Capitano Georgio's Girls

By TAD BARTIMUS

And THEY'RE OFF!!! This Father's Day, George, Lucile and their four girls are airborne, flying toward their first family vacation together since 1965. It is a Father's Day gift beyond price, though it began merely as a serendipitous "wouldn't it be fun if..."

One by one, the daughters signed on for the two-week bus tour of Italy. Now it's the six of them, like it used to be when they'd all pile in the car and head out West to the woods, the rivers, the mountains -- where George would teach them to fly fish and Lucile would teach them bird calls. These next two weeks in a foreign country will be an abbreviated version of those starry nights and busy days four decades ago when the only thing anybody had to do was have fun.

When Lucile first came up with the idea it seemed impossible. There were those heavy-hitting careers, familial responsibilities and perhaps most of all -- adult identities. There was a new baby. Teen-age boys. Clinical patients. Mom persisted. Dad chimed in. Laurie, 48, in Oregon, said yes first. Then Jane, 44, in Montana, said "sounds like fun." Anne, 46, in California, said "why not?" Susan, the 40-year-old baby of the family with a new baby of her own in Minnesota, simply couldn't bear to miss out.

Between them, the daughters left behind 13 children, four spouses, three German shepherds, three cats, two box turtles, two cockatiels, three rats, six mice, a rabbit, assorted snails and multiplying goldfish. The tour is 13 cities in 14 days. Their father calls it The Invasion, their mother says "it's a kick in the pants." The daughters worry about their octogenarian parents staying healthy on such a grueling schedule.

Being sisters, they also know they will disagree, because they all are of strong opinion and high intellect. They will laugh a lot, because they always have. They might get raucous on the bus; at some point they will definitely collapse in a giggling heap. They may even break into song.

If as they plan -- they rent an outrageously expensive car and drive 20 miles west of Florence to a little hill town called Montopoli, they will also cry. For Montopoli is the heart of George's World War II experience; his memories of it laid the foundation of the girls' own memories of their father.

They were weaned on George's tales of going every week to the orphanage to take chocolates, and whatever else he could scrounge. Since he couldn't speak Italian, the little girls there spoke to him in French, which he knew. His stories of golden light and overflowing gardens shaped his daughters' impressions of an Italy filled with beauty, exotic scents and civilized culture despite the cruelties of war.

While telling his Italian stories to his daughters, George always produced a dainty handkerchief he said was given to him by an orphan. It became the tangible link between an aging soldier's memory and his growing daughters' imagination.

Laurie, who now has the handkerchief, visited Montopoli 25 years ago as a college student:

"I set out to find the orphanage because we grew up on his stories, they'd enriched me so much and I loved my father so much. When I got there and they found out I was the daughter of 'Capitano Georgio' the Madre was summoned and we drank communion wine. She remembered him."

George, who professes to be "caught up in the whirlwind," will be with the women he loves most in this world when they make their emotional pilgrimage together. "No matter what happens there, 'Capitano Georgio' is in safe hands," said Laurie. So are they all.

Arrivederci! Buon Viaggio!

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