{"id":1660,"date":"2015-06-20T08:27:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T15:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/?p=1660"},"modified":"2015-08-10T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T19:00:47","slug":"la-famiglia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/?p=1660","title":{"rendered":"La Famiglia"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We took a bus, a train and another bus to the town of Campobasso (in the Molise region), where Darold\u2019s Italian family lives.<\/p>\n

Darold\u2019s grandmother (on his mother\u2019s side) was born in the nearby town of San Giuliano del Sannio.\u00a0 His great grandfather had emigrated from Italy to the United States but had taken his family back to Italy for a visit.\u00a0 While they were visiting, World War I broke out.\u00a0 They had to stay in Italy until they could get safe passage back to America, and during that time Darold\u2019s grandmother was born. \u00a0As WWI was winding down they finally booked a passage, they were at the Port of Naples waiting for their steamer trunk to arrive.\u00a0 When it didn\u2019t arrive in time to board, Darold\u2019s great grandmother said that they wouldn\u2019t leave without it.\u00a0 She was adamant, so they stayed in Naples.\u00a0 It turns out that the ship they would have boarded was sunk by a German torpedo.\u00a0 Good thing they stayed! I guess I owe my marriage to a steamer trunk.\u00a0 Eventually, they made it back to the States and the steamer trunk is still in the family.<\/p>\n

Darold\u2019s grandmother\u2019s first cousin was named Nicola, and he married a woman named Teresa.\u00a0 We visited Teresa (and the rest of her family) on a trip to Italy 20 years ago, and then again on our honeymoon almost 16 years ago.<\/p>\n

On our first visit with\u00a0the family we stayed in Teresa\u2019s house in San Giuliano del Sannio. We weren\u2019t married yet so she put us in separate bedrooms.\u00a0 When we returned to visit on her honeymoon, she put us in her bedroom complete with a giant crucifix over the bed and told us in Italian to \u201cget busy.\u201d Teresa was in her 70s then and was extremely active.\u00a0 She showed us how to make homemade cavatelli and tagliatelle.\u00a0 She prepared some amazing meals for us, making everything from scratch and procuring most ingredients for cooking directly from her backyard garden including peppers, tomatoes, figs, zucchini, zucchini flowers and herbs.\u00a0 Teresa is now in her 90s and lives in a rest home in San Giuliano del Sannio that Silvana (her daughter) helped to get funded and constructed.\u00a0 Silvana and Raffele (her husband) have an apartment in Campobasso, but they also have a \u201ccountry house\u201d in San Giuliano del Sannio and from there the rest home is walking distance to visit Teresa (which Silvana does twice a day.) \u00a0It was bittersweet to visit Teresa (we made several trips), as we knew it would be the last time we would see her.\u00a0 She has a very distinctive laugh, which we remember from our previous visits, and it was great to her that laugh again.<\/p>\n

We got re-acquainted with the whole family since we hadn\u2019t seen them since our honeymoon.\u00a0 Dante was particularly excited to meet his two cousins near his age (Claudio, age 11 and Emma, age 6) and had a blast playing with them.\u00a0 They rode a quad, shot pellet guns, and made knives and sheathes out of wood and aluminum.\u00a0 Amazing what two boys can do together when they don\u2019t even speak the same language.<\/p>\n

One of the great things about visiting friends and relatives in foreign countries is that you get to see the country in a way that you couldn\u2019t as a normal tourist.\u00a0 Not only did we relish Silvana\u2019s home cooked Italian meals, but we toured an ancient Roman town with them (Sepanium), visited the castle in Campobasso, saw a festival to Saint Anthony in a nearby town and all went out to dinner at a pizza restaurant. Raffaele shared with us all kinds of homemade treats like nut liquor, homegrown walnuts, dried hot pepper oil, wine made from friends and local \u201cTintilia\u201d wine from the Molise region. We spent time with Mariantonietta (Silvana and Raffele\u2019s daughter) and her husband, as well as Marieantonietta\u2019s brother, Giandomenico, who by the way is a huge San Jose Warriors fan.<\/p>\n

One day while we were out, neighbors of Silvana and Raffele also dropped by some amazingly delicious homemade pizza and bread, and we all went by their farm house to thank them.\u00a0 We seemed to be transported back in time at this farmhouse; they were practically self-sufficient.\u00a0 They had fig trees, stone fruit trees, a huge vegetable garden, dozens of bee hives, pigs, rabbits and a large plot of land fit for farming.<\/p>\n

By the time we left five days later, we had re-connected the bonds of family with Darold\u2019s aunt and uncle and cousins, and had created new bonds with Dante and his cousins. As we were leaving, Silvana packed a little \u201clunch\u201d for us so that we wouldn\u2019t go hungry on the journey home.\u00a0 She packed sandwiches, frittata, cheese, fruit, bread, drinks and dessert.\u00a0 Plus, they made sure we took along some wine with us. The food bag was nearly as heavy as our suitcase!<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know when we will see the family again, but we have high hopes that Mariantonietta and her family or Giandomenicao might come visit us in California.\u00a0 (Giando \u2013 if you are reading this, we promise to take you to a Warriors game!)<\/p>\n

For more pictures go to our\u00a0Flickr\u00a0<\/a>site!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We took a bus, a train and another bus to the town of Campobasso (in the Molise region), where Darold\u2019s Italian family lives. Darold\u2019s grandmother (on his mother\u2019s side) was born in the nearby town of San Giuliano del Sannio.\u00a0 His great grandfather had emigrated from Italy to the United States but had taken his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sailing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1660"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}