When my grandmother, Lucy Melino Fressola died, she left each of her descendants; children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren some money. With part of mine, I took my entire family to Italy; my husband, my two young adult sons, and I. We decided that it was about time to go visit my grandmother’s home town, Sant’Agata di Puglia, one of many picturesque hilltop towns in Southern Italy.
There was one little lady who still lived there that remembered my grandmother, her name was Giuseppina. She was short and spry with twinkly eyes. She welcomed us to her town with smiles and told us how she was the oldest of 8 children and how they had absolutely nothing. She was not able to go to school because she had to work instead and never learned to read. She eventually married my grandmother’s cousin, Saverio Fabbiano. They bought a house with the sweat off their backs and raised their children in this pristine little village. She radiated joy as she reminisced my grandmother’s last visit. It seems that the day my grandmother arrived, Giuseppina’s daughter had a baby. I later met that baby, a woman close to my age.
There was nowhere to park our car near her home or near our hotel, so this 80 something year old woman led us around on foot, we had to work to keep up with her. Every one of us has a story about our time in Sant’Agata di Puglia, but each of us remembers this smiling old woman who shared her town with us.
