In 2019, I received an Italian grandmother for Christmas. Her name is Maria Volontà and she will be 100 years old in February. We are not related by blood; and were strangers the day she first cooked me her Christmas Eve chickpea casserole, the same day she declared she would now be my nonna.
When Nonna Maria adopted me as her new pseudo-granddaughter, I was in Calabria, my late nonna’s native country, on the tip of the toe of the Italian boot, on a research trip through the fascinating Greek-speaking enclave. I was writing a novel set in this region during the Christmas period of 1960. As I trekked from village to thousand-year-old cobbled village through the sun-drenched December hills, I sat down with elderly people in their eighties and nineties, witnesses of the history I was trying to capture.
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Nonna Maria and her daughter, architect Antonella Casile, were referred to me by a friend of an acquaintance. I arrived at their house in Bova Marina at 2pm with my notebook and my voice recorder, expecting to stay maybe two hours. (Yes, I had the absurd idea that I would leave without eating – almost as if I had never met an Italian grandmother). In the courtyard there was a lemon tree that was groaning with fruit. December was early for lemons, but they were already bigger than my hand.
The nonagenarian who greeted me was not as tall as my chest, with black eyes set deep in a poignant spiral of worrying lines, and such blissful grace in her expression that she reminded me of the Virgin Mary statues in the many nearby churches. Maria, with her steely memory and musical speaking voice, turned out to be the key I was looking for to unlock the past.
courtesy of Juliet Grames
Maria and Julia Grames
She shared her memories, proverbs, poems and songs in her native Greco. We had only been chatting for a few hours when she suddenly reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Do you still have your nonna?” she asked me. I had lost my Italian grandmother a year earlier, when she was 98.
“Well, I’m your nonna now,” Maria said, then added with charming humility, “if that’s okay.”
This precious friendship would bring me great comfort during the panicky years of the pandemic we didn’t know would come—when my family would especially cherish Maria’s hard-earned wisdom about surviving scarcity, finding joy in simplicity, and connecting with others through spontaneous encounters. generosity.
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When supermarket shelves were at their bareest, Maria suggested delicious staples from her impoverished childhood: polenta with roasted garlic; brothy pasta with a single cracked egg thrown in for protein—a reminder that you don’t need luxury to be nourished and satisfied. As 2020 progressed and lockdown unfolded, she reminded me that the reason we have holidays at all is that treats were rare before our gentle modern age; a celebration once required labor and planning. Maria taught me how to rekindle holiday cheer by appreciating the old-fashioned, loving work it takes to keep traditions alive.
courtesy of Juliet Grames
Maria scoops up chickpeas
I was only allowed to leave at 11pm that evening with the promise that I would return the next day for ‘something very special’. That turned out to be a chickpea dish usually served on Christmas Eve, ‘la Vigilia’, a vegetarian feast for a holiday on which no meat is allowed before midnight mass. My family’s holiday traditions now include Maria’s new – and very old – chickpea casserole recipe, gifted to me by my new, and very old, nonna. The casserole has proven to be a vegetarian crowd-pleaser, hearty and elemental, warm and comforting, proof that what is oldest is sometimes also most modern.
And after dinner, I was gently kidnapped, forcing me to move in with the mother-daughter duo during my two-week stay. Every evening, Maria stood at her stove, ten decades heavy on her shoulders, as she fried softened pasta in the pan for the scholars and folk musicians who passed by. Witnessing Mary’s vibrant, patient generosity and the relentless charisma of a nonna at the height of her powers was a balm to my still grieving heart.
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In the years that followed when we could not visit each other, Antonella kept us in touch via WhatsApp. I wrote my novel, The Lost Boy of Santa Chioniawhile my two Calabrian advisors looked over my shoulder, continuing my rigorous Greco cultural training, sending me instructional videos on how to cook Greco delicacies and demanding that I respond with my own videos to prove that I could do it on the right way. I was honored to use their names for the main characters in my novel about their beautiful, secret corner of the world.
Alfred A. Knopf
‘The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia’ by Juliet Grames
Traditions are sacred because we make them sacred. Connecting with our heritage can bring us joy, but connecting with someone else’s heritage can be just as joyful, a gift to complement our own precious traditions and to illuminate our commitment to them. We can choose to make new traditions sacred, just as we can choose to make friends family.
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The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia by Juliet Grames is now available wherever books are sold.
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