MY VENETIAN FAMILY

This is my own family in Italy. I haven’t seen them in about 10 years, therefore it’s grown, many nephews and other very young children who are related to me through my cousins or other parts of my family.
It’s been a very happy meeting event with both old and new faces all happy to see me again, after having feared never to see me again.
Most of my joy is to see so many members of my extended family who are going to bring forward my culture, history and taste for various arts and cultures.
It’s my intention to reinforce and create relationships between all these new members of my family with my own children who being American know and see or study very little of what makes them special people of this new millennium.
In this picture I’m surrounded by my parents and closest cousins, who I put under the label of “venetian”, since they all both live very close to Venice and descend from the same grandparents who lived in Venice.
I remember growing up with them all and spending summer vacation in the same locations, besides going to the same kinds of high schools, even if we all took different degrees ad jobs.
This was my day of memories of all types, mostly good though because they are about pranks done together while teenagers.
The great advantage of all my nephews who live in Italy is that when they study history at school they can see and touch for real what the ancient cultures and people left for the future generations to experience, in fact I can still remember well my teacher of Latin and Italian literatures pointing out places and/or buildings in town not very far from us to exemplify the concepts of what he was teaching to us.
This is the unique legacy that I can give to my treasures, who can see, learn and experience the unique country that founded the whole Western culture, or our current way to see and understand the life in our world today.
Soon I’m going to have my treasures meet and spend time with their cousins here, so they will feel and understand the importance of their family ties, that are Italian just like their father who loves them so much that needs to share the wealth of culture I brought with me.