When I was your age
When I was your age.
The purpose of this project was to leave some shards of the past for future generations. It became a pilgrimage into the past, to the person I was, the family we were.
About the people in this memoir:
Teodoro Rapolla (Ted, Tiudo), married Marie Dugan, and died in Los Angeles, California. He had three children, Anne Marie, Georgeanne and Paul. Paul died before his father. His daughters still live in the house he built/designed in Burbank, California.
Adelina Rapolla, Lina, settled in Fresno, California, where Uncle Jo, Giuseppe Rapolla had lived. She had three children, JoAnn Scordino, Don Scordino and Carla Scordino. Don still lives in Fresno.
Addolorata Rapolla D’Ambrosio, Dolora’, my mother, moved to Monza after our family home was transformed into a parking area for the elementary school nearby. This occurred after I left for America. She and my father retired back in Venosa. Father died in 1973, she in 1986. She visited me in California and was present at the birth of my third child, Brian.
Antonio D’Ambrosio, Toni’, my eldest brother, moved to Torino, then Milano, all over the North of Italy, worked as a taylor, a costume designer, and a fashion designer. He married, and moved his family to Monza. He ended up working for The Piccolo Teatro di Milano as a fashion designer. Later, he worked for the fashion house of Valentino in Rome. His two two children, Mario and Laura still live in Milano or its vicinity. Toni' is 78, retired and living back in Venosa with his second wife, Rosetta. He bought land and built himself a retirement cottage on a vineyard, in the same style as our family home.
Luigi D’Ambrosio, my baby brother, was five when I left for California. He lives with his wife Debra in Invorio, Piemonte.
I, (Rosaria, Ninetta,) emigrated in 1959 at seventeen. Attended college and graduate school, became a teacher, and later a specialist and an administrator. I settled in Los Angeles, married Kendrick Williams, a scientist and researcher. Our children, Jon Scott Williams, Pia Nicole Williams-Robbins, Brian Christian Williams. We retired on the beautiful Southern Oregon Coast where we are presently residing. Our youngest, Brian Christian Williams, became a victim of homicide in Fullerton, California, on July 17, 2011.
Donna Maria Rosaria, Mingu’s mother, lived way into her eighties.
All other relatives, Mingu’s brothers, Addolorata's aunts and cousings are scattered in Italy. There are Rapolla's cousins living in New Jersey and New York. I met Helena Rapolla Farrell via Facebook-courtesy of JoAnn Scordino who had met her in person years before. That part of the family is doing well.
The family house I grew up in was torn down. Even the church I was baptized in, The Church of Purgatory, was declared unsafe and shut down. Ironically, the college I attended, Immaculate Heart College is now The American Film Institute. The church we were married in, a small Russian wooden church, St. Basil, burned down, and in its place, a beautiful big cathedral was erected on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
I returned to visit Venosa just twice, in 1970, and in 2002.
Some names were changed to protect privacy. Historical facts and information reported here are shared memories, and are repeated as heard. Any error was not intentional nor meant to deceive anybody.
This memoir is dedicated to my family: my children, who are my pride and joy, and my husband who has been my constant supporter. Without them, I would cry my heart out and never tell the whole truth.
To contact me:
When I Was Your Age
A Memoir
by Rosaria D'Ambrosio Williams
Chapter One
I have a feeling that time is running out, and I need to borrow an eagerness that no longer exists in my present life, a way to see my tomorrows lined up like ice- cream flavors, days and weeks different and exciting, ready to be savored.
I'm telling my story to understand it, to share it with my children and grandchildren whose roots and language do no match mine.They know so little of my past.
My grandchild Jasmine will line up at Barnes and Noble to meet her favorite author this month, and for the next sixty years, she’ll anticipate infinite adventures with every book she reads, every town she visits. I look forward to line up at her graduations, wedding, special occasions, anticipating the future through her eyes, thinking life goes on indefinitely.
What my husband and children know already is that I left Italy and came to study in America at the young age of seventeen, and returned to my hometown only twice to this date, for very short visits. Having to opportunity to come to America was a dream every child and young adult had at the time I grew up. America was in our destiny.
I grew up in the small town of Venosa, in the province of Potenza, in Southern Italy, where everyone lived an open life, sitting on the front stoop during hot summer days, shelling peas, knitting, hanging clothes. Children scrambled from house to house, delivering something, borrowing something, running small errands for their elders when they were not playing hide and seek, or kick-the-can. Everyone knew intimate details of each other's lives.
In 1942, the year I was born, Italy was in the middle of World War II, and everyone was always hungry. A slice of bread wet with olive oil and tomato was breakfast, supper, after school snack. Milk, eggs, meat were rare commodities. Bread, prepared at home and baked at the town's bakery was our main sustenance. Pasta and beans, or peppers and tomatoes, week after week, year after year kept us alive and hoping.
We owned land, a plot here and there, kilometers away from each other. Some were better for growing olives, some for grapes. Olive oil and wine provided us with enough cash at the end of the harvest to purchase shoes for growing feet, a coat for harsh winters and credit for groceries we'd use from the local store half a block away.
We grew most of our food, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, wine. We butchered a hog and made sausages and salami that hung in our cellar all winter long. We made our own clothes, knitted our own socks, sweaters. Father caned chairs, fashioned laundry baskets and olive containers out of reeds and saplings during long harsh winters. We cooked in a fireplace stocked with wood Father brought home on his shoulders every day he worked the land. Our cellar was full of wood and kindling, big bottles of oil and wine, vats of grain and legumes, and hanging on the rafters, drying fruit, peppers, salumi and cheeses.
I was eight when I experienced my first boy crush. His name was Enrico, a friend of my brother. One hot summer afternoon, he waltzed outside his door with a new pair of roller skates.The air was heavy with spent jacaranda blooms, and I had trouble falling asleep after lunch, tossing and turning on Mother’s big bed.
I pretended to sleep, following shadows of walkers projected on the interior walls, listening for the snoring to start before I got up and peeked through the heavy Persian shutters when a sudden shrieking of metal pushed me to the door, to peek through the shutters. Enrico had fallen on the ground, and a woman was gesturing and jelling at him.
“Stai svegliando i morti!” You’re waking the dead!” She screeched, standing on top of the boy holding a crying baby in her arms.
Enrico readjusted the skates, and took off with more speed, swirling and rushing with a look of annoyance and glee. The woman's yelling was causing people to come out of their siesta and join the
commotion.
My mother stopped me as I tried to slip out. She commanded me to return to bed. Enrico in the middle of a small crowd was about to get a beating any minute from the woman who had first seen him, and now had given the baby to someone else while she positioned herself to give Enrico a good beating. Any adult could correct any child, with physical force if necessary if that child appeared to have caused damages. All parents believed in swift corporal punishment.
Mother gave me a good slap on my behind as she dragged me back to bed. I soon fell asleep, dreaming I was a captured princess imprisoned by a snoring ogre, while many more ugly creatures were making their way trough the Persian shutters.
The next Saturday, Silvana, Enrico’s sister, my best friend, seemed to read my thoughts at our usual children's collective confession, kneeling next to each other and a dozen other girls our age, all reciting one sin for each commandment that we had broken.
“Don’t forget to confess everything.” she admonished.
From that day on, I kept peeking through the shutters, hoping Enrico would come out and skate. From my house, I could see his comings and goings, and found excuses to hang around my brother when the two of them played kick-the- can or soccer. I had a heightened sensation whenever I saw him: my ears and cheeks turned red and an immediate feeling of drowning overtook me.
At every confession, a slight feeling of shame lingered in me as I recited extra prayers to atone for that feeling.
“I’m done.” I would say to Silvana, hoping I had not blurted out anything about her brother, as I prayed hard for God to forgive me what appeared to be a sin of disobedience.
Boys usually played soccer, starting on one side of the street and moving wherever the ball landed, at times pushing girls to take refuge elsewhere.Girls invented elaborate games of make believe, purposely pulling the younger boys to play different parts.
Younger brothers played for a while, or as long as we could find a treat for them, then return to their mothers. If we wanted them to stay, we had to find ways to feed them treats.
My favorite game was “The lost Princess”, a ritual during hot summer nights when everyone stayed up late, the smell of jacaranda and wild oregano saturating the air, adults sitting out by their front stoop eating watermelon, and older brothers and sisters walking back and forth from one end of town to another hoping to catch a glimpse of the person they were interested in.
The story we acted out was of a princess abandoned and discovered by a poor couple who hoped that her relatives would come looking for her one day. She grew up knowing that her future was waiting for her.
Though dressed in rags, the princess walked royally. This last part was my addition. Mother kept pushing her hand on my back every time I stood up, telling me to walk straight like a princess, adding, "Your body is the temple of God!" I couldn't quite figure that part out, but I knew her hand could make points I never understood.
On a warm day, a prince riding by the girl’s house noticed a coverlet on the wash line. He was intrigued by the design, stopped and asked about its provenance.
She told him that she had been found wrapped in that coverlet when she was discovered in the woods. She would wash it twice a year to keep it smelling fresh and to remind her to go find her real parents one of these days.
The prince was curious.
“My family has spoken about a princess lost in the woods. They will want to know that she is still alive.”
Our game could last for weeks. It took place under porticoes, inside houses, in front of churches, taking up two or more blocks of real estate, involving many scenes, and improvised costumes.
It had many parts, depending on how many girls could come out and play. Those of us who could procure props such as rich-looking shawls, or white veils, were guaranteed the part of the Bride.
The boy parts went to tall girls.
The playacting ended after the Marriage Procession that slowly wound its way across the neighborhood all the way to the local church.
In the early fall, when cool weather shortened our game, I got a chance to play the Bride, having miraculously produced the veil I had worn for my first communion, a veil that had come all the way from America.
Silvana played the part of Prince Enrico Emmanuele.
The name was my invention.Somewhere, a real prince Emmanuele was going into exile, never to reign in Italy again and the story was becoming real before our eyes.
The older girls became jealous when I produced a veil so easily.
“Does your Mother know that you are playing with your first communion veil?”
“Of course she knows! She saw me just a minute ago”. I had rushed in the house and Mother figured I was going to the restroom. I returned with my veil and some fruit. We played the same game night after night, adding new twists and new props.
By September, when school started, and cold rains and homework interfered with our outdoor games, we prepared to grow according to mother's plans and father's ambitions.
Venosa Italy Life in a small town.
Chapter Two
Venosa, in the area of Basilicata halfway between Napoli on one coast and Bari on the other had been a known stopover for Roman soldiers on their way to the Levant. Training arenas and an amphitheater at the outskirt of town, sit next to an early Christian Basilica and catacombs. Hebrew, Greek and Early Christian iconography can be seen side by side. Statues of the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and San Rocco, the town’s patron sit in niches at each corner.
The Roman poet Orazio Flacco, Horace, was our most famous citizen.Teachers bestowed a crown of bay leaves to the student of the week that received the highest marks, a crown that is similar to the one Orazio's statue wears in the middle of the piazza that bears his name. The person with such honors walked around with that crown for an entire week, in and out of school.
By fourth grade, if you were the one chosen to wear the crown, you tucked it away after school hours.
A castle, numerous palaces and churches built during different centuries, dot Via Appia where my house sat at the corner of Via Armando Diaz. If we followed Via Appia out of town, we could walk in the footsteps of Cesar, thousands of years of history preceding us, leading all the way to Rome and other areas of the Roman Empire.
Most of my friends' ambitions were to become another Michelangelo or Dante or Cesar. We received our names as omens of good fortune, marking us for our future. Our parents' ambitions as well as their ancestry showed up in our names.
Some of us received saints’ names, and we were expected to lead lives of piety and devotion, similar to our namesake. The rest were named after deceased grandparents or uncles. People traced their roots and their fortunes to the saints and patrons that had inhabited their worlds, and had bestowed good luck upon them. Fortunes were acquired and lost based on the respect paid to the patron saint or to the deceased ancestor.
At home, and with friends, we spoke a dialect barely recognizable as today's Italian. I remember when our teachers insisted we speak proper Italian, as heard on the radio that most people still did not have at home, homes that consisted of one or two rooms, mostly without electricity right after the war.In the neighborhood, at christenings and weddings, old songs and stories were sung and told in Venosino. Any stranger who arrived by our town could be recognized by the way he spoke.
Immigrants to North or South America took with them their dialect, their food, customs and songs. In some suburbs in America one can identify the very town you came from because of the special dialect you spoke, the special foods you ate.
I was eleven the first time I left home to attend summer camp in Cattolica, a resort on the Adriatic Sea. I was the only child from my part of Italy, and was known as the Terrona, the girl from dirt farms. I had looked forward to visiting the sea, any beach would do. At school, an occasional magazine photo would be shared, or some one's post cards from friends from faraway places with enchanting names. When those friends returned in September, their bodies were bronzed, their hair full of highlights, their days spent sunning on the beach.
I was already tanned, already dark from my being outdoors most of the time.
An inordinate desire for adventure and fantasy kept me eager to jump at any opportunity to travel.
In Cattolica, I met people from all over Italy. I was introduced to food I had never eaten before, food that didn’t taste any thing like the food my mother cooked. I couldn’t eat, and feared that I might die and never see my parents again. The first time on the beach, I kept walking in the water, sure that in all that water I would be capable of swimming the way it had been explained to me. I was under water, choking and flailing before someone rescued me.
I thought God was finally punishing me.
In fact, every time I got into a difficulty, I thought God was punishing me for an infraction I had committed and forgotten to atone for, such as the time Maria and I disobeyed my Father's instructions .
It had been a typical summer day, and my cousin Maria and I had joined Father and Mother at the vineyard. The place was miles from our house, and we took turns riding the donkey. Mother had packed a “marmitta” a metal container to transport "pipirigni e pumidori" fried peppers and tomatoes, accompanied by a loaf of bread and a jug of wine. After lunch, while Father was taking a little nap, Maria and I had concocted a way to get a tan like the rich girls. We started to dig a hole and remove dirt by a small creek at the end of our property, in an attempt to create a swimming hole. He had admonished us earlier not to play in the creek, as the current was fast.
A couple of hours later, Pa`pa walked over to check on us, felt sorry for the sad looking hole we dug, and volunteered to finish the job. His hole was big enough for us to sit and stick our feet in, and lie around and get a good tan. Again, he warned us about the current in the creek before he returned to his own tasks.
We jumped in and splashed around and soon, the water became muddy and our fantasy beach adventure was destroyed. Without thinking, we picked up rocks and tossed them in the hole, while stepping further and further into the creek. One moment we were splashing and singing, the next moment Father was pulling us out, our hair full of mud and debris, and dumped us in the clear creek to wash the mud off as we cried and shrieked, itching all over, until mostly clean we went to sit in the sun to dry our hair and clothes.
Chapter Three: Praying for Divine Intervention.
Breaking Lent
Mother believed that evil lurked at every corner; that our lives were molded by our destiny, changed only by the will of God and the forces of nature. Her job was to protect all of us. Whenever she needed inspiration or strength, she turned to prayers, articles of devotion, and special foods. Her patron saint was St. Anthony, for saving her first born, and the Virgin Mary, who interceded at her birth.
Father chose my name, Rosaria Anna, after both grandmothers, giving me the special powers possessed by both sides of the family. Mother decided that Grandmother Rosaria didn’t deserve a child with her name since she had done nothing to ingratiate herself in our household. So, at home and with friends, I was Ninetta.
Addolorata, Dolo`ra for short, wore her name like a badge of honor. She believed that pain and sacrifices were her special crosses to bear, that her life was a preparation for sainthood. After each test, she offered the Virgin Mary novenas and tokens of appreciation that rivaled offerings made to any other saint. My mother believed in names.
One early spring, an unusual cold snap had destroyed the young peas, asparagus and cardoons and had confused the chickens as well. Easter was just a week away, and Mother could not prepare the traditional Verdetto, a bitter cardoon and egg dish eaten on Easter Day. Only divine intervention could save this Pasqua.
She was just fourteen when her marriage was arranged to the just-widowed-brother-in-law, six months after her big sister Graziella had died in childbirth. Her entire life book contained only chapters on suffering.
Her younger brother and sister, all underage and orphaned lived with her and her new husband. Her job, as the oldest, was to protect her siblings and spare them and her future children the destiny she inherited.
Mingu, her brother in law-turned husband, was a handsome and garrulous musician. With a big family to support, he now had no time to sing or attend wedding parties; why, he barely managed to run his vineyard.
Dolo`ra gave him time to mourn and forget his first wife. She heard accusations after accusations that this was not the life he had chosen for himself. He was moody and displeased about everything she did, everything she said.
Elsewhere, he was h
“If I had been a beauty, my life would have be different.” She remarked, not sure I could understand at my young age. I took the statement to mean that women with beauty had no trouble with their husbands. Her anger and frustration were the universal problappy, the life of the party, and after a few drinks, joked of how he happened to marry two sisters, one after the other, two years apart.
“I was trapped, you know. First by Beauty, then…”
The first wife, Graziella ,was the Beauty. He did not have to mention what a bad union he had made by marrying the second sister. Only Dolora' understood that they all had to stay together so nobody would end up at an orphanage.
ems of ugly women, I thought. I would often look in the mirror, at an early age, and asked about my chances of becoming beautiful.
Mother would laugh and say: “Don’t you worry, God took my beauty so I could give it all to you. You’ll have all the luck, all the beauty, and all the brains I don’t have.”
“How do you know? I could end up having your life,” I whined.
“That’s not going to happen, not with all the sacrifices I’m making,” she'd say with conviction.
“I need a man who appreciates what I bring...” she'd mumble as she beat the dust cloth, washed the brick floors with much fervor, yelled her complaints out loud, asking the Virgin Mary to change her luck, asking for a miracle to teach this man of hers. She kept telling us that the he had nothing; that he should be grateful for the property she had brought to the marriage.
Her sister, Adelina, a few years younger, in charge of keeping me in line, would repeat these comments to the neighbors, who were constantly reminding her that she had a third of that property coming to her when she became older. Her brother Teodoro also complained about his brother- in- law everywhere he went.
That spring day, with the snow still piled high, Mother told us to get our coats on and follow her. It was early afternoon. Father had been toasting bites of mozzarella on a stick. We had eaten our minestra with a few slices of bread, but we were anticipating eating the mozzarella bites, melted and hot. Mother repeated her command for us to bundle up. My brother and I obeyed.
“We are going to start a novena to get our chickens to lay eggs again," she said with a tone of no discussions on this one. She continued, "With eggs we can make our verdetto for Easter, and if we get extra eggs we can sell them and buy chocolate eggs."
The “chocolate” part convinced us. We were ready to leave when Father insisted that a young child doesn't need to go praying in a cold church. I remained behind, at his insistence.
It was too wet to work in the vineyards, and too cold to leave the spot by the fireplace. That morning when he fed the chickens, he noticed they had escaped the coop on their own. Mother had warned him that the door was not locking properly.
Father had been dozing for a while when I shook him, to remind him about the chickens needing to be put back in the coop. He woke up suddenly and asked brusquely:
“When did your mother say she’s coming home? She better pray that I don’t kill her when she gets back. She better ask the Madonna forgiveness for abandoning her husband and small child on such a cold day and putting everybody in danger. Fine mess she is creating”.
He was annoyed as he looked around the house for his boots and coat to go lock up the chickens and see if there were eggs to retrieve. Father returned a few minutes later to grab the broom by the back door. Then, he ran out again..
When he returned, he was brandishing a bloody knife. He fueled the fire, added water to the great cauldron, and began to pluck a chicken. I watched with horror. Mother had plucked chickens before, but outdoors, with plenty of space and water to wash the birds up. Father worked diligently for a good half hour, dipping the bird in the hot water to soften the quills. Then, he proceeded to chop the chicken into small pieces before trowing the ugly water out on the street. There was snow on the ground; but in front of our house, bird feathers and pink snow paved the path to our front door.
When Mother returned, before she could ask about the feathers and the pink snow, Father greeted her with a statement. “That chicken was getting too old, and Ninetta was starving.” Pa`pa said with a smile. The entire time that he was cooking, he told me how out in the dark, he had to kill a fox that had grabbed the chicken, how the fox could have attacked him.
“Madonna Mia,” Mother exclaimed when she saw all that meat, tears mixing with the snow flakes on her coat. She slumped down in a chair to remove her galoshes. Tony threw his coat down without hanging it up. Nobody was paying attention when he started eating before reciting grace.
As usual, Mother was the last one to eat.
“La Madonna ha provveduto!” She kept saying, believing this meal was a miracle. This was better than the verdetto she had planned to make for Pasqua.
Mother never asked about the chicken. We just ate and ate, more meat than at any other time. Everyone felt contented and blessed. I don’t remember anything else about that night, or about Easter Day a week later, whether we had eggs for the verdetto, whether we had the chocolate egg. What I hadn’t realized was that Pa`pa had broken the Lent, had sacrificed and prepared a meat dish a week before Easter.
We were too hungry to notice.
Mother was too pleased with her miracle to question this provident moment.