One country of birth. A second, different, country of origin. Never fully immersed in either one. That’s how I’ve felt most of my life. Living in limbo culture, as it’s commonly referred to, can be at times confusing, lonely, and makes you question who you really are and where you really belong. I was born in Canada. I am a first generation Canadian. My parents were born in a small town, up on a mountain side, in southern Italy. They were both the youngest of six children. I have some cousins old enough to be my aunts and uncles (one even older than my mother!), and some aunts and uncles old enough to be my grandparents. My eldest paternal uncle decided to move to Canada for better opportunities for himself and his entire family. They were living in Milan around the time that my uncle sponsored his parents and his siblings (they were 6 boys!) so they could move to Canada. Although, after a few years one uncle returned to live in southern Italy, taking with him my grandparents, where they were later laid to rest.
My father, who was only 16 years old when he came to Toronto, attended school to learn English and worked many odd jobs to support himself as a young man. He married my mother, whom he met in Italy while on vacation, ten years later at the age of 26. They moved to Canada soon after they were wed in Italy. Conversely, my mother is the only one of her 5 siblings to move out of Italy (they were 4 girls and 2 boys). I have great aunts and uncles, on my father’s side, living in Toronto and in South America. However, I have only one first cousin, on my mother’s side, currently living in Canada. I am also fortunate to have my maternal grandfather’s extensive adoptive family living throughout Canada. Not to mention, countless relatives from my maternal grandmother’s side living throughout the United States.
In my home growing up, English was our second language. I am fluent in Italian, reading and writing, which did not come easy. My father instilled one very strict rule, growing up we were only allowed to speak Italian in the house, even amongst my two sisters and I (a rule we broke often when my father wasn’t home). We would spend many Saturday evenings as children sitting around the kitchen table listening to my father read allowed a passage from an Italian book, in return we had to write out each word that he read. He also corrected our written work, and we would be graded…ouch! We would also spend time listening to my father read Italian children’s stories, and eventually learned to read those stories ourselves as well. Although it sounds tedious and gruelling, I am eternally thankful for this education. A love for my Italian heritage, along with an eternal bond, grew with each passing year.
What did it mean to me to be Canadian at a young age? I couldn’t really tell you. All I knew was that I identified as being Italian, but I was living in a great country called Canada. Outside my home was a place called Canada where everyone spoke English and where lots of other cultures cohesively resided peacefully, on the most part. Inside my home, a culture completely different. Language, beliefs, even the smell of different foods often clashed with the outside world. This is limbo culture. It was a dance I would come to learn. Difficulties and life lessons learned in the ‘outside’ world never to be spoken of in the ‘inside’ world, namely because my parents would never understand some of my life experiences. Similarly, homework was all in English. My parents only knew we were doing homework in the evening, but could not be involved because my mother didn’t speak very much English in those days, and my father worked night shifts on and off at a car production company. My saving grace was my super advanced (only fifteen months older!) sister who drilled me on my spelling and questionable math skills. She was my live-in teacher! (which would explain why she is now an educator at the university level, and an official editor of my blogs, along with my younger sister—a job they were both involuntarily appointed to).
Each weekend, my mother played Italian music while we all cleaned the house. I also listened to my mother on the phone as she called her siblings and extended family, speaking an Italian dialect that I would come to understand only as a teenager (and maybe learn to speak a few words for my relatives’ entertainment). Although I grew up in a predominantly Italian area I still felt the switch between my two worlds. This cultural clash became more and more evident to me as I got older, and attended high school and university, because I was exposed to more people from various parts of the world. In those days a common introduction was, “so where are you from?”, which didn’t mean which city you were from but which part of the world you or your relatives came from (a phrase now commonly viewed as taboo).
What did it mean to me to be Canadian as a young adult? I couldn’t tell you. However, I knew that I was the first generation in my family to attend university. I have aunts who are illiterate. They cannot write their own name or identify numerics. I returned to Italy a number of times, convinced I was returning ‘home’. How strange it is to identify with a country that I had never lived in, yet felt a strong emotional bond. I was convinced that I would feel more at home there than here, and that is not to say I didn’t love my country or was not proud to be Canadian. However, I soon discovered on one trip that I didn’t belong there either. You see, I was raised in an Italian culture through the eyes of my parents, who had a limited education, and had left Italy at a young age themselves (my mom was only 20 years old when she got married and moved here). Italy as they saw it ceased to exist, replaced by a modern generation of people whom some view my parents, and by default myself, as ex patriots and find difficult to understand our desire and pull to ‘their’ country.
On one occasion in Italy, I was walking down the street one evening with some cousins and their circle of friends. I was chatting away with someone in English when suddenly someone from our group shouted at me in Italian, “Shut up and speak your mother tongue”. Never one to hold my tongue in the face of prejudicial comments, I wiped around and gave him a good verbal lashing. In part, I told him my parents made me Canadian so I was speaking my mother tongue. But was I really? This experience stuck with me because it was then that I realized I was never going to be seen as an Italian citizen when in Italy, and I may never be fully immersed in the Canadian culture as I imagined I should.
So what does it mean to me to be Canadian now? It means exactly this: fully living and breathing two cultures. One plus one may sometimes equal none—but it can also equal two with some real and hard life experiences. Today, I don’t feel a great divide in me. I feel both Canadian and Italian, and not just because I have dual citizenship, but because both cultures uniquely shaped me. For me, being Canadian is defined by my dual citizen heart as well. With my children I celebrate my Canadian traditions just as strongly as I live and experience my Italian ones. Furthermore, I gave my children Italian first names, including spelling, so one day when my great grandchildren visit their grandparents at their gravesite, they will see Italian names and hopefully find a connection to their Italian heritage as well—and feel proud.
Thoughts At F___ It Forties 