Rinaldonomics: “No Feet” Healing
Rinaldo, my father used to tell a story to my brother and I when ever we would complain about what we did not have. The story was of him growing up during the war in Italy how food and clothing were scarce and while his godfather was a shoemaker, he had no shoes. He had no father, was a red-headed Italian and children made fun of him. He was called the “son of Mussellini” to add further insult to his sad situationof being son to an unwed mother. His clothes were ratty, his feet bare and dirty. He would mention how an orange peel was as good as a T- bone steak when available. One day, he met a man that had no feet and almost immediately his world got better knowing that his lot was not as bad.
I use “no feet healing” and it has made me the solar person just when I think my condition is pitiful there is always someone not too far away that has it worse. I bow my head and I am grateful. Below I share Ngalula’s Story. May it put your worries of “no shoes” to rest.
Ngalula came to Goma by boat from Bukavu. She’d walked weeks through the forest to get to Bukavu. She didn’t even know where she had come from. She was dressed in clothes given to her by some woman in the first village she’d come to after escaping the men who had held her captive for years. She had seen her entire family killed before her eyes, and she was taken as a slave. When she escaped she was pregnant. When she arrived at the dock in Goma she asked a policeman to take her to the hospital for women. He took her home instead, and raped her again. She escaped once again, and eventually got to the HEAL Africa hospital. Ngalula wanted to get rid of the child. The counselors became her family, and gradually she started to feel safe. She was healed in body, and as her spirit healed, she decided to keep the baby. One of the administrators agreed to give his name to the baby, when the little boy was born. When she was ready to live again, a donor provided money for her to go to cooking school in Kigali. She and her little son are living in Kigali, and she’s learned Kinyarwanda and is learning French in addition to the Swahili she already knew. She comes back to Goma, to HEAL Africa, to the counselors who are her “mothers” and the proud grandmothers of Johnny, who is now nearly two years old. Another donor is helping her as well, and flew her to the city in the north of Kivu where they live, to meet her and Johnny. This is a story of hope and transformation. She will have good skills and will be able to earn a living for herself and her son. She is confident and radiant. Pray for protection for her and her son. (The names of those involved have been changed to protect the confidentiality of those involved.)
If you want to make a difference this holiday season won’t you consider making a donation to Heal Africa?
Dedication: Fred Flintstone
Fred Flintstone McBagonluri
My meeting with Fred McBagonluri was the flint that started the pile of mildewing mayhem and the fire within me to dust off my writing.
Burning can be the catalyst of change or the destruction of all. From where I stood, I could see once the fire started a plagued city was burning. This fire would purify and make me whole again. This dedication is my gratitude for our chance meeting.
I was stuck in Limbo and while there is no danger to a situation of limbo, the suspended menagerie of unclaimed infants in an area of not pleasure nor punishment has an effect on one. Life in Limbo is merely survival. There is no joy. There are no plans. Still, I was going to play it safe. I had written my children. My sisters had survived the storm, my brother with an understanding only we shared, was still. It was almost as if he too was hanging with the babies of purgatory. I had the pleasure of reading and re-reading the passages of conversations never spoken- wasn’t that enough?
Not for Fred.
Fred had been in Dulles that evening when after hours of waiting for a flight to NYC, I realized my weekend with Kimberly was not going to happen. The lounge was full of sleeping, hungry passengers and crying children. There was a stillness that comes from being in a place beyond its hours of operation. I love those moments- but from the looks I was getting as I strolled from gate to gate trying to figure out what I would do-I must be the only one to look at moments like that.
Then our eyes met, in that familiar “ I know you from somewhere look” and I approached him and asked,” Are you on the flight to Newark at 1:50 AM?”
“Yes.” He replied.
“Do you know what kind of equipment you’ll be on?”
“I hope a plane…” We both chuckled and I realized I never would have asked that question a year ago.
“We were on the flight last week together, remember? We were going to NYC from Charlotte.”
I stopped and for a moment felt a sliding door open from a moment not mine. There was familiarity but there was no meeting last week between Fred and me. This is just one of the small miracles that happen in life when we see things with our hearts and not our eyes. We exchanged some small talk and I discovered that he had been on the plane from Charlotte, North Carolina the week before. I realized later it was my daughter who had met Fred.
We exchanged cards and chatted more. With each sentence came a connection to a linage that connected the man from Ghana and me. He got his Doctorate at the University of Dayton my home town. He offered me a piece of gum at the stroke of midnight in a celebratory gesture as I told him of my birthday plans now interrupted. As I slowly discovered this man before me in the chance meeting in an airport I was buoyed with possibility and hope. Have faith in your dreams and never give up.
I decided I would get on that plane even though my flight to Laguardia was for the next morning. In that way I would be able to spend at least 24 hours with my daughter. Oddly, though I was not on the standby list I was granted passage. Later the words of the wise man from Ghana would encourage and push me to write:
I knew it the moment I saw you at the airport that we had met before. It is really an amazing life. Each time I travel I make it a point to meet someone who will touch and enhance my view about life. I have met and corresponded with octogenarians, who were unique and were part of my schedule through life. To have sat on the same planes a week apart with daughter and mother is not an accident. We are a part of each others schedule and it is a great schedule that will lead all of us to a unique sunrise of our lives.
You know you have the power with words! You should revisit your work. Write a page a day. I write in the traffic, at the airport, etc. I want to leave an inspiration behind long after this body has yielded to the inevitability of death. We’ll chat soon. You have positive energy that attract people to you and so you can touch the world with the power of your words and perhaps make it a little kinder, a little tolerant and a little gentle especially for all those who want a better life but can’t . Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing? You are appreciated!
Coincidences are blessings reminding us to believe in the wonder of life…
Thank you Dr. Fred McBagonluri you are my humble hero, my inspiration and the blessing of that amazing encounter that made this book and many more to come, possible.
A Book is born
The Doula sees past the pains of labor to take the young mother and guide her to the sudden opening of a window. Through this you look out upon a stupendous prospect: a miracle. This memoir, mini miracle of mind and memories, would have stayed under silk scarves and on angry paper had it not been for its doula: Anora McGaha.
Anora McGaha, poet, writer, coach and confident came into my life and the window opened. What started per chance – reconciled pain into promise as our labor began. And just as Renata had come to deliver Kimberly despite what doctors said, so too did Anora deliver what most said was impossible. In exchange for nothing, both women gave me the possibility of everything with a single truth: they believed in wonder and what I was creating.
The legendary mid-wife who had delivered most of the Chiantigiana in the 60s and 70s had told me, “Never mind what others have done or continue to do, never mind what is “normal” and what is not. The baby will take what it needs and if you don’t gain weight it does not mean the baby is not healthy.” Her confidence, her touch and her words helped me make the hard decision to continue my pregnancy and fight the daily interrogations of “normalcy”.
I reminded the pundits, “Exactly what is normal?” To which they never had a good response.
In writing this book, Anora dug deep into the pockets of my life and pulled the lint off the forgotten details needed to make it work. Tirelessly she poked, pulled, encouraged and most importantly, reminded me to breathe. Which I did, sometimes with tears streaming down my face and sometimes, a paper bag cupped over my mouth- but I did breathe. When we approached the “crowning” she recognized that I was shutting down but never left my side. When I expressed my fears she told me she understood: no judgment, no pressure, just encouragement. Her smile knitting a sweater to warm what we had created together.
In this, I learned the value of trust. I learned the generosity of strangers that God puts in our path at just the right time. I learned what “normal” is all about.
I will tell you what “normal” is –that which we believe- that which we hope into existence- that which we will protect. Protect that which you dare to contribute to this life.
Never mind what the little voice says or the nose that scrunches up when you read or write or live. Never mind what people will say or make you want to do. Open your mind and a doula will appear. Invite her in and let her open the window to the possibilities that are unique to you alone and very much “normal.”
Thank you Anora, I breathe so much better with the window open.
Warmest regards,
Nancy A. Stolfo-Corti
Write. Right. Run.
Write. Right. Run.
“How do you know, I mean do you totally trust that what you wrote is correct English?”
A friend asks skeptically, it is discouraging to me. Awaken, woken the culprits in question. I Google and find an answer that makes both of us correct.
He is not the only one that has had similar comments. Better to be right (actually correct is better no moral connotation), rather than responsive seems to be the consensus. I understand. I have heard this before that is why the book has sat so long and so many more are stretching their fingers out to me.
English. Correct English. Stop.
There is only one time to make a first impression, but what readers do not understand is I am not here to impress anyone. I am here to heal and to let those that are on my path to know they are not alone. We are on the path together, maybe ahead or maybe a bit behind but we are moving forward. What is important to know, is that we will get out of the woods.
Take my hand.
I am not your typical writer. Look at this memoir, as the work of someone trying to straighten the shelves of a library, the library of the last thirty years of a life, well-lived in “for better and for worse.” My writing was created over thirty years in three countries with slivers of memories from those in the supporting roles. My memory has great pools of numbness but I have tried my best with the “forensics.”
As the visitor in my home tries to distill who I am by what they see on the bookshelf, there is much and more to interpret. Much like the shelves in our home that do not represent who we are, so are the memories of our lives incomplete, distributed between continents.
It is my hope that The Other Side of Tuscany serves as a catalyst to what I have to share on a deeper level one that has been blocked with musty baggage. The greater good of humanity sparks within the tiny courage of one. This is my courageous attempt to launch and to leap and to live again.
Frame the next few hundred pages as a journal that has been collected over time and dropped in to a viewfinder for closer review. There are only so many slides that fit. For each slide, there are a 100 missing. Do not try to wrap your mind around what is logical and what is not. The images belong together and the answers are all here, or within you.
I was once told there are not a lot of great writers, just persistent ones. I guess that is all that really counts isn’t it?
Persistence. Courageous persistence. Run.
“Disturbo?”
Romance languages can take one word and morph it into so many degrees of the same word. The word bella meaning beautiful can be even more so with “issima” added. A “bellina” becomes a softer side of beauty- what a “cute” or “pretty” would be in English but with all the sophisticated undertones of beauty. Likewise, the word bestia meaning beast can mean so much in a single utterance.
Bestia can be an unruly child, an animal or an exceptional person. My husband when confronted with why he never celebrated me on the feast day of women would retort, “ because she is not a woman, she is a beast”. In his rustic way, it was a compliment. Bestia, one word saying many things: that I was exceptional, that I was strong, that I was not just a woman. I am Bestia hear me roar, Helen Reddy take note.
So why I wonder can I not pass on the poetry of these analogies to one word of the Italian language that was spoken to me one spring four years ago?
“Disturbo” was the word. “Disturbo?” was the question that removed my footing from the steep climb of reconciliation. My plan taking to task “for better or for worse” sent tumbling below.
Disturbo literally meaning disturb is a polite way of asking if you are bothering someone, if this is the right time, thus opening the door to a conversation. In my case, it was like opening up Pandora’s Box with all the pandemonium that accompanied the act of opening what you were told not to. My husband’s lover was doing just that. She had given her word in the three years they dated (there is actually a better word for this probably not appropriate here) she would never do and that is, call his wife.
If voice recognition were utilized, the character receiving the sound bite “Disturbo?” would grimace and slowly fade from Technicolor to grey static, just as I did. Unlike the technology scenario, I was not given the grace of edit and eliminate enrichment or repeal. My “ disturbo?” hung over my plan, like rotting grapes of a patio canopy trellis.
“Disturbo?” has been redefined in my repertoire of polite. “Disturbo?” will never again feel good to me. “Disturbo?” lowers my body temperature and allows icicles to form on my liver.
“Disturbo?” No, you are not bothering me.
I am bestia get out of my way.
Nancy Stolfo Corti’s Memoir is Published: The Other Side of Tuscany
News Flash: The Other Side of Tuscany was published on November 5, 2009. The first 25 copies have been ordered
for a wine tasting event in Apex, North Carolina. Nancy Stolfo Corti, the author of a memoir set mostly in Tuscany, Italy, is also a sommelier, an expert in wines.
The telling of a story isn’t in the facts, it’s in the poetry; the rhythm, the phrasing, the pacing, the drama, the display of images that enchant and draw you forth, turning page after page, wondering what will happen next, what strings of words will light your spirit like a new constellation in the sky, what strings of your heart will be touched, aching and comforted, puzzling and inspiring.
The Other Side of Tuscany winds you through the bright sides and the dark sides over and over as life moves on. Coincidences. Dreams that foreshadow. Mysteries. Danger ever near. Haunting graces. Seeming miracles; lives spared, lives extended, lives renewed. This is the story of an extraordinary young woman whose talents, beauty and passion for life and love will move you; all of it true…except, the names of the guilty… and the innocent.
You can order your copy on Lulu http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-other-side-of-tuscany/7880272 or plan to get one at one of Nancy’s local events.
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Florence for a Day
I asked my daughter today, “Do people in Orlando go to Disney world?” She replied in Italian so that her hosts in Orlando would not hear her,” Si, 2 or 3 all’anno.” 2 or 3 times a year, but it is no big deal for them.
I often wondered the same for our beautiful Florence; the sumptuous Chianti that surrounds her, and the hidden jewels tucked about our land, if we could look at our home with the child-like eyes of a tourist.
Enter my son. Benji.
He is here in Italy with me, born in Florence 23 years ago and lived here half his life.
“Come to Florence with me,” I say as I hand him a helmet for the motocycle. “I want you to see it through my eyes.”
We bundle up and ride out of the Greve Vally onto the Strada del Chianti, pass the Certosa up high on the hill.
After descending into Galluzzo from the crest of the Certosa, we stop at our friends popular lunch stand for a Panino di Lampredotto and glass of ruby red, Chianti wine.
There was a time when the idea of eating a crusty, hollow dinner roll stuffed with cow innards would have sent a shudder down my spine and that of any “Straniere”(Foreigner) coming to Florence once being faced with the sandwich selection the first time. Opening your mind and palette to the delights of the “poor table,” which is typical in Tuscan cuisine, is merely a right of passage. In embracing “Trippa alle Fiorentina”( Tripe with peas and tomato sauce) or eating Panini di Lampredotto ( Boiled innards on crisp, buttery hard rolls) closes the chasm between your “strangeness” and that of being “at home” in Florence.
Greedily, my son and I munch on our sandwiches as broth drips down our forearms and into our leather jackets. I have lipstick on my greasy chin, not something an Italian woman would do. I look at my son who clearly loves this “taste of home” and he laughs at “clown Mom” and I cross my eyes. I look around at the 20 or so customers standing at the lunch counter, we all are enjoying the sandwiches and dripping and slurping the salsa verde( parsley and garlic sauce) from the wax paper.
I notice the police officer also enjoying his wine and sandwich. He too, is on a motorcycle. I wonder if there is something magical about eating and drinking in Tuscany that forgives the act of then driving after wine and Lampredotto? The officer smiles and gets on his bike and we do the same- no drama, no balloons or taped lines, just a civilized dispatch and wave off to our way to Florence.
As we get closer to San Gaggio, I tap Benji on the shoulder and gesture to go up towards Piazziale Michelangelo: one of the best vistas of the city and one of the most recognizable scenes that is synonymous with the renaissance city. The roots of the secular paper Birches are rebelling with the asphalt and I am thankful that Benji is an experienced driver, as we bump and swerve along.
Our eyes fill with the lens of a Fellini cameraman with the view implied of an Italian sports car. I wish my hair were in the wind and not the helmet, like many years before when I did this route with my husband. I hear the horns honking and the sing-songy trumpeting of the tour buses letting us know the city is not far.
We see Brunelleschi’s Cupola, red and heady in the sunlight. I felt myself choke up as I look at the tiny city, so colorful, like petit fours in a pastry case, the memories flooding back to me. I point out the green dome of the Synagogue, I was once told by one of my father’s Jewish customers that it was the most beautiful synagogue in the world. I share this with Ben and snap a picture of a mandolin player in a green tee-shirt almost as if on purpose, in front of the temple. One by one, I point out the places so familiar to me as if one would point out constellations.
I point out Santa Croce and tell him it is like the Westminster Abbey in London and name some of the famous buried there. I point out the route we will take when we descend Monte Minato and the route that we will do by foot once we park at the station. My son is impressed it is as if he is seeing Florence for the first time.
We park at the station and walk through the underground tunnel that has been remodeled and cleaned up since I last walked through it. We begin inside the old city center, built atop the Roman claustrum. From the train station walking towards the Duomo we see S. Maria Novella and the fortress.
The streets in this neighborhood are still laid out along the lines of the ancient roads of that city. Some of the earliest churches were built using the foundations of the Roman temples, and we’ll see the modern city border, once protected by a great ring of walls.
We trot past the Hotel Bagniloni and I point out the terrace that we would use to entertain the press after important collections at Pitti Donna This was before the important fashion houses out grew Florence and went to Milan. We turn down a tiny via that has the Medici chapel peeking from the end of it. I walk Benji towards the “Mercato San Lorenzo”, one he is not familiar with, as it is rumored for tourist only. I know in my hybrid state, as foreigner and local, that for some things the competition is so fierce in San Lorenzo, one can get really good quality and value. When he purchases some Armani knock-off Sunglasses for five Euros, he is convinced that I am right.
We continue to walk the market and up to the Borgo di San Lorenzo and to the bronze doors, the baptistery and il Duomo. I point out the door that has not been cleaned and then, the shiny one that has been restored. He remembered walking past this church a 100 times as a kid and said he never noticed the doors or the story panes filled with intricate details of each section.
We walked inside the Duomo, again he was looking at it as if it were the first time: not as a place to pray with half crossed lids in the presence of nuns but as a coffer of art. We look up and I point out the catwalk around the cupola and tell a story of “why” I ended up in Florence.
“You see before there was no bullet proof glass over the marble banister. I was in Florence with my family and we were walking around the catwalk and looking down when my mother lost one of her charms on her bracelet.
The charms were one of each of the children, silhouettes of three girl heads and one boy head with our birthdays engraved on each. My mom noticed she had only two girl heads and the one boy but could not make out who the missing daughter was.It was when we returned that a guard approached my mother and said that he believed she had lost what he had in his hand: Nancy Ann 4-12-1960.
She said that with me coming off the bracelet in Florence and being found symbolized to her that I would come back and live here.”
Benji had heard the story before. Now he could not only hear it, he could see it and feel the play of fate that my mother must of felt, in the vastness of the church and the miracle of “finding me” in Florence.
We looked around for the line that would wind around to the ticket stand to pay our passage to the 468 tourist – worn marble steps to the top of the Duomo. We found it on the south west side of the church, bought our tickets and started the climb.
My claustrophobia was creeping as I hurried to the first, tiny portal. My son was amazed at how narrow the passage was and how some people would fit or even get out if they felt ill. His wondering aloud was confirming my very thoughts, as I struggled to breathe and go up the stairs as fast as humanely possible with such a limited air supply. The first 100 steps I think are truly the most tragic. I decided to stop counting and take a few pictures so that I could catch my breath and grab a small glimpse of the outside from one of the pigeon holes.
At the catwalk that we had seen from below, we stop and gaze upward at the intricate and ironic artwork often commissioned by the church, yet executed by those very much against it. I point out how some of the artists were making political manifesto in the discreet fresco of a celestial scene. We try to pick out caricatures of popes and statesmen of the time. An eastern European woman is moaning that we have to stop talking pictures and keep moving not realizing that the two-way traffic has started a bit ahead of us and that there are people stuck in the walls leading to the roof. Benji and I address her in every language we know, hoping she will understand. She is not convinced and continues to be rude.
Finally, we climb the metal ladders that follow the curvature of the dome and see the light of the roof. The tourist line has now become two-way in the tight passage. I press up against a sign that says in four languages to not write on the walls and a large black graffiti that says “ PBR”. Ben and I laugh and take a picture imagining that it is for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
On the roof, we gingerly skirt the central steeple before we venture to the banister. The hour or more inside the confined space has made us dizzy upon having a view and air. The eastern European woman is moaning again, this time she wants to get down faster she says in broken Italian. Ben and I start to giggle, as we both imagine how she can do that with just a little push. We make a mental note not to venture down at the same time or she will be unbearable- now visibly sweaty, irritated and probably a little frightened and stinky.
After our trip down we take the “Via degli Artisti’ and venture into an artisan’s workshop as he carves marble columns and epitaphs. It is a scene from another time. It seems impossible that Benji has an iPhone and I will be talking to my friends on Skype in the same breath that this man carves his days work. We stop to see the wine shop and fruit vendor, I try to find the candy shop that I was commissioned to make Gingerbread houses for Christmas when the children were small.
We pop out in Piazza della Signoria and I show Benji when the 1993 bombing in Florence claimed the lives of five people. I show him Neptune and tell him how his Father and I danced in the fountain with half of Florence one night, when the Italians won the world cup in Madrid. I point out the state building and tell him how Kikka went to translate for the justice of the peace when she was barely Eleven for an English Couple that was getting married and having the reception at the restaurant.
We walk towards the courthouse and then on to Santa Croce, pointing out a property on Via Venegia that I had shown in the early years of the Agency. We start to walk along Lung’Arno and under the Portico of the Uffizi leaving change in the boxes in front of the Mimes that seem to have less life than the statues themselves.
Nancy Stolfo-Corti this week has completed her first book, The Other Side of Tuscany. More details soon.
This work is what happens when great passion, pain and pleasure come together- much like the making of a child. Like a child, the healing and growth that comes from the experience is beyond words but I have tried to put the birth to book.
The summer of deleting, arranging and correcting was so difficult that at one point I thought about sending it out – in a box set-with a handy, dandy red pen to correct and “fix” to your liking without any more editing at all. So many were the corrections, so many were the whole chapters in Italian to be translated to English. Just as many, were the dreams and descriptions I did not what to remember any more despite the side bar scribbled with “more detail here”.
I had a difficult birth but was fortunate enough to have one competent “doula”, Anora Magaha that did just what it took to deliver just the way it needed to be.
Nancy Stolfo-Corti's Blog 