Introducing Elisabetta
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Every year at Cape Hatteras, I go on a bike ride along a somewhat fixed path.
In younger days, I would ride along Route 12, first against the wind, and then reversing to go with the wind. This had great benefits if you happened to gauge the wind direction properly, because going out would be a struggle, but coming back, you would be miraculously transformed into an Olympic class cyclist. Kind of Lance Armstrong, but without the steroids.
If you got the wind direction wrong, though, not so good.
As the years passed, I decided that a bike lane consisting of a 12 inch shoulder on the side of a road where semis routinely go 70 miles per hour was not the ideal setting for amateur bike riding, even though I wear a protective helmet.
My revised route goes first to the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, past a tiny World War Two British cemetery, and from there to a National Park Service campground immediately prior to Beach Access Ramp 43. There is a mile and a quarter road that rings the campground, and at the end of my 10-mile campground velodrome, I head back North and out toward Route 12. But I first ride out an abandoned road that goes about a third of a mile, almost to the dunes.
At the end of this abandoned road I arrive at what I somewhat jokingly refer to as my own Meditation Point, mainly to hide my routine from those who might think me nuts or overly religious (even though truth be told, I have a tendency toward both these extremes). It is here that I pause, look around at the gray bones of trees long dead from ocean over wash, and gather my thoughts. And sometimes just think, sometimes pray, and sometimes just sweat.
On this particular day -- reflecting a bit on the fact that I have now officially lived one day longer than the 22,834 days accorded to my father -- I realize that I am now officially in uncharted territory. The statute of limitations on being your father’s son never quite runs out, but it certainly takes on a different feel once you live longer than he did.
Perhaps it’s time to get serious about my long-deferred quest for my father’s family origins story. Where did his family go? Why didn’t he ever talk about them? What happened to him after they died? How do I breathe life into the Ezekiel grey bones of my father’s vanished family? Or is this a story best left untouched?
Genesis says that the earth was without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep and God simply commands light into existence. In Hinduism, Diwali is the festival of light, a celebration of the victory of light over darkness. One of the oldest Hindu scriptures urges God to lead us into light from darkness. The Buddhists have numerous buddhas of light, including a Buddha of Boundless Light, a Buddha of Unimpeded Light, and Buddhas of Unopposed Light, of Pure Light, of Incomparable Light, and of Unceasing Light.
There’s not a lot of light in my father’s story.
The English word Genesis is Greek in origin, and depending on its context, can mean “birth.” Or “genealogy.” Or “history of origin.” I start this origins quest armed with these skeletal Mancini family facts to illuminate the void.
My father’s parents were named Frank and Elizabeth. Her maiden name was deFabritus.
They were from Italy.
They came to the United States in the 1920s and settled in New York City.
My father had a brother named Vincent.
My father worked in a fruit stand.
He served in World War 2 in the Navy on the USS Simpson.
And one more speculative point. For reasons that I do not know, I have always believed that my father’s parents died in a fire in the 1930s. I don’t know where this biographical detail came from.
OK, Ancestry. Do your stuff.
Perhaps it’s because I actually knew my maternal grandmother, I find myself drawn to focus my initial search on my father’s mother, Elizabeth, and use that as leverage to find out about Frank. My first step in the quest is to find out how and when she got here. Why would be nice as well but given that we never even really knew she existed, that might seem a far stretch for the Ancestry.com search engine.
I begin my Ancestry search looking for the ship upon which she came to the United States. And the information pops up remarkably easily.
There in front of me is the ship’s manifest from the R.M.S. Olympic, arriving in New York at Ellis Island on 28 July 1920. I find Elisabeth’s hometown is Itri -- just off the western coast of Italy, about 100 kilometers up the coast from Naples. The first direct documentary record of Itri dates to 914, but settlements in the neighborhood existed from prehistoric times. It was a city along the Appian Way, an ancient city.
The movie Two Women ("La Ciociara") with Sofia Loren was filmed in Itri. I don’t know about this movie, but truth be told, the Sofia Loren Life magazine feature from September 16, 1966 was a subject of many youthful fantasies. Those of a certain age will remember that specific cover, featuring Sophia Loren in some sort of bikini negligee. It was only surpassed in teenage male pre-internet visual interest by the Herb Alpert Whipped Cream & Other Delights album cover. I should probably leave it at that.
Wikipedia also notes that there was a massacre of Sardinian immigrants in Itri in 1911, provoked by fear of outsiders and job loss. Some things never change.
As I look at closely the manifest, I realize something that I had overlooked.
My grandmother’s name is not actually “Elizabeth.” It is “Elisabetta.” I imagine she got anglicized somewhere along the way or anglicized herself in the quest to fit in.
This makes me pause. “Elizabeth” was always just an abstract concept to me given that it had no context. Not even quite a name, more a word, not a person. “Elisabetta” sounds like a real person. Someone who might have actually existed.
As I think about this, it occurs to me that the naming of things carries curious weight. To name something is to give it power and identity and separateness. When we first interact with the world, we hear sounds, our parents begin to give names to the things in the world around us, including themselves. Ultimately, we become aware that there is a separateness between who we are and everything else. Our name becomes a bridge to the world around us.
Hello, Elisabetta. Her name means “pledged to God.”
