Winding down from the thrill of young love in the most romantic country in the world to the humdrum of life at home made me feel like a flower wilting after a spectacular blossoming or a balloon slowly deflating. True, I was going to start high school in a few days, and that had me on tenterhooks, but psychologically, I felt like I was stuck in a dichotomy that could be described in any of the following ways: my dream world vs reality, fulfilment vs emptiness, Italy vs America.
Academically, I was not a bad student, although I lacked in consistency, with a B+ average. I enjoyed my language classes and English the most. One day in my freshman year, my geography teacher, a nun, asked us to write an essay about what career we’d like to pursue, so I naturally wrote that I wanted to work in the language field, maybe for an airline or as a bilingual secretary, or if I was really good, as a UN interpreter. She did not agree; she told me I didn’t have what it would take to do something like that, based on the quality of my effort in her class (I loved geography but I couldn’t stand her!). This, with time galvanized my intentions even more, a classic case of proving the teacher wrong. Which I did!
During my sophomore year, I began a period of awakening, stimulated by the work we were doing, especially in English class. My dad taught me American Literature and to this day I have to say he was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, because he didn’t only limit himself to teaching the subject material. His classical European education gave him a wealth of knowledge to tap from, and he had the amazing ability to make connections between the American and European cultures. This was very different from the teaching style of most of my educators. That year, in his class, we read To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my favorite books of all time. I felt a kindred spirit with just about all the characters, and most of all, I noticed significant links between that small town in the deep south and my parent’s hometown in Italy (families have “streaks” here, too, hypocrisy runs rampant, and lately, a vein of racism has emerged following the influx of African refugees.)
Reading quickly became my favorite pastime and I felt that with each book I completed, I took a new step towards awareness and growth. I especially liked to delve in historical fiction with political themes, such as the novels of Taylor Caldwell and Helen McInnes. I also developed a certain propensity for writing and felt encouraged when one of my teachers complimented me on an essay I’d written. Can you guess what the subject was? Yes, Italy. Throughout those first two years of high school, I concentrated as much as possible on my studies and extracurricular activities, although it wasn’t easy, because in the meantime I was busy keeping the flame of love alive by daydreaming 24 hours a day, a pastime that had basically transformed me into a typical teen: brooding and irritable. I was bored by everything, but every so often, something exceptional would break the spell and give me some enthusiasm.
One day our English lit teacher organized a trip to see the matinee of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. The moment I saw Leonard Whiting appear in his first scene, my jaw dropped and I felt like I would swoon. Except for the blue eyes, to me he was the incarnation of Giannino; the same hair and physique, the same smile! I came home from that movie so excited, but with such a painful longing in my heart, I almost wished I hadn’t seen it…well, not really, but my desire to go back to Italy increased day by day!
The next night, we met at our usual rendez-vous spot beyond the piazza, but this time we weren’t alone. We started off on our walk together with Rossella and her boyfriend and, instead of heading down the Abbey lane, we went to the new park, where, besides the usual complicit cypress trees, a row of hedges and a couple of benches offered more comfortable seclusion and discretion. We felt free, but we were well aware that someone in the houses along the way was most probably watching those two young couples from behind their curtains, trying to figure out who we were, prepared to make a full report to some relative of ours. We just didn’t care!
We chose a bench at the far end of the park, while Rossella and her boyfriend chose one closer to the entrance. In all of the impetuous daydreams I’d conjured up in the previous two years, I hadn’t really thought of improving my capacity to speak Italian. Like many first generation children in isolated pockets of immigration in the US, I understood almost everything, but I had a psychological block to speaking it, for fear of making mistakes. So what little conversation we had was mainly composed of questions he asked, to which I responded in monosyllables. I didn’t care: I just wanted to be with him and never part. This time, our encounter was more animated and impulsive than that momentous first kiss, but we were nonetheless quite chaste. It still was, after all, young love. We spent the next precious hour in romantic bliss. Unfortunately it was to be our only encounter alone, although in the following days I took every opportunity to go out with my friends and watch him play soccer (he was a very good player, a town champion!), or meet him at the beach. A few days later, August, tomato harvest time, was upon us. There was always so much to do on the farm and he was a precious help to his parents. I knew well that with the tomato harvest, came the bottling ritual, so I volunteered to help his family make these precious preserves again. I had brought a radio/tape recorder with me from the States, so I could ‘steal’ music from the radio instead of buying records. I brought it to his garage with me and we listened to the music I’d taped while we worked. Occasionally I recorded some of the banter between him and his uncle Mario, interrupting the songs I’d so painstakingly recorded from the radio.
The hits that summer seemed as if they’d been written with our love story in mind, like“Tornerò” (I’ll be back) and “SabatoPomeriggio” (Saturday Afternoon). These songs spoke of separation and promises of eternal love, and they became our theme songs, even though we never got to dance to them. Luckily none of the interruptions ruined my recording of these two hits. That tape was destined to be worn down to nothing with time, but it would be a source of solace and daydreaming for the next two years.
Soon, it was time to leave again, and I realized we would again be separated for who knows how long. I don’t know why I obeyed my mother’s admonition to never contact him (“don’t you dare write to Giannino!”-–I think she had a frightening intuition), but I did while pining away. However, desperate to let him know how I felt, I decided I had to do something, so the night before we left, I asked my friend Rossella to help me write him a note. I wrote it out nice and clearly using my best penmanship, which he probably had a hard time deciphering, because Italian calligraphy is very different from ours. I hadn’t contemplated that I probably would never get a message back, because there was no time. Of course she delivered it for me, too, and no, I didn’t get a written reply, but little did I know that that was not the last I would see of that note. The morning we left, as we drove away I turned around to hold his gaze through the rear car window. He gave me a meaningful look and a nod that I will never forget. I felt a surge of hope, and at that point it seemed to me that my destiny was to just dream my life away.
September rolled around and I went back to school. I generally avoided my male classmates, or rather they avoided me, except for a couple of guys I considered friends. No one ever asked me out in high school: no prom, no double dates. I don’t know if there was some kind of invisible sign over me saying “stay away” or if the reason for my lack of boyfriends was that my dad taught at my school, so maybe they felt intimidated by him. But I really didn’t care much because I knew that no one could make me feel like Giannino did. I learned to accept that, even because, to my mind, American boys didn’t seem to have the maturity and self awareness of the Italians I’d met. I remember listening in awe to Giannino and his friends talking about politics and social issues, topics an American college student might have delved into perhaps, but a sixteen year old at home didn’t normally share this kind of interest, which to me seemed so worldly.
During those last two years of high school, I started feeling anxious and maybe even a little depressed. Graduation would soon be approaching and I didn’t feel ready for my future. Emotionally, I knew that my attitude towards life had to change. I was so introverted, I felt like I’d probably go into a panic at the first bump in the road, so during my Senior year, I decided it was time to gather my wits about me and start making some important decisions. I made up my mind to pursue my interest in foreign languages at Chestnut Hill College, despite what Sister so-and-so said. The college was just half an hour away from home, but I took a dorm room because I wanted the full college experience. I also continued working part time at the supermarket I’d been employed at since my sophomore year of high school. And finally, tired of being miserable, just before leaving for college, I made the conscious decision to get Giannino out of my mind and stop dreaming. I desperately needed to live, breathe, and experience reality!
I loved CHC. It was the perfect place for me. It was an all-female college, where I felt safe and nurtured both intellectually and spiritually. I tried the whole gamut of experiences, from learning to swim, to playing sports (Badminton is a sport, isn’t it?). I was awful at them both. But I did well academically and socially. There were no guys, so there was no pressure, and besides, there were plenty of opportunities for socializing at the other colleges and universities that the Philadelphia area is particularly replete with. Academically I felt right at home with the calm pace of lessons and study time, and I truly enjoyed learning the French language, literature and culture, as well as Spanish, Italian (about time, right?), and Russian.
Having made my momentous decision to stop dreaming about a guy that lived on the other side of the ocean, I thought I would be meeting guys here and there, and wasn’t planning on much else. I didn’t want to “play the field”, and neither did I intend to get too close to anyone just yet, but that’s exactly what happened. A few weeks after starting school, I met a guy at my absolute first outing with my friends – fraternity party (groan)…right around the time that Animal House came out. No, Tim did not make me feel like Giannino, but I had resigned myself to the fact that no one ever would. I gave him my phone number and we started dating and with time, things got more serious. We dated for three years and I believe that relationship was a growing experience for both of us, but deep down I knew it was destined to end. We went on day trips to the mountains and I stayed with him and his family down the shore a few times during the summers. We eventually got into a bit of a rut, mainly because we had absolutely nothing in common and we’d exhausted all of the possibilities for mutual growth. Each of us had given everything we had to share: He introduced me to Dan Fogelberg and Neil Young’s music, while I shared my experience with art and classical music. At one point, we decided to start seeing other people because we were just not getting along very well. We were on and off that whole third year, and in the meantime I went out with a couple of other guys I had known for years. But I was restless, and I was ready for a change.
That spring of 1980, I decided to go back to Italy with my mom and sister, five years after my last visit. Mom wanted to see her parents again, as they were getting up there in years and were starting to have health issues. I’d been quite depressed all year; I was unsatisfied with just about everything in my life. I felt very lonely deep down inside, to the point of deciding that I’d be commuting to university instead of rooming in during my Senior year.
The college was quite close to my home, and with my steady part- time job at Genuardi’s supermarket, I could afford gas (gas was affordable, then…). Tim had just graduated from Villanova University and had gone to Barbados to celebrate with his friends. Apparently he had met someone there- the classic ‘one night stand’- the one he absolutely had to tell me about when he got home…We had a huge argument and broke up.
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