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Thanks Tamara.
In answer to your question, my brother Frank, his wife, my younger sister Jo and I went to Milan, Italy in 1990 -- not knowing what to expect Italy to be. I just remembered what bits and pieces of what our small town in the Calabria region looked like. Not knowing what to expect in Milan, or what these relatives would be like. Our birth mother and our youngest brother and niece and her husband (we needed two cars for the 4 of us and our luggage) met us at the airport. Our mother, Teresa, (who was 72 at the time) cried and hugged all of us and spoke Italian, which we didn't understand, so we just smiled and said "ciao mamma". The other 3 relatives spoke little English. We had tried to learn italian but not comprehending the verbs they use, one word answers in Italian just didn't really help, and we never let out dictionaries get too far away from us. We also spoke with our hands a lot.
All of my Italian family's friends all came to visit to see what we all looked like. My younger brother never knew about his 4 american siblings until just before this trip. My older sister and her husband had told their daughter about us, but was told never to tell her Uncle about us. Why? I don't know.
Since then our birth mother has come to the US twice and has met her grandchildren and all of our families. She is now 85 and still going strong.
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