annarino writes

A new year begins with hope and praise for new beginnings. New year’s resolutions? I still wonder what I shall be when I grow up. It becomes harder with age to grow up. Angela and Angelo who brought me into world, parented me through life, showing me the way to be better and stronger, have been dead many years. The aunts and uncles who shepherded me through trials and struggles are also gone from the sight of those of my family still alive. Even my older brother Angelo and several lovable cousins have died. Childhood friends, too, have accepted their mortality and left me behind. 

Who is left to help me grow up? To remind me how to behave myself, and direct my steps of exploration? Too few for one as strong-willed as I. I find myself more child-like and childish than ever. Perhaps I do it deliberately so that I may hear my Mother’s chiding tone in my head as she shares her exasperation over my antics,. Her words have taken up permanent residence in my brain. She comments on everything I do, still. It is a mystery to me, one I endure willingly, now.

I fought that constant harangue and meddlesome interference while she lived. All the older Italian women, family and friends, had no qualms about meddling in my life. I laugh now, at their efforts, with some stirring of guilt. It was a hopeless task, and I made certain they knew it as I laughed in their faces. Who is laughing now? I hope they are. I hope I can still make them smile. I only wanted to watch their determined faces break into smiles as they hit me with a rolled-up newspaper and shook their heads. Oh, yes, they operated as a gang. When my mother’s singular efforts seemed to get nowhere, she called in the troops. They would descend on my latest apartment, in the latest city I had moved to, to take the latest job. I was supposed to remain at home, or live next door with a husband, or at least within a few blocks of Mom. I never did. When I was about 35 years old she asked her sister, “ She is not coming home, is she?” Aunt Millie disclosed this to me long after Mom had died. Aunt Millie kept Mom with me all those years after her death. Now, Aunt Millie is also dead to this world. But, she and mom, and all those other Italian women who mothered me will always be alive in my head and my heart. One day, I will be grown up enough to join them. I dread that newspaper. My guess is they still keep it at-the-ready.

Dad lives in my head and heart, too; along with uncles, brothers and older male cousins who formed a protective barrier around me sight unseen. I seldom hear their words. What I hear is their laughter. I see their smiles and watch them quietly hand me a baseball, fishing pole, chocolate milk shake, deck of cards, rake, electrical tape, cement tool. And best of all, their grins. They stood behind the women who were intent on “setting me straight” with grins on their faces and laughter in their eyes. They redirected my thoughts from my transgressions, as I watched them with great delight. Probably,  they smiled and smirked because I had taken the focus of the women off their own antics, temporarily relieving them of the women’s attention. 

I felt more kinship with them. I wanted their freedom. The women were content to stay in their place. I wanted to go find my place, separate and apart. I wanted the right to control every choice. I did not want to “ask my husband” before I took a step. I wanted to go farther and wider than our insular neighborhood of people and ideas, which seemed enough to satisfy those I knew. I am still searching for that place. I seek a place where freedom of thought and affection expand rather than contract. Often, but not always, like E.T. and all travelers, I simply want to “go home.” So, I do.

I travel through memories tough and sweet back to the South side, just beyond the railroad tracks where Italian immigrant families had settled down. Eventually, most of the children of those families left the neighborhood, as did I. But, I truly still live there no matter my current address. There are no dead parents, no dead aunts and uncles, no dead cousins, no dead brother or dead friends there. All those I love still live there.

Aging brains do not become forgetful. Aging brains simply choose to remember all that once was alive, all those whom they loved. Aging brains hold memory alive with a strength no young brain can comprehend. We do it out of love, not loss. We have lost no ability to remember. We simply choose to remember what we chose to love.

So, here is my New Year’s resolution; I shall love all that is new, and all I can remember from what is old. I shall continue trying to grow up. I shall look for new paths, new journeys of discovery. I may appear to move more slowly than I did last year. I am carrying more baggage with me. I am carrying more of those who died and can no longer physically walk beside me. I love this journey. I am in no hurry to end it. However, I may have to take more stops along the way. The journey of life may seem slower when young. But, it is not. The young simply have fewer bags to carry. They only imagine they go faster, because they go lighter. I may be old now, but I feel light, too. Those whom I carry share their lightness of spirit with me. Someday, I shall become as light a spirit as they.