Mamma Nonna, once upon a time

I am beginning to scan a bunch of family photos, and thought I would try to do a few magic tricks with the relatively simple tools I have on my Mac. I mentioned earlier that there was a picture in one family photo which showed a portrait of a young Mamma Nonna on the wall (for those of my newer readers, Mamma Nonna was my Italian great-grandmother). I scanned the photo, cropped out the portrait, and enlarged it, with the result here. It is very grainy--our other (non-Internet) computer with Photoshop is currently down (we are definitely not doing as well as usual in the cyber world), but here is the strega in her youth. It is hard to tell from this photo exactly how old she was--she could be anywhere in her twenties or even her thirties. I believe my mother still may have this portrait in her home (she lives in the old family house), as well as the one of my great-grandfather which was done at the same time.

I have a lot of indescribable emotions as I work with these photos. It has been like reconstructing a Rosetta stone from a million fragments. I just got my great-grandmother's death certificate from Massachusetts and found another piece of the puzzle: that her father's name was Arcangelo Barrasso. Finding these photos makes me remember that I will only tell a shadow of these people's stories--but at least they will not vanish forever, that these people's legacies are woven into my DNA, into my heart, that they contributed to who I am today, and that is important for me to remember as I work...which is what I am off to do right now, despite the late hour. Sometimes my ghosts can only come to me at this time, it seems.