The two who stayed

My grandmother had six sisters and two brothers. They lived in a stone house in the village of Cicagna - in the hills near Chiavari, where we dined with family last night. When she was a young girl, my grandmother was told by her mother to go outside and fetch some firewood. It was in the middle of a terrible storm and my grandmother was afraid to go out. Her mother insisted, but still the girl refused to go. Finally, her mother angrily said that she would do it. My grandma watched from the window as her mother climbed the hill outside the house, doing the chore in her place, as a mudslide came and buried her, killing her instantly. If my grandmother had gone instead, my family would not have come to America and I would not be here to record this story. After the mother died, the father remarried, but the new mother wasn't a caring step-mother. One by one, the children left to work outside the home and all of them eventually emigrated to America, the older ones helping the younger ones to make the trip. All of them came but the two who stayed - one in Genoa, and one in Chiavari. Those two have children and grandchildren in Italy today and those are the two families that Joe and I spent several unforgettable hours with the last two nights. In 1973, when I was Joe's age and came to Italy one summer to study Italian and stopped to visit the family on the way, even meeting my grandmother's oldest brother and hearing him speak in Italian and the Genovese dialect. I returned often on weekends, taking the train from Florence and even hitch hiked once. My Italian grew stronger each time and my grandmother, who was still alive then, must have been proud that someone from the younger generation had made a new connection. Now I have brought my son who so enjoyed meeting his Italian family. Last night as we sat around the table, a younger cousin, Morgana, typed an email to Talia and we made plans for Joe to return in December, this time with Talia. I called my mother and had her speak with her cousin - two women in their eighties, chatting for a minute in Italian. My grandmother would have been so pleased that we've kept a tie with the families of the two who stayed.