NO CURE

As is the case with everyone, I can never go home again. I may travel back one day, to the country of my youth, but ‘home’ is no longer there.

Within my parallel universe, I still stroll along the cobbled Viale della Vittoria in Terracina. I still sit at the eating-table in the two room studio of the Maestra who wrote my lessons in a quaderno. And, Enrico still arrives on the bus from Frosinone, and we stroll along the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea as his sister walks behind us.

The me that lives in that continuum, is in Cisterna sitting at an open window with my cousin Maria as we watch the Zingari set-up camp in the field below. The smells from their simmering stew over an open fire wafts up and settles into our nostrils.

In that space in time, I am in Cellole, where we kill pigs for food, shear sheep for wool, and tend vineyards for wine. I sleep on a feather bed in a three room apartment there, and gather wood with Zia Celeste for the stove that cooks our meals. I visit my aunts, uncles and cousins often, but I live in Terracina with Nonno and Rosina. The three of us live in the Villa on the sand at L’Acqua Santa in summer, and the apartment on Via Roma in winter, with an occasional autumnal soggiorno in San Felice.

And, of course, I am with Lina as we share the laughter that comes from seeing Nonno doing his best to remain hidden in an attempt to keep an eye on us while we dine al-fresco on the beach with the two German boys we just met.

Italy was my drug. Everyday I was high with the pleasure she gave me. There is no cure for this addiction, and someday I will overdose from the mere memory that still lingers, and be glad in it.

In part, this is my youth. In this world, peace is with all who have passed. In that world, we are still laughing.

 
 
Oil on canvas/A Gypsy Camp
by William Turner (of Oxford)
(1789 – 1862)
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