Beyond the Cobblestones

BEYOND THE COBBLESTONES

By Luisa Livorno Ramondo

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Luisa Livorno Ramondo

All rights reserved.

BEYOND THE COBBLESTONES

ISBN

978-1-63676-880-9 Paperback

978-1-63676-881-6 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63676-882-3 Ebook

DEDICATION

To my husband, Damien, for always making life so colorful, and loving me through thick and thin.

To Luke for your sweet soul, to Damien for your immense strength,and to Giordan for your irresistible personality.You are all the true loves of my life!

To my parents, Antonietta & Leonardo, whose lives inspired this book and continue to inspire me every day.

To all my friends and family for helping me get this far, especially the strong, smart women that I am blessed to have in my life.

AND

To all the young girls out there with big dreams…never let anything get in your way!

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I started this book many years ago, I hadn’t had any earth-shattering experiences or life changing events that led me to write this story.

No ah-ha moments.

No revelations.

No lightbulbs coming on over my head.

Instead, it was steady little bits of information that started as far back as my memory goes. Little details, stories told over the years, traditions I didn’t understand but followed, time spent with relatives in two different countries; all sparked the writing of this story.

It was like a small child, clawing at me, needing my attention.

As a family, we started off in a row home in East Falls. It is an unassuming little town in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, close to the Schuylkill River where I went for picnics with my mother. My parents owned a small supermarket in our town that primarily serviced the low-income housing community nearby. It was a tough neighborhood, and I was different from everyone around me, and that wasn’t a good combination.

I learned very quickly that being accepted as an American in America wasn’t a given, and I wanted to be more American. I wanted to have an American-sounding name, like Jennifer or Michelle. I wanted to have American parents who knew how to speak English properly and how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with white bread. These may seem like insignificant struggles to you, but growing up different is what kids often dread.

All we want to do is be like everybody else when we’re young, and we never realize at the time that it’s a good thing that we’re not.

My brother, sister, and I were taught from a very young age that you work for everything you want, and you certainly don’t let what other people think get in the way of your dreams. We grew up surrounded by love, laughs, and lots of hard work, and we knew deep in our core that hard work would pay off.

Of course, we struggled.

My parents didn’t speak English very well, so we were considered weird in our very American neighborhood.

I was bullied at a very young age because my family was different.

I was embarrassed by the food I brought to school, so I would throw it in the trash and pretend I forgot my lunch.

These struggles at times made me regret my heritage, and I often wished I had a different life.

However, as I matured, I began to understand how fortunate we were to be here. To have the opportunity to work and buy a home, to build something of value for our family. I grew up most of my life well aware of the struggles that my parents went through to get to this country. Then, I was constantly reminded of the struggles my parents went through to keep what we earned in this country. Even though we didn’t have much, I spent a lot of time around people who had less. That, coupled with the many stories I heard of their childhoods, finally led me down a road of gratitude and appreciation.

My parents’ history was what led me to the understanding that we were lucky to be in America. They shared stories about a country that everyone romanticizes and admires for its beauty. And beautiful it is! Even though my parents shared many stories of arduous lives growing up, they both admit to being content in what they knew at the time, surrounded by a loving family and a loving country.

However, no matter how beautiful and romantic Italy was, my mother knew they would never get anywhere there.

Through much planning, saving, and waiting years through the immigration process, they moved away from everything they knew for what was sure to be a better life in the unknown. They had no money, didn’t speak the language, and had limited family to rely on in their new country.

But America was the place to be.

And they were determined to get there. This was ingrained in my head from birth. No matter how bad it ever gets here, it’s always better than anywhere else in the world. At some point, I started to think that people who were born and raised here, and had many generations of family who were born and raised here, didn’t feel this same appreciation. I learned to see this country through the eyes of my parents, and it is a view that I have never lost.

My parents’ stories of hard times, poverty, and lack of opportunity are what drove my mother to move her family to this country. My father followed, reluctantly, but a day doesn’t go by when he isn’t grateful for her determination. He is of the opinion that life in this country has turned out, by far, to be better than any life they would’ve had in Italy. They are proud of what they have achieved here, and I’m incredibly proud of them for taking such considerable chances.

I often try to imagine what my life would have been like if my parents had never come here, or worse, if they had come here and decided to go back because things were too difficult. Some of their friends did that back then. Sometimes it was easier to go back to what you knew, but my parents did not.

They stayed on a very difficult path in order to give our family the opportunities they didn’t have when they were growing up.

This is a story about a girl in a small Italian town who has the spark from a very young age to be more than that small town would’ve allowed.

It is a depiction of the dream my mother had for a better life and all the years I lived growing up in that dream.

It is my belief you will see that no matter how difficult things may seem, or how many obstacles stand in your way, that if you persevere, you can make your dreams come true.

PROLOGUE

TIME FRAME—PRESENT DAY

I’m an old woman now, but I was once young like you.

I was born in Orsara di Puglia, a small town in the South of Italy, about eighty-three square kilometers in size, population 3,200. The streets were small and made of stone. The hills were brutal, but the weather was kind to us. Except the north wind. That was a mean wind, and when she blew, it felt like little knives piercing your skin. As luck would have it, we were blessed with the warmth of the sun and very mild days for most of the year.

We spent a lot of time outside, on the cobblestone streets. We talked to our neighbors, about things like war, religion, and food; and of course there was always town gossip. I remember having lots of friends around all the time. We lived poorly, and in tight quarters, so people were always close. Nothing was private. Everyone knew your business, but I didn’t mind that too much.

The real beauty was that a lot of people in our town were in the same situation as we were, so everything seemed normal. We walked everywhere, including the places we could fill our water buckets and get wood for the fire; we also had to do our laundry outside. We did this with our friends, since they had to do the same chores, anyway, and we had fun doing it. It may seem strange to you that laundry would be fun, but it was. Playing at the fountain, splashing each other, and laughing over who lost the battle and had to wash their clothes downstream made a boring, everyday chore seem like a game to us.

It was a good life, or so we thought.

Life was simple then, and even when I go back, it’s still the same in a lot of ways.

Of course, people have modern conveniences now like machines to wash their clothes, but dryers are not common. Walk through town, and you’ll see sheets hanging out to dry from every balcony, swaying in the breeze, warm from the sun. The people who live on the main roads are lucky, since the streets are wider and the sun is able to shine through. My house was on a street where the sun didn’t make it through quite as easily.

The sounds of the streets made my heart sing with happiness.

The church bells of San Nicola di Bari would ring every day, and it was a welcomed expression of our obligations to Chiesa Madre. The Mother Church reminded us that we were a family, and we had to take care of each other.

And we did.

Everyone in town helped each other out if they could.

Children would run through the streets, sometimes barefoot, feet hitting against the cobblestones and echoing between the buildings. Voices carrying through the little alleyways. Whistles and singing, laughing and mothers screaming, these are all the sounds I remember growing up. Sounds of joy, sounds of despair, sounds of responsibility; all of it stirs up memories for me.

We had no money, very little food, and nowhere to go.

But one thing was true: even though we didn’t have much, we had our community, and we had our country.

Our traditions were rich and strong. We followed them like a map through our lives, always guiding us through the years, teaching us about who we are. And one thing I can say for sure is that Italians know themselves. They don’t always share what they feel, but they always know who they are inside at their core. And for me that began in that little town. This is how I was raised.

So, when you read my story, I hope you realize that it was hard, but it was good. Good in that we were loved, we were challenged, we knew who we were, and we knew that with hard work we could have a better life than those who came before us.

It’s the early years of my life that shaped me into the person I am today, and no matter how grim it may sound on these pages, I am forever grateful.

CHAPTER 1

I need to get away from everyone.

I like to daydream about what exists outside of this town. I have to believe it’s a big world out there. I see movies on the television down at the neighborhood bar. I see what’s in the newspapers.

I know there’s more out there.

A whole big world, away from here.

My street, Via Silvio Pellico, isn’t actually a street, but an alley about five feet wide that you can only go through on foot or bike. The sun is blocked by the cold stone houses and doesn’t make it through very much. The temperature is cool most of the time since everything is made of stone. It’s nice in the summer, but not so much in the winter. Most of the surrounding streets are like that, which makes having a car useless since you would have to park somewhere else in town and walk all the way to your house, anyway.

Not that having a car is an option.

We have no money and there are no cars in Orsara.

On Via Silvio Pellico, we live on the ground level at number thirty-one, which has a blue door. The lower levels host doors to enter the houses, and long flights of steps lead to houses on the second levels. Eleven of us live in this small, two-room house with no windows other than the one on the door. I can’t say that it’s very comfortable, but it’s a place to live, and it’s ours.

When you walk into my house, there’s a long, narrow hallway with a water barrel on the right.

It is my job to keep this barrel full.

On the left is a pen for our pig. This time his name is Pepe.

We will keep him here for a few months and then kill him so we have food for the winter.

Claudia, Mama says, quietly annoyed, go and fetch the water now! We need to make the pasta early today. I have a lot to do, and your father will be home tonight. She says it urgently, trying not to wake the whole house.

It’s Spring, and my father is coming home from one of his work rotations out of town. My mother always wants to be ready for when he comes home. It’s usually a happy night since he comes with money, but not always.

My older sister Paola already went out to get firewood, so I was definitely lagging behind schedule.

Okay, Mama, I say as I hurry out to get water, one of my many duties.

Walking down the alley, I see some neighbors congregating outside to gossip. This is their typical morning routine. Signora Russo is in the middle of them, as usual, in command of the day’s stories.

Claudia, where are you going? asks Signora Russo.

I have to get the water. I keep walking as I say it, hoping she won’t ask me any more questions. She always wants to know everything.

I hate getting the water. Day in and day out I have to get water. I always dream about what it would be like to live in a house where you have water running into a sink.

It’s impossible to even imagine.

As I return with the water, I call to my mother. Mama, I’m back!

While dumping the water into the large barrel, it splashes with a refreshing sound that I love, knowing I am now done fetching water for today.

Good. Now let’s start making the pasta.

I walk one step down to the kitchen table and sit back in a chair as I spy the embers in the fornacella, creating just enough light for us to work. This little oven is the heart of our home. Not just for cooking, but for heat, too.

Near the oven is a fazzatora to make the dough in. It’s made of wood and shaped like a small boat. I get the grain out of the contraption built into the middle of the wall and start to crush it into a powdery mess. I form the powder into the shape of a volcano and then I add water to the center. I begin by methodically forming the powder into a dough, always working toward the middle. The sides of the fazzatora are slanted away from the center, so I play with the mixture by moving it up and down on each side, rhythmically, to the music in my head.

Claudia, come on! My mother’s patience is wearing thin. I understand it’s time to stop playing with the mixture, so I mix and mix and knead and knead, all the while listening to the music in my head and daydreaming about anything and nothing. The dough is forming quickly into a nice round ball and is springy to the touch. It is ready for Mama.

This is the way it’s always been; I can’t remember anything different. We make dough for pasta and bread. Tradition runs deep here, and everyone does it. I don’t understand why it’s so important, but I think it may be because most of us are poor and it’s too expensive to buy pasta already made. Mama says that pasta making is an art. Well, certain pastas, anyway. When we make orecchiette or cicatelli, then it’s definitely an art. Fettuccini is easy—anyone can do that.

I walk away from the fazzatora so my mother can take over. She cuts the dough into smaller pieces, rolls out each piece in long, pencil-like strings, and begins to make cicatelli, my favorite pasta.

Mama, what are you making the pasta with tonight? I ask.

I picked some greens from the town field that I can use. Go wash them and cut them up, Mama says as she hands me the bucket of greens.

Okay, I say, a little disappointed that we weren’t having cicatelli with tomatoes. I’m so sick of greens from the field. But we don’t have any tomatoes, and it’s not worth fighting with Mama, so I keep my mouth shut.

No one has anything to call their own in our house, so we learn to share from an early age. We sleep on large sacks filled with corn husks, all the kids together on a wooden platform built above my parents’ bed. We have one dresser to keep our family clothes in and one lightbulb hanging by a wire in the center of the room.

I go outside with the bucket of greens and sit on a neighbor’s step since my