Connections

My youngest child often “gives” me an earworm. She laughs like it’s some kind of gag gift whenever it happens. “Hey Mom, I’ve been singing this song all day. Do you know it?” There have been days when I’d like to give her a hipcheck for infusing my brain with her annoying songs. Without her “worm”, this past week, I’ve got a song of my own stuck in my head. Who are the People in Your Neighbourhood? You know the song from YTV’s Sesame Street. “The people that you meet, when you’re walking down the street.” I’ve often walked along the street where I live and thought about the people in my neighbourhood. It never occurred to me any of them could be family because, of course, I don’t have any family living anywhere nearby. And then, after living in The County for over 40 years and telling people I don’t have family here, I stumble upon a family member living in my neighbourhood. For those of you who know me, and many of you do, you know I’ve got a complicated family. To start with, in my family I am, as are my siblings, first generation Canadian. So, finding real, honest-togoodness relatives in The County is truly six degrees of separation.

“The people that you meet each day.” This particular earworm started on Remembrance Day when I posted a wee tribute to the people in my family who had served in armed conflict. I mentioned my om’s brothers, Sebastiano and Guiseppe Curcio, my father, Patrick Durning, and his brothers Charlie and Neil. Within minutes I received an Facebook notification from my neighbour—a mere five doors away, “You’ve got Curcios in your family?” Let me tell you, if you’re a Curcio you know it’s a name a lot like the family names Cole or Smith or Wright or Rose or Minaker are in The County. There are a lot of Curcios around, but not all of them are related. I know. I know.

Back in the day they were all family, the Coles, the Smiths, the Roses, the Minakers and, bless their Sicilian hearts, the Curcios. Islanders all. But to connect my mother’s family name to me, well I knew someone was onto something. And, then it happened. My neighbour posted an image of the Scala/Curcio family chart—a handdrawn chart—on my Facebook page. In the language of social media, OMG. That hand drawn chart was exactly the same as the one in the box of documents and photographs gleaned from my parents’ home after they passed away. Exactly the same, by the same hand. LOL and what the HE double hockey sticks (the hockey sticks my mom used to stake her tomatoes). A person I would often meet while walking down the street is my family. The Curcio connection, and now a Scala connection with the Durnings thrown in for the hat trick.

For the next few hours things got pretty exciting, on Facebook, for both of us. Six degrees of separation and five doors away, I had family. Then my neighbour/family posted a picture, taken in the 1930s and asked, “Tee, do you know any of the people in this picture?” She mentioned it was a Scala/Curcio family reunion, perhaps taken in the States. The stern face of my grandfather jumped out at me. I held my breath as I looked more closely at the other faces. My sweet-faced Uncle Joe, my Aunt Lucia, a very, very young Aunt Antonina and my grandmother, Concetta, a woman I had only seen in a few photographs.

My grandmother died before I was born. She would have been a thirty-something in the picture. A soft smile on her face. My heart was actually pounding. I’d never seen this photo before, and here it was, on Facebook, shared by a neighbour. Shared by a neighbour who was now family. I have very few photographs of my mom’s family, or of my mom, prior to the 1950s. And, then I saw my Mom. Sitting on the grass in the middle of the picture, looking as if she was a million miles away and as beautiful a young woman of about 12 or 13 as she was in adulthood—my mom, a child at a picnic with her family. I cried. I missed my mom and her family, and there they were in a picture taken at a family picnic, as it turns out, in Riverdale Park. The Scalas and the Curcios took a moment to pose for an image that would bob to the surface decades later to unite neighbours and make them family.

A County friend, Janet, once told me to be careful about what I had to say with regard to local folks, reminding me they were all related in some way or another. Holy six degrees of separation, I thought. And then, from Pachino in Siracusa, Sicily, to downtown Picton, cousins who were separated by five front doors got together with their family charts and photographs- -cousins, several times removed. Now what the HE double espresso is that all about.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca