73

our own feelings. The study in depth of Manzoni's Promessi Sposi, Leopardi and Foscolo's poetry, and the classical epics was opening a new world for me. Although I never stayed long enough in any place to develop long lasting friendships, I have wonderful memories of these friends and the time we spent together. Not only did we study together but we shared our feelings and our dreams.

Meanwhile we had decided that my mother and I would join my father in the United States. Italy was still going through a difficult period of postwar recovery and it was more advantageous for us to go to the United States than for my father to come back to Italy. At the very end of the war in Europe going to America
was an exciting idea for anybody. Many of my friends even envied me for this great opportunity. I had mixed feelings about leaving Italy, my life, my friends, and my studies. Most of all the thought of leaving behind my mother's aunt , Bambina, who had been like a mother to me all my life, was extremely painful to me. With her usual self-sacrificing attitude she encouraged and urged us to go, but this did not diminish the pain, a pain that I have felt all my life, even after her death in 1957.
74

We began the process of preparing for this departure and I did not go back to school in Lanciano in the fall of 1947. I really missed school and my friends with whom I stayed in touch. My mother and I got involved with the long bureaucratic process of obtaining all the necessary papers. Each of these papers required often several trips to Civitaluparella, where at this time the local records were kept, to Villa S. Maria and to Lanciano. We were also in contact with the American Embassy in Naples to obtain a visa. The quota and the long list of Italians waiting to obtain passage to America dragged the process until the end of 1947. We finally received our visa and passage on the Saturnia, one of the few ships that offered transportation to the United States from Italy.

Our trip to Naples by car was uneventful. We had two suitcases and a trunk which the Saturnia allowed. This was the baggage in which we tried to put everything we wanted to take with us. I had to leave behind all the books. (Fortunately my mother and father brought back some of them when they went back to Fallo for the first time in 1957. It was also some consolation that they were there when my aunt Bambina died).