In 2019, I got an Italian grandmother for Christmas. Her name is Maria Volontà and she’ll be 100 years old in February. We’re not related by blood; and were strangers the day she first cooked me her Christmas Eve chickpea casserole, the same day she declared she was going to be my nonna now.  

When Nonna Maria adopted me as her new pseudo-granddaughter, I was in my own late nonna’s native Calabria, at the tip of the toe of the Italian boot, on a research trip through its fascinating Greek-speaking enclave. I was writing a novel set in this region during the Christmas season of 1960.