The Aged Giant (Writing Assignment #1)

Before I went to Italy, my mother’s Zia Yawnee loomed large in my consciousness. In the late Fifties, Yawnee (actually, Ioni, I would later learn), a non-Jew, dared to marry my great-uncle Paul. I was raised on stories of the elegant Italian woman my mother called Zia because the family refused her the honor of “aunt” in English.

Ioni returned to Italy after Paul’s death in the late Sixties. In the mid Nineties, I convinced my college roommate we should route our Spring Break trip through Verona so that I could meet this giant of my (mother’s) memory.

We got to Ioni’s gated condominium community after dark. An old woman’s voice answered our buzz in thickly-accented English. Jenny and I found our way to the elevator. When the doors opened a tiny, withered woman jumped in fright at the sight of us. “Oh Marian,” she exclaimed, calling me by my mother’s name, “you scared me.”
I reminded her that I was Marian’s daughter, and that she and I had spoken on the phone. I called her Zia and kissed her cheek. She was short, the top of her head lower than my shoulders, and smelled the way old women smell--of talc, medicine, and old-fashioned perfume.

I tried to reconcile my mental picture of Zia Yawnee with the bent, teetering Zia Ioni before me. “Come on,” she encouraged as she shuffled into her apartment, “I want to show you something.” Jenny and I smiled at each other as we followed, and I knew I was about to see some of the spunk I expected.