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Friday, 29 October 2010

The Story of Carmela Borelli

By Mimi Torchia Boothby of Watercolors

In the center of Sersale, Italy, the town where my grandfather was born, there is a little monument dedicated to one Carmela Borelli, a “heroic mother,” dated 1929.

When I first saw it, I imagined she had protected her children from wolves or worked extra hard to keep food on the table for her children, something confabulated, exaggerated, not something that you would get a monument for today. Boy, was I wrong.

As I got more familiar with Sersale and improved my Italian, I read the story of Carmela Borelli, and it goes like this:

One day in February 1929, with the smells of spring in the air, Carmela was returning from her labor of gathering grain to store and resell in the town. She was crossing some mountainous terrain with her two little kids and her two donkeys, laden with grain, when suddenly the weather changed and it began to snow.

The wind swept up and neither she nor her children had enough clothing to protect them from this ferocious change of weather. She began to run, but the donkeys were not willing and she eventually left the first for dead, continuing to drag the second along.

A neighbor saw her running by and exhorted her to leave the donkey behind, but she was so enervated that she did not hear him. Her children began to suffer from frostbite, so she took off almost all of her clothing and covered them.

At last, she approached the church, Monte Croce, at the foot of the town, but no one was around and she collapsed on the ground covering her children and died.

After I read this, I was surely more impressed but the story reminded me of that dumb song, Only 5 more miles to Mary Anne and I wondered if she really had lived and died this way.

I recently visited Sersale, and made my rounds, running from house to house trying to visit all the cousins, a nearly impossible task given the shortness of my visit. One of my cousins asked me if I knew the story of Carmela Borelli and yes, I responded, I certainly did. She asked me,” how would you like to meet one of her descendants?”

Incredulous, I assented, yes, of course. Later that day I was introduced to her oldest son’s wife, Carissa, a beautiful brown eyed modern young woman.

I asked her if she was really related to Carmela Borelli, and she responded by pulling out a photo and saying, "This is my grandmother Costanza" - Costanza was the little girl whose life was saved by Carmela Borelli's last act.

All I could say was, “Wow, if it wasn’t for Carmela’s last act, you wouldn’t be here!

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Posted by Ronni Bennett at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Email this post

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