Everybody's got daddy issues.
If you told me, a few years ago, that I'd have any kind of relationship with my father, I probably would have laughed at you.
My father was always this strange entity that I would see a couple of times a year. The memories I have of my visits to my paternal grandmother's house are incredibly tactile. So strong, in fact, that I remember everything... from sound, to smell, to touch. I'm sure that wherever they are in the folders of my mind, they're kept separate from everything else because of this. (I want to note, right here, that I just thought of something that I must start working on.) The memories range from my fascination with my grandmother's pink, round powder puff box, with this scent that will always be known as 'the other Nona' to me, to my father trying to feed me cachis (a fruit that I still do not know the word for in English), the sweet juice running down his rough calloused fingers, to the way his whiskers tickled my skin as he whispered into my ear. Cara mia. His dear one.
On the Scholars trip to Appalshop last year, we participated in story circles where a topic was agreed on, sometimes just a word, and we'd all go around the circle telling each other memories. The topic was something like "reveal" or "a double meaning" and I began thinking of the trips my mother and I would take to my other Nona's house. My mother would turn the engine off and potchkey around with her hair in the mirror a little. Then she'd reach into the side pocket of the driver's seat and take out her bottle of Fendi perfume. She'd spray some on and then she'd ask me if I wanted, and I never refused. What little girl would refuse being part of such a ritual, and putting on grown-up perfume? I never really understood or thought about its significance. And it hit me.. what was really going on. It was something I had been so naive about. There I was, in a circle of almost strangers, finally realizing what it was all about. I was overwhelmed by it. I felt like I had gone back in time and I was sitting there, as an adult, next to the mother from my memories, seeing it - really seeing it - for the first time. The desperation.. The disappointment on her painted-on-face when the phone would ring and Nona would tell us it was him, saying he couldn't make it.
I never had the chance to be curious about who I am and where my traits and such could possibly have "come from" because I only really knew half of the equation. The visits I had with my father weren't the kind that I could take much away from. They were very trivial and all I cared about was that my daddy was coming to see me and that he was this nice man who gave me lots of hugs and kisses and never did so much as raise his voice. Quite a bit older, but perhaps not much wiser, I'm constantly learning things about my father: He was a barber back in Italy. My grandmother was his father's second wife and I have aunts and uncles I never knew about. He was on (at least) cocaine when he left us for his best friend's wife. And little things, like how he likes to work with his hands and finds it impossible to sit still most times, like me.
It's a fascinating relationship. When I told him I was going to Italy, he told me I have to go visit his sister in Amato, where he grew up. I have an Aunt Yolanda apparently. And Amato is such a small country town that all I have to do is get off the train and ask for her. "They'll take you right to her door." I feel like I am jumping head-first into a family I should have known all along. I have no anger, amazingly enough. Only insatiable curiosity. And this consuming desire to be welcomed with open arms.
My father was always this strange entity that I would see a couple of times a year. The memories I have of my visits to my paternal grandmother's house are incredibly tactile. So strong, in fact, that I remember everything... from sound, to smell, to touch. I'm sure that wherever they are in the folders of my mind, they're kept separate from everything else because of this. (I want to note, right here, that I just thought of something that I must start working on.) The memories range from my fascination with my grandmother's pink, round powder puff box, with this scent that will always be known as 'the other Nona' to me, to my father trying to feed me cachis (a fruit that I still do not know the word for in English), the sweet juice running down his rough calloused fingers, to the way his whiskers tickled my skin as he whispered into my ear. Cara mia. His dear one.
On the Scholars trip to Appalshop last year, we participated in story circles where a topic was agreed on, sometimes just a word, and we'd all go around the circle telling each other memories. The topic was something like "reveal" or "a double meaning" and I began thinking of the trips my mother and I would take to my other Nona's house. My mother would turn the engine off and potchkey around with her hair in the mirror a little. Then she'd reach into the side pocket of the driver's seat and take out her bottle of Fendi perfume. She'd spray some on and then she'd ask me if I wanted, and I never refused. What little girl would refuse being part of such a ritual, and putting on grown-up perfume? I never really understood or thought about its significance. And it hit me.. what was really going on. It was something I had been so naive about. There I was, in a circle of almost strangers, finally realizing what it was all about. I was overwhelmed by it. I felt like I had gone back in time and I was sitting there, as an adult, next to the mother from my memories, seeing it - really seeing it - for the first time. The desperation.. The disappointment on her painted-on-face when the phone would ring and Nona would tell us it was him, saying he couldn't make it.
I never had the chance to be curious about who I am and where my traits and such could possibly have "come from" because I only really knew half of the equation. The visits I had with my father weren't the kind that I could take much away from. They were very trivial and all I cared about was that my daddy was coming to see me and that he was this nice man who gave me lots of hugs and kisses and never did so much as raise his voice. Quite a bit older, but perhaps not much wiser, I'm constantly learning things about my father: He was a barber back in Italy. My grandmother was his father's second wife and I have aunts and uncles I never knew about. He was on (at least) cocaine when he left us for his best friend's wife. And little things, like how he likes to work with his hands and finds it impossible to sit still most times, like me.
It's a fascinating relationship. When I told him I was going to Italy, he told me I have to go visit his sister in Amato, where he grew up. I have an Aunt Yolanda apparently. And Amato is such a small country town that all I have to do is get off the train and ask for her. "They'll take you right to her door." I feel like I am jumping head-first into a family I should have known all along. I have no anger, amazingly enough. Only insatiable curiosity. And this consuming desire to be welcomed with open arms.