No luck today on family ties

Thursday, April 7

We solve a few mysteries today, but we don’t find out how we are related to any of the other Seghieri families. First, we meet Elena’s husband, Davide, and their little girl, Flavia. We also meet Sergio and Silvana, Davide’s parents. Then, while munching on chocolate chip cookies that Lucy and I bring and cenci that Elena provides, Davide, Elena and Sergio help me construct as much of their family tree as they can. Davide is the nephew of Libero Seghieri, and some of this information I have from meeting Libero last spring. However, they cannot trace their family line back far enough to find a connection to our side of the tree. In fact, they do not know how they are related to my third cousin Mario Seghieri, even though they lived together in the same house within the lifetimes of Libero and Mario. Many of the other Seghieris we have met are on Libero and Davide’s side, including, we discover, Gilda, our padrona at the Casolare dei Fiori and the mother of Luca and Roberta.

What needs to be done, Elena says, is for someone to make an appointment with the priest in Montecarlo to delve back further in family line the same way that Mario’s side of the family has done. That someone should be someone who lives here full time, we agree, and once that is done, we will see where our families fit together. For now, I will have to await word, which may not come until after we leave.

We do finally find out exactly who lives in the old Seghieri house. Two of the seven apartments are empty—we knew that—and two belong to brothers of Ivo. One apartment—the ugly one, Elena says—is occupied by Sicilians. We don’t know if she is joking or not about the ugly comment. It used to be occupied by Mario and his family, but he sold it and used the profits to help build the beautiful big yellow house he lives in between the old Seghieri house and the Casolare dei Fiori. Another apartment is occupied by Dante, and the last two, which have been completely made over, are where Davide and Elena and Sergio and Silvana live.

We had once been interested in renting or even buying one of the empty apartments on the end opposite Davide, but during our two months here, that idea has fallen into disfavor. There is a smelly outbuilding and chicken coop at that end that don’t appeal to us, and we also realized that three of the other people who live there are single old men. Of those three, we have only met Dante, but if the other two are anything like him, they will be hard to understand. Now, however, we will still keep it on the list of prospects, because we have enjoyed very much this short visit with Davide and his family.