Its Friday...June 5th...

20 years ago today, my son was born.  He was this tiny, blue blob when they laid him on my stomach. He didn't move.  The nurses rushed to cut the cord- no time for ceremony, Johnny was pushed out of the way and things were tense.  I shouted " He's blue! He's blue!"  This tiny mass had been in the birth canal without oxygen for too long.  Martina grabbed him and they rushed over to a corner of the room where they placed him under a billie light and suctioned out his tiny little mouth.  The room was silent except for the nurses who rushed to bring air to this small human, fresh and new to the world.  Suddenly, I heard him.  A small cry that grew louder, the tension broke and the family breathed.  

That was how my son entered the world, and today marks his 20th year.  His birth has always been symbolic of so many things, and this year, his 20th year, is no different.  He is named after the first Subbiondo we discovered in Italy, in a small village called Santo Stefano di Camastra.  He is named after the last Subbiondo to born in that same village in 1861.  He is named this way because he was discovered in Italy when I was only 22, during my semester abroad.  Like his ancestor Andrea, he was conceived out of wedlock and I saw my own story as a parallel of Andrea’s mother, Anna.   He marks the return of my ancestry to its origin. 

I start my story here, because it was my pregnancy while I was abroad that solidified my connection to my ancestry.  My discovery that I was pregnant while I was in Italy was evidence to me of my connection to the past, my ability to speak the language, to melt into the crowds unnoticed as a foreigner was further evidence of my place in my familial history. It was Andrew that solidified this. It is here that my story begins. I am choosing the last day of school to begin this journey because, as a teacher, our year is not marked by the traditional dates, but by the school season.  We measure life with the beginning and end of a school year and so ends another year for me today... and so begins the summer.

The Beginning

During my high school years, I had the amazing opportunity to travel with my father throughout Europe.  Those trips lay a foundation for a love of travel that has become an important part of the person I am today.  Further, those trips allowed me to become connected to my ancestral heritage and to fall in love with my family’s story.  When I was seventeen, our trip included the last known location of our ancestors: Santo Stefano Di Camastra, a small coastal town that is known for its pottery.  As I poured over the historical records that showed the evolution of my family’s name and chronicled the birth of each of my ancestors, a profound connection to this region grew within me.  As I grew older, I continued to study the language and even graduated early from high school so that I could return to Italy to perfect my abilities in the language.  Although it would be many years before I was able to return to this small town, it became a part of my personal description of who I was. 

During that same trip, my father also took me to the Aeolian Islands.  Although I loved them, I never knew how significant they would become for me when I became older.  It wasn’t until I had the amazing opportunity to take my son there when he was seventeen that I realized how much I had longed to be there again.  As an adult, it felt as though only a few years had passed since I had last been there, and yet, when I asked about a place I had been as a young girl, the response I heard over and over was “that was a lifetime ago.”  In fact it had been; it had been the entire lifetime of my son since I had been there and things there had truly changed.  The profound impact of this reality settled into my soul and silently shaped me even without my knowing.

Upon entering the doctoral program at CIIS, I had a conversation with a professor completely in Italian.  At first, I will admit that my aim, in some odd way, was to make my father proud.  I wanted to show the kind professor that I could speak Italian and in so doing, show that my father could be proud of me.  Yet, as the conversation continued, a series of connections between my own life and the people I knew and the university became a clear sign of an unavoidable synchronicity that was drawing me closer to my deepest dreams.  Suddenly, it struck me that if my deepest hearts desire was to return to Italy, then, this was the time to make it happen.

Now, only three days stand between me and my time in Italy.  As a family, we will start in the north with friends that we have come to know over the years and then we will head to Siena where I will finally show my son & his father where I lived when I was pregnant.  This will be the first time I will return to Siena since I left as a 22- year- old struggling through morning sickness.  I want to show them where I was and truly celebrate who we are today.  From Siena, we will head to Napoli and then to Santo Stefano for four days.  It will the culmination of a life long dream to see my children play in the Piazza in my small town.  I am looking forward to my time with my distant cousins and long strolls with endless granitas.   Finally as a family, we will meet up with Josh & Katie in the Islands , were we will explore the Islands together.

And then, everyone will leave and the work will begin.  Charlotte and I will remain for another month and the true exploration and reflection will begin.  It is through this Blog that I hope to tell my stories, share my discoveries and record my own transformation.  This journey has been a long time in coming and now, with the help of so many, a dream becomes a reality.