a heaping bowl of linguine with ricotta she made after Mass – just for me. It was a piece of Mancini bread dipped into sauce before dinner was ready, a meatball set beside it without a word. It was her saying, “I love-a you from t’e top of you head to t’e bottom of you feet.”

Back then, I was young and did not understand the holiness of those moments. Now I think some of the holiest moments in my life happened in her kitchen.

There are memories that seem small while we are living them. A glance. A gesture. A second helping of pasta. Only later do we understand how love quietly survives from one generation to the next.

Heaney’s poem reminds me that intimacy sometimes lives in peeling potatoes, in stirring sauce, in simply being beside someone long enough to remember the rhythm of her breathing.

And years later, after they are gone, we realize we were never closer.

‘When all the others were away at Mass’

When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some were crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives – Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

by Seamus Heaney

When my mother was 91 years old and six weeks before she died, she told me she was sorry for all the rocky years between us. Then she added, “I have many regrets, but…I’m still learning, don’t you see? It takes a lifetime to learn how to live.” Millennia earlier, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote much the same thing.

There is wisdom hidden in everyday moments, but why is it so hard to stop long enough to notice them? Why does it take a lifetime?

I try to live in the present moment. I meditate every day, yet outside those quiet ten minutes, my mind races with worries that ricochet through my thoughts, especially in the dark hours of the night, when the devil seems to dance on my chest.

Over these past few days, I was blessed to spend time with my family in Pittsburgh. When my older brother glanced up from his reading and smiled, when my niece stopped to hug me on her way to prom, when my sister-in-law enjoyed a second helping of the chicken pastina soup I made — these were everyday lessons, answers to everyday prayers.

When I slow down and truly pay attention to a conversation, a fleeting kindness, a painful truth, or a small unexpected blessing, something shifts inside me. I breathe more deeply. I listen more carefully. I begin to understand what each moment is trying to teach me.

My prayer today is that you and I do not wait until we are 91 to learn this lesson. Each day quietly offers us another chance to become more patient, more compassionate, more awake to others and to ourselves.

I am still learning. Perhaps we always are.

Maybe it really does take a lifetime to learn how to live.

Ten years ago:
my granddaughter Iysa, brother JF, and Darlene, my sister-in-law

In the last days of my mom’s life, I spent six months with her in hospice. Those months, especially the final weeks, were precious. We had been at odds for much of our lives, but as she faced the end, we found our way back to each other. We made peace. For that, I will always be grateful.

The summer between my junior and senior years in college, my parents gave me a trip to Europe. It was the era of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day, when the idea of backpacking across a continent still felt both romantic and possible.

When my two girlfriends and I arrived in Florence, we made our way to the Piazzale Michelangelo, high above the city. I remember standing there, looking out over the terracotta rooftops, the bell towers, the golden ribbon of the Arno River.

I was completely captivated, and in that moment I knew I was home. I turned to my friends and said with surprising sincerity, “One day I’m going to live here.”

I didn’t question it. I simply recognized it.

Over the years, I’ve heard other versions of that same quiet certainty from different people in different places.

A friend deplaned in Ireland and said that she felt like she had returned to something she already knew.

Another arrived in Alaska and told me the air smelled like Christmas, like a memory she had always cherished.

Someone else traveled to Germany in search of ancestral roots and never left. “I arrived and stayed. I knew I belonged there,” she said simply, as if it were the most natural conclusion in the world.

These are not stories about tourism. They are stories about recognition.

Travel has a way of doing this. It places us in landscapes we have never lived in, yet we respond as if we are remembering them rather than discovering them. As if certain places are not new at all, but strangely familiar, like a word we had on the tip of our tongue and finally remembered.

Is home a place we come from, or can it also be something that, for reasons we cannot fully explain, comes alive in us?

A friend wrote to me after last week’s blog:

“Wow, this really hit home. My husband has been dealing with a difficult family situation for years, and he finally made the decision to get up off those nails. He realized that the pain of staying had become greater than the fear of getting up. I know he is going to be in a better place with himself and his son.”

Her message stayed with me because it reminded me of my son, who suffered a 14-year heroin addiction. In an effort to understand addiction better, several years ago I interviewed 42 recovering addicts and alcoholics from around the world and asked, “What brought you to recovery?”

The majority answered without hesitation: “When the consequences of my actions became too painful to live with.” Only then – when the pain point of using became so intense – did the people I interviewed decide it was time to get off the nail.

Today, my son is 19 years sober, and our family lives in deep gratitude. But my son had to reach that decision himself, in his own time, when the pain of staying the same outweighed the fear of change.

As parents and spouses, we want to protect those we love from making mistakes, but sometimes we can’t. We can support, love, and guide – we can stay close, but each person has to decide when he or she is ready.

My hardest lesson.