Daughter 1.2 is about the leave the nest for 18 months. The nest still has a few feathers and bird poop in it, but she’s doing her best to leave her corner of the nest so that another bird can borrow it now and again.
We’re used to her going off to University for five years…but since she graduated she’s been here, temping a little, babysitting a little, and reading a lot. Get it while you can, Chica. Your reading list is about to be limited significantly. In a few days, you’ll be sitting in a classroom much like the one I was in, maybe even the same one, cramming your head with Italian verb tenses and vocabulary. It will make your brain pop, but save the pieces and everything goes back to normal the next day.
Ten weeks after that, you’ll land in Malpensa airport and begin a new life as a missionary. As Dante said, Incipit vita nova.
I firmly believe our society would be better off if its youth were required to do a year of public service. Whether it’s the Peace Corp, the Military or missionary work, youth benefit greatly from having to do something that a) pays little to nothing and b) is not about them. Performing acts as part of the greater good transforms a person.
30 years ago this month I departed for Palermo. I thought I had been taught Italian. Turns out I had, but it was spoken precious little in Sicily, so there was some adjustment. I suppose if you learned English at Oxford and you were dropped in the middle of Alabama, you’d have a similar experience.
The next 18 months were some of the hardest of my life. Struggling to learn a language, adjusting to a radically different culture, and dealing with rejection and sometimes active hostility all don’t do well for someone’s morale. But that time was also some of the best of my life.
So here’s some advice (unsolicited but a father’s right).
1) Absorb just how old the world is. Not in the sort of prehistoric way, but in that the oldest buildings in the United States are barely old enough to register in Sicily. It’s not about the buildings…it’s the culture that is ancient. People have a different perspective when they walk past a cathedral that was built starting in 1193. It makes you more patient.
Sure, Anasazi culture flourished over 1000 years ago, but this temple in Selinunte has it beat by over a millennium. And that’s just the Greeks. Add a few centuries on and you see Phoenician settlements. Then you get old. When a building in the US from 1912 is on the National List of Historic Places, it sorta makes you think if Americans know anything about what historic means.
2) Enjoy the people. Milano is different, but then again, people are people. If you are humble and open to being vulnerable. You gotta hang it out there with Sicilians. At the time I was there, Sicilians were a pretty closed society. Strangers caused some anxiety, and given the history of Sicily there’s no surprise. The only country that didn’t invade, rape, colonize, exploit and leave was Lichtenstein.
The Milanesi won’t be that different (other than the justifiable paranoia). They won’t let you into their circle easily, but once in…oh boy. I love Sicilians more than any other culture I have encountered. Once you are in, you are in, but it’s on their terms. You prove you can be trusted and you’re accepted into the family in a very real way.
When Ian and I visited a few years ago, we stayed in a room a little B&B…wonderful folks. After a few days I asked if I could buy them dinner…pizza. They were a little surprised but agreed. Rather than go out, Elvira invited us into their section of their home, something that had never happened before.
So, Sorella, go native. Ditch your clothes as they wear out and go for the good stuff.
3) Have a sense of humor. Behave in a human way, and people respond likewise. This couple was walking down a narrow street in Sciacca, a small town on the southern coast of Sicily. I was taking a picture up the street, and they walked into it, then jumped back, as if they knew they were ruining my shot. I said (in Italian), “no, no…come on, I was just shooting up the street…”
They smiled and started walking down toward us. As they passed, I said “…but you two have such beautiful faces…” I went as wide as the lens would go and held down the shutter. We all were laughing. It was a beautiful moment.
Italians taught me to be spontaneous. Grazie mille, Italiani.
4) The small things make a big difference. Pay attention to the little things. Walk into an open door at a normally-closed church, and chances are the parish priest will give you a tour and show you a fresco from an artist you’ve never heard of unless you studied Art History, and even then, maybe not.
You will stumble into amazing things. Stop and absorb your novelty. I realized long after I took this picture that it was Piazza Pretoria, where Garibaldi marshaled his troops (the Mille, or Thousand) to ride up the peninsula and mop up for unification.
Ask the lady behind the counter at a small deli in the middle of nowhere if they have figs. She’ll say sorry, they’re done for the season. If you say “Dang, I keep missing them as I head south…” She’ll smile, disappear out the back door and come in with a dozen dark, purply-green figs, shrug and say, “Well, I guess there were a few more.” If you stick around and share them with the little old guys who follow you into the deli because you’re obviously not Sicilian. They’ll gesture, smile and say, Che brava ragazza…
Buy a little bag of ciliegie di mozzarella di bufala. Nibble a hole in the corner while the proprietress watches and squirt the milk into a potted plant outside the shop. When she looks startled, tell her it’s more nutrients for the plant. Then eat the little balls of perfection like popcorn. She will stare at you, but the 12 year-old kid in the shop will laugh and probably tease you a little. But it’s another human interaction.
Drive to a little town no one cares about. I visited one called Piana degli Albanesi, and it was decimated by emigration just before World War II. A lot of them moved to Madison, so the names on the headstones here match the ones there. There’s not much, just a lot of signs in both Italian and Albanian, but there was a nice little spring where people gathered for drinking water (to be fair, it was Sunday afternoon and no one was outside except us). My bet is that a lot of the ancestors of my Italian friends drank from that same fountain.
The water was delicious. Find your own fountains.
So, Sorella…this is stuff you already know and practice regularly. Just add to it the love your father sends right behind you.
I love you so much,
Daddy
Good advise from a good father….lucky girl.
Well said! Good luck, Whitney.