Looking back.

We're chugging along, Hubby and I, looking back more often than looking forward. Our conversations tend to go here and there, but mostly to some memory in the past, our shared past of fifty years, and our individual pasts before we met.

Recently, we had a celebration with his relatives, a brother, and a half sister, and scenes of their shared childhood kept popping up in the conversations. Things Hubby remembered did happen to involve one or the other sibling. Each then begins to add or subtract details, sometimes between moaning resentments dropped in to set the record straight.

You do remember that I paid for that car I smashed, Hubby says. No, you couldn't have paid for it, his brother declares. Of course I did; I had two jobs in my junior year and I saved every nickel and dime to buy that car. You, referring to his sister, you never had to pay for anything; Dad just bought you the lessons you wanted, the car you dreamed about.

The three of them talk about some slight the other committed and the conversation goes to another year, another decade.

As scenes were shared and re-created, detail were added to set the record straight on various improper times one or the other listed to make a point, or to correct the recollection. The rest of us, spouses who might never have met if not for the people doing the reminiscing, we just drank our iced teas or wines, and smiled.

Now, now, wasn't it nice you had each other through tick and thin, one of us might attempt to add a cold ice cube of levity to the muddle.


I don't have family or friends from childhood around me. The last time I spoke face to face with my brothers was fifteen years ago. We've moved a few times, changed careers, got divorced, married, remarried, retired, and otherwise remained connected only because the new phones are so much better at Christmas greetings than those old air mail letters that took weeks to get anywhere.

The last time I saw any blood relative of mine, excluding my children, was three years ago at a cousin's wedding. But even these were not people I knew before coming to America. And besides, cousins are not the same as the folks who might remember every detail of your childhood, even the color of that shirt you wore when you angrily killed that rooster that was bothering you as you played hide and seek in the backyard of some relative and could not succeed in shoeing that rooster away.

My husband's family moved about often; but the two brothers managed to keep up with each other even after they left home. As they recount this or that, I marvel at how much they remember, their first day of school, first fight or bloody nose, first stirrings of homesickness. They can name places and people and dates with no hesitancy. As they speak,  they help each other reconstruct, make sense of blurred occurrences, stabilize the importance of the feelings they remember with each scene.

I envy them the treasure trove of shared memories.
I envy their comfort.

And I long even more for the losses I feel, of family and companions, uprooting losses that have stayed with me. Losses that had names; and those that just floated by now and then, as I watched a movie, heard a phrase, tasted a food that brought back those lost years.

As waves of refugees cross continents, embrace new languages and customs, I'm reminded of my journey, easy compared to the one they are taking. I can see their future, and their struggles, and their looking back wanting what they left behind. They will never be able to reconcile these losses. They will concentrate on their daily prayers of gratitude that their lives were spared, and their children's lives have been blessed with new beginnings.

May they grow strong and brave; may they have the courage to write about their losses as they embrace their new challenges.

Of Friends, Family, and Voyages

If you grew up and spent your life in the same place, your families and friends have witnessed most events in your life. Some people know this rooting in place is important, and they treasure the instances when everyone shows up at an event, when  they can catch up with each other on anything that happened out of sight just spending an hour or so at the local coffee shop.

At seventeen,I knew this life intimately.

Because of an enormous desire to travel and experience the world, I left my family, friends and hometown for the great adventure awaiting me in America. Did I have any hint of what was waiting
across the ocean? Did I contemplate the effect such a move would have had on the rest of the family? Did I analyze the pros and cons, the long term consequences of such a voyage?

NO. I WAS ONLY CONCENTRATING ON THE GREAT ADVENTURE IN MY FUTURE.

Did I find all the things I had anticipated? Yes and no.
Did I miss all the people and things I left behind? Yes and no.
Would I recommend such an adventure to others? Yes and no.
Knowing what I know today, I would have a long talk with that seventeen year old....
(to be continued...) 

What I did for love.

As I get older, and I engage in writing down my memories, I'm cognizant of the fact that we never know when our last letter will be written, our last thoughts documented.

What choices did I have in front of me, and was aware I had the choices?

I married a couple of years out of college. It was love at first sight, and for me, the things and people I gave up in that decision were not clear until decades later. I wanted to be married, spend all my time with a man I met and couldn't live without.  I had no idea what I was giving up.

 We marry because we fall in love. What happens next takes a life of its own.

Now, forty-five years later, I can count all the times I came in front of a path that was not easy to discern, never black and white,  good or bad.

I gave up my Italian roots and became absorbed in becoming a good American wife, even cooking American meals.  I had no idea that I would see my father only once before he died, that I lost all contacts with my cousins, aunts and uncles, even my two  brothers, after my mother died, and land and holdings in Italy disappeared and were liquidated without my knowledge.

Had I wished to return, even to visit, would have been difficult. My husband and I spent years getting an education, then paying off student loans, purchasing a house, sending our children to school. Our vacations were camping trips, simple two-three days close enough, and inexpensive enough to be affordable.

When we retired and we visited Italy, I could barely recognize any thing or anybody I knew. I had changed; they had changed.  We were all strangers now, with little in common.

We think we know what we are doing.
Life is way too complex to predict.
We take big leaps of faith every day, with many decisions.