Ana Wintour who lives in Trotto, Napoli is my half-sister. There is a picture with me and my sister in her apartment and I recognize it because Elaine is wearing her sick dress.
Read moreDad is there too, lying on a couch.
And my mum is in there as well, in a separate old-time black and white photo (the small square postage stamp size ones with crinkled borders) and she does not look quite the same, but still it could be her.
I have to crane my neck as I stand on a chair in Ana’s daughter’s house, looking at the framed photo collage placed high up on the wall above the cupboard door. The wooden chair is rickety but close up in the little black and white photo is my mother, I’m almost convinced. She’s looking square on, and in the photo she has straighter hair than usual, and it is short and parted at the side.
It is the color photo from the 70s that really gives it away though.
My dad is lying on the couch in our living room in Coring Road and he’s holding Elaine as a baby up above him; me, I’m in my green shorts, in the background. And next to that photo is the sick dress photo. The dress was so called because it was a woolen, knee length dress with yellow, blue and red hooped stripes top to bottom.
Elaine had a matching woolen hat, I remember, with a matching multicolored pom-pom. My mother loved that dress. Us, not so much.
Once I saw the dad photo I cried out, “That’s us! that’s us!” as if it was proof.
I got down from the chair and Ana’s daughter came in with two others (was one of them Ana? I didn’t think so), and they sat on stiff backed wooden chairs facing us. Ana’s daughter had thick set black eyebrows, long straight dark hair parted in the middle, and she had a long face.
Anyway, judging by the age of Ana’s daughter I figured at Ana must have been my half-sister, even though she’d have to have been born a couple of years ahead of me.
That’s when I asked Ana’s daughter where they were from and she replied “Trotto… Napoli.” Only I couldn’t quite hear the second word. I had her repeat it, she had a thick rolling Italian accent after all, and at first I heard “Trappoli,” but I hadn’t of heard such a place so I settled on Napoli instead.
The dream was clear about the spelling, Ana Wintour not the other one, but why was this so important to me?
Photo from Thought Catalog via Flickr, credit Quote Catalog.