Nonna Carmela, Mom, Bisnonna Laura Manfredi, Nonno Vincenzo

I wrote this in IT TAKES A LIFETIME: Above my head hung a picture of Nonno Vincenzo with my great-grandmother, Bisnonna Laura Manfredi, Nonna, and my mom when she was just four years old. I loved this black-and-white image because it proved to me that these people, two of whom had died before I was born, had once been alive.

Nonno’s birth name was Vincenzo, but when he came to America, he thought this sounded too Italian, so he chose to be called Jim, which he thought was a good, solid American name.

“Oye, my Jim is a good man,” Nonna had told me. “He comes a-first wit’out me to l’America and gets a big job in Pitts-a-burg. He helps many people, gives t’em jobs, and keeps water on to houses of our paesani even when some people tell him to close.”

“But why would people want to shut off the water to the houses of the Italians?”

Her voice became animated, “In t’ose days, t’ere is La Mano Nera, t’e Black Hand. T’ey tell all Italian people to pay a pizza, some money for many t’ings like water in t’e house. Many people are poor and cannot pay not-a-t’ing. My Jim always helps people from the old country. When people need water, he keeps t’e water on. Ma he dies too soon, when he is just a young man.”

“How did he die, Nonna?” I asked.

“A knife in t’e belly.” She looked away from me and refused to say more.

My reflection: The photo gave me a sense of whom I came from, my history. In the end, it truly led me home.

 Something to think about: When we lack accurate historical facts, our minds fill in the gaps with what we think, or want, to be true. That’s what I did. I took the little Nonna told me and invented a world around it.

Have you ever filled in family stories with what you wished had happened? Or have you started your own historical search to understand your past?