Pina Di Ciaccio had survived a minefield, Nazi soldiers, and years of hunger, but at thirty-two she faced a different kind of battle: marriage not for love, but to avoid living "under the sister-in-law."
After Armando's story, it's time for his wife, my grandmother Pina. From a harsh childhood of labor, to a youth that could have ended in illness, or with that Nazi pistol pointed at her heart. Or in the minefield she crossed alone.
He faced the firing squad three times and never renounced a thing.
“What we accomplish today is nothing but the sum of yesterday’s thoughts.We are today where yesterday’s thoughts have brought us, and we will be tomorrow where today’s thoughts will take us.” - Blaise Pascal I didn’t expect that a small memory from ten years ago (November 2015) would hit me with such clarity. Back then … Continue reading The Day I Realized My Thoughts Were Steering the Ship
To truly understand who we are, sometimes we have to go back. Not to our memories, but to those of those who brought us into the world. Because our parents weren't born fully formed, ready to raise children. They were children too. They had fears, hunger, hopes. They saw things they never fully told us. Here's the first part of Grandpa Armando's origins.
Backcanes and fear stole Isabella's voice. In Gaeta, she found it again with a single word: yes, to a boy at a dance.
EYES TO SEE 