Le Due Fotografie

This week’s 52 Ancestors prompt is “Favorite Photo.”

From a genealogical perspective, this is not an easy choice for me to make because I have so many. But this image is a standout, the one I show to people whenever they hear our story, the one they have to see to believe.

The photo was taken in Sicily in 2017. The large photo at center was an enlarged copy we brought with us on the trip, in the hopes that we could use it to show local people in the village who we were asking about, whose descendants we were. The woman in the middle of the photo is my great-grandmother Giovanna, and that photograph was taken in 1950, the one and only time she returned to Sicilia after leaving in 1917 as a teenager to join her father in Boston. Her father died two months later, before he could send for the rest of the family, or return home to join them.

Without Gram around to fill in the details these last 37 years, we made educated guesses about who was in the photo, and held space for the details we didn’t know. She was photographed here with her younger brother, Carmelo, who was probably only about 10 years old when she last saw him. In 1950 he was married and we guessed that little girl was their daughter — but we weren’t sure.

When we returned to the island in 2017, we had the lucky (perhaps divine) fortune of being introduced to a woman who shared Gram’s maiden name. She had brought photos too, including the small black and white photo in the lower left corner — the identical and original image of the one we had.

We sketched some family trees in my notebook, and I realized this woman, Angela, was my grandmother Bella’s first cousin. My great-grandmother Giovanna was her aunt. Our Jennie, Grammy, and Gram now had another label: zia, aunt Giovanna. And to top it off, we learned the name of the little girl in the photo: Crocifissa. We would meet her the next day.

My Italian was minimal at best, and Angela spoke no English, but in this moment, viewing the photos side-by-side this way, she said something with a sentiment I understood perfectly: Of course we’re family. Who needs proof with photos like these?

She was right, of course.

That meeting was one of the most memorable of my life. And even though we each already had that same photograph, it felt essential for me to snap a new photo of the two of them together. Found. Reunited. Just like us.

52 Ancestors Challenge by Amy Johnson Crow. Week 2 prompt: Favorite Photo.