Particularly important was the feast of San Serafino, which fell on October 12, the day the Americans commemorated Columbus’ discovery of the New World. It was a day when Umbertina could rejoice in the spectacle of the American fall, so much more brilliant and rich than the gentle autumn of the Sila, and gave thanks that her fields had been harvested and her foods preserved by that time. Then there were other important days, like the Assumption of the Virgin on August 15, when Sara (actually baptized Assunta) was born; San Francesco di Paola on April 2; and, in June, the great summer feast of San Giovanni.

The devotion that Umbertina was most attached to after Margherita’s death was not to a saint of the old country but to a Venerable of this new land, the Mohawk Indian maiden named Kateri Tekakwitha, whose shrine was nearby at Auriesville. Each year for many years, on the Sunday before Labor Day, Umbertina and her unmarried daughters would set out for Auriesville to attend the Kateri Mass in honor of the martyred Indian maiden and to pray for the special intention of Margherita Longobardi. It was not just the mass that moved Umbertina. It was that short trip into the Mohawk valley which made her heart expand and gladden as she re-evoked her own journey up from New York and the way her eyes had beheld the green hills and fields of the valley in rejoicing and thanksgiving. At Auriesville she looked out over the expanse of green from the height where the shrine stood and saw always trees, trees, trees; and something in her remembered similar long green vistas in the hills above Castagna from her girlhood. She loved the sad beauty of these excursions. She never stopped marveling at the old barns that stood like weathered abbeys, grand and imposing. It was the equivalent moment of standing in the hills above Castagna as a girl.

Some years after Margherita’s death something happened that seemed to Umbertina another great lesson of life. Serafino burst into the store one day, excited and flushed, to say that he had just heard at Scalise’s that Domenico Saccà was at the station about to board a train to leave the country and go back to Italy. Domenico had been brooding for months over the end of his Circolo Socialista, which had come about when the old members defected and set up a new club, the Società Castagnese, which was strictly social with no politics allowed. It hurt Domenico, and then with the death of his wife he had, in fury and frustration, decided to return to Italy.

“Imbecile!” said Umbertina in disgust at such a senseless act. At the same time she was moved, for despite the aggravation he provoked in her, Umbertina knew they all owed their start to Domenico. Serafino was beside himself at the thought of the shoemaker’s leaving.