This trip was originally planned as a way to celebrate Luigi's 70th birthday even though we'd planned to be home right before his birthday in 2020. Now, with the way things have worked out, we will actually be spending his 73rd birthday in Sicily. On the actual date. We'll start our trip home on the following day.
I really want to make this trip special for him so I've got a few surprises in store. I've needed to tell Lou about one of my surprises: a tour of the part of Sicily where he was born. I'm not sure if the company I'm working with realizes that we're kind of interested in little Luigi's young history just as much as his ancestry. We'd love to see places that have meaning to the short period of time that he lived in Sicily.
Today is the day that we're committing the funds and sending off the information. Names, dates, birth certificates, a marriage license, a passport, and so on. Obviously I couldn't come up with all the information on my own. This secret is out of the bag.
Lou is afraid that the researcher is going to put us in contact with part of the family that his mother broke ties with in the 1970s. My thought is even if that meeting is disastrous, think of all the other information that we can get. That we'll always regret not delving more into his history than an hour or so spent with people he doesn't really want to be with.
I'm not sure how much this venture will end up costing. A researcher will work in Sicily gathering information - and then the tour company will plan a full day tour based on what they discover. I wanted our tour to be on our first full day in Milazzo so that we'd have another few days to explore on our own afterwards, but the tour company's ideal date for something like this is the second to last full day in Milazzo. We can make it work.
I'm pretty excited.
