The summer I was twelve my nonna came to England for a summer-long trip. Our family has a lengthy story on emigration between Italy and England and at the time, I lived in the UK and my nonna lived in Italy. One sunny day that summer my nonna and I had spent the day shopping in Nottingham city centre. We were heading along Maid Marion Way to the bus stop when something caught her eye in the window of a charity shop. It was a tiny ceramic top hat in teal complete with little grey mouse poking out of a hole, ‘un piccolo cosaril’ she’d say, ‘a little thing’, a trinket, a knick knack, and it was fifty pence, worthless really. For years it sat on her dinning table in Italy, just one of the many things on shelves and walls that made her home hers. Only I saw her smile that day and years later only I understood the joy the tiny object brought her. When she died and we were sorting her things, relatives asking to have this or that all I wanted was the top hat. Now it sits high on shelf in my living room, a reminder of her every day that some days make me smile and others break my heart.
