My Italian Uncle

by Lauraine Alberetti Lombara

           I’ll always remember my “Uncle” Ernest.  He’s really my father’s cousin who came from impoverished Italy after WW II to work in our bountiful land.  He lived with my family sporadically for eight years.  I was only five but I can still picture him coming home afternoons with a bag full of fruit, different each time, depending on the season. I would climb onto his lap and with glee, dig my fist into the bag to see if there were bright tangerines, sweet strawberries, firm green grapes  or that bewitching pomegranate which we called an Indian Apple with its maze of cherry red seeds.   As I ate my fruit, I listened, wide-eyed, to stories of his farm in the Taro valley of Emilia-Romagna, with its views of the Apennine Mountains or to humorous anecdotes of the miller’s daughter, my mother, Laura.

           

         I was very proud of my Zio, which is Italian for uncle.  He was tall and stalwart with thick brown hair, tender brown eyes, an aquiline nose and a mouth on which a smile ever played. Zio was always very well dressed. He never scolded me and I always knew in my heart how much he loved me.

      

         I remember the many excursions we took. On a sunny spring Sunday, he would bring me to the Boston Common where the full-bloomed tulips transformed the gardens into a picture print of Holland. The thrill of riding beside him on the fairyland Swan Boats under the romantic bridges, around the miniature island, feeding the scrawny  ducks and scaring off the fat-bellied pigeons is revived when I walk through now.  In autumn, we would visit the Franklin Park Zoo and spend a delightful time shuffling through crackling leaves from one mysterious cage to another, with one of my hands clutching his and the other balancing peanuts, ice cream or Cracker Jacks. Finally, we would reach the monkey cage where Zio would pick me up and raise me higher than anyone so I could easily watch their antics.

        

       Whenever we have minestrone soup, the homemade aroma brings back his memory for it was a standard ritual for he and my mother to fuss over the thickness of the broth.

        

       Whenever I see a man flinch and squirm from being tickled, I think of him and how I wouldstealthily steal in back of him, then quickly run my small fingers up his side and escape, helter-skelter so he couldn’t catch me, but he invariably did and I would roll with gales of laughter and scream many “I give ups”.

           

       The years passed quickly for my beloved Zio and the sad words my mother told me about his need to return to his family caused me much heartbreak. I recall not believing her and trying to convince myself that he would never go. One of the saddest times in my life was the night he left South Station for New York, there to board the ship. The memory is so lucid, it seems as if I just returned from the crowded, noisy station with milling people, pushing porters and steaming trains. Zio said his good-byes to friends and then to my family. Lastly, he took me, sobbing from my father’s arms. I tried, incoherently, to make him promise to return one day. Not until the train started chugging did he painfully say he would. He knew then that he would not, but I lived on that kind answer for many years.

         

      Now, it would be up to me to visit him as he was getting old and could not return. Every time he wrote, my mother  would read his letters to me and I would go back to the days which my Zio made into a treasury of memories. Sadly, I was not able to visit him before he died but the joy he brought me lives on.

I wrote this story in 1959. Fifty-seven years later, the memory of my Zio still abides with me.