One.

My grandmother died almost three years ago now, but I still think about her all the time. I don’t talk about her a lot, the reality being that I only saw her a handful of times. She lived in Italy and I live in Canada.

When my parents immigrated in 1965 it was still prohibitively expensive to make phone calls to Europe, let alone visit. After 8 years we returned as a family for a summer, and then she came to Vancouver twice, with my grandfather. But after he died she didn’t want to travel alone. We went back again when my mother remarried to meet my stepfather's family who lived close by, in the mountains. After that I didn’t see her for over 20 years. In 2006 my mother and I made a trip together and I was able to sit down as an adult and talk with my grandmother for the first time. That was the last time I saw her.

So it may seem from my limited exposure to her that she would have had a very slight influence on my life. Luckily, the opposite is true. From the time I can remember, my mother, stunned by homesickness and an inability to understand this new country and its ways, soothed us, and herself, with stories of food prepared the same way for generations, life on a multi-generational farm, and her mother. While bathing us or cleaning up after dinner she painted a vivid portrait of my grandmother’s character, and what it was like growing up poor in post-war Italy. Over the years, my mother’s own experiences gave her further insight into her mother’s decisions and choices, and the portrait she drew for us developed further. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood my mother poured into my ears a detailed history to compliment the genes she placed in my body.

The trip I took with her in 2006 was an attempt to satisfy my burgeoning questions about destiny and obligation. I had rebelled wildly in my early 20’s, so was confused to find myself in my late 30’s growing into a person I didn’t understand but recognized only too well. By chasing the strong and demanding blood-thread that ran through my body back past my teenage years to my mother, and back again (restlessly tapping through a continental flight) to my grandmother’s kitchen table, I began to learn about myself.

I find myself wanting to live up to the women who came before me and to connect with them in a significant way every single day. I know my grandmother lives within me. I recognize her in how I arrange my dishes and how I refuse to grate the cheese until the pasta is cooking. I hope to learn even more about who she was. I hope to take this intangible thing that binds my mother, my grandmother and me together, and to bring it into the light.