It was a Wednesday, but not an ordinary Wednesday. This was the day of my Mother's birth, but it was special beyond that wonderful occurrence. December 8th is a Holy Catholic Feast Day, a day of holy obligation, which means you are required to go to church that day. In the little town my Mother grew up in it was a special Feast Day. Every town had a festival for the Virgin Mary's Assumption into heaven. The women in this town were busy cooking for days before.
My Mother's Grandmother had been preparing for this day for weeks. When my Mother made her arrival she thought fast. This birth would require a baptism and with a baptism would come another feast to prepare. My crafty Great-Grandmother started crying that baby Leda would not last the day, she had to be baptized right away! So December 8, 1920 my Mother was born and baptized into the Catholic church of her little town and my Great-Grandmother only had to prepare one feast.
My Mother had a two-year-old older brother, Vincenzo, and about two years later she would have a younger sister, Anna. They lived in the house her Father, Gino, was born in, with her Grandmother, Maria, and her Mother, Concetta. Within a year of her sister's birth her family would be turned upside down.
Gino was about 6 or 7 when his own Father died while building their house from the stones from the surrounding countryside. He died leaving Maria with 7 children, including Gino, to raise, not to mention a farm to run. These 7 children ranged in age from 12 years down to 6 months. This is something my Mother has told me about many times, and I'm sure something that she was told as she grew up in Italy.
By the time my Mother was 5 years old she was doing heavy farm labor, cutting wheat with a scythe with her brother, carrying water from the well for their cow and more. She told me of the time her brother tied her to the oxcart they used, when they needed to move anything really heavy or travel too far to walk to, and began to beat her because she refused to help him carry a 5lb heavy metal bucket of water for their cow. She was around 5 years old and luckily a neighbor happened to come by and stop him. Vincenzo and Leda were very close, they worked side by side and had to share and share a like. As they say, familiarity breeds contempt, with such closeness comes some animosity.
Most of my Mother's stories involve her brother Vincenzo. How once he teased her that he was going to lock her in a field they were cutting with scythes and she ran to get out before he closed the gate and she fell on her scythe. She cut herself just under her chin and bled profusely, but lived to tell the tale. Lucky too, because judging by the scar, an inch one way or the other and she might have nicked her carotid and bled to death! These are tricks big brother's have been perpetrating on little sister's since the beginning of time, but in such rugged country there are bound to be dangers.
They would hoard chestnuts under their plates trying to get more than the other when they would eat them. Over the 17 years my Mother lived and worked side by side with her brother in Italy, they developed an ever closer relationship. Her sister, Anna, was closer to their Grandmother, Maria, as she stayed in the house and helped a little with the house work, but was mostly pampered. Even my Aunt Anna has said she didn't really have to do much work when she lived in Italy.
The best stories my Mother tells are of her cow, Rossa, who was her best friend, confidant and work mate, too. The cow provided a calf every year that they would sell and milk to sell, too. She was also transportation to far away towns and would haul and help with the plowing. My Mother loved her cow Rossa. Her descriptions of the red tuft of hair on top between her ears and big dark eyes studying everything are vivid and have lit my and my children's childhood imaginations.
When my Mother was around 3 her Father was threatened by Mussolini's regime. He had to join the army or drink down a bottle of castor oil. So he escaped to America. He left his family and his own Mother to work the land and scratch out a living. Over time, they didn't hear much from him and he never sent any money to help them out. The absence of her Father hurt even worse, because many of the other men who had fled returned at least once a year and sent money to help their families, but she never had any direct contact with her Father.
Insult to injury were the stories she heard about how the other men would always buy drinks for her Father and laugh at him in his drunken foolishness. Reflecting on these stories I concluded that my Grandfather had not grown up in a house with a Father in it, so maybe he didn't know how to be one. It doesn't excuse his not sending money or trying to make some other contact, but it does explain some of it.
