that my brother now lives

P’s mother’s younger sister Vincenzina never married. She had the chance, she says, when she was around 18 ― meaning her family had chosen someone for her ― but she wasn’t interested. Instead, she’s become the favorite aunt of all her nieces and nephews, as far as I can tell. She travels to Australia, France, Rome, and beyond, to spend time with her brothers and sisters and their families, and she’s always the first person they come to see when they visit here.

Zia still walks to her campagna and back nearly every day ― a good hour each way, mostly uphill. And she still carries back her bounty on her head, arms resting comfortably at her sides unless the load is exceptionally wide and requires balancing. As I’ve found out “pian piano” over the years, Zia is also the one who keeps the family history alive through photographs, stories, and age-old recipes.
Zia is truly a woman after my own heart.

We didn’t really bond until I was leaving for America a couple years ago, when we got to talking about a relative of theirs who had gone to America and kept in touch until the late 1950s, she said, and then the letters stopped. She thought he went to “Nuovo York,” she said ― New York ― until she showed me the last letter she had received from him. Postmarked Kulpmont, PA ― on the same street that my brother now lives.

I did some research online, and discovered he had died not long after that last letter. But to imagine that as late as 1960, my Lithuanian grandfather (who grew up in Kulpmont) and P’s uncle could have been friends, drank at the same bar, passed each other in the post office ― in Pennsylvania? Amazing.
The more deeply I dig into my and P’s roots through stories, habits, and food, the more connected I feel to this terra.

I’ve spent a lot more time with Zia since then, and I’ve learned so much of their family history that P didn’t even know. It’s always exciting to come home and share with him what I’ve learned as he loves the old tales too. Such was the case this past week when I learned the family recipe for cuzzupe, an Easter specialty around here. Recipes for cuzzupe vary greatly ― this one produces a sweet somewhere between a cookie and a cake, while other types of cuzzupe are more bread-like, and you may find whole eggs baked into them as well.