Do you miss home?
It’s a dangerous business, Barbs, talking Italian over the phone.
This is an authentic vintage status update:
“Some say to be prepared for 2018 by always carrying with you these three items: a #book, a #notebook, and a bottle of #water. I have a notepad on my phone (with a pen!) and I listen to audiobooks, so two are covered. This 2018 is off to a great start!”
While I still share my past-self attitude towards water, as in I’d rather ignore it altogether, I need to disclose some mixed feelings towards technology.
You know how I felt about my FitBit(ch) and that my laptop died before I moved to Australia. I decided I’d replace it once I found a job, and once I did, I also bought The Sims and a bottle of not-the-cheepest wine to celebrate my career achievement. I was indeed grateful for smartphones, but I was starting to feel like my phone was useless for human connection.
Oh, you don’t say?! Look at me being early on the timeline.
The danger of talking Italian over the phone
I had a phone because, well, it was 2018 and you had to have one. I mostly used it for Facebook status updates and audiobooks. I even kept it in my bag at work because, during the day, all my Italian friends were asleep, and whenever I was with Aussie friends, everyone who could have messaged me was with me in person.
That year, Facebook complimented me for making 40 friends, and I think about that way too often. I know it was intended to be a nice thing to celebrate, but it meant I only just met 40 people in the whole city. In the Country. In the Continent. In the Southern Hemisphere.
Occasionally, I would take videos in cool places or leave voice notes to my Italian friends, all in Italian and all delayed. The only phone-call friendly time turned out to be between 5pm-ish here and 8am-ish there, when I had just got out of work. I usually called my mother while walking on the wrong side of the footpath and admiring my favourite tree.
I felt quite comfortable speaking Italian in public; after all, what were the chances of one of the 40 people I knew being next to me and able to understand Italian? And even if someone was allegedly “Italian”, I presumed they wouldn’t care why I was grounded 20 years ago.
Nobody ever interrupted me, chiming in on my personal life, which would have been highly entertaining, but I have started recognising Italians in the wild. I could (should?) have been more careful in my transatlantic gossip. In fact, the boyfriend and I played this game called ‘spotted’: anytime we heard someone speak Italian, the first person who noticed would say ‘spotted!’.
Yes, we’re literal like that.
We played all over Europe, much to my amusement at his inability to distinguish Italian and Spanish. Clearly, in Melbourne, the chance of hearing Spanish was much lower, and the fact that there were so many ‘Italians’ around meant that the possibility of someone listening to my calls was pretty high that whole time.
Recently, a couple was chatting in Italian while walking behind me. I turned around and smiled, recognising a familiar Northern Italian accent. Pretty rare in Melbourne. In the following few minutes, they revealed their whole life story to me. They came from a town not far from mine and were here on my same VISA. She worked at a French bakery, and he worked for a tech company. He sounded grateful and said that even the rural work to prolong their stay wasn’t too bad, but she shook her head and said she hated it here. She missed walking up to the green of the mountains and felt lonely without her friends. She asked how I could possibly enjoy it here.
When people asked me if I missed my family, I felt bad saying that, no, I didn’t.
Don’t give me that sad face. I’d be miserable if I did!
Imagine if I woke up every morning like the baker girl: hating the beige of the city, and missing everything and everyone back home. Wouldn’t that be horrible?
Granted, I was still in my honeymoon phase. Going to the city was an event. The skyscrapers’ windows lit up in the evening were my personal constellations. I felt like I was accomplishing my goals and was exactly where I wanted to be. I didn’t have a return ticket yet, and was unfazed by this ‘suspended’ time that almost felt like I was living a dream.
I know some people don’t see Metropolis as idyllic, but whenever I travelled to a real city, I liked to sleep with my hotel window open; I didn’t want to miss out on the night skyline or the sounds of the streets below. Spoiler alert: I still do.
Maybe I should start saying that my roots are just wireless.
While I often described myself as ‘uprooted’, this wasn’t accurate. My lifelong friends and family were deeply rooted and stood tall and strong, showing how far I’d gone. My Italian roots were important, but like a tree, to reach my full potential, I needed to grow beyond where I was planted, and strong roots allow branches to reach higher up.
I chose to migrate to the other side of the World while having a safe place I could call home. Most importantly, I was lucky to have a strong community empowering me to live wonderful adventures without guilt. My friends even sent me off as a custodian of our reciprocal goals and aspirations for the year. That’s a special treatment they didn’t reserve for any other migrating millennial from our group.
Shout out to the other cornerstones of the World: S to the West in Florida, M to the North in Norway, and M to the East in New Zealand. The South sends its regards. They’re not reading this anyway.
Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence dated back to 2018, when these events took place:
Some people are like mint, impossible to keep inside a single pot.
PS I don't know how I missed this post when it came through a few weeks ago. I'm glad I found it, 'twas a great read :)