Loreta Giannetti , Italian-Canadian, tells the departure for America. Starting a painful, agonizing, as seen through the eyes of a child who feels his world disappear. The emigrants who have experienced the same emotions will find themselves in the story of the little Molise.
F ine December 1956. It's cold in the house. Tomorrow we will take the ship to Naples, where for America. I do not recognize my home. The furniture was sold. There are only three chairs in the middle of the kitchen and retrieved the funds for the construction of the crib.
The fireplace warms us that makes us a bit 'light the flame. It's dark outside. Starless night. My mother looks bigger than usual. When he walks to the kitchen, the shadow reaches the ceiling. I'm afraid. My sister is sleeping on a box that acts as his birthplace. This home close TOMORROW.
Tonight vigil and expect friends and family came to greet us. Here come the grandparents, aunts and uncles come. They do not know where to store the chairs mom offers to the elderly and speakers to young people. No one wants to talk, you cry alone. The fire is silent tonight. It's cold and dark. All dressed in black like a funeral. Only his eyes red, watery eyes only so many tears.
Grandma begins to speak quietly with my mother. Perhaps the talk of my father, his son ahead of us in America. But the tears of a mother increases more and more. I approach her and she takes me in his arms. The first time in many months.
Out of an accordion begins to play, a sad song then another two and no more. You hear the pitch of the musician who goes. Reaches more people, neighborhood, my mother's friends, wives and companions: they start slowly cries of pain.
mom tormented by cries of this flight and cries of Rimage. Cries of grandmothers, aunts, wives of. The men are silent and secure the open fire, a cigarette in his mouth. They do not say anything. After a while, 'they all go. "We support the station tomorrow."
The kitchen is heated, the fire remains true: it is he who keeps her company until the end of the night.
My sister always sleeps. My mother prepares a bed made of wooden crates of the crib. It takes the big pool green and takes me in his arms and there, stretched out on the land of Bethlehem, near the fire, get your sleep. Now everything is dark around us.
Loreta Giannetti