A Love Story

(In honor of the first day of spring)

Grandma and Grandpa D'Ambra (she was a Mattera) both grew up on the island of Ischia across the bay from Naples, as children of tenant farmers. Farming then was not an easy life for men or women, and where sometimes the climate complied to produce bumper harvests, the Earth sometimes did not.  In 1883, Mount Vesuvius erupted, not only causing devastating lava flows on the Italian mainland, but triggering earthquakes fanned out from the epicenter. Grandpa's mother, who was holding his infant sister when the tremors began, was struck by a falling rock while protecting the baby. The child still died, and my great-grandmother remained an invalid for about a year before passing away.

My great-grandfather had no time for raising his family as well as making a living, but knew a woman with a couple of children whose husband had also died as a result of the earthquake. She had a reputation for being a good mother and an excellent housekeeper, so they married so that my grandfather and his sister would have someone to care for them.

Well, in theory... To hear Mom tell it, the story directly from her father, he inherited the stepmother from Hell. It was all about her children. At dinner they got the choicest food and my grandfather and his sister the least appetizing portions. There was rarely meat for supper, but if there was, her children got the larger portion, if not all. If my great-grandpa noticed, she would tell him some lie about his children having misbehaved and that they being punished. He worked from sunup until long after sundown and it was no use his children contradicting their stepmother; it just wasn't done to talk back to adults. Her children didn't do chores, but his children did. Grandpa's sister was stuck with the housework. If her children ripped their clothing, she mended them, but did not extend the courtesy to his. And his children—oh, how naughty! But hers were angels.

Like other Italian boys of that era, Grandpa started work in the fields at an early age. Before that he had functioned as an errand boy, bringing drinks back and forth to the field, fetching tools, an extra set of hands or feet to shift some crops, weeding the vegetable garden, etc. But at nine he left the house each day to do a full day of man's work on the farm. His stepmother refused to make breakfast for him, so he spent each morning hungry.

But a perceptive little girl on a neighboring farm never let him down. He passed her door each morning and she would invite him in. She was also nine and by that time a capable little housekeeper: she could cook, mend, take care of siblings, and clean house. Each morning she would cook him breakfast, even if it was just a simple egg with some bread and dripping on the side, and perhaps some goat's milk to drink. While he ate, she would take her needle and thimble and repair any rents in his shirt or his shorts. She knitted him stockings when his were too holey to darn.

When they grew older he knew he loved her not just for her breakfast and for her sewing, but for her heart, and he wanted it with him forever. And that's how the sweet little girl who couldn't let this ragged, hungry boy down became my grandmother.