I found this lovely photo of Nanna Francesca’s Sydney cousins and friends tucked in with a letter sent to her in Brisbane in the 1950s. The way news was shared of a new baby and baptism celebration back when it wasn’t common to hop on plane (and who could afford to take time off from work anyway).
In Italy, they’d all mostly lived in the same town, often a short walk from each other’s houses. Now, different situations meant sometimes living vast distances apart in Australia and, plane fares aside, even an interstate phone call was terribly expensive, if you actually had a phone yet.
I can just picture Nanna Francesca finding this letter in the mailbox and opening it while still standing out in the sunshine. Perhaps smiling to see the photo tucked inside. Happiness maybe mixed with a little melancholy at not being able to be there in person.
There’s so much I love about this photo. The togetherness, the joy in creating their own music and a new life held aloft – the baby perhaps the first born of the next generation in this new country. I notice the older generations are not there, they are back in Italy, and so new connections are being created all the time in Australia and held close, friends becoming like relatives too. All the while, holding onto that much-loved and familiar Italian life as well, which the new generations will also come to love. Connections new and old. ❤️🌠
A photo taken with Nanna Francesca at my first big Italian wedding in the 1970s. (The reception venue of the day complete with champagne glass tower, doves, smoke machine and parquetry dance floor to slide across later on!)
Tonight is Epiphany Eve and in Italy many children will be waiting to see what they receive from La Befana, ‘the witch’ – sweets if they’ve been good, coal if they’ve been naughty. As I wrote in, Mezza Italiana, I was chosen as La Befana for my school play, being ‘an Italian kid’, and as you can see from the first photo, I wasn’t too thrilled about it! 😄 Although, I’d warmed up to the idea by the second photo when I got to climb through a window. (As you can also see, being summer, I’m already a bit burnt from swimming at the local pool!)
A part of my Italian-Australian life in two photos… the first one – Nanna Francesca (centre) taking her visiting cousins from Sydney to Qld’s Big Pineapple. To me, there’s something about seeing these three Italian migrant women standing in front of something so Australian, knowing how my nonna loved going there and knowing how it was a world away from their stone villages in Italy. Nanna Francesca brought me back an enormous Big Pineapple pencil with a pineapple on the end of it. I was about five (and still have it!) She also bought herself a Big Pineapple tea-towel and salt and pepper shakers.
These shakers – in the second photo – sat, never used, behind glass in her ‘good’ cabinet, for decades. Then, after my grandparents had both died and the family was packing up their house of more than fifty years, I found myself standing in front of this cabinet looking at those two pineapples. Yes, they were kitschy but I couldn’t let them end up lost, so now they sit on a bookshelf in my kitchen, a little reminder of Nanna Francesca that makes me smile.
Melanzane fritte – made with eggplants from the backyard vegie patch, just like the crumbed, fried eggplant slices that Nonna Gia and Sofie cook together in, The Proxy Bride. I’ve put these ones on one of Nanna Francesca’s plates and next to them is a little pot I bought in Italy to stand in as a ‘chilli pot’ (though I confess mine has salt in it at present!)
Bisnonna Francesca… a companion post to the previous on Bisnonno Domenico. Likewise, I didn’t get to meet her yet each photo has a little to reveal and brings the past somewhat closer in that moment. A rare photo, circa 1930 (bottom right) shows Francesca in Palmi, Calabria with her mother, Soccorsa, the baker and her daughter (Nanna Francesca). The three who lived together for years after Domenico was in Australia. And then (top left), just Francesca and her daughter, soon to leave to join him in 1934. She and her mother had worked hard to help raise the ship fares, determined as she was to be reunited.
In his work clothes (top left), one knee patched, behind him his Applethorpe orchards on land he’d hand-cleared, long before he could afford the horse.
Zoë Boccabella 