Leaving my country and becoming an expat was inevitable for me. Leaving your home country, your family, your friends and your safety net was normalised for myself and my brother through the art of storytelling. Both my parents and my grandmother are amazing story tellers, which is probably where I have inherited my penchant for spinning a tale or two. But the stories my family would tell were based on reality ... somewhat. I am sure my Papa would embellish them here and there and we loved them. We couldn’t get enough of their adventurous stories of cross continent train journeys, boat trips from Europe to New Zealand and Australia and those long and hypnotic car crossings through Outback Australia. They sounded like the greatest adventures you could have. As we got older more and more of the finer details emerged, why did they leave? Why Australia? Why didn’t they go back? Their reasons, like how they got to Australia were many and varied.
My Mother left her country as a small child with her parents and as always it was for a better life. When they first moved to Australia is was because my Grandfather loved travelling and adventure and it coincided with the £10 ticket to the land of ‘milk and honey’. When they arrived, they soon realised, as they were dropped off at a crappy hostel that this wasn’t exactly true. Got to love advertising, hence the “stuff this we’re gong back home” decision after a few years in Australia. After 5 or so years they left again and travelled to New Zealand, stayed for a few years there and then finally settled in Australia. My Mother and Grandmother would tell me amazing stories of their childhoods, growing up in England. It was full of the most vivid imagery of bombs falling from German fighter planes in the middle of night, days spent playing in nearby forests and fields abundant in wildflowers. Snow and bus trips to school and Grandad always working on his Morris Minor. My Papa grew up in post WWII Italy, which as you can imagine was wracked with poverty and hardships. From a small village in the South of Italy he told me on more than one occasion that “even as a small child I knew, I knew deep in my heart I had to leave. I had to. I could not and would not stay in this village for the rest of my life”. He did. He worked his arse off as did both his parents and his siblings to pay for their education and when he was old enough, he moved to Switzerland with his older brother to pursue a career in electrical engineering. The money they earned was sent back to their family, a common practice and after a few years due to “family issues” - which I will not delve in to here because that is more than just a blog post it is a novel unto itself. Let me just say, it had to do with a dodgy marriage and a religious organisation which has been classified as a cult. That’s it I am not going into that any further - my Papa and my Zio migrated to Australia. While each of my parents spoke of their experiences of journey from their homeland there was/is a sadness in their eyes, mixed with joy, and pride at the life they made in Australia. I would feel their sadness, even at a young age. I would cry with them, not really understanding why as they regaled us with funny stories about their childhood, the hardships after the war, my beautiful Nonna who cooked the best, sang the best and loved the best and my Grandad whose anti-authoritarianism spelled trouble for him during his time in the army. It wasn’t until I took my first steps on to the uneven path of living abroad, did I really understand, I mean really understand how they felt when they left their country, their family and their friends for a new life. Not knowing what that new life would entail, would it work out? I’m still trying to figure out if it is indeed working out for us. Maybe that’s the thing, you never reaslise it at the time because of all the challenges you put yourselves through until then, when you look back and realise that while it may have been shit and it didn’t work out like you thought it would, it was worth it. I hope so anyway. Homesickness. It hits me harder than my partner. Sometimes I think he’s a robot because it doesn’t affect him at all, but then he did say he couldn’t move out of home fast enough and after 20 years of being together ... I see his point, being the odd one out can be a hard space to inhabit. But I understand it now, the longing and heart breaking sadness that fills you from your toes to the top of your head because it’s more than just the country you happen to be born in, it’s a massive part of who you are. And while I may be in public denial at the moment that I am Australian, due to the current and ongoing political climate of the country I am inextricably tied to that country – the smells, the sounds, the weather, my family. It is not to say that my husband and children aren’t enough for me because they are my whole world but it’s as though something is missing, as though I have lost a really important part of my body such as an arm or a leg and while I may be able to function without that part of my body I’m not whole. On the flip side, moving abroad offers you the opportunity to be the person you always wanted to be because no one knows you. They don’t know your history, how you should be behaving and therefore can’t judge you on your past. It is a great opportunity to re-invent yourself and branch out, but there is always that part of me, sometimes little and sometimes huge that feels homesick. There are specifics that I miss so much, tangible things such as:
Yet there are more intangible things that I miss so much. The smells that drift from my parent’s kitchen window when my Papa is cooking his delicious sauce, the sound of their laughter, the lazy afternoons spinning tales and philosophising about the state of affairs with our sister. There is a warmth that fills my body, spreading like liquified summer when I’m surrounded by those intangible things. I understand now.
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