Mama's Village
Our Trip to Sicily, May 4-15, 1999
by Wanda Carpino, with comments from Mama

My grandfather, Salvatore Vassallo, was born in 1891 in Calavetra, a hill village in the province of Agrigento, on the south side of Sicily. In 1912, when he was twenty-one, he sailed from Palermo to New York with a cardboard suitcase and his stonemason's tools, and he came to Providence and never went back. He laid half the stone steps on Federal Hill, to hear him tell it. His daughter, my mother Jeanne, is 77 now. She has wanted to see Calavetra her whole life.

Papa died in 1994. Every year after that Mama said "someday," and every year I said "next summer." This spring I bought the tickets before either of us could say it again. The cousins we had only ever known from Christmas cards met us at the bus, and then they fed us for twelve days straight.

This page is the trip. The food has its own page, because the food was most of the trip: five family recipes from Calavetra.

Click a picture to see it bigger. Mama's comments are in italics, because she insisted on reading every word before it went up.

Getting There
We flew out of Boston on Tuesday, May 4, overnight through Rome to Palermo. Mama said the rosary somewhere over the Atlantic and slept the rest of the way. I didn't sleep at all.

Palermo
Two days to get our feet under us. The cathedral; the old market, loud and crowded and wonderful, where a man selling swordfish sang at us; and the golden mosaics in the cathedral at Monreale, up on the hill above the city, which I will never forget. My Spanish got me about halfway through most conversations. Mama's Sicilian, which she hadn't really spoken since her father died, came back a little more every day.

Mama says: It came back the minute that swordfish man started in.

South Across the Island
On Friday, May 7, we took the bus south to Agrigento, two and a half hours across the middle of the island, through rolling hills of green wheat with red poppies in it, sheep, olive trees, and little towns stacked on hilltops. Mama slept against my shoulder and woke up every time we went around a curve to say "look, look."

The Valley of the Temples
Saturday morning, early, before the tour buses, we walked through the Valley of the Temples below Agrigento. This is the Temple of Concordia, built by the Greeks in the 400s B.C. It is one of the best preserved Greek temples anywhere, because about a thousand years later it was made into a church and so nobody tore it down for the stone. In the early sun the stone turns the color of honey. I'm sorry the scan is crooked; the print slid on the scanner glass and I liked it anyway.

Mama says: Papa used to say the Greeks were the first stonemasons in Sicily and he was the last.

Calavetra
That afternoon we took the local bus up into the hills. When it stopped in the piazza, there were three people waiting: Giovanni Vassallo, who is 73 and Mama's first cousin, the son of Salvatore's younger brother who stayed; Giovanni's son Rocco; and Rocco's daughter Lucia, who is 19 and studies English at the university in Palermo. Lucia was holding up a sign with our names on it, which was silly, because there was nobody else on the bus. Giovanni took one look at Mama and started to cry, and then she did, and then I did, and Rocco took the suitcases.

Mama says: He has my father's ears. Exactly my father's ears.

The village climbs up a steep hill, and most of the streets aren't streets at all but stone steps worn smooth in the middle. Everybody hangs their wash across the lanes. Old women in black climb those steps with shopping bags faster than I could. We stayed with Giovanni and his wife Concetta, and every morning Mama and I walked up to the piazza for coffee, which took twenty minutes because everyone stopped us. By Tuesday the whole village knew who we were: the Americans, Salvatore's granddaughter and great-granddaughter.

Sunday, May 9: the Register
It was Mother's Day in Italy too. We went to Mass at the church where my grandfather was baptized, and afterward the priest, Father Lorenzo, took us into the sacristy and brought out the old baptismal register, a big leather book. He turned the pages very carefully until he found it: Salvatore Vassallo, 1891, in faded brown ink, in Latin, with his parents' names and his godparents'. Mama put her finger on the line and didn't say anything for a long time. Father Lorenzo let me copy it all out by hand.

Then lunch. Rocco and his wife Carmela set a long table in their courtyard under the grapevine, and cousins kept arriving until there were fifteen of us. Pasta, then meat, then salad, then fruit, then the almond cookies, then coffee, and it was dark when we got up. That's Mama at the head of the table, which is where they put her and where she stayed. Everybody is toasting her.

Monday, May 10: the House
Giovanni walked us down to the house where my grandfather was born. It is small and very old, two rooms of yellow stone, and nobody has lived in it since the 1960s. Mama knew the door at once from an old photograph her father kept on his dresser. She stood in the doorway a long time. I took this picture, then I went and sat on the wall and let her be.

Mama says: I was not crying. It was dusty in there.

The Rest of the Week
We spent the rest of the week in the cousins' kitchens, which is why there's a recipe page. Concetta taught Mama her caponata, and Mama argued with her about it, happily, for three days. Carmela let me help with the arancini. Rocco took us down to his olive and almond trees below the village in his little truck and showed us which trees his great-grandfather planted. In the evenings the whole village walks up and down the main street to visit, slowly, arm in arm. Mama walked it every night with Concetta.

On Thursday evening Lucia took us up to the wall at the top of the village. From there you look down over the terraces and the olive groves, the lights coming on in the town below, and far off the sea, going silver as the sun went down. My grandfather looked at this every evening until he was twenty-one. I understand a little better now why he never talked much about leaving, and a little better why he did.

Going Home
On Friday morning half the village came to the bus. Concetta packed us a bag of almond cookies for the plane that lasted all the way to Providence. We flew home Saturday, May 15. Lucia writes to us now in English every month, and Mama writes back in Sicilian, and I translate in both directions with a dictionary.

If You're Going to Find Your Family's Village

• Write ahead. The parish priest may have the records, and the town hall too. Ask before you go.
• Bring photographs of your family to give away. Ours were passed around for a week.
• Learn a little Italian. They will be so pleased you tried, and then they'll answer you in dialect anyway.
• Shops close in the afternoon and dinner is late. Take a nap like everybody else.
• Learn the bus schedules the day before. Buses to the small towns don't run often.
• Bring an empty suitcase. You'll be sent home with olive oil, almonds, and a tablecloth.

On to the recipes >>

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Last updated Sunday, August 29, 1999