Footprints- Mike Rosanova

My father was born on Miller street a few doors up from Taylor St. 1913. His parents were from Cielico, a small town high in the mountains of Calabria. Grandma Rosanova died of pneumonia during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1920, when my father was seven. His big sister Rosie took care of him. She had the instincts of a mother hen. In 1950 or 1951 when I was still an infant or toddler, my father gave Rosie and her husband Lou the down payment for a two bedroom bungalow in Bellwood. When they built a garage behind the house, Rosie and Lou immediately built an arbor for grapes and when the cement was poured for the skirt of the garage bordering the alley, they pressed my footprint into the cement. It's more than 70 years since the event, and all the adults involved have long since passed away, but my toddler footprints are still there. It was one of the first places we visited when my wife and I, my bride and I in 1980 were first married. Even though I haven’t walked without a cane in a few years now, I still recall it, the first visit with my bride, as a testament to kindness and family loyalty, a significant evidence of Italian family heritage. Auntie Rosie and Uncle Lou and I are all in the one photo that has survived, all of us smiling for the camera, a corner of the neighbors garage, just off to the right.