Slipping back into Italy

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Too slow at the beginning, too fast at the end. The initial weeks of re entry didn’t spawn any tears…those, in fact, came weeks after my body and mind finally realized just where I’d came from and where I’d returned to. Home.

Boston. Connecticut. Italy. Connecticut. Boston. Connecticut. Back to Italy.

My return to the US constituted week upon week of visiting. Most people were already well-aware of my adventures, and I was more interested in the update on the lives of the people who’d I’d missed out on for 10 months. Visiting my good friends in Boston, who are as close to me as anyone could be and realizing just how fortunate I am for this. (How could I ever have been afraid that a years worth of physical absence would erase any piece of our relationship?) Visiting old students who’d grown in various proportions and whose new, deep, adolescent voices greeted me with enthusiasm. Visiting family and catching up on life… my oldest nephew has a girlfriend, I greeted my youngest nephew for the first time, and listened to the magical tales his older brother shared, my niece is the little sister I never had, a brother moved across country, new houses, job wishes, a broken laundry machine, conversations in Italian, temper tantrums, pool visits, corn on the cob, mid-evening card games, bats, bears…

Just how much more could there have been?

Well in a little old house tucked away in the woods, surrounded by a chorus of birds, there lived a large family. One by one they grew and found families and sought out their own adventures, each leaving a mark on that little old house, and the house leaving a mark on each and every one of them. One room, inhabited by all siblings, gathered books and photographs, objects and trophies, papers and memories of all sorts, pencils and paints, souvenirs from past adventures, relics soon covered by dust as time passed and finally the room was relinquished by the last sibling. And there it sat for a good many years. Until I came home and realized that 90% of the archaeological site was mine.

And so with the prodding of my parents, I opened boxes, flipped through old sketchbooks, donated stuffed animals to a shelter, packed bag upon bag of clothing for the Salvation Army, trashed bag upon bag of stuff…Stuff? Some memories are more concentrated in some objects than others. The higher the concentration or the more vivid and important the memory, the more likely it landed in my SAVE pile.
Pictures of boys whom I adored over my teenage years. Girl Scout badges. Unicorn candlesticks, cards written by my parents and brothers for birthdays and graduations. Artwork documenting my earliest stages of youthful artistry, from my first sketches at 8 years old to the anatomically perfect images from college, photographs documenting my deepest, darkest identity struggles, and even one of the many large and bright paper mache and metal wire earrings I made and wore proudly to school.

Boxes were lugged to where my belongings from Boston were already being stored. A few weeks and the room was clean. It was painted. New bedspreads and the furniture rearranged.

When the stuff is gone, is this no longer my old room? What is my history? Where do I belong? Can home no longer exist in a place, but more likely in the people? In the emotional blanket of comfort and strength that they give you?


Two days before my plane was scheduled to leave, my mother and I left for a small New York vacation. More truthfully, we were picking up our two cousins who’d arrived from Milano, to show them the Big Apple before heading back to my parents house where they’d be immersed in American culture for several weeks. But not only did I see New York like I’d never had a chance to see it before (and how incredible it is!), I was able to spend 2 long, wonderfully full days with my mother before leaving home, again.

And then it happened a little too fast. My surroundings, my habits, my environments changed. So very far apart. But so very part of my roots, my history, and therefor myself. The piece of me that I’d left in Italy that only Italy can know was waiting. All of a sudden, over thousands of miles of land and water, my body landed in Italy. Feet firm. A little sluggish at the toungue. It was like I’d never left.

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Comments

[Savage]

Time and again
I love reading your blogs and viewing your pictures Cristina, this one really touched me. I wish you the best on your trip back.