They went past canal locks, bridges, and neat homes on green grassy patches of land that weren’t cultivated for food but could be left for beauty; they passed barges, the main streets and tidy village greens that were the piazzas of upstate New York, factories on the river with high arched windows and tall smokestacks that were as imposing as the palaces and temples of the old country, and the clean white spires of the churches.

Serafino pointed out to her fine large buildings, as noble as monasteries or churches, and amazed her by saying they were stalle, cow barns. Even the animals live well here, she reflected—not made to pull loads, but, as she saw, free to graze on hills or lie, sleek and fat, on the grassy meadows, well-fed and content. How much better off they were than the poor Christians and Jews cramped in the stink and murk of the New York tenements! And she thought of the Jewish ragman who had come to the courtyard behind the tenement to sort through the refuse and had found her tending basil and slips of geraniums in some old cans. He had said something to her, smiled, and nodded. Later she was told what he said: “You Italians make something grow wherever you are.”

A richness she hadn’t conceived of was everywhere—even fruit trees, abandoned along the tracks, displayed their unpicked bounty to her wondering eyes. Green was everywhere; a yellow-orange light played over the foliage that was just beginning to show some red in the clear pre-autumn air under a huge sky billowing with clouds. Tall golden sunflowers filled her sight. Umbertina felt the blood coursing through her veins in her desire to dig the earth, to plant seed, to cultivate, tend, and harvest.

For the first time since they had left Castagna she felt at peace. She had never spoken aloud her worst fear; it had simply lived with her, deep in her heart, the fear that they had offended God and broken His design for them. She knew, by the Church’s teaching, that there was a great design in life, wrought by God just as surely as the seasons followed one on another and plants sprouted from seed and women brought forth children.

But now she saw her journey not as a curse or a rent in God’s design, but instead as the addition of another motif that would enrich the great pattern. After all, the nut falls from the parent tree to start its own growth; and the wind blows about the seedlings of plants that fall to earth far distant from where they started. So it must be with some people, for surely the Lord wanted His earth populated and tilled, not left idle. And as she looked from the train window and saw the expanses of land, the old fear left her heart and certainty of her future took its place.