Sadly my Nonno Antonio and Nonna Maria have passed on and all I am left with are the memories of their warm hugs and soothing voices. They live in the halls of my memory now – the most precious of which I pull out only once in a while, just in case it gets used up if I try to remember it too many times. As I embarked on my own journey and voyage back to their homeland, I couldn’t help but think to myself that perhaps I was following in my Nonno Antonio’s footsteps. Boarding a plane, and leaving all of my beloved family and friends behind to come to a foreign country, which I have longed to call home. Was I about to change the outcome of my families’ roots yet again by leaving my patria just like my grandfather did? Was I to begin an immigration story of my own?
It is now more than ever that I am able to understand the courage which comes with making such a decision, the fear which comes with the unknown and the problems which are faced from living in a foreign country. I find myself wondering in amazement at how my grandparents survived for 30 odd years in a country which they never learnt to speak the language. Did they encounter the same daily problems as I do? And who did they turn to for help?
I can’t help but wonder if my Nonno Antonio were alive today, would he find it hard to understand why I wanted to go back to his patria. To the land he left in search of a better future? To the land he left forever and turned his back on with such conviction and determination.
And maybe that is why my decision to leave Australia perplexed my mother so much. My European journey meant something more to her than just a few years travelling around a country getting to know its culture again first hand, discovering my family roots. Maybe it’s because she has never returned or because to her a voyage to the other side of the world is a voyage from which you may never return, despite all of the modern day technology which has made travelling distances far more accessible.
I still remember the phone conversation I had with my mother only weeks before I boarded the plane destined for Italy.
“What’s the matter with me” I yell? “What’s the matter with you?” I ask. “Why can’t you be happy for me? Why can’t you be the slightest bit excited for me? I am going back to YOUR country for goodness sake” I screamed at her in true Italian style.
“This is my country now,” she screamed back at me, with her Sicilian blood beginning to boil.
I begin to argue “Don’t you understand? I was raised in Italy. Everything! I grew up listening to the language, eating and cooking its food, learning about the evil eye, peering up at statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ on every dresser in their house, the stupid superstitions, the trips to the delicatessen, the garden.” I pause for breath, hoping to get a reaction from my mother but nothing, so I continue, “the visitors, the neighbourhood full of relatives and Sicilians. It’s all been Italy! And You! So Sicilian! How can you not understand me when Nonna, Nonno and your heritage created this within me? How can you sit there now and say that it’s not your home anymore, when everything I was brought up with was tainted Italian? You taught me to love it! And I do love it. I want to be there more than anything right now and all I want from you is to be happy for me and to give me a glimmer of knowledge that I am making the right decision.”
I am not sure she understood. In her own way she turned my rant into something else later. After all, that’s what Sicilians do. Besides I am not even sure I understood it myself, or where it came from. All I know is that it is was true. I am the first of our family to make the voyage back to the homeland of Italia. I couldn’t understand why no one could see how humbling and important it was to me that I was the first of the Australian generation to want to go back and retrace our families’ heritage? I wanted to understand why my Nonna clasped her hands together and raised her eyes to the sky whenever the word Sicilia was mentioned.
My Italia. I longed to see and experience her for myself. I felt her, and the thought of her made all of the hairs on my body bristle.
But before I could board the plane, without my mother standing at the airport to wave me arriverderci! I had one more thing to do….
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