Family Traits

Now that we're less than two weeks away from our second ultrasound, I'm really beginning to think about our baby and imagine life with him or her.

Obviously our main prayer is for a healthy baby. The health of this baby has been our number one concern since January 4, but the feeling grows stronger each day that its tiny presence becomes a little bigger. I fully recognize that carrying this life in my body is a wonderful gift, and I feel blessed and honored that Jonathan, the baby and I are on this journey together.

People have asked if I have a gut feeling about our baby's gender. I do, but I don't have a strong preference either way. It would be fun to give my parents their second grandson or their first granddaughter. It would be thrilling to add another Hardin boy to the family or welcome the first Hardin daughter of the next generation. I would love to watch our son with his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, or know that our daughter is the next in a line of strong-willed women. 

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know how happy I am that we will learn our baby's gender on Jonathan's grandmother's birthday (April 9) and that our baby's due date is three days before my grandmother's birthday (September 10). I have spent the last two years documenting our family's history and stories, and now I'm ready to see which family traits and characteristics appear in our baby. Blue eyes and fair skin seem like the two most obvious ones, but maybe we'll have a rebel baby with brown eyes like both of its grandmothers.

Until then, I've put together a family album that goes back to our great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. God willing, our child will grow up knowing exactly where he or she came from and who he or she looks like. What a wonderful thought and what an exciting journey.

Thanks for sharing our joy.

Jonathan and his grandmother Sadie.

Me and my grandparents Bill and Lucy.

Jonathan and his mother Denise.

Me and my grandma Joan and my mother Julie.

My dad Fred.

Jonathan's mother Denise.

My mother Julie and grandmother Joan.

Jonathan's father Greg and his grandfather Gerald. 

My grandmother Joan.

Jonathan's grandmother Sadie.

Jonathan's great-grandparents Dayton and Elzie with his grandfather Gerald.

My grandmother Lucy.

My great-grandmother Jennie Moore (back left), her brother Andy (back right), her mother Martha, stepfather Jacob and half-siblings Jake and Mayme Van Bibber. 

Jonathan's great-grandfather Dayton.

My great-grandmother Elsie (right) and her sister Myrtle.

Jonathan's great-grandfather Clovis Yates (back, second from left) and his great-great grandparents William and Julia.

My great-grandfather Raoul with his sister Marie and parents Ernesto and Adele.

Jonathan's great-grandmother Eliza Michael (top right) and her siblings. 

My great-grandmother Tina (front, bottom center) with her siblings and parents. 

lady with a heart for Capri

Capri, Italy.

LADY WITH A HEART FOR CAPRI  by Anna Maria Boniello

My Nonna in her room in Capri.

Translated from Italian to English

The first time that the little Lucia, daughter of Raoul de Forcade Marquis and Marchioness de Biaix Tina, laid her eyes on Capri, she was just five years old. It was a different Capri in 1928, an era in the middle between the two World Wars, and the aristocratic family descended on the island as a place of choice to spend the free time, the holiday months, even in those that today would be called the "low season." The memories of Marquise Lucia (pictured), now ninety years old, they are perfect and shiny and well-preserved in her memory, where she recorded anecdotes of famous people and simple stories of the local people. "Our first house," begins to tell the Marquise de Forcade, "was Villa Weber. Few today know that it is not the beautiful building that houses a hotel, but a typical house from the local architectural lines at the beginning of the Two Gulfs, which has hosted over the years, having been the home of the philosopher-poet, the premises of the court and then the court. Then we moved to another house with the largest and most sumptuous Villa wall, in a bottom of Vuotto to Tiberius, owned by an English nobleman. The most vivid memory I have, however, was our landing in Capri. No pier, but fishermen welcomed passengers with their strong arms and their boats and took them to the ground. This was my first arrival to the island."

See the original story (written in Italian) here. You can also read a story by my grandmother about Curzio Malaparte that is written in English here. 

family photos: great-grandmothers

It's a day for beautiful, turn-of-the-century photographs of our families. The top photo is Jonathan's great-grandmother Eliza (back left) and her sisters. The middle photo is my great-grandmother Tina and her family. She is front and center. The bottom photo is my other great-grandmother Elsie and her sister Myrtle. Eliza's family lived in Prentiss County, Mississippi, Tina's family lived in Naples, Italy and Elsie's family lived in Lancaster, Ohio. The time period would be about the same for all of them. What would they have thought if they had known they would be linked together someday? 

family stories: tina and raoul de forcade

My great-grandfather Raoul de Forcade was born in 1886 in Verona, Italy. He was raised in Naples, attended the University of Florence and spent a year in Vienna. He served as a calvary officer in the Italian army, and was dashing man who greatly enjoyed the bachelor lifestyle -- to be specific, my aunt mentioned he enjoyed duels and the company of opera dancers. His mother Adele nagged him to settle down and get married, but he ignored her pleas. 

My great-grandmother was born in 1901 and was one of nine children. She was a very well-rounded young lady who rode horses, played the piano and spoke French. She met my great-grandfather for the first time when she was 17 or 18 years old. She was riding with some friends when her horse shied and threw her. My great-grandfather saw her and went over to help. Instead of playing the part of the damsel in distress, she was angry and only wanted to get back on the horse. A few years later, she spent the day at the beach with the wife of a calvary colonel. They were excellent swimmers and decided to swim a long way from the shore. While they were swimming, a boat full of officers approached and asked if they needed help. They accepted the invitation to be pulled into the boat. Ironically, my great-grandfather was among them.

After their second meeting, Raoul started writing to Tina. Occasionally he introduced her to his mother at parties. His mother liked her very much, but she didn't approve of an engagement because my grandmother wasn't a member of the Italian aristocracy. Eventually, he resorted to extreme measures to win her approval -- he informed his mother that he wanted to marry one of his opera dancer girlfriends! Suddenly the lovely girl with an independent nature wasn't such a bad match after all, and his mother insisted that he reconsider the lovely Tina. They were married and moved to Verona. My grandmother arrived 10 and a half months later. She is in the bottom photograph.