My maternal grandparents came in from Michigan today for dinner at my parents' house. The last time I saw them was for my sister's wedding two years ago; it's been a long time since we just visited, and the conversation was accordingly rich. They didn't know I had taken twenty-one credits of music during undergraduate; I didn't know that during a trip to Florence, my grandfather found evidence suggesting his family did not originate in Agrigento, Sicily but Rome. Like any good Americanized Italians, we ate pasta in meat sauce followed by apple pie and strong coffee. And we talked and talked and talked.
The picture was taken as the three men goofily discovered just how tall each of us was; I was in mid-sentence, explaining to my mother how to handle the Olympus camera when it went off. Fair enough.
I'm proud to bear my mother's maiden name as my middle name.