Each one of us has a history that tells a story. If you have not yet learned your story, I suggest you do, for our history is inextricably linked to the future.

Come with me, on this brief journey, and hear my mother’s story.

My mother, Rose Calanna Falcone, began life the moment her parents, Giuseppe and Concetta Calanna, held their beautiful baby girl in their arms and listened to the rhythm of her beating heart.

Joseph and Concetta were born in Sicily, in Palermo and Messina, respectively. During the 1900s, my mother’s parents arrived at Ellis Island and settled on Millick Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

When my grandparents first arrived in America, they could not speak a word of English. Although, like many Italians, Nonno Calanna quickly learned the skills necessary to acquire money. In a very short time, he became owner and landlord of a three-story apartment building on 60th Street in West Philadelphia.

On the ground floor, Nonno Calanna ran a poolroom. This was his main source of income. Even though Nonno was a “pure” Italian and himself a member of the Mafioso, he still had to pay the Mafioso protection money to keep his business safe.

To add to his income, he also ran a side business as a number runner collecting bets from gamblers and delivering the payoff when they won. Nonno Calanna’s little granddaughter, Barbara Joan Bevilacqua, remembers sitting on his lap waiting to perform an important job.

Barbara Joan had the privilege of holding slips of white paper between her lips that contained numbers for individual bets. This was done in playfulness, of course, but speaking in a more serious tone, Nonno Calanna would give Barbara Joan strict orders.

“If a man comes in a dark blue monkey suit, with a badge, you chew — and swallow!”

On the right-hand side of the store was a hoagie shop where Nonno Calanna made delicious steak sandwiches and hoagies. Joe’s Steaks were famous with the African American community who enjoyed the pool room.

When my grandmother Nonna Concetta first came to America, her work in a tailor shop was cut short by six pregnancies and the subsequent raising of six daughters. Her seventh child was a son named Archie who died of pneumonia at the age of 5. Unfortunately, Nonna was still a young woman when she died of pancreatic cancer in 1944.

When a family member dies, it leaves a void that cannot be filled. Hence, my mother, a young woman, was left to fend for herself. To survive, she worked in dirty cigarette factories with men whose morals were questionable.

By accident, she met my father, a plumber, when he came to fix the refrigerator in her apartment and fell madly in love.

As time progressed, Nonno Calanna did not want his daughter to marry my father. He did not trust him. Before she left for Norwich, he slipped a small pistol into her purse with a stern warning.

“Rosie. Sleep with one eye open.”

My mother married my father anyway, and in time, my grandfather’s words proved true.

After a few years, with a habit of smoking too many stogies, my grandfather developed lung cancer and died in 1955.

I believe the people of our past are not gone — but silently cheering for us on the sidelines in a world beyond our imagination.

Listen. The past is speaking.

Concetta Falcone-Codding is a 1971 graduate of the Norwich Free Academy and is the author of The Lonely Nest. You can contact at concettafalconecodding1@gmail.com.