Finding My New Nana

Covid-19 Cleaning Reveals a New Family History

In the springtime of uncertainty, there was certainly time to clean out closets. Strangely, burrowing in dark corners brought comfort. Outside were so many questions: When will it end? Will my loved ones suffer and die? Will I get it?

The answer was always: I don’t know.

But inside my closet were things I knew everything about. That Twiggy doll was a Christmas gift from Aunt Tuddy, there were faux pearl rosary beads I held tightly to at my First Holy Communion. A button from a 1979 Patti Smith concert stirred up memories of a San Francisco summer — smell of eucalyptus, cool fog rolling in, pot of ratatouille on the stove of the crashpad. I even knew what happened after that summer: I married the guy I met at that crashpad, and now there he was, leaning into a Zoom work call at the kitchen table in Los Angeles…40 plus years later.

Back in the closet, at the bottom of a messy box, were a pile of letters my Nana had written to my mother, from a trip she took to Italy in 1957. When they first came into my hands a while ago, I’d skimmed them and got a little thrill, as they reminded me of a story Nana told me over and over when I was a kid. It began with her apologizing to me for not being around when I was born, telling me she’d been on a trip to Italy with my grandfather. Again and again I…