As the rain increased and
the temperature dropped, the dreary weather discouraged us from taking
afternoon walks, and we turned our attention to inside activities. Reading and
writing letters was one. We heard from my brother in British Columbia that they had a
daughter. Because they lived in the wilderness where the snow was heavy, I had been worried about them. But they
had driven into town before her due date to have the labor induced, and their baby,
Jennifer, was born safely in a hospital. I was sorry that we were so far away. We
couldn’t just drive up to visit them, to welcome the new addition to our
family, but I wrote to them instead and asked them to send pictures so we'd have a visual connection to this new little person.
One item that I had made sure to pack before we left
for Italy was my camera. On our stopover in England, I photographed the many
relatives who turned out to greet us, and when we arrived at Gabi, I
photographed our surroundings. I sent
some of these photos back to my sister and my aunt in California, so they could
get a sense of our new environment. As
the year progressed, I continued to photograph as many of the ordinary, and
extraordinary, moments as our dwindling funds would allow. These same pictures
are the ones I look at now to help me remember the people, the celebrations,
and most of all, the landscape that defined our life for a year.
The boys left for the
asilo in the morning at eight o’clock and returned around four thirty. It was a long day, but they were very happy. They
made friends, played lots of games, and sang Italian songs. Paul learned to
form the letters of the alphabet and to draw, and most importantly, they both
improved their Italian. As winter wore on, the sun set earlier and earlier, so
the boys couldn’t go outside to play after dinner. We needed some other way to
entertain them during the hours before bedtime. We didn’t have a television,
but we had books and puzzles, and crayons, and Lego blocks. We also had my
extensive collection of photographs and our 8mm movies.
That collection of photographs—now even larger—helps
reinforce the memories of things I knew, but they also correct memories of things that I thought I knew,
memories that are false. For instance, I remembered the statue sealed in the wall of the Apple House at Gabi as
the Virgin Mary with the Christ child. However, I was surprised to notice in a
photograph many years later, that the statue is instead, St. Joseph with the
Christ child. The blue robes on the statue of my memory, are actually brown in
the photograph. My life’s experiences all emphasize the
importance of mother and child—my closeness to my mother, my great love for my
children. I must have imbued the statue I remembered with my own preferences. We are not
the same as we were last year, or even yesterday, and our evolving selves
affect the way we recall events. Is it any wonder that sometimes “the truth” of
what we think we remember is so hard to determine? I struggle with the photographs from Gabi,
and with the letters that I wrote to my sister, to find a way to mediate the
“truth” of this experience and to make sense of it.
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| St. Joseph with Christ child on the Apple house at Gabi |
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