Chapter 53. La famiglia di mio marito

GB was adopted by a nice Jewish family.  He was officially converted to Judaism when he was about 7.  He remembers the event vividly because he and his brother, Chuck, were taken to the West Side and dipped in the waters of the mikvah, a ritual bath.  He wasn’t told why it was necessary.

Some 60 years later, we learned why the conversion had been the way it was.  GB’s mother wasn’t Jewish.  Now this wasn’t something GB’s parents told him.  In fact, they never discussed his adoption, nor would they give him any information about his birth parents.  They just said they didn’t know.  

Well, not exactly.  The evidence of their knowing lay quietly in a safe deposit box which was opened upon the death of GB’s adopted mother.  It was then we learned GB’s birth name:  Robert Tolve.

I began researching who GB might belong to and after DNA, adoption records, birth certificates searches, I discovered the family living in Denver.  

The next step was to get in touch with the Tolve family and see if they had any interest in meeting the son of Alice Tolve.  

That was the tricky part.  We all know stories of adoptees rejected not just once by their biological families, but twice.  I didn’t want that to happen to GB.

What to do?  Facebook, of course.  I checked it out and found a Jamie Tolve.  So, I wrote him.  I said I was looking for an Alice Tolve Indorf and by any chance, did he know who she might be?  I knew  Alice had died in 1993 but perhaps her siblings might be interested in meeting GB.  

Jamie responded that Alice was his aunt, Aunty Alice and he adored her.  And, why was I looking for her.  I told him.  He said he had never heard that she had a child.  Couldn’t have.  She married late in life.  No, couldn’t have been her.  

I sent him the documentation.

He said he needed to consult with his great aunts.  They were Alice’s nieces.

After a time, we were invited to meet two of Alice’s nieces, Barbara and Linda. We walked into a restaurant and seated at a large table were several men and women.  One woman jumped up and ran over to GB.  She hugged him and said “Welcome to the family!”  

They knew nothing of GB.  They never knew Alice had a child.  It was, after all, in 1947, and an unmarried woman would be sent away during the obvious portion of a pregnancy.  Family and friends would be told she took a trip, or went to boarding school, or had her appendix out.  All sorts of stories.  In Alice’s case, she spent her last month or so at a local Denver home for “unwed mothers”, gave birth to GB, and placed him in an orphanage.  Six months later, the Bloom family adopted him. It was unusual for a Catholic infant to be adopted by a non-Catholic family.  As it happened, GB’s biological father was Jewish and perhaps that was the link.  We don’t know.  His family, the Zuckerman/Feldman family wanted nothing to do with GB.

The people at the table all talked at once.  They were genuinely happy to see him.  They had been skeptical, of course, but the documentation had proven the relationship and, further DNA searches on internet engines revealed several more first cousins.

I sat dumbstruck. The two nieces brought pictures of Alice, her nine brothers and sisters and parents, Helen (Babe) and Nick. They gave the framed photo to GB where today it sits on his dresser. I looked at the nieces.  I checked out the photo.  Then I looked at GB and realized he shared the chin.  He looked like his first cousins!

Since that first meeting maybe 10 years ago, there have been picnics, dinners, theater outings, visits to Central City, funerals, visits to the cemetery to visit Alice’s grave, Easter, St. Paddy’s Day.  Last week we had brunch at Connie’s home.  She is one of 27 first cousins that GB inherited when he joined the family.  Many are now gone and, for the life of me, I can’t remember all their names.  

But here’s what I know.  Each time we are with them, there are hugs and laughter.  There is a bond with the family that is unexplainable.  Barbara had a beach party a few weeks back and as the younger generation left for other parties, each one came over, hugged GB, hugged me, said “Love you”.  They hugged every single relative before they left.  The leaving took a bit of time.  And, it does for us as well.  We stand up to leave and begin the walk around the room, or rooms, and hug each cousin.

Mary Ann always asks, “Are you happy you’re in our family?”

Yes. Yes. Yes.  

A few years ago, GB and I spent a month in southern Italy.  We went to the little town of Tolve in the Basilicata province. It was a charming hill town surrounded by farms. We spent the night, walked to the church, hung out in the piazza, ate probably the best pizza ever, and bought a book on Tolve families.  It was in Italian and we figured one of the relatives would be able to translate.  Oh well.  No.

As we left town, we watched two Border Collies working cattle.  They were moving the herd from a lower pasture to an upper.  We stood at the side of the road and watched this marvel of dogs working without any people guiding them.  There were no sounds save the bells clanging from the necks of the cattle moving at their own bovine pace.

We drove out of Tolve and drove by a sign marking the way to Brienza, a few miles away.  Brienza.  Cousin Connie’s last name. The province was filled with memories none of us in the family could possibly access.  Nicholas Tolve had come to America in the mid 1800’s.  And today, the memories of life in Basilicata, Calabria, or Sicily are long erased.  Still, this family kept the bonds.  They somehow managed to never quite forget from where they had come. 

Each small community in southern Italy grows something.  It could be olives, tomatoes, basil.  It could be the production of burrata, wine, breads.  Each community proudly tells anyone who has the good sense to ask, what is important.  Why the land matters.  How they’ve managed to survive through wars, famine, and today, the loss of the younger generations no longer interested in agriculture.  

This family, my husband’s family, la famiglia di mio marito, has somehow kept that feeling alive.  This family not only accepted Alice’s son, the child no one knew existed, but they created space to love him.  And, I guess, having spent that time in Italy; having met this family, it wouldn’t have been difficult for them to make space.  

When people love, there is always room for one more.