We are family!

Pat and I just spent two day in Sulmona, Italy - my family’s ancestoral home. Some of my distant relatives still live here and since the center of town is a medieval village, I’m confident that much of what we saw is how my great grandparents Dominic Gentile and Anna Quattr0chi left it when they moved to the United States in the early 20^th Century.

When we arrived here, I admit to being pretty nervous about meeting my family members. I wasn’t sure how many family members still lived here, their ability to communicate in English or any expectations they had of us. I was pretty confident that after a couple of days in Rome, Pat and I had both mastered “menu” Italian, but that was about it.

We took a train from Rome to Sulmona – a small ‘burg with a population around 30,000 nestled in one of the Abruzzo region’s many valleys. It’s a dramatic three hour ride that goes through a progressively steep and gorgeous mountain range. Sulmona is best known in Italy for two things – it is the home of Ovid and it is also ground zero for “confetti” – the candied almonds that are enjoyed at many Italian festivities. There are several confetti factories and almost every store front sells confetti and lovely pieces of art crafted out of these candies.

After checking into our hotel, we headed out for lunch with the intention of calling the family on a full stomach. Our first mistake!

We were delighted to find that the restaurant the front desk clerk from our hotel suggested was a Michelin 2 star establishment and affiliated with Italy’s Slow Food Movement. After an antipasta of meat and cheese, a second course of pasta and salad and wine we were pretty full. Just as we were asking for our check, a middle-aged man and woman with a pre-teen in tow appeared in the vestibule. After one look at Pat, the man exclaimed “MC DONALD!” We established that he was Gianfranco Aureli, the son of the relative whose name and address I had been given and that his mother was waiting for us with lunch ready. Even through a messy exchange of broken Italian and English it became clear to us we were going to be eating again and it was probably best if no one mentioned our first go at the mid-day meal to his mother Anna.

We made our way to Gianfranco’s flat – a gorgeous place in an 18^th Century building downtown – where we collected his daughter Maria Elena. She became our life-line for the day. She not only spoke great English but had a pretty impressive vocabulary that trumped that of many 18 year old native speakers of English. Maria Elena is enthusiastic about the art, architecture and history of Italy and we felt fortunate to learn so much about Sulmona’s rich history from her over the course of our visit.

After piling five people into a tiny European car, we made it to the home of Anna Aureli. She is the sister of my distant cousin Livia who lives in Ithica, NY. I’ve met Livia several times but it has been many, many years since I’ve seen her.

As soon as we arrived at Anna’s food started pouring its way out of the kitchen – antipasta, bowls of ravioli, roasted meat, salad, fruit and cake and coffee along with at least three different types of wine throughout the meal. Then, at some point Nunzia (Gianfranco’s wife) determined that what we Americans needed was gelato. A quick trip to the store resulted in two types of gelati (one was a combination of cantaloupe, strawberry and lemon and the other was tiramisu flavored if you must know J ) and whipped cream. Of course, Pat and I were served large portions of both. Then, just when we thought we were done with this super sized meal, out comes the Limoncello and grappa. We were able to get by with only doing a shot of Limoncello at that point.

All through the meal there was much talk of our American family. Anna met my great Aunt Ann and Ann’s daughter Helen Ann some years ago and she knew that Ann passed away a little over a year ago. Although Anna has never met my grandmother or any of her offspring, she knew most of our names.

Anna had gifts for us (and of course we had left all of our gifts for the family in the hotel) – a wedding gift of placemats and napkins along with a lovely basket of flowers made of confetti.

After the six hour lunch (which was preceded by an earlier lunch if you recall) and lots of linguistic Olympics, Pat and I were exhausted from the day and decided to try to politely retreat to our hotel. Gianfranco and his family walked us back to our hotel. Along the way Gianfranco and Nunzia stopped to buy Pat and I a box of confetti and a bouquet of flowers made of candied almonds. Throughout the walk they offered several times to have a dinner of pizza with us if we liked. We politely declined and slid into our hotel room where we slipped into a deep sleep and food coma for the next ten hours.

We agreed to call the next morning as we were again going to have lunch at Anna’s after a walking tour of the town. Anna’s daughter Gabriela would be there with her husband and child.

We woke early the next morning and knew we needed some more tools to make it through the day. First, we both needed an empty stomach! Second, a few more Italian words and expressions needed to be memorized. And third, we needed props such as the gifts we brought, a crude rendering of a family tree I created, and pictures of my family to help bridge some of the communication gap.

After an extremely light breakfast of yogurt and espresso, we took a walk to the main piazza to grab a few minutes of solitude before another exciting day with my family. When I called Gianfranco around 10 a.m. he told me we should come now. We walked to his flat where we found his sister Gabriela, her husband Stefano and her daughter Arianna. Stefano immediately became another language lifeline for us. After a quick round of coffee cake and juice, we were off to see the sights of Sulmona.

Between Maria Elena and Stefano, we now had two interpreters to help us through the day. We began again at the Piazza Garibaldi which is a rather large piazza for a town the size of Sulmona. It also has an ancient aqueduct system in the square. Then we saw several churches and the museum of Sulmona and took a stroll through the park.

After such a light breakfast and all the walking, I was actually hungry at lunch time – which was a good thing. We arrived at Anna’s to find her there with her sister Philomena. They were both busy making lunch and Gabriela jumped in immediately to help. The meal began with a meat and cheese antipasta. Next we had a very lovely broth based soup with eggs and meatballs. It is one of my favorite dishes we’ve had so far on our trip. According to Stefano this soup traditionally also contains nettles but they’re not in season right now.

After a serving of pasta, we then had breaded veal cutlets with artichokes and salad. It reminded me of dinner at my grandmother’s house when I was young. Breaded veal cutlets were always a favorite. Fruit and cake were present yet again but this time Pat and I were both prepared and had taken smaller portions of everything else to save room.

During lunch Stefano and Pat began discussing food and their own favorite “manly” recipes to cook. Pat gave away all his secret tips for making great pizza on the grill and they swapped tips on how to make the best pasta carbonara. Pat made a definite impression when he exclaimed “dammi un cinque” (give me five) at the end of their bachelor recipe exchange.

Once the table had been cleared we were able to distribute the gifts we brought and I had pictures to show of my family back in the U.S. Anna and Philomena are both very knowledgeable about our family who live in the U.S. and were excited to put faces with names. I was also able to use the (very incomplete) family tree to help them further identify people.

They showed me lots of other family photos new and old (from my great-great grandmother to their own children). Philomena was kind enough to give me a photo of my great-great grandmother (who was also named Philomena) which I will treasure as a piece of my family’s past. Through interpretation from Maria Elena both Philomena and Anna explained how attached they feel to Williamson because they now have more family in West Virginia than they do in Sulmona.

They also explained that my great grandparents did not live in Sulmona but a really small place called Badia about five minutes out of the town. Philomena was insistant that we go to see it and meet her sister Teresa and other family members who were apparently waiting for us.

So, we headed to Badia where we learned about a hermitage on the side of the mountain there. They tried to explain that the only man who ever refused an invitation to be Pope had lived at the hermitage in Badia but details were sketchy and much seemed to be lost in the translation. I’ve put this on my list of things to google!

We met several more family members there. All of the family we spent the earlier part of the day with left us in the hands of Carmine, a distant cousin with some English skills. He took us to meet Teresa (another sister of Anna) who was quite a charming lady. She is a poet and a sort of independent spirit. Although we were approaching the twelve hour mark with family at this point, we were so thrilled we had the opportunity to meet her that day.

After two days of trying to piece so much family history together, Teresa gave us a glimpse of the Holy Grail – a family tree she has been working on for years. I was floored and astonished to see how much information she had gathered and somewhat shocked that no one else had mentioned it over the course of two days. We left with a promise from her that she would email me a copy of this document so I could help her fill in many of the State-side blanks and Carmine came up with the idea that we should try to include as many pictures of people as possible in the family tree. As we were leaving we found out it was the one year anniversary of her husband’s death so we were happy to have brought something positive to her day.

Carmine took us back to our hotel and we pretty much collapsed from exhaustion yet again. The next day we took one last stroll through Sulmona before catching a bus to Scanno – an ancient city (circa 1067) with dramatic views of Abruzzo National Forest. More to come on this amazing little town nestled into the nooks and crannies of a mountainside…

You'll find pictures of our time in Sulmona here - just click on the folder labeled "Sulmona".

Ciao!

Rachel