Snippet 4
It was July 21, 1969, when we heard from the 19 inch TV screen: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. The fuzzy reception resembled a silent screen feature, coming from the small box sitting at the edge of the heavy wooden table. The precarious V shape of the metal antennae delivered this momentous event.
We Americans had gathered around Za’ Rosa’s table for pranzo, mid-day dinner. Za is short for aunt. My parents, husband, sister and brother were delighted to share this wonderful meal with our Italian family and thrilled to have access to a tv. Maria, Za’ Rosa’s daughter, and Teresa, her daughter-in-law, helped prepare the delicious courses. The oven-baked pasta filled with pieces of dried sausage and hardboiled egg was crusty on the edges, the browned fresh-killed chicken raised in the backyard was crisp, accompanied with sautéed zucchini, baked eggplant, fried potatoes, and garden salad. These tasty dishes, Calabrian comfort foods, were enriched with continually poured homemade wine. We talked, laughed, and ate with gusto, making attempts to remain in our seats, lower our voices and contain our heightened excitement of the news yet to come.
The dining room was on the second floor with its wooden casement windows and double doors that opened onto a small balcony where pots of hardy red geraniums bloomed. The iron work around the balcony was handmade by Za Rosa’s deceased husband. The kitchen with its hand hewed beamed was below us and several steps below street level, a street that was more a walkway than a roadway. Cobbled stoned and narrow, it curved and descended between concrete attached homes opening into a piazza, the town square with its church. Marcellinara is in Calabria, Italy, and sits eight kilometers at the foot of Tiriolo, an ancient Roman town that served as an outpost for their armies and centuries later in WWII for German troops. A strategic spot, the Mediterranean and Ionian seas can be seen from this summit.
Za’ Rosa’s home of many generations can be traced to the 13th Century. Across the street was the original water fountain that supplied this section of the community. Centuries before 1969, villagers would fill up their clay jars for their everyday needs. Now there was running water in the homes, but for conservation it was turned off from the one to five daily.
With our stomachs filled, our excitement high, we watched Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon. The astronauts appeared to be jumping on a cushioned surface as they managed to set up the Stars and Stripes. Our American egos were puffed to witness this phenomenon. Our gathering in Za’ Rosa’s home secured our roles and roots in history. Yet, we were foreigners in this home of ancestors, foreigners tied to a cosmic mission. Time bent in that dining room.
The dishes, pots, and pans Za’ Rosa used to nourish us were piled high in the kitchen sink and would sit there until the water was turned on again hours later. Rationed water and men on the moon made me feel like a cubed Picasso subject. What tilted the impression even further came with Teresa’s comment, “That show can’t be real. Everyone knows that Jesus lives on the moon.”