Long time no write

I have been consumed by school the last year almost two years and nearly forgot I had a blog. Ha!

But, picnic is planned up and ready again for this year Aug 29th Phillip Arnold Park in Renton. Which brings us into our third year. My intentions as my search begin in early 2007 was to find family members, and family friends who all came here late 1800's early 1900's from Mattie and Susa Italy. After seeing that our last name was spelled in so many different ways Anarde/Anardi/Ainardi- it has proved to be difficult to find everyone, and has been even harder to find how we are related even though we all share a common name (that is an usual name at that!) we can't find our connections in family trees.

My theory is the connections are really far back. As I can only pin my tree to 1700. Susa and Mattie were towns with populations no bigger then 20,000 at any point really in history and that was in the hay day when the Romans took over. And now they hover around 2,000 to 5,000 in population. So very small. Even more puzzling in my search is I found even more Ainardis/Anardis/Anardes in South America then in North America. Being limited in Spanish, communication has been small. But I have gotten that they are decedents whose grandparents or great-grandparents as well came from Northern Italy. Which again makes the tree of our surname even bigger.

To make a long story short I believe I have gotten more questions then answers in my search on my family background.

I avoid because of guilt.

Lately my oldest child Raven and I have been butting heads. She is nine, and really starting to throw attitude towards me, I can sense pre- teen coming. My husband doesn't see this but I think its daddy's girl syndrome. I rarely talk about this in life and I never type about this on the internet, but this has consumed me lately. My anger isn't directed at Raven , its about something I feel I can't control. It is a fear. A fear of not being able to help my child. And, I have a lot of anger towards myself and the world. Raven appears normal. Very pretty, I am always told she is the sweetest child by her teachers and those who only meet her briefly. Now she is getting older and she is more apparent of her differences with those around her, and emotionally she has began to express her feelings on this. Raven was born May 16th 1999 and it was a very difficult pregnancy. I had hypertension so much so my blood pressure was at the point where a stroke or seizure was sure to happen if I was not induced. Furthermore she had stopped moving the last few weeks of my pregnancy. The doctor pushed it off as her being squished in there so there was nowhere to move. This made sense to me. He was wrong. Raven was born with the cord wrapped around her neck and arm. 25% of births have a baby with a cord around their neck, usually a dr detects it and a c-section is formed. only 5% of the time is a cord wrapped around twice as it was with Raven. Almost always then is a C-section formed as death is common if vaginal is continued and cord is chocking the baby. Needless to say I pushed for almost two hours, forceps later, and a blue and white baby came out with a ripped placenta and cord. Raven suffered brain damage, but no one told me this then. Raven developed slow but no one said a word, as she was always just a few months behind it seemed. No big deal everyone said. It bothered me though. My friends babies were learning to talk , crawl, and walk and Raven was always months behind them. It wasn't until school started somebody said "hey, there is some serious developmental problems here, but we don't know what." She is nine years old and still no one can really tell me what is wrong with my child or really how to help her.She can read sometimes at first grade level, sometimes do math at second grade level. Ahh but emotionally she is still many ways like a 4-5 year old. Last year at school to ease her tormenting they FINALLY put her in special education classes. I feel defeated, and I feel unarmed with the tools she needs me to have to help her succeed in life. I'm going to approach the pullman school district this fall and ask them if we could start a group for the parents and kids in Special Ed. Raven struggles so much socially. And, this is the part I struggle with her the most. accepting that she has a "unseen disability". It isn't like downs- syndrome. She appears normal, but she is not and I have such a hard time as does society seeing this. Perhaps if all of us parents in the special ed classes got together we could all discuss the struggles the strengths. I need people to identify with just as much Raven does. Both of our anger over the disability is coming to a boil.

Change that tune

Well since primarily most of my Italian, life and family updates are written over at i-italy.org. I figured I could take the liberty of just making this a whatever my interest happens to be at the moment. The huge structure of only writing on my genealogy I found was stifling my writing. Its true I'm extremely passionate on the topic, but I can't write about it in several places and still give it that excitement I felt it deserved.

Plus, to be honest, school this quarter is whipping my butt making it very hard to write about my real interests over and over. I sometimes rather vent, or be creative. I will never take a online class again. I feel as though I am confined to the computer and my books. My butt has spread and I'm gaining weight. Ughh. So glad Fall classes are just a few weeks away. Back to civilization!

So for now I give you pictures of the scenic highway along WA/ID boarder!(I love the Paul Bunyan guy, found the old cartoon on you tube the other day. Oh how I miss the classic cartoons. It was a hit with my kids.)

susa Italy newspaper

Casa

www.ametegis.org

We made it in the Mattie's, website.

Hey a story I wrote(the one below this post) made it on the front page of i-Italy magazine. YAY

http://www.i-italy.org/sections/magazine

scroll a few stories down you should see my drawing, and story.

pace

How I found the Italian in me

I’ve never read the book, “Were You Always an Italian?”By Maria Laurino, so I won’t pretend I have, but the reviews are a very mixed bag. (http://www.sicilianculture.com/news/alwaysitalian.htm)My own story could be similar in finding my Italia. I’m not a full blooded Italian. I’ve got a mix of other Northern European and Native American from my mother. Do I embrace these cultures too? You bet. In fact as a kid, it was what I knew best. Being an Irish and Native American meant more to me then Italian, even if my surname ended in a vowel.

I grew up in a home that had concealed its identity almost 80 years before. I knew I was Italian, but we really didn’t talk about it or embrace it like one should. Grandpa didn’t want to talk about his parents the “immigrants”. He only shared a few words of Italian with me, and he really had no idea where his family came from when I showed him a map. “Oh, it’s somewhere up north by France.” We joked about being Italian, if we even bothered talking about being Italian. We watched mob movies and compared ourselves to it. If gathered in groups “we all smelled like Garlic”. We called each other “Wop’s” and “Dego’s”. I didn’t know there was problems with any of this tell I grew up.

I call this the identity crisis. Last summer I knew my last name as Anarde. My grandfather had nine siblings. Half of them spelt our surname Anardi but when I asked why, no one seemed to have the answer. I knew growing up telling people I was part Italian I was given strange looks. I wasn’t the “typical Italian” look. I was blond, blue eyed and the name wasn't right. The only thing that linked me to a Roman past was the nose. I grew up watching these mob movies with these women thinking I needed to have the big hair, smacking gum, hide drugs for my men, and getting beat on. I couldn’t identify. I started to think maybe I’m not so much Italian. I had the wrong skin, hair, eyes, personality(according to the media)and even name.

So last summer my brother had gone to Rome with his college class and when he came back he got me really interested in looking into our grandfathers “hidden” past. I had already started to research my mother’s side of the family with the Native American family, but with no success.
At almost 30 I did finally find the answer to our name. I can only imagine what it’s like for one who has found out that they were adopted. This damage though was almost 80 years old. For my name was not Anarde nor was my other family members names Anardi. It was not pronounced the way I had recited it for all my years. I had found the key to the past; my great grandparent’s hidden names. Ainardi was our surname and no one knew. All that knew the secret were dead. My great grandfather’s name was not Louis as it said on his death certificate , it was Luigi. My great grandmothers name was not Melanie as the Americans and her own kids called her but it was Meliana. What was in the name? This name goes as far back in Mattie and Susa Italy from the Roman times it can be found in books written in French and Italian but why did they turn their hearts on their names. Fear, WW 11.

This still didn’t resolve the shame of 80 years that I needed to work through for myself and my family.

Part1