Grandma smiles upon seeing her hometown, Caulonia Superiore, for the first time in 78 years.	Holly Martin, my cousin's wife, reflects on the history of the coliseum in Rome.	A woman touches the foot of a statue of Jesus in St. Peter's Basilica, a common gesture performed by many tourists visiting Vatican City.
Grandma holds up official documents from the Municipal building in Caulonia Superiore that contain her parents' names and an old address.	A man rides his scooter through the streets of Caulonia Superiore.	A gypsy woman genuflects in the street as she prays for money. She was in the same position two hours later.

Roots unearthed at journey's end

By Adrian DiUbaldo
adiubald@mscd.edu

For many years, my grandma has been interested in going to Italy. The country of her birth has been in the back of her mind since she came to America. It has been a constant presence in her subconscious since she was a toddler.

Three weeks ago, my grandmother, along with nine other members of my family and I, traveled overseas for the first time in an attempt to find a place known to us only by maps, vague stories and my grandmother's birth certificate.

When we set out on this voyage of self-discovery, we had a vague idea of where in Italy she was from, but we weren't sure. Throughout my life, whenever anyone would ask Grandma where she was from, the answer was always Reggio De Calabria. Calabria is a region in southern Italy and Reggio is a small metropolitan area. To make sure this was really the place, we checked her birth certificate. Grandma was wrong. The birth certificate says Caulonia Superiore. Caulonia is still in the Calabria region, but it is on the opposite side of the peninsula.

Now that we had a clear idea of where we were going to visit, it was time to make the excursion. With gear to last us two weeks, we landed in Rome. After four days in the timeless city, we headed south into the land of our ancestors, not knowing what to expect.

The next day, we headed east to fulfill the wishes of my grandmother, a woman who had never known her hometown.

It turns out there are two towns in Italy named Caulonia: Caulonia Marina and Caulonia Superiore. Marina wasn't quite what we expected. We thought the entire town would look like the quintessential Italian village, complete with narrow cobblestone roads and rolling hills. In actuality, Marina is a hip beach town that looks like any community on the southern coast of California.

It turned out that our hopes were not entirely unfounded: Superiore was everything we expected and more. The town was picturesque to an almost unbelievable degree, with laundry hanging from lines out of windows and all the gorgeous scenery of a Coppola film.

The next challenge was figuring out where in the city grandma grew up. The only thing she remembers about her house is a story her parents used to tell that included a blue door. Superiore is a small town, but we didn't have enough time to search all the houses for a blue door. The courthouse was our best bet to solve the mystery. We found the courthouse and tried to communicate our objective the best we could to the female official. We could tell the lady was cautious, but when she heard our name she perked up. Because she perked up, we perked up. In broken English, she told us to come with her.

Did she know where grandma had lived?

This is when Grandma's emotions kicked in. Her eyes began to tear up and she was grinning like a 12-year-old. We hopped into the car, drove a few blocks through winding avenues to another strange building. Here we found some official-looking Italian documents that bore the names of my grandmother's parents. We knew we were getting somewhere in our search.

The lady from the courthouse again told us to follow her. As we walked through the town making small talk, the courthouse official nonchalantly announced that we were on the street where my grandmother's childhood home had once stood. At the end of the street was a tobacco shop owned and operated by my grandma's third cousin, a short lady who talked a million miles an hour and instantly treated us like immediate family.

We had accomplished our goals. We saw Italy for the first time and answered some lingering family questions in my grandma's mind.