Beyond These Skies....Part 7....A Maze of Marble and Stone

Visiting the cemetery where my beloved Nonna and Nonno rest side by side in their stone marble mausoleum, surrounded by concrete and other towering mausoleums of the Italians immigrants which also sought out this part of Australia as their new found land. I touched my lips to my mouth, reached up and deposited a kiss on my Nonna’s photograph and then did the same to my Nonno’s framed portrait. “Ciao Nonna and Nonno”I said to them and I instantly felt the tears swelling in my eyes coming from a place that hasn’t healed in over a decade. A place I know never will. There will always be tears in me for my Nonna and Nonno. I wondered to myself how many of those people laid to rest there were on the same boat as my grandparents. It just doesn’t seem right. Their graves should have been in their homeland and I wish I could just transport them to their beloved island. Their graves deserved the magnificent backdrop of the images they carried in their hearts for over 30 years. I wish I could have gathered them up and returned them to their island, their home.

Beyond These Skies....Part 6....An Immigration Story of my own

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….

Beyond These Skies....Part 5....Sicilia!!

Sicily with its dreadful poverty; real life is never far from anyone’s mind. The mafia has been the only successful business in Sicily for centuries and it still continues to keep a hand in everyone’s lives. Palermo, a city which Goethe once claimed was possessed of an indescribable beauty may now be the only city in Western Europe where you can still find yourself picking your steps through World War II rubble, just to give you a sense of development there. The town has been systematically uglified beyond description by the hideous and unsafe apartment blocks the Mafia constructed in the 1980’s as money laundering operations. Asked if these buildings were cheap to construct, a Sicilian man says “Oh no, this is very expensive concrete. In each batch, there are a few bodies of people who were killed by the mafia, and that costs money. But it does make the concrete stronger to be reinforced by all their bones!”

Sicily is a jumbled mass of human existence finding space where ever it can; there is no sense of zoning, no order. People stand on street corners and watch the cars simply go by. Old men sit in groups outside the bars and watch the women go by. Young boys call out to their friends on the other side of the street while young girls check their reflections in the shop windows. Car horns blast incessantly. What an utterly intoxicating yet impossible place all at the same time!

Yes it is beautiful on the outside but on the inside it is like a prison. Sicilians both love and hate their island in equal measure. So beloved and so reviled. On the surface everything is perfect and beautiful. But underneath lays a hard life. The Mafia is everywhere, in every aspect of life. Mafia is the simplest of things. Paying the guy at the car park to look after your car, the rubbish collecting on the streets, the merchants wondering the streets with their bags of fake Gucci glasses, that’s Mafia! Yet ask a Sicilian what is wrong with Sicily and they will declare “It’s not the Mafia that’s the problem with Sicily, it’s the Sicilians!”

In Sicily, the only people you can trust are your family, if you’re lucky! Your husband, your wife, your children and your parents. And that’s it! Everyone else is out to stab you in the back and ruin you, given half a chance. People live in jealousy. There is very little work and not enough money, so as soon as you have something, others automatically want to take it away from you. The only good thing about having to deal with Sicilians is that it makes you hard. If you can live in Sicily, you can live anywhere. If you can deal with Sicilians you can deal with anyone!

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?

Beyond These Skies...Part 3....European at Heart

I could never have completely understood the step I was about to take as I boarded that plane, destined for an unknown land. Born and raised in Victoria, Australia, I learnt a carefree kind of lifestyle, allowed to roam the streets freely on my bicycle and play with friends in the streets. I made friends easily and achieved much in my schooling and sporting activities. But I longed for Italy and the continent of Europe. Born to an English father and a Sicilian Mother, I was brought up within a family where Europe was home to every single ancestors before me. Their stories of immigration intertwined within my families’ history. I grew up being Australian but feeling deeply European within my heart. My siblings and I, faced with the knowledge of being the first generation of Australians within our family, lived in a world where our European families roots where as important to us as was celebrating Australia day. We only had to look as far as our parents to understand that another world outside of Australia existed. A world which we had become a part of due to our parents and grandparents traditions which they carried in their hearts and brought with them on their voyages to a new land.

Beyond these Skies....Part 1....A life Changing Moment

It seems that it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference. A chance encounter, a fleeting thought, a brief conversation, picking up a book meant for you in a book store, or the single image that won’t leave your dreams. It’s the moments you don’t even notice which can start a chain of events that have you suddenly veering off onto a tangent of a lifetime.

If they look back, can most people pinpoint the exact moment that their life changed forever? The defining moment or series of events that coincided to achieve an outcome that they never would have dreamt of? For me, it was a rare moment of acting without thinking. A series of events which brought me to the point of allowing myself to listen to my heart, whilst ignoring my ever cautious mind. I imagined myself walking down ancient streets and felt that strange shift inside of me whenever I thought of that magic word…..Italia! It drew something out of me I couldn’t explain. It held such a power over me I couldn’t resist and in that moment I felt like I had no other choice. “Go,” I whispered to myself, and from that moment forward I gave over to the acceptance that everything in my life would change forever.

That very moment for me, is now over 2 years ago. Those chance encounters and dreams are all long gone. And, Yes, my life has changed forever. Of course, these moments can happen at any time and to anyone. I am not deluded by the thought that my epiphany was the work of true pioneering brilliance, but a moment in my life when I allowed my destiny to take flight with me in tow.

My recent past tells of a period of time spanning over 2 years of travelling, experiencing, and exploring. As I stand here today looking back over my travelling journey, I am proud to say I did it in my own way and got the most out of my experiences and have been lucky to have had many amazing opportunities come my way.

With the perspective of hindsight, I now know my life will never be the same because of the impulse decision I made to leave Australia at such a young age. In such formative years of my life I left behind my life as I knew it and begun the journey of creating another. The moment I made the simple yet huge decision to leave all of the beautiful people whom I cherished as part of my life and take flight to begin the journey in which would create my new destiny, I created a new life. I started down a new road, a new journey, and changed my life as I knew it.

Beyond These Skies...

Recently I have been compiling memoirs that explore the eternal theme of belonging. The understanding of heritage, stories of immigration and how the people in our childhood can shape us. I hope you enjoy this next phase of my waffle!