A Journey in Reverse - Part 1

A Journey in Reverse

(Un Viaggio Inverso) – Part 1

by Lisa Diletti

Thirty-eight years later, I can still hear my dear father’s excited voice on the phone during my stay in France, “Lisa, come meet us in Bellagio for your mom’s birthday. We’re coming from Lugano, Switzerland. I made a reservation at the Hotel Florence—it’s just a quick trip from France.”  And as though it was yesterday, I vividly remember my rapid response, “Would love to meet you. But where the heck is Bellagio, and how do I get there?”   

While Bellagio was my parents’ absolute favorite spot in all Italy, and for good reason, it was still very much under the radar for most Americans back in 1986, especially if you were under the age of 30. My parents would lightly mention Bellagio and lovely Lake Como without ever providing sufficient details to influence me to add the location to my itinerary. In truth, the atmosphere in Bellagio then was a far cry from today’s well known Lake Como vacation spot. So while I was a bit surprised by my father’s invite, I was delighted to celebrate my mother’s birthday in a place she loved so much, and off I went in search of Bellagio in June 1986.

My parents Celia and Joseph Cherubini - Bellagio, June 3, 1986

Suffice it to say, without today’s useful apps—like Rome2Rio or Google Maps—navigating from France to Bellagio proved to be a most arduous journey. After several trains and a death-defying bus ride from the city of Como, I eventually reached Bellagio and made my way to the Hotel Florence (a very odd name, I recalled, for a hotel in the Lake Como area), bedraggled but very happy to see my parents. Little did I know that this unplanned visit to celebrate my mother’s birthday in Italy would prove to be life changing.

Throughout the late 1980s, I was making frequent trips to Italy and France, searching for communications and marketing positions. Thanks to my work as the public affairs assistant director for a nonprofit group in Washington, DC, that kept running out of funding, I had lots of unanticipated “free” time. My unpaid leave coupled with $99 airfares on People’s Express from Washington, DC, to Brussels made my frequent trips to Europe possible on my very limited budget.

My parents amusingly called my European job hunt the “viaggio inverso” (the “reverse journey”) of my grandparents who had emigrated to the United States from Italy in the early-to-mid 1900s, almost entirely for economic reasons.

Luigi Bianconi and Zaira Simoneschi, my maternal grandparents, were both orphans who came to America with their siblings from Priverno (originally called Pipperno) in the Lazio region. Although from the same town, they would meet and marry in Glen Cove, NY. At age 15, my paternal grandfather, Angelo Cherubini, left behind his mother and siblings to join his father who was working in Oyster Bay, NY. Often, he would recall how his mother made him leave Italy because she disliked the girl he was seeing, Giovanna, from his village, Rocca Massima, near Roma. While he never forgot Giovanna’s name, he eventually married my grandmother, Giulia Genua, who had emigrated as a baby with her parents from Avellino in the Campania region. Sadly, my grandfather never saw his mother again, or his father who returned to Italy when my grandfather was only 18.

My grandparents’ personal stories are ones retold by many immigrants — of sacrifice, hardship, loss, determination, and, yes, success. To this day, I am still amazed by the enormous strength it took for them to leave their homeland and emigrate to a new country — and without any English-language skills, money, or any known future work.

It came as no surprise that my grandparents were also intrigued by my odd quest for a life in Italy. After all, they had sacrificed greatly for a new life in America that would ensure their children and future generations had the higher education and opportunities they lacked. Their perseverance and hard work led to prosperity and an easier life for my parents and, ultimately, for me. They all wondered why I wanted to leave the “American Dream” behind.

It’s hard to pinpoint why I have always had a strong fascination with European lifestyles, particularly, Italy’s, and passion for international travel. Perhaps taking chances, trying something different (as my grandparents illustrated), or non-conformance was in my blood. Or, was it simply my deep connection to Italy through my grandparents and the Italian cultural traditions they kept alive?

I often had marveled how my immigrant grandparents allowed my mother and her sister to go away to college as they had their two sons—it was an act not typical for most American women in the 1940s, let alone daughters of Italian immigrants. At that time, Italian immigrant parents more often relegated their daughters to the kitchen than to a college campus. But not my grandparents!

It was not until I was in my 20s that I realized how exceptional my maternal grandparents were to ensure their daughters earned a university degree just as their sons had. My bilingual mother graduated in 1943 with a B.A. degree in Italian Literature from Notre Dame in Baltimore, Maryland, all while World War II was raging. My paternal Cherubini grandparents also valued higher education for their three children and my talented artist father graduated from Parsons School of Design in NYC in 1950, after also studying in France, Italy, and Mexico. Clearly, taking chances and passion to explore was in the blood!

Fabio and I with my grandfather Cherubini

While I never landed a job in Europe in the 1980s, I did meet the love of my life, my Italian husband, Fabio (a native of Ascoli Piceno), who was working at the Hotel Florence during that celebratory and fateful visit to Bellagio in June 1986 (Thanks Mom and Dad). After his professional soccer career ended suddenly with a serious injury as a goalkeeper, Fabio studied hotel management and hospitality and was, fortunately for me, working and living in Bellagio. This first visit, to be repeated many times over the years with our three children, marked the true start of my long viaggio inverso, and the “odd” hotel name proved to be a sign of where my future lay. Had my father not invited me to meet him and my mother in what was an unfamiliar place for me, my story clearly would have taken a very different route.

As one could imagine, much has happened over 30+ years to finally complete my viaggio inverso, with countless steps, many challenges, unexpected events, and lots of planning and some luck. I look forward to sharing the full circle of my journey to Italia, beginning with Fabio’s move to America in 1987. And for those wondering, no, I didn’t marry Fabio for his extraordinary culinary skills, particularly his mouth watering olive all’ascolana–however, that certainly has been a marital bonus!

Lisa Cherubini Diletti is a seasoned international communications and marketing professional living in Florence with her husband and their two dogs and two of their three adult children living close by. More about Lisa @ www.lcdcommunications.com.

Lisa has also written for Business Insider . You can read her article on why She’s glad her 3 kids all went to university in Italy instead of the States.

View from our home now in Florence, Italy