In her thirties, writer Thea_Lenarduzzi realised how little she really knew about her beloved Italian grandmother; several years and countless conversations later, her Nonna’s stories would form the basis of her first book, ‘Dandelions’.
I meant her birth in 1926 in Mussolini’s Italy, but she seemed not to hear me. I had worried that her awareness of my phone, propped up on a packet of biscuits, recording our conversation would make her clam up; in fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. Like an excited schoolgirl, she started on three things at once, the stories beginning and ending abruptly in mid flow. I heard again about the earthquake, the secret heart attacks, the nervous breakdown, the lost child.
The intensity of Nonna’s talk made me worry about what I had started – what could this great opening-up do to someone so advanced in her years? – and I felt a frightening sense of responsibility. I had never seen her cry and now I saw it in the knowledge that my own questions had provoked it. I think we both knew, for different reasons, that we had to talk until the talking dried up, to make it count.
It was as though I was meeting Nonna for the first time. I asked countless questions – general, first-date type ones like: “Who was your favourite author?”, and personal ones like, “What did your dad smell like?” Some made her laugh, others brought anguish, still fresh after half a century or more.. Perhaps she had known all along. On my next visit, she gave me her diary and pointed out that my work as a writer/editor and hers as a seamstress were not so different.
While she revisited and reclaimed the elements of her past, rekindling lost familiarities – happy memories of her beloved father alongside bitter ones of her mother – my own sense of familiarity began to unravel. The fixed image of Nonna receded; an archetype was replaced by a breathing woman, whose complicated thoughts, feelings and experiences wouldn’t be tidied away in the cupboards of the past.
I suppose what I’m saying is: ask questions, especially about something you think you know off by heart. And then listen like you’ve never listened before. Gobble it all up.
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