The family is alive and well — just different

Note: While I continue to write a freelance column every other week for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, where my column has appeared for about 17 years, it will no longer be posted online there, at my request, to avoid a possible conflict with my regular job. While the topics often don’t have anything to do with the theme of this blog, I thought I would post them here to make them available online (I know, for all two people who were following it online).

 “La famiglia e finita.”

I understand enough to know what she’s said, but she translates, “The family is dead.” I’m talking with an older woman, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin who descended from the same town in Italy where my grandma was born. I’m calling her because I am interested in information on places to stay there.

A couple of years ago, I visited that town on a mountain in Italy with my daughter. We rented a car in Rome and made a day trip.

I had never been there before, and was enthralled with seeing the house where my grandmother grew up, the church where she married, the streets she walked as a girl. My daughter, however, was a little creeped out. It was the town that time forgot. Most of the young people are long gone, and many homes are empty, owned by relatives in the States, Canada or other parts of Italy who come for August vacations. But where she saw decaying brick and the occasional stray dog, I saw magic.

Ever since, I’ve had a singular goal of going back to stay overnight. I want to wake up where my grandmother woke up. Walk the streets she did. There’s no hotel there, so it’s a matter of finding a home or room to rent.

And that’s how I happen to be on the phone with this kind woman, who is lamenting how cousins used to be as close as siblings, and now they hardly know each other. How extended families used to live within blocks of each other, and gather for meals just because.

 I remember. Growing up, we regularly attended baptisms and weddings and dinners at the Italian-American club. I have wonderful memories of huge Italian meals, kids running around in Communion dresses, women dancing with women at the wedding, where old ladies packing their purses with sweets.

I got what she was saying, but didn’t comment that I couldn’t agree. Yes, things have changed. Women work. Kids grow up and move away, chasing jobs and dreams.

But my cousin in New York and I talk often. We see each other often. She’s one of the few people I can stay up until 4 in the morning talking over wine with – and remain awake.

I think of my son, in New York City for an internship, catching a bus to see his cousin, who’s in Boston. A few weeks earlier, he and his wife had come home to Traverse City, spending several days with us and another cousin, who now lives in Chicago, and reverting to the same closeness they developed sharing a playpen.

We have family gatherings at my parents’ frequently, glad for whoever can come. The ties that bind are still there.

The family isn’t “finita.” It’s just “diversa.”

Different.