misplaced mama

(inspiration for this post here) 

I thought it was a harmonium when I called my husband. I know that we are broke, I said. But you know I’ve always wanted one. So I am letting you know, I might get it. I might not, but I might.

I didn’t get it that day. It was exactly the same amount of money I owed to Sula’s preschool and so I opted to pay them. It was either pay you or buy a harmonium from Goodwill, I told her teacher. Dumb choice, she said. Go get that instrument.

The next day I went back to Goodwill. I was thinking that somehow it was going to be part of my writing ritual. I’ll play it before I sit down, I told him. I’ll play it and sing the four Sanskrit songs I know and then I will write, I assured him, we all need a ritual. He was silent. Then he laughed. And then he sighed. And then I bought it. I bought it in it’s red velvet lined suitcase. I bought it with it’s golden glittered sparkle keys and mother-of-pearl-body and yellow beaded note board. Lira it said in gold writing across the front. Made in Italy.

Italy?

I went home searched on the internet for Lira harmoniums, and of course. Of course it wasn’t a harmonium. It was an accordion. I’m Sicilian, not Indian. My harmonium is an accordion.

And then the story came back to me.

I never met any of my grandmothers. This is how it is when your parents have you older in life. I had a grandfather for fifteen years and he was my greatest human gift besides my own flesh and blood. But that’s all, nobody else. And my ancestors stories mostly got lost, sailed with waves across the seas. They are from the Old Country. But what I do know passed was down from the mouth of an old aunt, the place where stories stream from, like a verbal inkwell, she shared what she knew. I ate them up in my soul, hoping to capture who they were and where I came from. How their eyes searched for truth. How their bellies called for food. How their feet walked the path. How their hands played the keys. How their arms held on to each other.

He was called Giuseppe. He was a musician, an accordion player. He was poor, a nomad, an artist. He traveled around Southern Italy playing music for the wealthy, at their homes or second homes or third homes.

She was the daughter of a prominent family, “aristocrats” was the word my aunt used. Her name was Paolina. She wasn’t Sicilian, but from somewhere north, exact location still being revealed. He came and played music for her family one summer. Out on warm Sicilian nights, against the blue of the Mediterranean Sea, she sat and ate fish and olives and drank fresh cherry juice and listened to him while his sounds kissed the air.

She fell in love.

So did he.

And so they left together, she gave up the riches and the homes and the comfort. She traveled by the side of her musician. Her family was in an uproar. She didn’t care.

Soon a baby entered her womb. Their only source of money was from his traveling sound, so they continued to cover ground, accordion in arm, hope in heart. This was a different life for her. She was used to fine things. Safe things. She was delicate and the pregnancy stole her health. She safely gave birth to a baby girl, Salvatrice. But soon after Paolina fell ill and died.

Giuseppe came back shortly after with a plan.

He was going to America.

* * *

I cry in longing and inspiration. Salvatrice, my grandmother is only a story, handful of pictures and a pair of pointy silver rim reading glasses my father kept in his hankie drawer. Nine kids total but she watched three of them die. She lost her husband while my father was growing in her belly. The aunt who holds these records, these stories, is dying right now, as I type, almost 100 years old. This is my bloodline. To tell these stories, to let them live. My children deserve to know who lives in them, whose ghosts visit them on windy autumn nights, carry them through dreams and stroke their cheeks while they sleep.