The Chest from Milan

The um...

...the news about Nonno’s passing didn’t make... as big of a commotion in the family as I thought it would... and... I know that the last year hasn’t been easy for any of us right now, so I'm sorry ahead of time... but I expected more from us.

When I heard the news about Nonno... all I could think about was mom.

I wanted to be sad because Nonno was gone... but I couldn’t help imagine that he was in a better place than where he's been the last 5 years... He would finally get to see Nonna again and, of course, Mom would be with both her parents again in Heaven.

It helped me a bit thinking they were together.

It’s been so long since we’ve visited mom’s family overseas that I didn’t remember Nonno very much. I knew how much he meant to mom and how much he loved us all. One time, mom began to spin vision-inducing stories about her childhood in Milan. About Nonno’s crazy ideas and inventions and how most of them were failures.

"He used to tell me I was his greatest creation.” mom boasted, gazing into space with tears forming in her espresso-colored eyes.

“His Bellissima!”, she sang!

She told me that sometimes he would become so focused that he wouldn’t eat or sleep unless Nonna forced him to. No one could disturb him without threat of being ran out of the shop by Nonno using a metal ruler as makeshift sword!

She laughed so hard that I laughed at her laughing! So mom went on to explain exactly how Nonno would bring his ideas to life with what she called his magic pen.

“He grabbed his magic pen and would swoosh and splash it in the bottle and ink splattered everywhere! Then he would take his old notebook and cradle it in his arms like it was a newborn baby. He would bury his nose into it and scribble tiny lines everywhere like a madman!" Her demeanor changed suddenly...

"One time I asked him to see his work and he told me no! and that he wasn’t finished yet! I told him that it wouldn’t matter to me, I would love to see it now. He showed me and I…”

She paused.

I could tell it weighed on her heart.

“I laughed at it and told him I didn’t see anything magical with what he did. It looked like scribbles and lines and ink stains, it didn’t have form or color and it wasn't beautiful.

I never saw your Nonno look at me so disappointed before that or since then.” She said frowning, “But when he finished, he showed me again and it was vibrant and beautiful! It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It looked like it was from the future and that it had no business being in that old black book.”

"Now your Nonna had an eye for design!" She asked. The lack of color and form of Nonno’s drawings reminded mom of Nonna and she continued looking off into space. “Nonna was a small lady who was very quiet and calm. She had long black hair that reached the small of her back and it had a sophisticated streak of gray all the way down. She had large glasses that took up most of her face and even though it looked like she wasn't smiling, she was! She used to joke and say that Nonno’s wild inventions gave her gray hair early in life and that it was her punishment for marrying a crazy genius instead of the nice boy whose family owned a goat-cheese business.” She chuckled, "she was a strong woman, a good woman, very patient with papa and with me... that's no small task especially in my teens" She smirked.

"MMMMM!" she grunted, breaking the awkward silence.

“Nonna’s food!” she snapped at me, “-was Beyond compare, the best! But still nowhere as delightful and colorful as the dresses she would make for me! I never left the house without feeling like I was royalty, la Regina! Mama’s dresses were art and everyone loved her art.” She spun around holding the brim of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger. “Whenever I would tell your nonnina that I wanted a new dress she would smile so big and take out her portfolio. She would look at me but it was like she was looking through me. She would ask me to spin and courtesy like the queen for inspiration! Then she would dip the pen in the ink bottle and tap. She would make deliberate strokes, tilt her head and swing her whole hand back and forth across the paper. Soon after she would take her watercolors and fill the painting with rich colors and flowers.

The portfolio had a pocket in the back of it with a lot of pieces of papers. Nonna told me that these were her most beautiful designs and that they were a work in progress. She could never bring herself to make the finishing touches”

She paused for a few seconds.

“I still don’t know if she ever finished them… I wish I could find her drawings again. I asked your Nonno and he doesn’t remember where it was. I sensed he was so heartbroken when she died that he didn’t want to find it.“

Mom ended the stories. I could tell she missed Nonna, the way we miss her. Mom always wanted to write books and kept a small black notebook where she would write stories and poems.

It reminded me of Nonna’s dress Portfolio and Nonno’s old book of inventions she told me about in her stories...

And so... finally...

This leads me to why I asked you all here today. Mom died about a month after we had this chat about Nonna and Nonno. As we all know Nonno didn’t take it well when he heard. He spent the next 5 years isolating himself in his home never responding to any letter we've ever sent. That is until yesterday when the delivery guy left a package at my house. One postcard that had “Leggeri Prima” in large letters on and a large chest.

All from Nonno. The postcard had this on the opposite side: “These are the memories of Nonno and Nonna and our Bellissima - Milano, Italia - Per la mia famiglia”

For... For my family.

As I opened the chest my jaw hit the floor… Leatherbound notebooks bundled together with twine. Stacks of them filled the chest to capacity. Large and small, all worn from use with a slight smell of pine and a smell that I recognized but couldn’t quite pinpoint. When I opened one notebook I saw beautiful machines the likes of which I’ve only seen in sci-fi movies. The sketches and scribbled labels that painted most of the pages seemed to never stop only interrupted every so often by perfect renderings of his best inventions, some of which are in every home around the world today. In a different book I saw drawings of clothing and accessories for men and women. Beautiful dresses in full color inlaid with intricate swirls and patterns, along with notes for material, measurements, and patterns. There was a sketch of Mom as a little girl.

There she was...

La Regina herself draped with a deep purple dress... with a flower in one hand and a smile on her face holding the hand of a tall handsome man in a suit and hat... Looking down at his greatest creation.

In the back of the notebook with the drawing of mom was a pocket with a handful of little envelopes with pieces of paper in them. These were the drawings mom wished that she could find. Someone had placed each individual drawing next to a photograph of someone wearing Nonna’s finished dress and a signed receipt for each one.

I thought this was pretty cool and a good reason to honor Nonno and get us all together… I knew mom would have wanted to see these amazing pieces of our family history, so I wanted to make sure you and your kids all got to see these too…