Postcard from Florence

On faith, nature and nurture.

A big welcome to everyone who has joined us since last time (SO happy you’re here!).

Things were a little full on over the school and uni Easter holidays. My dad was finally discharged from hospital, after his fall (thank you so much for all the prayers, kind thoughts and wishes. He’s doing OK, and we’re just so thankful we got him home. At times, we really thought that we might not).

On a very happy note, for a few days I also got to do this.

I squeezed in a short city trip to Florence, with my girl—a mother and daughter treat, so the boys stayed home. It was a gift and I am so grateful. It was something of a pilgrimage for me, being the city where I first met my Italian birth father, in my early twenties.

My Italian family’s Catholic faith feels inextricably woven together with that of my own, Anglican upbringing. Having been baptised, confirmed and raised within the Church of England, married in an Anglo-Catholic church in Oxford (coincidentally, one of those at the forefront of the Oxford Movement, led by Saint John Henry Newman and friends), I have always been drawn to the rituals, smells and sounds of the church of my birth father and devoutly faithful nonna.

I feel deeply connected to both spiritual homes, just as I do to the countries of both my blood and my upbringing.

Lately, I’ve found myself wondering if it is possible, in some way, to inherit our faith? For aspects of a certain tradition be passed down, in our DNA, or as some form of spiritual memory? Could the question of nature/nurture, and the both/and-ness that comes with it, be mapped onto our faith stories, too?

What made last week’s trip even more poignant is that my daughter is now the same age (a bit younger) that I was when I met my birth father, who we lost almost ten years ago.

jenbadenhoward

A post shared by Jenni Baden Howard (@jenbadenhoward)

Walking by the river, crossing over the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge with its green shuttered jewellery shops, I imagined we’d come across the hotel of that first meeting (I’d spotted him first, walking into the lobby, all tall, lanky and nervous in a cream fisherman’s jumper, accompanied by my younger sister and brother).

I couldn’t recall the name or exact location of the hotel, so we wandered into a few that looked promising. But nothing sparked a memory, and I couldn’t be sure.

And, honestly, I was OK with it.

Perhaps it was better that way.

Being there, I thought a lot about my dad, too, back in the retirement home with my mum, and the selfless love they showed in sending me off on those early Italian adventures with their blessing. How hard that must have been, to let me go.

The thing is, I never let go. They went with me, in every step.

More and more, when I think about our family story, I am amazed more, not less, by the heart’s supernatural, grace-given capacity for love. That how loving one part of your family—and, maybe, your faith tradition, too?—doesn’t have to mean letting go of another.

And how beautiful that is.

A few things I’d tell you about in my postcard from Florence:

• The elderly man driving his yellow Fiat down a narrow, cobbled street where we were getting gelato, blasting ABBA’s Waterloo at full volume from the car stereo.

• Getting a mental block at the Uffizi gallery about Botticelli, and repeatedly referring to “Bocelli” (as in, Andrea).

• Entering the cool, dark Basilica di San Lorenzo, the oldest church in Florence (older than the Duomo itself, dating back to the 300s AD). Just getting my head around that, honestly.

  

• TIRAMISU ICE CREAM.

• Laughing so hard with my girl outside the Duomo after dinner one evening that I almost didn’t make it back to the hotel in time (midlife mothers, if you know …).

• Realising how much I’d needed to laugh that hard.

• Sitting on a bench in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà Bandini (The Deposition) in the Opera del Duomo and being undone by the way Mary is leaning in to her son, after his body has been taken down from the cross. In her grief, she appears to be giving Jesus a fleeting, maternal ‘side kiss’.

  

  The most powerful of moments imagined and chiselled in stone.

  We overheard a tour guide, a New Zealander wearing cool glasses, Converse, a messy bun and her baby in a sling (the sweetest), telling her group the back story to the unfinished sculpture, and the deep faith of Michaelangelo himself. It left me 100% wanting to read more.

Sending love for your weekend, wherever you are.

But, before I sign off, a couple of HUGE thank you’s: to Rachel Marie Kang, author of the beautiful Let There Be Art, whose words resonated deeply with me and so kindly and generously cross-posted On not cutting it to her readers at The Black Letter on Substack (honoured doesn’t cover it).

Also to my dear friend, the wonderful writer Sue Fulmore who linked to another essay in her newsletter, A Capacity For Wings (find her beautiful words on Instagram).

I’m so grateful to Rachel Marie and Sue, and to you for reading, commenting, messaging and sharing your beautiful Life Stories.

I wish I could get us all tiramisu gelato.