2 days ago
14
Just days before Christmas in 2018, I took a flight from New York City to visit my family in southern Italy. My wife, Elvira, and daughter Caroline had moved to a small town in the countryside a few years earlier, and I planned in due course to join the festivities permanently.
I’d made the trip before, once or twice a year since they moved, mainly to get the lay of the land. But this time was different. Caroline had recently had her first child and our first grandchild. And now, after making do with photos and videos, I was finally going to meet Lucia Antonia, all of 11 weeks old. Rarely in my life had I felt more giddy about an encounter in the offing.
Coming out of the airport, I spotted Caroline, cradling the baby in her arms. “Hello, Lucia,” I said, reaching out to take her tiny hands in mine. “I’m Grandpa. I’m thrilled to meet you.”
So far, so good, I thought. Except we all then got in the car for the 134-mile drive to our houses in Guardian Sanframondi, an ancient town of 4,700 residents perched on a hillside in the Campagna region. And Lucia immediately started crying. Hard. For the next hour.
We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, where Lucia took a breather. But once we buckled her back in her seat, she resumed crying, only more intensely now. She wailed like an ambulance siren, her eyes crinkled shut, tears streaming down her cheeks, gasping between sobs.
All the while, Caroline cooed to Lucia in a tender singsong voice, trying to soothe her. “We’ll be home soon, baby,” she said. “Then you can go right in your crib and feel better.” My son-in-law Vito did the same from behind the wheel, but to no avail. Lucia kept squalling away for another hour, her lungs billowing like bellows. As we neared our destination, after almost three hours en route, Lucia reached a crescendo, her decibel level almost operatic.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” Caroline said from the back seat. “Lucia must be making quite a first impression. Are you sorry you came?”
“No,” I said. “Why would I be sorry? I’m listening to our first grandchild. I can imagine no sound in the world more beautiful.” And I meant it.
Naturally, I was sorry Lucia was upset. Maybe she was hungry or thirsty or felt stifled strapped into her seat. But this much I knew: babies cry. And may cry no matter what you do. I assumed Lucia had her reasons.
By then, even though we’d just met, I already had some history with Lucia. Seven weeks before her birth, we’d seen her image on a sonogram. She was floating in utero, all three pounds of her, ensconced in her amniotic castle. We heard her heartbeat thump away, too. My wife had called me just hours after Lucia was born. “She’s here,” Elvira whispered, her voice catching in her throat. “And she’s perfect.”
Later, I learned that Lucia had emerged from the womb with her eyes open, as if to signal she was ready for action – a phenomenon seen in only about one in three babies.
Suddenly, arriving home from our ride, I was stricken with a strange sensation. This was going to be my first Christmas as a grandfather. And, by extension, my first designated officially as “old man”. It was foreign terrain. Would I do right by Lucia as her “Nono?” How well would I adapt to my new station in the precincts of the elderly? I would find out soon enough.
Today, we live a five-minute walk away from Lucia. She is now seven years old, a second-grader at middle school. Any time she goes to the park in the town, all the kids call out to her, ready to partner in play. Usually toddling along next to Lucia, hand in hand with his big sister, is her two-year-old brother Nicola.
Lucia changed the equation for me once and for all that day. So what if she cried her eyes out for three hours in the car? Since then, her arrival on the planet has enriched my every moment, and never more so than when Christmas rolls around.
