On Sunday, I posted a photo to Instagram of Angelo, my Italian birth papa, taken around the time he and my first mother met.
What I didn’t share on social was that I saw the photo for the first time only a few weeks ago. So, it couldn’t be more precious to me. A snapshot, literally, of the time that the parents who gave me life met. A piece of the jigsaw puzzle, in saturated Kodacolor.
Hearing our family stories are one thing. Seeing photos from the time itself are something else, aren’t they?
Here’s another one from the same batch, of the local area (or it might be a bit further along the coast, close to the border with France?).
Amazingly, not much else has changed.
It’s crazy for me to imagine them driving around those roads in that TINY CAR—did he drive like a distracted madman then? He did by the time I met him, in my twenties, and drove me nuts.
The very first time we took our youngest, just a few months old, to visit the family, British Airways lost our baby car seat (because of course that would happen to us), and we had to buy another one in Genoa. We thought we’d secured it to his car properly—backwards-facing, as per back at home—only to be stopped and pulled over by a policeman on the motorway driving back.
After much shrugging, gesticulating and explaining (both Angelo and the poliziotto) later, all was OK.
It’s been so great reading the stories you’ve been messaging me with! Some have asked me how to leave comments to appear below the post. Just hit the comment button at the foot of the email, and that should work? If not, I’ll do a step-by-step—those who know me are already laughing, since I am the LAST person to ask about tech. I just insert a button where Substack tells me to).
Either way, messaging, commenting or DM-ing—keep your stories coming.
I no longer have my papa, and I’m so grateful to have had the summers with him that I did. Driving madly. Driving me NUTS.
What I’d give to have him do that again now.