Ask Grandpa and Grandma!
We are all older and hopefully a bit wiser than we were in our youth. When we were young, having a conversation with the grandparents was not a priority, even with the language barrier! We were more interested in knowing where the next cookie was coming from without getting our face cheeks all smushed together for a kiss. So if you had the opportunity to have a conversation with grandpa and grandma Tomasso now, what would you ask them?
I would have several questions to start the conversation including: how did they find the resolve to leave Italy knowing they would probably never see their family again? What was that goodbye like? What were their life dreams and aspirations. What was their biggest regret? What was their greatest joy?
So if you had the chance, what would you talk to grandma and grandpa about?
More from Dolores (added here with permission)…
Hi, David,
Thanks for your message. It rounded out some of the thoughts that I was quickly putting together. One does see life differently as one ages, and the older one gets, the more so.
Your writing covers a lot of territory but I was happy to be up-to-date with your family and to hear your thoughts about our extended family history. I have especially wondered about what happened at the time of Grandpa Tomasso’s death: he was in his late fifties and there were eight children. I was slightly more than a year old. When I was growing up, I learned very little unless I asked a direct question: my mother told me that he worked an open fire at a foundry (?) and died of pneumonia.
Grandma was very religious, said at least one rosary daily, and in her later years went to daily Mass at Holy Rosary. I remember that she used to walk there from Avery Street.
When I visited Grandma’s last living sister in La Villa in 2020, I had a twinge of what their life was like as children and why the lure of the New World may have gotten attention. She lived in quite poor circumstances.
I feel as though we (you and I) are different generations in the cousin-line. I still remember visiting you in the hospital when you were there as a child. You always seemed like a “happy” kid, though I think that we each wear our emotions differently.
Yes, as I recall, “family” was the beginning, middle and end of “happy”. That translates into “people.” I hope that your 3.5 year old grandson Henry gets as much emotional satisfaction from family. I am not sure how that works these days because there are so many other demands for one’s attention even at an early age. Perhaps “family” is not the social womb that we knew growing up, but since I don’t live in that construct, I don’t know. Everyone seems so “distracted” emotionally and otherwise.
Hi, David,
Your post is interesting because every so often I wonder some of that -more about my father who came here at 15 years old – but I don’t know if our grandparents’ generation put such feelings into thoughts or words. I wonder if our generation has been brought up (and bought) the idea that life is supposed to be “happy.” Looking back, I believe that the people I remember in that generation expected life to be hard and expected to make hard choices, though they certainly felt the hardship.
I’d want to know if they set thought about returning to Italy
My father was clear that he never wanted to go back. My mother visited Italy without him because we all knew how he felt.