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Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Wholly Family: Maria Curci-Dinapoli (second from left), on her wedding day in 1910 at San Jose's Holy Family Church.
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Remember When The secret of Grandma's sugar crock A family played out its dramas where the Almaden Expressway now passes through
By Cookie Curci-Wright
Through the years, I've discovered bits and pieces of the past that, when put together, make up my extraordinary grandmother Maria Carmela Curci-Dinapoli.
I knew that she came to this country as a young immigrant from Italy and married my grandfather Antonio Curci in 1910. A few years later, she was widowed with three children. I had heard family stories of how Grandma struggled to find work, pay her debts, and keep her family together during those difficult years. In all of these stories, one fact remained prominent--Grandma's deep religious devotion had guided her through each problem and task.
But it was only recently that I would discover yet another missing piece to Grandma's past that would help me know her just that much better. My memories of Grandma begin on an Almaden ranch in California during World War II. By then, she had married her second husband, Tony Dinapoli, and had settled into her rural ranch life, raising a family of seven boys and one girl.
During World War II, a government-issued flag, imprinted with five blue stars, hung in the front window of my grandparents' old farm house. It meant that five of their sons were off fighting in the war. Without the boys to work the land, the ranch was short-handed. Grandma and Grandpa had to work twice as hard now to produce a bountiful fruit crop. During harvest time, every member of the family pitched in to help, including grandkids like myself. Even so, it was a difficult time for Grandma: rationing was in effect, there was little money, and worst of all there was the constant worry over whether her five sons would come home safely.
The ranch was a lovely place, especially in the spring, when the orchards were white with plum blossoms. During the summer, while we harvested the prune crop, Grandma cooked up fine Italian lunches. We would all sit on blankets spread out over the orchard ground, enjoying not just the wonderful food but also the satisfaction of being a part of such an important family effort.
To encourage the ripe fruit to fall, Grandpa used a long wooden pole with an iron hook at the top to shake the branches of every tree, causing a shower of plums to cover the ground. Then the rest of us would crawl along, wearing knee pads that Grandma had sewn into our overalls, and gather the plums into metal buckets. We dumped the buckets of plums into long wooden trays, where the purple little plums were soon sun-dried into rich, brown prunes.
After a long, hard day I would walk hand-in-hand with Grandpa through the orchard while he surveyed what had been accomplished that day. I'd enjoy eating fresh plums off the tress, then licking the sweet stickiness from my fingertips.
On each of these walks, Grandpa would stoop down and pick up a handful of soil, letting it sift slowly and lovingly through his strong work-callused fingers. Then with pride and conviction he would invariably say, "If you take good care of the land, the land will take good care of you."
As dark came, we'd all sit together on the cool, quiet veranda of the front porch. Grandpa would settle comfortably into his rocker, under the dim glow of a flickering moth-covered light bulb, and there he'd read the latest war news in his newspaper.
Grandma sat nearby on the porch swing, swaying and saying her perpetual rosary. The stillness of the quiet ranch house painfully reflected the absence of the five robust young men. This was the hardest part of the day for Grandma; the silence of the empty house was a painful reminder that her sons were far, far away, fighting for their country.
On Sunday morning after church, Grandma was back out on the porch, again repeating her rosary before going into the kitchen to start cooking. Then she and Grandpa sat at the kitchen table, counting out ration slips for the week ahead and what little cash there was to pay the bills. Once they were finished, Grandma always took a portion of her money and put it in the sugar crock, placing it high on the kitchen shelf. I often asked her what the money in the jar was for. She would simply answer, "A very special favor."
Well, the war finally ended, and all five of Grandma's sons came home remarkably safe and sound. After a while, Grandma and Grandpa retired, and their little farm became part of a modern expressway.
I never did find out what the money in the sugar crock was for--until a week or so before last Christmas. Completely on impulse, perhaps feeling the wonder of the Christmas season and the need to connect with its spiritual significance, I stopped at a little church I just happened to be driving past. I'd never been inside before, and as I entered the church through the side door, I was stunned to come face to face with the most glorious stained-glass window.
I stopped to examine the intricate beauty of the window more closely. The magnificent stained glass depicted the Holy Mother and child, and like an exquisite jewel, it reflected the glory of the very first Christmas. As I studied every detail of its fine workmanship, I found, to my utter amazement, a small plaque that read, "For a favor received--donated in 1945 by Maria Carmela Curci-Dinapoli." I couldn't believe it--I was reading grandmother's very words! Every day, as Grandma had said her prayers for her soldier-sons, she'd also put whatever money she could scrape together into her sacred sugar crock to pay for the window.
Her quiet donation of this window had been her way of saying thank you to God for sparing the lives of her beloved five sons.
The original church in which the window was placed had long ago been torn down. Through the generations, the family had lost track of its existence.
Finding this window at Christmas, more than half a century later, not only brought back a flood of memories from those World War II days on the ranch, but also made me a believer in small but beautiful miracles.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
