Who we are: Rachel Victoria Mills

 I'm Gilda Cozzoli and Frank Jannuzzi's daughter, first child of seven.  Born in Miami a few months before the end of World War II, where my father was in the Navy, I've always been attached to the ocean, sand, shores. Here I am at Lavallette, where my grandparents plunked me...and all of us...down the same year.

My siblings in order are Frank, Eileen, Charles, Mary Ellen, Ann and Tom whom we sadly lost several years ago, though his wife Jean and her children, Tommy and Sarah, and now Sarah's Riley Thomas, are not lost at all.  

sometime in the late 1990's
Mary Ellen, Charles, Vicky, Dad, Ann, Mom, Tom, Eileen, Frank

In the family, I'm Vicky, or Aunt Vicky, one of the many Victorias named for our great-grandmother and who knows who else before that...Aunt Vi, Gloria [Victoria] Lucchesi Myers, Vi Gagliardi.  Except for Aunt Sadie and Janet, I think I am the oldest one among you.  Huh.  Oh, no...those Cozzoli boys (Tom and John) are older than I.

I live now in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, near, wonderfully, my son Joseph Weiner and my grandson Alexander, 7 and Alexander's mom, Tricia Becker in the next town.  (Though it's difficult, I should mention that Joseph's younger brother Michael passed away 20 years ago September.) Our neighborhood is one of those one dreams about...we know everyone, no one cares what color you paint your house or what you plant, children over-run yards and lots of ages mingle.

We have a lot of family in North Carolina now, all migrated, as I did more than fifty years ago, from the north...my sister Eileen and Jim are in Hendersonville, my brother Charles and his whole family in Cary, Durham, and Asheville, and over the border in SC is everyone else except Mary Ellen, still in NJ...I don't know what's keeping them. Of course, we haven't seen anybody since February except on Zoom.

I'm still lucky to be able to have Alexander a few days a week after his remote school ends in the afternoons so Joseph, who does his own work remotely (he's a tech person) and helps Alexander with his, can have some hours free for meetings and thinking.

While those two are temporarily borrowing my house, I'm a few blocks away in a small apartment with a huge garden and lawn, because in fact the plan was to be traveling the world, as I began last year, before travel was closed down.  But Alexander and I take advantage of the nice weather and long grassy slope to play baseball, badminton, and bocce, and make small villages among the beauty berry bushes.  Alexander is never without a good idea for what to do next.

                                                                     

Anyway, I'm retired after 40 years of teaching in university, a vocation which has taken me in and out of the classroom in interesting ways. My favorite was a journal workshop I kept going for three decades, in whatever community I lived...listening to all those stories was wonderful. 

I love being retired.  I love having people over for dinner or weekends or whatever (alas, that and book group and art workshops and lunch with friends are out for a long while, I guess).  I make art, two- and three-dimensional...paint, write, make books.  

I keep in touch with friends far and near.  I sew small things (not particularly well..I'd be a scandal to our talented antecedents, but it's relaxing).  In winter, I knit...Aunt Sadie and I trade ideas, but I take only the simple ones.  I read...no surprise there...and watch films, especially French films that remind me of Paris.

Each day I walk the mostly emptied campus next door and town and the old neighborhoods.  It's a pretty place for walking.  I miss the shore at Lavallette.  

And I miss working for PORCH, our volunteer community food distribution organization...they are still going even stronger (you can imagine, with people out of work and kids out of school buildings), but they've cut me off during the pandemic for my age...nice of them, but sad for me.

(

This is not I, but one of the PORCH founders, Debbie Horowitz, who keeps at it no matter what.)

That's enough for now.  If you really want to know what I think and do, you are welcome to sign on to my blog...not this one, but Rachel's House [rachels-house.blogspot.com], a journal where I scribble for myself, family and friends whenever I feel like it about home, books, art, travels, memories, the weather, etc.  There are lot of pictures, too.

I'm wondering, now we're in November, what the holidays will bring.  As usual, the minute Hallowe'en was over, I made out my Thanksgiving menu...then realized that there will probably be only three people to eat it.  Still...

Anyway, I'm enjoying these stories as they come in, and hope you are, too.  Be well, all.