Beyond These Skies....Part 4 ....An Emigration Story

One day, one moment, one decision is all it takes to change the destiny of an entire family, both for those present and for those yet to come. In that one single decision my Sicilian grandfather made to leave Sicily and venture to Australia. He changed the outcome of his families’ lives forever. Taking the detour of a lifetime, he left one island behind for another and set in motion the possibility and eventuality of a new generation of family history. Ordering his wife and children to pack up their lives to begin a voyage of no return, Nonno Antonio broke off a branch of the family tree and moved it to the other side of the world.

So you see, for me immigration is not a distant memory or something that happened so long ago I repeat it like a worn out tale of family history. 50 years is less than a lifetime and for the rest of my Grandparents life and for all those who walked off those boats after their life changing voyages, they can still recount in living colour everything they left behind.

As many Sicilians did in the 1950’s and 60’s, Nonno Antonio, Nonna Maria, Zio Jo and my mother left Sicily in search of Australia’s promised opportunity and better life. Yet for all the positives in that statement I am only left wondering how they must have felt stepping onto that boat with the knowledge that they would never see their homeland, families and beloved friends again. How did they bring themselves to leave members of their family? Never to return or see them again? How did they live with the likely knowledge that they would live and die in a foreign country? I now understand how brave my Nonno Antonio must have been to look upon something he loved with the knowledge that he may never see it again. And how Sicilian Nonna Maria and my mother were to know pain like that, but for the sake of pride pretend they were pleased to be leaving.

Sometimes I wonder what would have become of my family and my life if Nonno Antonio hadn’t been as strong and courageous as to make the decision to leave the worn track of his history and take the leap into the unknown. Would my mother still be living in Sicily raising her family within a Sicilian arranged marriage, continuing to live out the Italian traditions of her family?