On this day, September 1, in the year 1917, my Aunt Mary was born in the mining town of Russell Gulch, Colorado. She was born small, according to my mother, and didn’t fully develop. In the childhood photo I have of her, she stands next to a rocking chair made by one of her uncles in a handmade dress adorned with lace. She was the fourth of seven children born to my grandmother.

After she graduated from St. Joseph’s High School in Denver, she went to Emily Griffith Opportunity School to learn how to sew. The school, located just east of Cherry Creek and therefore accessible to those who lived west of it, lived up to its name and provided many opportunities for immigrants and their families. My maternal grandparents both earned English language proficiency certificates from there, in preparation for the US citizenship exam. Aunt Mary made my mother’s beautiful graduation dress, a sailor style popular in the early 1940s. Aunt Mary walked to opportunity school and one day accepted a ride from a truck driver, thinking it was her half-brother, Dan. Once she realized her mistake, she quickly got out. She was trusting in a way that could make her vulnerable.

Aunt Mary lived at home, with my grandparents. After they both had died, she lived with each of her siblings for one month at time. For most of my childhood, I remember this ritual of preparing one of the bedrooms for Aunt Mary’s arrival. We kids always looked forward to it. She loved us, paid attention to us, and helped me practice spelling words and mathematical “times tables” memorizations. She refused the use of borrowed suitcases for her monthly moves and instead carried nested paper grocery bags full of her few belongings. When a bag became worn, she would simply add a new outer layer. (Decades later I have come to appreciate her organizing method when I make a car trip: one bag for coats, another for shoes, another for hats, allowing easy access to the right garb.)

“I’m slow,” she would say with a smile, repeating words she must have heard in school. Yet, she carried a living genealogy in her head. She could tell me the specific dates of when someone had died in our large extended family.

Her needs were simple and she appreciated a few things: coffee with four sugars and plenty of milk, attending Catholic Mass every day, afternoon baths, ice cream, reading the newspaper and watching her favorite TV shows, The Lawrence Welk Show and The Carol Burnett Show. Seeing Aunt Mary laugh out loud while watching Carol Burnett impersonate an everyday character made it was impossible not to feel joy.

Cousin Billy and I took Aunt Mary to San Diego one year so she could see the Lawrence Welk Museum. Lawrence wasn’t there, but she enjoyed attending Mass at the mission churches and having ice cream in the hotel room at night.

Aunt Mary taught me about generosity, a value which she consistently demonstrated. If someone gave her a candy bar or a treat, she always shared it with us kids. “Here, you take half,” she would say, without hesitation. She had little but she always shared what she had. At some point in life, Aunt Mary started to receive a small payment each month from the government for her care. Every week, she would choose three missions to whom to give money.  Billy would help her with the mailing and stamps.

She lavished praise on us nieces and nephews, signing birthday cards –enclosed with a few dollars–with a long list of accolades. “To my smart, kind, generous, brave niece.” It wasn’t flattery. Rather it seemed like she saw the best in us, and wanted us to see it too. Although her writing became shaky over the years and it became harder for her to write, she still did it. She would conclude her cards and letters by asking us to pray for her.

In March of 1980, she was awarded the Fulton Sheen Award named after an influential priest who believed in integrating faith into everyday life. The beautiful wood plaque presented to her in person reads “To Mary Faustin for your love of and devotion to the foreign missions.”

Aunt Mary understood what mystics know and many of us often strive a lifetime to learn: the joy of life’s simple pleasures. The benefit of daily spiritual practice. The healing of laughter. The value of generosity.  

From Aunt Mary, I learned about compassion, about being kind to people who were different and treated as “others.” Everyone in our extended family was influenced by her presence in our family. Two of my sisters became special ed teachers because of her. We all benefitted.

Her tombstone reads “Beloved Aunt” and that she was. I feel emotional writing about her.

After she died in 1999, Aunt Mary came to me in a dream. She smiled down on me at my bedside, and seemed larger than life, although it was clearly her essence. I felt like I was in the presence of a saint, or at least a saintly being.

Blessed be, dear Aunt Mary. Please, pray for us.

(reposted from DEA MADRE October 2015)

Carmela Moser was the first person I met in 1980 when I set out to find my father’s relatives in Trentino, Italy. I was on a bus, clearly a traveler with my backpack, headed to the little village of Faida di Pinè, where my grandfather was born. Not many foreigners, and probably never any Americans, rode this bus. The woman on the bus was curious. “I’m searching for my relatives,” I explained in my best Italian. When she learned my cognome was Moser, she said, “Io sono Moser! Vieni a casa con me!” “I am a Moser! Come home with me.”

We spent the next couple of hours listing our families’ names and birthdates, searching for a connection. I explained that my grandfather was Giovanni Moser and had emigrated to the US in the early 1900s. She too had a relative with that name who emigrated about the same time, but ultimately we determined they were not the same person. I learned that most of the people in the village of 300 or so people had the surname of Moser, and that Giovanni was a common first name. After some thought she said that, although we were not related, she knew who my cousins were and where they lived. She directed me to the village of Cirè, where she said my relatives operated the sawmill. I got back on the bus, and sure enough, later that day met Onorina Bortolamedi, the wife of my dad’s first cousin. Carmela, with her vast knowledge of the cultural history of her village, gave me the gift of locating my father’s family. Continue reading →

One of the few Christmas decorations I pull out each year is a Christmas manger scene that my mother gave me. Over the decades, Mom would ask me if I had set it up yet, so partly from guilt I would get it out, so that I could say yes. But the truth is, it has brought me a lot of joy to see the little baby Jesus in his crib, surrounded by animals, loving parents, and travelers, and protected by an angel. The human figures no longer stand firmly on their own without toppling over a few times.  It isn’t a finely carved presepio that Italy is known for. The figures and manger are molded plastic, yet they are still tasteful.

One year, the year that was to be my mom’s last, when the Epiphany arrived on January 6th, I resisted taking the nativity set down. Mom was not doing well and having this Holy Child nearby felt like a source of grace and comfort. Mom left hers up as well, and we joked on the phone that this was the longest time that we had ever had them on display into the new year. Continue reading →