The Village on the Hill

My grandfather left a small village in Calabria, in southern Italy, when he was sixteen, and never went back. He talked about it my whole childhood: the olive trees, the church bells, the view of the sea from his mother's kitchen.

In February, I got my first passport and flew to Italy with his old address written on an envelope. I took a train, then a bus, then a taxi up a winding road to a village of about four hundred people.

The house was still there, with blue shutters and a fig tree in the yard. An old woman was sweeping the steps. In my clumsy Italian, I told her my grandfather's name.

She dropped her broom. She knew the family. Her mother had been my great-grandmother's best friend. Within an hour, half the village was in her kitchen, feeding me bread and olives and telling me stories about my grandfather as a boy: how he climbed the church tower, how he stole figs, how he sang.

From her kitchen window, you can see the sea. He was right. It's beautiful.