"You are what you notice, maybe." - Dana Spiotta I wake up to Churchill pawing a hole in my perfectly taut window plastic which I'd proudly installed the day before. Yelling at him wakes me up sufficiently, so I slip on my glasses and gaze out the window. I see a lavender-mauve light bathing the church at the end of the alley, as well as the top third of the ornate Italianate house Victor saved from the wrecking ball. The warm feelings normally reserved for old friends seep b

Over the last few years, I've gotten to know my Italian relatives and even visited them in my ancestral hometown (pictured above). What an incredible experience! It has spurred me to learn more about all the other branches of my family. The next person on my list has been, for a while, my great-great-grandmother, Odelie Tremblay. Odelie is known to me only through a few colorful stories that my older cousin, Stanford, told me...including that she would turn her back to the te